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Kate considered the question. “I don’t know. Probably nothing important.”

“That wouldn’t have mattered either.”

Her expression softened. “I wasn’t ready to stop talking to you.”

Something in Wes’s chest tightened. “You could have messaged.”

“I will next time.”

Kate said it so casually that Wes almost missed the certainty in it.

Next time.

His bear did not. The warmth inside him deepened. Had she noticed what she’d just said? Wes did not ask. He would not turn two words into a promise she had not made.

Wes lifted their joined hands and pressed his mouth briefly to her fingers. Kate watched him. Then she leaned her head against his shoulder.

No speech followed. Wes did not need one. He rested his cheek for a moment against her hair and looked toward Penny, who had finally stopped moving.

A rabbit had appeared beneath the hedge. Penny stood absolutely still. The small brown animal paused several yards away, ears lifted, watching her. Wes touched Kate’s hand and nodded toward it. Kate followed his gaze. They stayed quiet. For perhaps half a minute, the three of them shared the same patch of orchard while the rabbit decided whether they were worth worrying about. Then it bounded across the grass and disappeared beneath the next section of hedge.

Penny spun around. “I saw it!”

“You did,” Wes said.

“It looked right at me.”

“That means you were quiet enough not to scare it.”

Penny beamed. She hurried back toward them, then remembered halfway that hurrying probably did not count as rabbit watching and slowed down again. When she reached Wes, she crouched beside him. “Do rabbits know people?”

“Some learn which people are around them a lot. Mostly they learn whether you’re dangerous.”

“I wasn’t dangerous.”

“No. You were standing quietly with a stick.”

Penny glanced at the stick as though reconsidering whether it damaged her harmless image.

“Do you want to see something?” Wes asked.

She nodded.

He stood and led her a few steps toward the hedge, Kate following more slowly behind them. Wes crouched and pointed to the soft patch of earth beside the grass. “See those?”

Penny bent down. There were two small prints pressed into the soil. “That’s the rabbit?”

“Probably the one you just saw. The back feet are longer. If you find tracks again, that’s one of the things you can look for.”

Penny crouched beside him and studied them with complete seriousness.

Kate stood a few feet away. When Wes glanced up, she was watching him. Not the tracks. Him. Her expression made him still for a moment. Warm. Soft. Something deeper beneath it that he did not try to name. What did she see when she looked at him like that? A man crouched in the dirt beside Penny, pointing at rabbit tracks. It did not seem like much. Wes stayed where he was, one knee in the damp grass. He held her gaze. Kate’s mouth curved slightly.

Then Penny asked, “Can I touch it?”

“The footprint?”

“Yes.”