My hands reached out without my permission to grasp her upper arms and spin her toward me. “Hey. You’re doin’ all you can do, Callie. Just relax. I’ll get you here early next week and you’ll have all the time you need.”
She sagged in my hold for the briefest moment before squaring her shoulders and tipping her chin up. “Thanks, Wyatt. I just can’t wait until I have a lab of my own and I can spend as much time as I need without all these restrictions.” She pulled out of my grasp and spun around. “I’ll be able to hire more scientists and we can actually get something done for a change. I’m sick of running around in circles.”
I shook my head as I walked over and grabbed a pile of her sample racks. “Callie, you’re savin’ the world and the rest of us are just livin’ in it.”
She shook her head as she headed out of the building and over to the SUV to set down the racks in her arms. “I’m hardly saving the world, Wyatt. I’m not even saving all of North Carolina. I’m only testing for contamination in this county so far.”
I grabbed her wrist as she tried to walk away and spun her to face me. As usual, her eyes settled somewhere around my chin, but I didn’t care. I didn’t need her to look me in the eye to get my point across. “If you find even an ounce of contamination and can stop it from affecting the wildlife in that area, or even worse, the humans living there, isn’t that saving their world?”
Her arm trembled slightly beneath my touch as I waited for her to process my words. Finally, her shoulders rose and fell with a shuddering breath and she pulled out of my hold. I mourned the loss of her soft, warm skin beneath my fingers and clenched them into fists to stop myself from reaching out again.
“I’ve never looked at it that way,” she said softly, her eyes on the ground between us.
My hand shook with the need to cup her face, but I somehow refrained. “Well, you should. What you’re doing is important. Never forget that.”
She took another deep breath and nodded once before spinning around and walking back into the building, leaving me standing there watching her retreating figure. I shook my head to rid it of my dazed thoughts and followed her.
Once all the samples were loaded into the SUV, we climbed in ourselves, the silence heavy between us. Callie stared out her window as I navigated us onto the main road that would lead us out of downtown Asheville and back to the lodge.
I drove unusually slowly as I wracked my brain for a way to prolong this outing. To get even just a few more minutes with her. To make the feeling I had when she was around last as long as it could.
“Um. Hey, you wanna get something to eat?”
Without turning her head, she said, “No, thanks. I’m not hungry.”
The moment the words were out of her mouth, a loud grumble sounded from her direction and my lips stretched into a smile. Not hungry my left foot.
“Are you sure? Your stomach doesn’t seem to agree with you.”
She laid a hand on her abdomen as if she could mask any further sounds. “It’s fine. I’ll get something when we get back to the lodge.”
“Do you have somewhere you need to be right now?”
She was quiet for a long time and my smile got wider knowing she was trying her hardest to come up with an excuse. I don’t know why I found it so funny. Usually knowing a woman was doing anything she could to get out of spending time with me wouldn’t be humorous, but it was different with Callie.
Everything was.
Worrying she’d hurt herself if she put too much more thought into it, I chuckled and added, “You know, I’m new around here. I could use some insider information on where’s good to eat in town.”
I let that sink in, knowing it’d have the effect I was looking for.
I’d gotten to know Abraham and Bea pretty well in the past few weeks, and if Callie was anything like them, I knew she’d find it hard to say no to something like this. The McCoys were just too polite for that.
Finally, she sighed, her shoulders slumping. “Okay, yeah. We can get something to eat.”
Again, you’d think my ego would have taken a hit at her reluctant tone, but my smile just grew. “Great. Where are we going?”
She sighed again, but it did nothing to deter me. “Well, what are you in the mood for?”
“I could do a burger right now.”
She sat up a little straighter in her seat and shot me a small glance. “Okay, well there’s a new place I’ve been meaning to check out a few blocks from here. We can give it a try.”
“Point the way.”
She rattled off a few directions that I barely heard over the thumping of my heart. I knew it was loud enough for her to hear, but what could I do? This woman did something to my insides, and it was impossible to hide.
We found street parking and climbed out of the Suburban. I would have liked to get her door for her, but unsurprisingly, she’d taken care of that herself before I got to it. I did, however, beat her to the restaurant’s door and ushered her in ahead of me, so I figured we were even.
The insides were designed to look industrial, with corrugated metal on the walls and concrete floors beneath our feet. A perky hostess greeted us immediately before leading us to a booth in the back. My heart raced as the implications of this lunch sped through my mind. Thankfully, the music was blaring overhead so there was a possibility she couldn’t hear it, but I still needed to get myself under control.
Callie took a seat, but I remained standing. “I’m going to wash up. I’ll be right back.”
I spun around and left both before she could answer and before my overactive heart could give me away. Finding the men’s room easily, I slipped inside and to the sink where I let the cool water run through my fingers, my head dipping as I did.
I’m not sure why, but it felt like this lunch was important. More important than I’d realized when I’d first suggested it.
The problem was, I didn’t know which side of the razor-sharp knife we’d land on. Could this actually be the start of something? Or would she continue to freeze me out like she’d been trying to?
I splashed some cold water on my face before peering at myself in the mirror. “You need to get it together, Carter. She’s just a wolf from your pack and this is just lunch.”
I knew it was so much more, but I needed to lie to myself or I didn’t think I’d be able to leave the bathroom again. When I thought I had myself under control, I steeled my nerves and stalked out.
Back at our table, I found Callie had already ordered something.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said as I took a seat across from her. “I got you a water and us some fried pickles.”
I reached over and grabbed a few of the battered chips and popped them in my mouth.
“Ah! Ooh, ooh,” I breathed around the fiery food in my mouth.
Callie laughed and I looked up at her, the lava on my tongue forgotten for a moment. The afternoon sun was hitting her in a way that lit up the red highlights in her dark hair and made her eyes even brighter than usual. But it was the wide smile across her face that made my heart pick up its pace once again.
“You’d be hot too if you just came out of a deep fryer,” Callie said between chuckles.
I swallowed the fireball in my mouth and downed a sip of water before answering. “Coulda’ warned me.”