My Cone and Only (King Family #1) - Susannah Nix Page 0,24

Definitely not my stupid brother’s.”

“You’ll have to take that up with Josh,” Mia said with a shrug.

I damn well would.

But there was a more important question on my mind now.

Should I take it up with Wyatt?

After lunch, I dropped Mia back on campus and drove up to the state park. Spring ended early in Central Texas, giving way to the crushing heat and humidity of summer by May. But we had a few weeks of temperate weather left yet, and the fields along the highway were covered with swaths of bluebonnets and scarlet paintbrush.

I spent the rest of the afternoon deep in the park’s northeastern woodland area collecting red oak samples to test for Bretziella fagacearum—the fungus responsible for oak wilt—but as I trudged through the forest undergrowth, I kept thinking about what Mia had told me.

Had Josh threatened Wyatt to keep him away from me? Was that part of the promise my brother had extracted from him? I kept coming back to that somber, knowing look in Wyatt’s eyes when he’d told me about the promise he’d made Josh.

A promise is a promise.

He’d looked almost…regretful when he’d said it. Like he knew I wanted more—like maybe he’d always known.

But more than that, he’d looked like he might have wanted it too.

It could be that was just my imagination doing some wishful thinking. But what if it wasn’t?

I was so distracted thinking about Wyatt that I let a low-hanging tree branch catch me across the face and gave myself a nice, angry scratch. Muttering a curse at my carelessness, I forced my mind off my nonexistent love life and back onto my work.

That kind of inattention could be hazardous in the field. Traversing uneven terrain came with a high potential for accidents, even on seemingly flat ground. The layers of decomposing litterfall that made up the forest floor could conceal all manner of dangers. It was too easy to miss a hidden obstacle until you’d stepped in a hole and broken your ankle or tripped on a hidden rock or vine.

There was wildlife you needed to be wary of out here as well, like bobcats and javelina and the odd cougar. Even deer could be dangerous when cornered or provoked, especially during rutting season or when they were protecting fawns. It was always best to give Bambi a wide berth.

Additionally, the park was home to its share of venomous species, such as copperheads, coral snakes, cottonmouths, rattlers, black widows, brown recluses, asp caterpillars, velvet ants, and my favorite—Scolopendra heros, the giant Texas redheaded centipedes that could get up to eight inches long. The biggest one I’d ever spotted was five inches, but I’d love to find a full-size one of those babies.

I wasn’t afraid of the park’s wildlife—but I did have a healthy respect for it and the dangers it could pose to a person. It was my job to help protect the native species and their habitats. Blundering around carelessly out here could put both myself and the wildlife at risk.

All of which meant I needed to keep my mind on the task at hand and off Wyatt King. The task at hand being oak wilt—one of the most destructive tree diseases in the United States. It had been killing off our Central Texas oaks in epidemic numbers, and the only way to control it was early identification and removal of diseased trees to prevent fungal spread. It was easy to spot in the more common live oaks by the obvious veinal necrosis on the leaves. But other types of oaks often didn’t exhibit distinct symptoms, and required laboratory culture to confirm the presence of B. fagacearum fungus.

I spent the rest of the afternoon collecting my samples without further incident. It was only after I’d dropped them off at my office and headed home for the day that I allowed thoughts of Wyatt to preoccupy me once more.

Was Josh the reason why Wyatt never flirted with me? Never touched me in a way that could be mistaken for anything other than platonic, brotherly affection? Never directed any of his innuendos at me, or made the sort of suggestive, leading remarks he enjoyed making with everyone else—even my brother’s girlfriend?

When Mia had first moved here, before Wyatt knew Josh liked her, he’d unleashed his full charm attack on her. But as soon as he realized my brother was interested in her, Wyatt had backed way the fuck off, fast. After that, Wyatt had treated her a lot like he treated