Chapter Eleven
DELANEY
When we finished dessert, Glamma and the girls waved me away when I tried to get up and help. Now it was just me and Marc.
Staring at each other.
Things had changed. Slightly.
A shift had happened—microscopic, the kind you feel before you can name it. The way you move the couch a few inches, and then can’t stop noticing the impression it left behind in the carpet. Evidence of what used to be somewhere else.
He didn’t annoy me as much, which was deeply inconvenient. Scratch that—he still annoyed me. The annoyance just felt different now. Less nails on a chalkboard. More like a song stuck in your head that you secretly don’t mind.
I hated that.
It had been one night. One conversation that didn’t end in irritation or eye rolling, or me mentally drafting a speech about how he’d ruined my childhood. One night didn’t rewrite twenty years.
Marc looked at me from across the table. “So—”
“Do you—”
We both stopped.
I reached for my wine glass and then didn’t drink from it, which told me more about my current state than I wanted to know. The silence hummed with things neither of us were saying yet.
“You go first,” Marc said, leaning back with the careful precision of a man creating deliberate distance between us. As though he’d noticed the shift too and had decided to be cautious about it.
Smart man.
Infuriating, but smart.
I cleared my throat. “Your grandmother mentioned that these yoga sessions needed to go well for you too.”
An emotion shifted across his face. Not quite discomfort, but close. He nodded, glancing away before meeting my eyes again with that particular directness he had.
Marc didn’t talk to impress people. He talked to solve problems.
Apparently, my brain found that attractive now—a personal betrayal at its best—as though my subconscious had voted against me without informing me it was even on the ballot.
“I’ve been helping the shelter apply for grants,” he said. “We finally have one that we’re really close to getting. It would set them up for years. And if the shelter follows their guidelines, there’s an excellent chance of renewal.”
My eyes widened despite myself. “That’s amazing.”
“It is.” He paused—longer this time, his eyes dropping briefly to his hands before meeting mine again. “But this one is different.”
I leaned forward before I could stop myself. “How so?”
“They require multiple site visits. We’ve already had two. Extensive oversight. Animal welfare is their top priority.” His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “If they think the animals are stressed or mishandled at any point, we lose it. All of it.”
Oh.
So many things clicked into place at once.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked.
He ran a hand through his hair, and his wavy curls rebelled immediately, springing back as though they’d never been touched. “Not many people know about it. We’ve been keeping it quiet. We didn’t want to—” He stopped and almost looked embarrassed. “Jinx it.”
Marc Kingsley, town vet and part-time lord of control, was afraid of jinxing something. I filed it away for later.
“Are you in the final stages?”
“There’s still paperwork to complete. Additional site visits to prepare for.” He let out a soft sigh. “I’ve heard they sometimes do surprise ones, too.”
Which was why he was so—him—about all this.
This whole time, what read as control wasn’t criticism.
It was fear.
That, I understood. Fear of losing the thing you’d been quietly holding together. Yeah. I knew that one. “I get it,” I responded softly.
We shared a small smile—the kind formed on recently frozen ice, neither of us entirely sure it would hold. Moving carefully. Testing each step.
I bit my lip, thinking through the ramifications. “So you’re helping Theo fill out all the paperwork…”
“Yeah. As the local vet, I can answer it with the clinical knowledge it requires. And Theo—” A flicker of fond exasperation crossed his face. “Theo hates documentation. There needs to be a level of detail—”
“That you have,” I finished.
He nodded once, easy, as though it was just a fact.
Part of me still didn’t trust this truce. The part that had spent two decades perfecting its Marc Kingsley Grievances Catalog, and I wasn’t quite ready to close it and put it away.
I looked at him carefully. “So if the shelter is in need of consistent funds, why hasn’t your family …” Damn me and my big mouth. “It’s none of my business.”
“We’ve tried,” he said, with no defensiveness behind his words. “Theo won’t accept it. Our family has always given where we can in Ruby River, but Theo felt he was taking advantage of our generosity. He wants the shelter to sustain itself as much as possible.”
I respected Theo for his decision. I also understood it in that particular way you understand a thing when you’ve spent your entire adult life refusing to ask for help.
Not that I was going to say that out loud.
“What if you don’t get it?” I asked.
“We can’t think that way.”
