Wild Sanctuary

Chapter 1

DAISY

The “Welcome to Blackstone Creek” sign still has a bullet hole through the o, same as it did the last time I drove past it. There’s a part of me that’s comforted by the idea that some things in Montana never change.

My Honda Civic groans as I turn off the highway onto the county road, protesting three days of hard driving from Denver. The check engine light came on somewhere in Wyoming, but I’ve decided it’s a vibe.

My therapist would have a lot to say about that.

The mountains on either side of the road feel like old friends who aren’t sure they want to welcome me yet. I’d forgotten how the Rockies feel different here than they do in Colorado. Wilder almost. Less tamed by ski resorts and hiking influencers with their matching Patagonia jackets.

I crack the window despite the chill and let the cold pour in, the scent of pine and distant rain filling my small car. I make it about a mile before my eyes start to sting, and for a second, I can just about hear my dad telling me I’m being dramatic.

And you’d be right, Dad.

My stomach dips as I pass the old Miller place.

The fence posts are gray and splintered, every one of them leaning toward the dirt.

The cattle are long gone, and the barn roof has collapsed on one side.

Plywood covers every window of the sprawling main house where I went to birthday parties every summer, where Mrs. Miller’s kitchen smelled of fresh apple pie and there were always too many children and never enough chairs.

I haven’t been back in three years, and the town where I spent my summers is dying.

I press the gas pedal even harder but it doesn’t help. The Holburn place slides past, sold to developers who never broke ground, followed by the Coopers’ spread, now sitting empty.

My phone vibrates in the cupholder and I don’t so much as glance toward it. It’s either my editor, my mother, or my ex, and not one of them has anything I need to hear right now.

Just then, the GPS pipes up from the dashboard, “In half a mile, turn right onto Glacier Ridge Road.”

Not that I actually need directions to Glacier Ridge Ranch. I spent every summer there from age six to twenty, back when my parents’ separation meant I got shipped off to Montana for two glorious months to stay with my dad.

In those days, I’d have sold a kidney for one ungrudging word of approval from Wyatt Hartley, a man once like family, now a stranger.

I learned to ride horses here, on a patient mare called Taffy.

Drove stick for the first time in Wyatt’s truck, jerking through the gears hard enough to give us both whiplash.

My father—the ranch’s foreman and Bill Hartley’s best friend—considered the Hartleys more family than most of our blood, and taught me that love could be loud and messy and still last.

I learned how to grieve here, too. Three years ago, I came back for the first time since I was twenty. But it wasn’t for a summer visit or a holiday dinner. That last time was for a funeral.

I stood in a black suit that didn’t fit properly across the shoulders, and my heels sank into cemetery mud as I tried to accept the fact that they were both gone.

That my dad, Tom Monroe, and Bill Hartley were stolen from us in a single, terrible moment.

Two men. One accident. Too many questions.

An icy road? Poor visibility? Maybe a curve taken too fast? The sheriff called it an accident and the case was closed within the week.

The ranch gates appear around the bend, massive timber posts that have stood for over a century, with a wrought-iron Glacier Ridge Ranch sign that’s weathered to a deep black suspended between them.

I pull through and stop, letting the engine idle while I take it in.

The valley opens up ahead of me, thirty thousand acres of cattle land and horse pastures rolling toward the mountains. The grass is that particular shade of green that only exists in Montana in late spring, rippling when the wind moves through.

The main house sits atop a sloping hill. It’s a large, old two-story, the cedar siding now weathered to silvery gray, with a porch that wraps around the entire house.

Along the south side, a garden stretches behind a low picket fence, roses and lavender and something tall and purple I can’t name from the car. It looks well-tended. Someone’s been keeping Jessamine Hartley’s garden alive long after her passing.

Behind the house, the original red barn lies front and center. To the left is the newer equipment barn, and on the right is the state-of-the-art training facility West, the youngest Hartley brother built for his horses.

In the near pasture, horses graze with their heads down, tails swishing at flies. Further out, cattle dot the hillside. A hawk rides the thermals overhead, and somewhere behind the main house a dog barks once, twice, then stops.

It looks exactly like I remember and nothing like it at all.

Or maybe that’s me.

I ease the car forward, following the gravel drive toward the guest cabin Wyatt said I could use. The tires crunch over small stones, a sound so familiar it makes my throat tight. I used to love that sound as a kid. It meant summer.

It meant Dad.

Now it just means I’m back where I started, with a stalled career and a box of questions I can’t answer.

