Chapter 14
No Further Questions
JULIETTE
Themorningarrivedonschedule.
Nick had left before the light shifted—no coffee, no questions, no chance for the morning to make demands. He was gone before I could even decide whether I wanted answers or a repeat performance—which was rude, considering my body had already voted for the repeat performance and my pride had filed an objection in triplicate.
Same white light washed across the timber floor. Same birdsong threaded through the open air, bright and relentless. The suite looked exactly as I’d left it.
Sitting up took more effort than it should have. My skin felt cataloged. Every line accounted for.
The mirror didn’t get more than a glance. I tied my hair back, tight and efficient. My pulse jumped against my own fingers as they brushed my neck.
No. We are not spiraling before coffee.
On the deck, the air had already begun to cook, the scent of spice and sage rising to meet the sun. Another ranger, one of the younger ones, waited beside an unfamiliar safari vehicle, his uniform too crisp for the hour.
"Morning, Ms. Wilder. Lodge?"
"Please."
The three-mile drive vibrated through the frame. The landscape passed in a blur of gray and olive. My mind kept reaching for the Day Five itinerary, but the destination was the only thing with any weight. When my phone buzzed with the dogged persistence of a Rayann interrogation, I ignored it. I wasn't prepared to filter the noise floor of my sisters. Not until I’d seen Nick in the daylight.
I turned the screen off. Wilder Horizons, with all its moving parts, was three thousand miles away. I was a woman in a dusty jeep, watching a man with a diplomat’s poise and a soldier’s hands navigate a landscape that didn't give a damn about the quarterly projections of Wilder Horizons.
We pulled up to the main lodge. I was out before the engine died. The crunch of gravel under my boots was the only sound in the sudden vacuum of the morning.
Nick was at the edge of the deck.
He didn't move as the vehicle approached. He stood angled toward the tree line, one hand resting on his hip, the other near the radio. His focus swept left to right. Tree line to open ground. Back again. Left to right.
He didn't look at me.
The boards held the night’s retained warmth, warming the soles of my boots as I crossed to the service station. I poured thecoffee—black and scalding, exactly as I needed it—and felt the air pull tight, anchored to me even as he kept his profile toward the treeline.
"You’re early," he said, his voice dropping into a register that felt like it was intended only for the space between us.
“The entire bush has opinions this morning,” I said, moving to the railing to watch a pair of hornbills bank toward the river. I kept my attention on the birds, resisting the urge to check the set of his jaw.
"Besides, I’ve never had much of a stomach for wasted daylight."
"Efficiency," he noted, and I could hear the faint, dry edge of a challenge in the word. "A comforting standard to maintain."
I took a slow sip, the liquid nearly hot enough to blister, and welcomed the sharp focus it forced into my system.
Third-degree burns. Better than looking at his mouth again.
"Do you always begin the morning with a perimeter sweep, Nick, or is there something specific out there that requires your undivided attention?"
He turned then, just enough to catch my eye. He didn’t smile. There was no softening, no morning-after haze in his eyes. If anything, he looked tighter than he had in the suite, every part of him locked down with the kind of control that made my pulse recognized before the rest of me could pretend otherwise.
“I am always looking for something specific, Wilder.”
"And did you find it?" I asked.
His attention flicked to my mouth. A fraction of a second. Then back to my eyes.
