TESS
The first thing I noticed when Wade shook my hand was that it swallowed mine. The sheer scale of it is mesmerizing—my entire palm and fingers disappeared into his big, meaty paw.
And yet he was so gentle, which only made me want to swoon even more.
Next to us, Sloane’s whole body is vibrating as she tries to hold back her excitement. She looks at me with bright, twinkling eyes.
I know that look. I’ve been on the receiving end of it for months—across brunch tables, over FaceTime, and in carefully worded texts that always start with so I was thinking and end with a man's name I did not ask for. Ever since she got together with Ike, she’s been a pest.
I love her, but I may have to kill her.
"Sloane mentioned you might be here," I say, which is the most generous version of the truth I can manage. What Sloane actually said, across multiple conversations, was you'd really like him, Tess, he's sweet and he's funny and he's this big teddy bear who makes the best ribs in Montana.
To which I said no thank you more times than I can count. Set ups have never gone well for me, and I specifically told her so.
"Yeah," he says. "She might've mentioned you, too."
"Small world," I offer.
"Tiny," he agrees.
Then he points to the line forming at his table. “I should…uh—”
“Yes, please, feed these patient people,” I say, and he smiles before turning back to the smoker.
I lean down and pick up the tray.
Sloane loops her arm through mine and steers me away. She must know she’s about to get a mouthful.
"So," she says.
"Sloane."
"What? I was just going to ask—"
"What I thought of him, right?”
“No, I was going to ask how the ribs were?”
“You’re such a liar.” I laugh.
She grins. It's unbearable.
"The ribs were amazing,” I reply. “And he seems like a very nice guy.”
But I'm definitely not telling Sloane that Wade’s exactly the type of guy I’m attracted to…big and down to earth in such an honest way. Or that thinking about him driving me into the mattress with that thick body of his will be haunting my daydreams.
Because Sloane will do something with that information. Maybe even tell Ike, and it could get back to Wade. I know how it works.
So I just ask Sloane to drop it for now and I eat potato salad and help Beth hand out cake slices. I talk to people whose names I'm still learning, and I don't look at the cook site more than twice.
Okay, maybe three or four times. Five max.
I keep going over our interaction in my head.
Wade didn’t stare at me like most men. I don't mean he didn't notice. He noticed—I saw the half-second when his gaze traveled over me and then snapped back up. He was gruff and bossy and borderline rude about fire safety, yet when he touched me, he was only worried I was hurt.
Men look. That's not really a complaint. It’s nature.
The sky is blue, water is wet, and when you develop early men look.
However, some of them are polite about it and some of them are just pigs, and those guys always seem confused when you don't take it as a compliment.
I learned in college to read the first five seconds of every interaction with a new man as a diagnostic.
Where do his eyes go? How long do they stay?
Wade Dawson passed with flying colors.
Around two o'clock, the crowd thins. Families start packing up their lawn chairs. A cluster of retirees settle deeper into the shade.
The afternoon sun is bright, but it makes the mountains stand out next to the blue sky. It’s as awe-inspiring as the day I arrived.
Des Moines didn't have this. Des Moines had cornfields and committee meetings and a colleague who spent months making me out to be a pariah.
But Montana has trees and good, kind people. One of them a man built like a grizzly bear who smells of cherrywood smoke.
I find myself drifting back toward the cook site unintentionally. Wade’s breaking down the rig, loading things into the bed of his truck as if he’s done it a thousand times. Riley's helping, or trying to, carrying a stack of foil pans and talking at full volume while he grunts responses.
"Hey," I say, and they both look up.
Riley beams. “Hi, Ms. Fields.”
“Great job, today, you two,” I say.
“Thanks, but it’s all him,” she replies, gesturing to Wade. “I just prep.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Ri,” Wade adds. “You know prep is important.”
“I know,” she says, continuing toward the truck.
"I have a question," I say, because I've been thinking about it since the first bite of brisket. "There was something in the rub on the brisket I couldn't place. Almost floral? But not sweet."
He stops and smiles. “It’s my secret ingredient.”
“I can vouch for Ms. Fields, Dad. She won’t tell anyone.”
“Cross my heart,” I interject.
He smirks. "Dried lavender. "Just a pinch. Half a teaspoon per pound, ground fine so it doesn't overpower anything, it just…opens things up. Lifts the pepper without fighting the salt."
"Where'd you get that idea?" I ask.
He tells me about the wood and why oak is the foundation, but cherry gives the color.
He tells me about the bark (the crust on the meat) and how the spice and smoke and rendered fat create this exterior that you spend hours building.
And in minutes you can ruin it with the wrong wrap.
He tells me about something called the stall, where the internal temperature of the meat stops rising and most people panic, but you just have to trust the cook and keep the fire steady.
He'd be a good teacher, I think. I recognize the breed.
He doesn't dumb it down. He gestures to the smoker, miming the way you test a brisket for flexibility, and at one point he actually pats the side of the rig as if it's a living thing he’s proud of.
Riley catches my eye behind his back and gives me a look that clearly says you started him off.
I grin at her.
He goes for ten minutes without taking a breath, and I don't interrupt. I don't want to. I'm watching him show the passion he has for his craft. It's the way I get when someone asks me about Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf.
His face softens, the gruffness nearly gone.
"The competition you mentioned," I say, when he pauses to take a drink of water. "The Labor Day one. What's involved?"
"Full program. Brisket, ribs, pork, chicken. Four categories, four turn-in windows, and you're judged blind."
