Page 82 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

Here's the part I don't expect.

Sawyer doesn't answer for me. He turns his head and looks back at me instead, and his hand stays down at his side, palm open, not reaching.

"May I?" he asks.

He's asking to walk me through the crowd. Nothing more, and he's asking, in front of every camera in the county, for permission to touch my hand.

I look at the open hand.

Yesterday, this man asked me for a drink instead of steering me into one. An hour ago, he offered his name and his license to a stranger's crisis and never once itemized what he expected back.

Now he's standing between me and a room that has decided my independence is public property, and he is still, willingly, waiting for me to say yes.

How can I keep rejecting him when he’s doing all the right things I thought only happened in cozy romance novels?

I put my hand in his.

"Yes."

His fingers close around mine — warm, firm, careful.

He doesn't crush it to make a point. He doesn't pull before I've set my own weight. His thumb rests still against the side of my hand, a held thing, not a leash.

He turns back to the room.

All he has to do is lift our joined hands, and that seems to be the answer to this reporter’s interrogation, or anyone else’s inquiries, to say the least.

"If we're finished being bothered, we have careers to preserve."

Then he leads me toward the clerk's office, and the other three fold in around me without being asked.

I don't have to look at the map to map them.

Beckett is off my left shoulder. August has put himself between me and the thickest bank of strange Alpha scent. Cade walks at my back, keeping the followers a body-length off. My old pack closes around me on pure instinct, the way water closes over a stone.

Sawyer, though, is the one holding my hand.

The contrast is not lost on me.

My body eases under the layered cover of all of them — not all the way, not safe, not enough to forget where I'm standing. Still, the panic lets go of my throat one finger at a time, and in the release, my heart does a small bright thing that has nothing to do with fear.

Was this what rescue was supposed to feel like — when the man remembered to ask first and effortlessly protects you from anything that dares wish to see you crack and crumble?

I glance at his profile.

The calm jaw. The dark curls. The infuriating composure. Cream sleeves rolled over strong forearms in a building that is currently trying to end me.

Have I just met my knight in shining armor?

I consider the linen.

Fine. My knight in aggressively expensive tailoring.

The clerk's door shuts behind the five of us, and the noise of the lobby cuts to a hum. For one breath, I think we've made it.

Then Mayor Florence sets her back against the door and does not look relieved.

"That bought you credibility," she says. "It also bought you an obligation, effective the second he said it out loud in a public building."