Right. Of course. Usually Mr. I-Have-To-Control-Everything would be actively thinking of the worst-case scenario and coming up with various ways to combat it is choosing not to. Interesting that he didn’t have a Plan B–or C or D–for this.
I’d spent two decades building a very specific case against Marc Kingsley. Finding out we were alike in various ways was not the evidence I’d asked for.
I tapped my fingers on the table. “So now that Glamma has moved up our timeline, we need to figure out what to do next.”
He pulled out his phone. “I’m going to message Theo. We didn’t make a lot of progress finalizing the animals, but I can let him know which ones we discussed and ask who he’d recommend.”
“I’d love to rotate the animals if we can,” I said, “so that more of them get face time with the people coming to class. The whole point is to increase awareness of the shelter and to improve the adoption rate.”
“Agreed. I was thinking we should keep the classes small. Maybe five or six people. We can control the environment better that way.”
A frisson of irritation ran through me.
There it was.
“Marc.” I kept my voice even. Mostly. “We need more people to make this work. Cheryl can help manage participants, and with the additional support, we can easily accommodate twelve to fifteen people per class. Once the animals are more comfortable, we could do a few sessions outside, weather permitting. We’d have to see.
But we have to think bigger than five people. ”
“We also need to make sure the animals aren’t overwhelmed.”
“I know that,” I snapped out sharper than I’d intended, the words cutting through the careful civility we’d been building.
I breathed out. “Marc. Animal welfare is absolutely my priority. You don’t get to be the only responsible person in the room.
At some point, you have to actually start trusting that I know what I’m doing. ”
He didn’t argue.
Marc Kingsley—king of polite rebuttals, emperor of having a counterpoint—paused and appeared to be considering what I said instead of preparing to dismantle it.
That was new.
And also unsettling.
“I have a hard time letting go of control,” he admitted, quietly enough that it felt more like a confession than an explanation. “I don’t like the thought of people or animals getting hurt. If I can prevent it, I will.”
That wasn’t control.
It was care wearing armor.
And I genuinely didn’t know what to do with this version of him, so I focused on the problem in front of us.
“I’ll talk to Theo about having additional volunteers in the space during the session,” I offered. “People who can monitor the animals who seem to be struggling with the interaction.”
He was quiet for exactly the amount of time it took to run the numbers. Then, “Okay.”
It was the start to a compromise, which meant we were the kind of people who could compromise with each other now.
Twenty years, and it took a yoga class and an animal shelter grant to get us here.
Glamma materialized in the doorway with the supernatural timing I was beginning to suspect she had deliberately cultivated over the years. “Fair warning,” she announced. “I’ve already set each class to ten, with a waiting list.”
Marc’s jaw clenched tight enough to do damage to his molars.
I pressed my lips together to contain the smile threatening to escape.
“So we can tell Theo we’ll move forward with twelve people to start,” I interjected.
“Perfect! I’ll pull people off the waitlist.” Glamma clasped her hands together like we’d just announced we were getting married.
Oh God. Why was that the thought I’d had? Bad brain! I did not need to picture Marc and me getting married.
I bet he looked hot in a tux, though.
Stahp it!
Marc turned a very restrained glare on his grandmother. “Could you at least tell us what day and time you’ve scheduled these classes?”
“Oh! Of course.” The sparkle in her violet eyes told me with complete clarity that she absolutely knew those details and had chosen not to mention it until now. “It’s Friday at 6:00 p.m., starting next week. We figured you’d need a week to get things figured out.”
Before either of us could respond, her trio of friends made their way back into the room. Martha with her coffee, Goldie with her serene expression, and Gladys delighted about something she clearly wasn’t sharing.
Martha surveyed the room with the calm authority of someone who had wrangled difficult guests over the years at her B&B and learned to read a room. “The sexual tension in here,” she announced, “could power a small lighthouse.”
I choked on my own spit.
Marc froze so completely I wondered for a second if he’d stopped breathing.
Martha nodded and gave us an exaggerated wink. “Possibly a medium-sized one, actually. There’s been an upgrade since before dinner.”
Gladys settled into her chair and considered this. “I give it a week. Maybe less if someone demonstrates downward dog incorrectly on purpose.”
“I would never,” Marc sputtered, horrified.
Glamma nodded sagely. “That’s what your grandfather said.”
“I didn’t ask—”