Chapter 2 #2
"She handled the situation well." Anthony meets my eyes briefly, and I get the ghost of that almost-smile. "How's the risotto?"
"Outstanding," Marco says. "Anthony, tell Paulo that the chef's table concept is —"
And the conversation expands the way good dinner conversations do when everyone at the table is comfortable with each other.
Justin and Marco argue cheerfully about the restaurant concept.
Holly steals bites off Justin's plate while pretending she's not.
Anthony doesn't talk a great deal, but then again, he doesn't seem to need to, but when he does, the room orients toward him without him doing anything deliberate to cause it.
He refills my water glass without my asking.
That's just good manners. That's nothing.
I'm staring at his hands again.
Stop staring at his hands.
When Holly excuses herself to deal with an issue, and the men start talking finances, I scroll through the reindeer photos on my phone, professionally, for content planning purposes, this is a work trip after all, when I notice he's watching me.
"Working?" he asks.
"Occupational hazard." I turn the phone so he can see. "I'm a travel blogger. Also technically a travel agent, but the content side is where the momentum is right now." I click to the next photo. "Your reindeer are extremely photogenic."
"They're aware." He looks at the photo, then at me. "What kind of content?"
"Luxury travel. Unique experiences. The kind of thing you can't get from a generic search." I pause. "Which is harder lately. Because of —"
"AI," he says.
"That is a very direct way to say it."
"Is it inaccurate?"
I make a face. "No. It's exactly accurate.
Which is why I need to find things the algorithms can't replicate.
Real human perspectives. The feeling of somewhere, not just its rating.
A story that's actually mine." I look at the reindeer photo.
"This place has that. There's no version of this that a chatbot generates. "
"No," he agrees. "There isn't."
He's still watching me when I look up. That steady, present attention. It’s almost like he's listening to something underneath what I actually said. It makes the back of my neck warm in a way that has nothing to do with the fireplace. He’s attentive and listening in a way that tells me he wants to hear what I’m saying.
"What?" I ask.
"Nothing." He picks up his bourbon. "You're going to write something good about this place."
It's not a question, either.
Holly, having returned and taken her seat across the table, is doing absolutely nothing to hide her smile.
I kick her under the table.
She doesn't even flinch.
Later that evening, after gingerbread panna cotta that I photograph and then eat in about four seconds, after Marco leaves with the theatrics of a man who never actually wants to leave parties, after Holly falls asleep on Justin's shoulder and gets gently steered to bed, it's just the two of us in the small lounge off the atrium with the fire going.
I don't know exactly how that happened. I wasn't tracking it happening.
He's in the armchair. I've tucked my feet under me on the sofa. He has bourbon. I have the last of the wine.
"Tell me about the ranch," I say.
He looks at me over the rim of his glass. "What do you want to know?"
"You and Holly mentioned you have a rehabilitation facility. What are you running right now?"
"About forty animals. Elk, mule deer, a pair of foxes, a bear cub we're overwintering. He came in underweight in October."
"A bear cub?" Did he say a bear cub?
"He'll go back in the spring." He says it simply, like this is just a thing that happens in a person's life.
“Do you cuddle him? Read him bedtime stories? More importantly, can I cuddle him?”
He laughs then, a genuine laugh, and the sound fills me with more warmth than that of the roaring fireplace.
“Absolutely not. The idea is to rehabilitate the animals back into the wild. We keep handling to a minimum. A bear comfortable with humans ends up being a dead bear later. I do everything in my power to make the animals healthy enough to go survive and have long, happy lives in the wild.”
There it is again. That thing where someone talks about something they genuinely love, and it shows whether they want it to or not.
I ask about intake processes and he explains them.
I ask about specific reindeer care requirements, I have that Arctic Circle research somewhere in my brain and I'm genuinely curious. Something shifts in his expression when I ask the right follow-up questions. Like he wasn't expecting to find the questions interesting. I’m not placating him, I’m actually quite fascinated by everything he’s saying.
"Do you take visitors who won’t touch the animals?" I ask. "For educational purposes. Or content purposes."
A deliberate pause. "Occasionally." He looks at me. "You could come out this week. If the reindeer photos were useful, the orphaned elk alone would be —"
"Yes," I say, before he finishes.
He pauses.
"Thursday," he says.
"Thursday's perfect."
He nods once, like a decision made, and goes back to his bourbon. But he smiles.
There it is. The actual smile. The one the shadow has been standing in for all night.
I am in so much trouble.
My suite is absurd. Fireplace, soaking tub, cashmere throw blankets, floor-to-ceiling windows with a mountain view that makes me feel like I'm sleeping inside a snow globe. After the day I’ve had, I should be asleep the moment I reach it.
I am not asleep.
I'm lying in the dark, staring at the ceiling, listening to the wind off the mountain, thinking about a water glass getting refilled without asking, about the way his hands looked working those gloves off on the side of a mountain road. I’m thinking about Anthony talking to calm a frightened animal with nothing but his voice and his patience.
About the way he said my full name. Maya Daniels.
I grab my phone.
Me: Going to his ranch Thursday
The chat detonates.
HOLLY: I KNOW.
EMILY: She is GONE.
CHLOE: This is already a love story I'm not taking questions.
LILY: Wait what happened at dinner? I need a full debrief.
MADISON: She went to dinner and now she's going to a ranch. That's character development.
AMBER: What kind of ranch?
MAYA: Wildlife rehabilitation. It's for CONTENT.
EMILY: She typed that so fast.
LILY: CUTE OUTFIT!
MAYA: It's a ranch. There are animals. I will be in barn clothes.
HOLLY: Cute barn clothes.
CHLOE: The cutest barn clothes.
MADISON: You're going to fall in love on a ranch in Colorado.
MAYA: That is the most dramatic thing anyone has ever said to me.
HOLLY: Madison is not wrong.
MAYA: Goodnight, everyone
EMILY: She didn't say Madison was wrong.
LILY: Noted
I lock my phone.
I pull the cashmere blanket up to my chin and stare at the snow-globe mountains through the glass.
Madison is probably wrong.
Probably.
I fall asleep smiling and I'm not telling anyone.