“I don’t know.” She sealed another sample and labeled it neatly. “Yet. But I’ll be damned if I let something happen to the forest.”
She felt his eyes on her before he spoke. “I’m sure you can source from somewhere else, if it comes to that.”
She stopped writing, looked up straight into his dark eyes. “This isn’t about my business, Rex. It’s about the forest. If something’s wrong with it, if something’s hurting it, then it’s my duty as a human being to try to help. And that is exactly what I’m going to do.”
He went still.
Very still.
Dark eyes on her, the pull between them tightening. Then he nodded. Grave. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Yeah.”
As if she had just sworn something.
As if he had, too.
She stood, brushing dirt from her knees. He rose with her, instinctively closer than before.
“We keep looking?” he asked.
“Yes. There are a few more spots I want to check.”
He nodded again.
And together, they moved deeper into the trees.
Chapter 3
Her back hurt—a deeply satisfying soreness. She couldn’t say if it was the same as gym-sore as she'd never been one for the gym, but it was definitely forest-sore. It was a throbbing between her shoulder blades and along her spine from hours of bending, reaching, and hauling. She was fairly certain she had splinters in both palms from scrambling over bark and grabbing at whatever kept her upright. Her hands were streaked with dirt, and green smears from crushed leaves stained her nails. Sweat had dried along her ribs, between and under her boobs. Her hairdo had long ago given up and escaped whatever clip had tried to contain it, strands sticking to her temples, the back of her neck damp and itchy.
She was hungry enough that her stomach had started making dramatic, betrayal-level noises. She could practically feel the shower she was going to take later: hot water pounding down as steam curled around her.
And man, she was so, so happy.
She’d planned for harvesting these plants, had mapped it all out in her neat little notebook, color-coded and ambitious but realistic. But with Rex’s help, she’d managed twice the area.Twice. The forest had opened up under his guidance like it was some secret garden only he had the key to. Turned out, Officer Growly knew hidden paths that cut the hiking time from one site to another. Not trails, not really. More like slivers between bramble and fern, narrow breaks in the undergrowth that looked like nothing until he stepped into them and the forest simply... parted.
Not always the easiest, though. She’d been scratched by wild blackberry vines that clung like jealous exes. And she’d needed help getting over a huge fallen trunk, a monster of a tree with peeling bark and mushrooms blooming along its side like tiny balconies. Help he gave with not even a second of hesitation, as if chucking a human over a humongous fallen tree was just a Tuesday afternoon thing. He’d stepped behind her, put his big hands on her waist, and lifted her. Just like that. All the way up with no grunt, no dramatic inhale, no flex-and-prepare. Just up and over.
Still, the chucking had involved touching and very close proximity, so she was far from mad at it. He’d only touched her waist, mind you, but dang, the guy didn’t even hold his breath to hoist her over. Think of what he could do in a clothing-optional situation—
Never mind.
Bottom line was, she had so, so many samples to test. Carefully wrapped bundles tucked into her bag, leaves and stems and tiny blossoms that smelled faintly bitter, sweet, and wild. She’d start tomorrow. She didn’t have time today, not with that earned shower waiting in her imagination and the sky already shifting toward evening. Still day, but the light filtering through the canopy had softened, gold draining into amber. The air felt cooler, the shadows now longer and thicker between the trunks.
They were still deep in the forest, meaning they wouldn’t make it to the car before sunset, but it didn’t seem to worry him, the forest expert, so it didn’t bother her. She followed him easily, boots sinking into loam, stepping where he stepped, trusting the broad line of his back as it moved ahead, while she thought about her shower, the muscles of his back, and dinner.
She might get a pizza to celebrate, one with all the toppings, heavy enough to test the cardboard. Olives, mushrooms, pepperoni, maybe those little spicy sausage crumbles. Shewanted to eat enough of it to put her into a food coma until tomorrow. Hard cider—that, too. Cold, sharp, and just sweet enough to make her sigh. It always got into her head, made the edges of the world pleasantly soft and giddy, but she’d have nowhere to go at that point and—
She bumped straight into the solid, unmovable wall that was his back. “Oof. Why did you stop?”
He didn’t answer. He tilted his head this way, then that, as if he was listening to something she couldn’t hear. Then he sniffed the air.
Weird.
“Rex?”
“Quiet.”
There was a rumble in his voice, but it was more worried than mean, which only made her more curious. Of course, she was smarter than to talk now. Something was obviously up; let the man-wolf do whatever he was doing.
