Chapter 6
DAISY
June runs Sunday dinner like a general commanding troops. No survivors.
“Colt, you’re between West and Rhett. Maggie, end of the table—no, the other end, you’re still covered in cow.”
“I showered!” Maggie protests, but she’s already moving to the far seat. “Mostly.”
“You have hay in your hair.”
The voice belongs to West, leaning in the doorway with the quiet stillness I remember—tall and lean, with those green eyes that miss nothing, so like Wyatt’s.
Maggie flips him the bird before reaching up to find the offending piece to flick at his head. “Snitch.”
“Daisy…” June pauses, a smile playing at her lips that I don’t quite trust. “You’re next to Wyatt.”
Because of course I am.
I freeze halfway to the chair I was aiming for. “I can sit anywhere, really—”
“Nonsense, honey. Wyatt needs someone to keep him from brooding into his potatoes.” June gestures at the seat to the right of the head of the table. “Go on.”
Wyatt’s mouth presses into a thin line, but he says nothing. Just pulls out the chair at the head of the table and drops into it like a man facing execution.
This should be fun.
I slide into my assigned seat, hyperaware of the inches between us.
The dining room hasn’t changed much since I was a kid: the same heavy oak table that seats eight, the same mismatched chairs collected over generations, the same wide windows looking out over the back pasture where the horses are settling in for the evening.
The pot roast sits in the center of the table like a crown jewel, surrounded by bowls of roasted vegetables, mashed potatoes, fresh rolls, and a green salad that I suspect no one will touch. Steam rises from everything, carrying the scent of rosemary and garlic.
And home.
Dad’s recipe.
The thought catches in my throat as I inhale deep into my lungs.
“Nobody touches anything until we do the thing,” June announces, taking her seat across from me.
“The thing?” I ask.
“June’s thing.” Colt’s already reaching for a roll. “Don’t fight it.”
June slaps his hand without looking. “Best part of your day. Maggie, you first.”
Under the table, Wyatt shifts, and his knee brushes against mine.
The contact is brief—barely a whisper of denim against my bare leg—but it hits like a live wire. I glance at him, but he’s staring straight ahead, shoulders ramrod straight.
He doesn’t move his leg away. Neither do I.
“Delivering those breech twins safely.” She reaches for her wine with a smile. “That’s hard to beat.”
“West.”
“One of the new ones ate from my hand today.” The corner of his mouth shifts ever so slightly.
“Rhett.”
“June set a place for me.” He says it simply, like it’s everything. June doesn’t look up from her plate, but a smile tugs at the edge of her mouth.
“Colt.”
He gestures at the table with both hands. “Cobbler.”
June closes her eyes briefly. “You haven’t even had it yet.”
“I have faith.” He presses a hand to his chest. “It’s called optimism, June.”
“It’s called being impossible.” The smirk on her lips belies her words as she turns to me. “Daisy.”
I glance around the table. At the mismatched chairs and the steam rising from the pot roast and these people who said my name as though I’d never left. “This.” I smile softly. “Exactly this.”
June shoots me a delighted smile before she moves on. “Wyatt.”
“Laughter,” he replies simply. “The real kind.”
He straightens in his seat, his knee shifting against mine again before he looks out the window.
June lets out a small breath. “I got a call today. The Bannock hotel in Bozeman wants me to pitch for their corporate events contract.” She looks around the table. “Biggest thing I’ve ever gone after.”
The table erupts. Colt bangs his fist on the wood, and Maggie whistles as June shakes her head with a soft smile before hushing everyone.
“Come on now. Eat before it gets cold.”
Dishes pass in every direction, hands reaching over hands, everyone talking at once, and Colt somehow ending up with three rolls on his plate before anyone else has one. Beau has positioned himself under the table, his massive head a warm weight against my foot.
Wyatt reaches across me for the salt, and his forearm passes six inches from my face.
He’s rolled his sleeves to the elbow, and the muscle shifts under tanned skin as his hand closes around the shaker.
I watch the tendons flex, the fine dark hair, the tanned skin pulled tight over muscle, and my brain just… empties.
Like someone pulled the plug on a full bathtub. Every coherent thought I possess swirls down the drain and is replaced by the single, unhelpful observation that Wyatt Hartley has forearms that could sell magazines.
“Daisy? Mashed potatoes?”
I blink to see that June is holding the serving bowl toward me with an expectant look.
“Yes. Please. Thank you.” Four words and all of them are way too loud. I take the bowl and serve myself a portion that’s frankly embarrassing, but at least my hands are busy now and not doing something unforgivable like reaching out to trace the vein on his arm with my fingertip.