"And you're doing all of that alone?"
"That's the plan." He screws the cap back on his water bottle. "Riley helps with prep, but she can't do the overnights. School starts up right after and she's got soccer and—" He shrugs. "It's too much."
He talks about his summer schedule. He drives a semi three days a week—long haul, hundreds of miles, alone in a cab. He's home by Thursday, practices his cooks on the weekends, and somewhere in between he's raising a teenager who is brilliant, mouthy, and clearly the center of everything he does.
The competition isn't a hobby. It's the plan. He says that word with a weight people usually reserve for mortgages and surgeries.
And he doesn’t complain, just describes his routine as just that…a routine.
"What happens if you win?" I ask.
“I stop trucking and cook full-time.” He says it simply. “The prize is enough for a real start, and there's a sponsorship attached that covers a full season on the circuit. Entry fees, equipment, all of it."
"That's a big dream."
"It's also a lot of brisket," he adds, and smiles. It creases the corners of his eyes and my stomach flips.
Riley reappears at his elbow with his keys. "Dad, I'm loading the coolers. Cambros in the truck bed or the back seat?"
"Bed, please. Use the straps."
She vanishes with the competence of a kid who's been doing this since she could carry a cutting board, and he watches her go with a soft expression that makes my insides melt.
"Anyway." He turns back to me, catching himself. "Sorry. I'll talk 'cue until somebody physically stops me. Occupational hazard."
"I'm an English teacher. Trust me, I understand occupational monologuing."
He laughs, and it makes his shoulders shake and his entire body move with it. It’s adorable.
"It was nice meeting you, Tess."
"You too, Wade."
And I watch him head over to the truck.
When I get home later that night, smoke is threaded through my hair and the fabric of my dress and probably my skin at this point. Wade’s smoke. Oak and cherry wood and whatever alchemy happens when he feeds a fire and lets it do its work.
I should shower, throw a load of laundry in, and go through the stack of syllabi I've been meaning to revise…something productive with what's left of a perfectly good Saturday evening.
Instead I kick off my sandals by the front door, pour a glass of the rosé that's been sitting open in my fridge that’s going flat, and drop onto the couch.
The house is quiet. That's the thing about living alone in a small town where your only real friend is blissfully shacked up with a fire captain and your sister is on the other side of the planet doing something medically heroic.
I take a healthy sip of wine. It’s cold and dry. I guess I'm more tired than I realized. With the sun, the crowd, the amazing food and the big, handsome man who made it…all of it settles into my body at once, heavy and warm.
I set the glass on the side table. I'll just close my eyes for five minutes.
And suddenly, he's there.
He curls into the edges of my dream like his smoke. First, I see his hands, with the burn scars scattered across his knuckles, the healed-over marks that show a life spent near open flame. They’re thick and rough, just like the rest of him.
My eyes go up his corded forearms. Dark ink curves around one of them, something floral and unexpected on a man this rugged such a sexy contrast. Higher up, near his shoulder, sits a barbecue fork and spatula crossed like sabers under a lick of flame.
That man and his fire…
He's standing right in front of me and I have to tilt my head back to find his face, and even then his shoulders block out everything behind him. I remember how it felt to collide with his solid frame earlier.
His T-shirt stretches across his huge biceps and the apron wraps around his stomach…thick, round, and unapologetic. It’s the kind of belly that says I eat what I like and it’s part of who I am. I want to press my palms against it, feeling him breathe.
His hand comes up slowly and touches my face.
He uses just his fingertips at first, grazing my cheek, and then his palm settles against my jaw. His hand is hot and eclipses the side of my face. He's gazing at me with those hazy brown eyes, in complete awe.
He strokes his thumb downward and my eyes fall closed. His rough skin makes my own come alive. When I breathe in, all I get is woodsmoke, char, and his heady musk. Somehow my body goes tight and liquid at the same time.
"Tess,” he rasps, right above me.
His thumb moves along my jaw, over my chin, and then it drags across my lower lip.
My breath catches. He presses down, just enough, and I open my mouth obediently.
His thumb slides in against my tongue, and I taste salty, smoky skin and the sweet tang of barbecue sauce.
I close my lips around him and he groans, low and raw, sending a rush of wetness between my legs.
His other hand finds my waist and his fingers spread wide across my hip and he's pulling me in, pulling me against all of him—the thick chest, the bulk of his belly, and the steely hard length below.
I let out a shaky breath, feeling him everywhere, overwhelming me, and his mouth drops toward mine and—
I jerk awake on the couch.
Holy shit.
The living room is nearly dark. My hair is in my face, my heart is pounding, and I am flushed from my chest to my scalp.
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes and exhale.
I hear my phone vibrating in my purse, so I fish it out.
It’s a text from Sloane.
So…
I had a great time, Sloane. Good food, lovely weather.
And?
I already told you. Wade’s nice. And he cooks delicious barbecue.
Nice? That’s the best you can do.
We’re complete opposites, he’s twenty years older than me, and I’m not sure he’s even attracted to me.
Stop it. You’re a knockout, super smart, and funny…
Everyone is attracted to you. Even I entertained the thought when we first met.
Also, opposites attract. It’s been proven.
And you aren’t allowed to call out the age thing, when Ike and I are even further apart and I can’t imagine my life without him.
I huff. It’s strange being in this position, since I so recently was the one giving Sloane a hard time about all of this with Ike.
So, I make a decision.
Fine, I need you to ask Wade something. But don’t get too excited.
Too late.
Oh boy.