I’d emailed Wyatt a month ago, in a professional, distant tone, explaining that I was writing an article on multigenerational ranching families for Rocky Mountain Magazine and asking whether the Hartleys would be willing to participate.

I’d promised to stay out of everyone’s way, citing that I only needed access and a few interviews.

Standard journalism stuff. Nothing personal.

He’d written back two lines:

Cabin’s yours. Don’t get in the way of work.

That’s Wyatt. The man has never used three words when two would suffice, or any words when a grunt and a meaningful stare would do the job just as well.

As I reach the turn-off for the guest cabin, a sharp motion catches my eye in one of the training paddocks.

There’s a man working a horse, a stunning blood bay, coat slick with sweat. Except the horse is having opinions about things, his ears pinned back and body tense with resistance. It spins, fast and sharp, trying to escape the man’s control.

But the man moves with it.

He flows with the horse’s motion like he’s anticipated every move before it happens. His hands are steady on the lead rope, not fighting, just guiding. Then the afternoon sun catches his bare back and I slam the brakes.

The car lurches, making my seatbelt lock across my chest and bite into my collarbone. My pulse catches up a second later.

And just like that, every reason I came here evaporates. All of them, just gone.

Because right there, in that paddock, is Wyatt Hartley.

Shirtless.

Sweaty.

The muscles in his back shifting like a geography lesson I want to study with my hands.

Three years since the funeral, and he couldn’t have the decency to let himself go even a little.

I sit frozen in my stopped car, hands white-knuckled on the wheel, and try to process what I’m seeing.

I’ve known this man for twenty years. He’s the one who taught me how to throw a punch when Bobby Andersen tried to kiss me at the summer fair, crouching down to my level with that serious expression and showing me how to make a proper fist. The one who carried me back to the house on his shoulders when I sprained my ankle chasing Colt, the second eldest Hartley, through the creek bed, lecturing me the whole way about watching where I put my feet.

He should feel like an old family friend I can nod at politely and never think about again.

But he has never felt like that. Not at fourteen. Not at twenty. And not now.

Not since I was old enough to understand why my stomach flipped every time he walked into a room.

His shoulders are broader than I remember. Or maybe six years away just made me forget how much space he takes up. The muscles in his arms flex and release as he works the rope. His jeans are riding low on his hips, faded and dusty enough to tell me he’s been out here for hours.

Six years away, except that one week I don’t count, and apparently none of it did a thing to cure me of this stupid, pointless, one-sided thing.

You’ve had colds that were easier to shake, Monroe.

The horse finally gives in, sides heaving as Wyatt’s hand comes up to pat its neck, and I catch myself watching that motion. That gentleness. He rations it so carefully with people and gives it so freely to everything else.

Then he turns, his gaze meeting mine through the windshield, and his entire body goes rigid. One second he’s relaxed, easy in his skin, and the next he’s made of stone.

His hand drops from the horse’s neck, and I slowly raise my hand in a wave that feels stupid even as I’m doing it.

He doesn’t wave back. He just stands there, staring at me in a way that doesn’t require interpretation.

Because Wyatt Hartley has never been happy to see me. He tolerates me because I’m Tom Monroe’s daughter, and he’s an honorable man.

But happy? No way. Never that.

Hey, at least he’s consistent!

I put the car in drive and continue toward the cabin, my hands steady on the wheel and my pulse anything but. In the rearview mirror, I see he hasn’t moved.

And suddenly I remember why I almost didn’t come back.

The Christmas I turned twenty. A red dress I couldn’t afford and the courage to talk to him, to really talk to him, not just as Dad’s friend’s son. He’d taken one look at me, called me ‘Daisy-girl’ in a voice I’d never heard before, and disappeared to the barn for the rest of the night.

I’d spent the beginning of that night feeling beautiful and the end feeling like an idiot.

Message received.

So I stayed away. Let Dad come to me in Denver instead. Told myself I was too busy with internships and jobs and building a life, when really I was just too proud to sit across a dinner table from a man who couldn’t stand to be in the same room as me.

I park in front of the guest cabin and sit there for a long moment with the engine off and my hands still on the wheel. Through the windshield, I can see the cabin porch—the same one where my dad used to sit with his boots off and a beer going warm, telling me stories about Glacier Ridge’s history.

A screen door bangs somewhere across the yard and I blink, realizing I’ve been staring at that porch for a full minute.

Enough, Monroe.

I’m not here for nostalgia. And I’m absolutely not here to moon over a man who’s never said more than ten words to me in a row.

I’m here for answers. And I’m not leaving until I find them.

Wyatt Hartley is just another complication, and I am absolutely not stupid enough to make him the biggest one.