I pass the potatoes across. Wyatt reaches for the roasted carrots at the same moment I do, and our fingers brush over the serving spoon. He pulls back like he’s been burned, gesturing curtly for me to go first.
“Thanks.” I smile hesitantly, ladling carrots onto my plate.
He grunts.
That’s it. Just a grunt. Not even a real word.
I study him from the corner of my eye as I pass the dish to June.
His shoulders are rigid beneath that blue shirt, the fabric pulling taut across them every time he reaches for something.
There’s a muscle ticking in his jaw. He’s holding his fork like it personally offended him, and his other hand is resting on the table beside his plate—big and rough, the knuckles scarred in that way working hands get, the kind of damage that accumulates over years of rope and leather and fence wire.
I find myself staring at those hands and thinking about how they looked on the lead rope yesterday.
Patient. Sure. Gentle with eight hundred pounds of resistance, and I wonder—just for a fraction of a second before I shut the thought down hard—what gentle hands like that would feel like somewhere softer.
Somewhere I shouldn’t be thinking about at this table.
What the hell is wrong with you?
He wasn’t like this when I was a kid. Grumpy, sure—Wyatt Hartley has been grumpy since birth, probably—but not this closed off.
Not this… prickly. Maybe it’s the weight of running the ranch without his father.
Without mine. Three years of carrying this place on his shoulders would grind anyone down.
I find myself wanting to lighten that load somehow. To see him smile, even once. That real smile I remember from childhood, rare as a blue moon, but worth the wait.
“So, Daisy.” Colt spears a piece of roast with his fork, and I’m struck, not for the first time tonight, by how much he’s grown into himself.
Six years have been generous with his golden-brown hair and sun-kissed jaw.
Those bright blue eyes that still look like they’re in on a joke nobody else knows yet.
He’s grinning at me from across the table with the easy confidence of a man who’s never once doubted his own charm.
“Journalism in Denver. What’s that like?
Lots of exciting exposés? Political scandals? Celebrity gossip?”
“More features than headlines,” I admit. “But the kind that pay the bills if you know how to find the story underneath. This article on multigenerational ranching could be good, though. There’s real interest in how family operations are surviving against corporate agriculture.”
“Fascinatin’,” Colt deadpans. “Tell me more about… agricultural economics.”
Maggie throws a roll at his head. He catches it, winks, and takes a bite, utterly unrepentant.
“Daisy’s doing important work documenting a dyin’ way of life, asshat,” she declares. “Show some respect.”
“I’m showing respect! I’m showing so much respect.” Colt gestures with the half-eaten roll. “I’m just saying, if you ever want the real story on rodeo politics, I’m your man.”
“You’re a man who quit at the top,” West observes. “That’s a story.”
“That’s ancient history.” Colt takes another bite of roll, his easy grin firmly in place. “Nobody wants to read about that.”
Beside me, Wyatt reaches for his water glass, and his arm drags slowly across mine, bare skin to bare skin, and I go liquid.
Every thought in my head replaced by the single catastrophic awareness of how warm he is and how close he is and how if his arm moves one more inch, I’m going to make a sound that no one at this table needs to hear.
He sets his glass down without drinking from it. His jaw is working, and his eyes are fixed on the far wall like the wallpaper pattern holds the secret to inner peace.
Did he feel that, or am I just sitting here vibrating like a tuning fork next to a man who barely registers my existence?
My eyes drop to the scar on his chin, pale against his tan skin.
I remember when he got that scar.
Clear as day.
* * *
It’s a few days after my thirteenth birthday. I’m perched on the fence rail where I’m not supposed to be. Dad told me to stay by the barn, but Wyatt’s working with a new stallion—a big bay with wild eyes and a mean streak—and I can’t resist sneaking closer to watch.
He’s twenty-two, and I think he’s the coolest person I’ve ever met. The way he sits in the saddle, so easy and relaxed, like the horse is just part of him.
Out of the blue, the stallion rears without warning, twisting midair, and Wyatt comes off hard. His chin catches the edge of the water trough on the way down, and a sickening crack echoes across the paddock.
There’s so much blood.
I don’t remember climbing down from the fence, but suddenly I’m kneeling beside him in the dirt, pressing my small hands to his jaw like I can hold him together. Like I can stop the red from seeping through my fingers if I just press hard enough.
“Daisy.” His voice is calm, even though his face is a mess. “Breathe. I’m okay.”