Mari pulled off her sunglasses and wiped her eyes with the back of one hand, still grinning.
He shifted from one foot to the other, his shoulders bunching as his skin crawled with shame. It wasn’t that stupid a thing to say. She was talking about preventing the spread of unintended disease and—
“You’re exactly right,” she said, stopping his defensive thoughts as another chuckle shook her slender chest. “I’ve never thought of it that way, and Lord, now I’m not going to be able to think of gloves as anything else.”
He hesitated, his toes curling and fidgeting in his boots as he tried to decide what to say. She wasn’t making fun of him; she really thought what he said was funny.
He wasn’t entirely sure what to do with that. He’d sort of expected to be in trouble.
Seemed like, whenever he took a step outside the construction zone, the other bios were all up his butt about rare-plant this and fancy-ass-bird that, like his boots were the size of Nebraska and they’d crush everything for miles. But then the words Mari said earlier came drifting back.
Permit to handle.
Endangered species.
He frowned down at his boots. “Gonna write me up, aren’t you? For turtle grabbing.”
The shy smile tugged its way back onto her lips, her eyes warm before she slipped her sunglasses back on, hiding them from view. A pang echoed in his chest, and he rubbed absently at it. Probably he ought to quit this job before his stupid crew gave him a heart attack.
“I think it was consensual grabbing, considering you saved the tortoise from danger. There’s a Good Samaritan law for that, though it’s not usually applied on monitored sites.” She cleared her throat. “I guess you were checking under your tires after all.” She gave him a knowing look, the memory of yesterday’s rant about “not prancing three circles before he drove his truck anywhere” hanging between them.
He grunted, and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Don’t take any brains to see a turtle under your truck. Not like I get my jollies running shit over.”
He’d never forget the bump the truck made when Leroy ran over their neighbor’s dog, Bart. Or the softness of the second bump when Leroy backed up “to finish him off the humane way.”
He shivered.
Mari said, her voice dropping softly, “That’s not what I was saying. Not at all.” She reached out and touched his arm but then let go so quickly he figured she’d maybe done it by accident. “Come get me next time, okay? I’ll disinfect the tortoise’s shell just in case. But if you moved a tortoise and something bad happened, you could be in a lot of trouble.”
His arm tingled where she touched him. “You ain’t gonna write me up?” He couldn’t stop frowning at her, though he probably looked like an ungrateful asshole. These bios were all like a bunch of rookie traffic cops, too quick on the draw with the ticket notepad. They didn’t bother much with just talking things out.
He scrubbed roughly at his arm, trying to get his skin to quit getting all stirred up about one measly touch from a woman who didn’t even mean it like that.
“You didn’t do any harm. The thing is, some tortoises are more skittish than others, and if you handle them roughly, they can get scared and void their bladders.” Her hint of a smile was gone now. “Out here, losing their emergency store of water can mean they might die of dehydration before the next rain.”
He stared in horror at the cheeseburger-sized tortoise, sitting placidly beside the bush. He might have made the little guy piss itself to death.
“Hell.” He yanked off his hard hat and turned in a circle, jerking at the knot of his hair where he kept it tied back at work. There was no shame worse than pissing yourself.
He’d started wetting the bed after his mom died when he was a little kid. Dreaming there was a fire burning in between them and if he could just put it out, he could see her again. But when he would wake with wet sheets clinging to his legs and tears salty on his cheeks, he knew it hadn’t been water at all and that he hadn’t saved his mother.
He’d always tried to get the sheets in the washer himself, but the one time his father woke up and saw what he’d done, he’d wrapped the soiled sheets around Jack like he was a dog getting its face rubbed in its own mess. That wet ammonia smell suffocating him, his arms pinned to his sides so he couldn’t get away no matter how hard he thrashed . . .
“Mr. Wyatt? Are you okay?”
He jerked at the sound of his family’s name.
“Don’t call me that!” he snarled, whirling on her.
She jumped back, stumbling when her heel bumped a bush. Light on her feet as always, she caught her balance before she could fall, but the tortoise yanked into its shell at the sudden movement.
Jack felt like dog shit, his head hanging and shoulders clenching tight. He’d scared the woman and the little turtle.
“Hate that name,” he muttered, trying to explain why he’d been such a jerk. “Feels like you’re talking to my old man. Name’s Jack.”
Jack Wyatt. The name echoed in his head, even though he refused to say it out loud. Didn’t have to. Wyatts were quick on the trigger, and women, children, and animals cringed out of their way. Thousands of miles from the Alabama hovel where he grew up and he couldn’t shake the truth of that name, no matter how hard he’d tried not to be like his piece-of-shit dad and brother. This woman had known him only four days and even she could see it.
He gestured miserably to her, then to the tortoise, reaching harder for words than he usually ever tried. “I—shit, I’m sorry,” he said. “Didn’t know. I could scare them so bad, I mean. Didn’t know. Wouldn’t have . . . you know. If I did.”
“That’s why the training is important,” she said. Not like she was shoving the I-told-you-so down his throat, but not backing down, either. Her gaze held steady, even as his flicked between her, the ground, and the tortoise that was just peeking its head out of its shell again. “It’s important for you and your crew to hear.”
The other bios had all tried to give their speech, too, but he’d never allowed them to waste working time on all that bureaucratic crap. But then, he hadn’t known that they could kill the animals around here just by startling them.
He turned his hard hat in his hands, uncomfortable as all hell, but then he swallowed and jerked a nod. “We’ll come in ten minutes early tomorrow. You can give them your talk. Easy on the bullshit, though, huh? I want the real deal, not a whole bunch of lawyer talk and crap.”
Mari nodded. “One biological resources training coming up, hold the bullshit.”
He snorted a laugh, and realized he was just standing there, his unease having drained out of him so subtly he hadn’t even felt it go. Her droll humor must have tricked him into thinking he was shooting the breeze with his buddies instead of with a too-pretty tree-hugging professional interferer.