Page 10 of Boston (Coral Canyon: Cowboys #12)

CHAPTER

SEVEN

I n all honesty, Boston wanted to slam on the brakes and pull the truck to the side of the road. Maybe then he could demand that Cora tell him what she really thought. That felt like an Uncle Luke thing to do, and an image of him and Sterling flashed through his mind.

He knew their love story, and it had taken Sterling showing up and bawling Luke out before they’d gotten on the same page. Maybe he just needed to open his mouth and say something.

He thought of a scripture he’d read that morning, and he wanted to be more faithful and less fearful. So he swallowed and focused on the highway in front of him. “I think we could be friends, sure,” he said. “I don’t know you that well, but I think—I mean, I’d like to.”

He nodded, wishing saying the right thing came more naturally to him. “Yeah, I’d like to get to know you better.”

She didn’t respond, and Boston let a few seconds go by before he looked over to her. She studied her hands, and she seemed as unsure as he felt. “I think we should just be honest,” she said.

Wasn’t that what he’d just done? “Okay,” he said, not sure what else she needed him to say. She looked at him, and Boston realized she definitely needed something more.

His mind blitzed and seemed to fracture. Dear God , he thought. I’m going to open my mouth, and I’ve heard You’ll fill it with the right words.

He took a breath.

Please don’t let me crash and burn.

“If I’d met you somewhere else and I didn’t know you were my boss, I’d ask you to dinner,” he said.

“There, yep. That’s it. I think you’re beautiful, and I’d ask you out, so I could see if this weird, twisting, fizzing in my gut is just me coming down with something, or if there’s something between us that could become?—”

He cut off when she started to laugh.

Pure humiliation cut through him, and Boston now wanted to slam on the brakes and turn the truck around.

“Sorry,” she said, immediately sobering. “Really, I’m sorry.”

“Why are you laughing?” He refused to look at her and instead poured all of his focus into gripping the steering wheel as tightly as possible.

“I’ve never heard someone say that their attraction to another person is ‘weird’ or ‘twisted’ or could just be them getting sick. I don’t know, it sounded funny.”

Boston pressed his teeth together, his jaw already aching. He’d barely been able to eat breakfast that morning, and he’d waited for Cora past noon. His stomach buzzed with angry hunger, and he told himself to stay silent.

He’d already said way too much anyway.

“I’d go out with you,” Cora said next, and that caused Boston to jerk his attention to her. She grinned at him, the gesture only enhancing her beauty. “I mean, I couldn’t even wait an hour to ask you for your number, so yeah. I’d like to get to know you better too.”

Boston relaxed again, the tension in his legs and back finally letting the seat hold him upright. “So let me ask you this.”

“Oh, brother,” she said. “This isn’t going to be a meeting filled with questions, is it?”

Meeting.

“I think you just answered it,” he said. “But I’d just like to point out that you literally asked me to drive my truck forty-five minutes each way to ask me questions over mac and cheese.” He looked at her again, raising his eyebrows as a final way to ask, Did you not?

She blinked a couple of times before her features softened. “I suppose that’s true. What were you going to ask?”

“If this was a meeting or a date, but you said meeting , so.”

“I think it could actually be both.”

“Both?” He shook his head and focused on the road again, though it simply stretched ahead of him in a black, straight ribbon. “It can’t be both.”

“Why not?” she asked. “You ‘sort of’ hung up on a client today.”

“I did not hang up on her,” he said. “I said I had to go first.”

“I think we could talk about the lodge now, and then we can have lunch together later.” Cora blew out her breath. “But what do I know? I’m new in town, and maybe this isn’t how you do things in Coral Canyon.”

Boston had no idea different places had different rules. “I’ve been set up on my last few dates,” he said. “So I guess I don’t know how things work here either.”

“No girlfriend?”

“Not right now,” Boston said, shaking his head. “Nothing serious ever came of the blind dates.”

“Who sets you up?”

He grinned over to her. “Julie.”

“Mm, seems like she’d know.”

“You’d think so, but nope.” His pulse stormed through his veins. “What about you? No boyfriend?”

The mood in the truck shifted slightly, and since Boston had grown up in the background of a large family with a lot of personalities, he’d gotten very good at listening, watching, and reading the room.

“No,” she said. “Things ended with my last boyfriend last fall.”

“How long were you guys together?”

“Three years,” Cora whispered, and Boston didn’t like the way she’d folded into herself. He found her physically the same—sitting up fine in the passenger seat. But she’d definitely wilted right before his eyes.

She’d clearly not ended the relationship, and while Boston wondered if she was truly over this other man, he didn’t want her to hurt. His momma had often told him he had a bleeding heart, and that his kindness and goodness was one of her favorite things.

He reached over and took her hand in his. “That’s a long time, so that had to be hard. I’m really sorry.”

“It was…I thought he was going to ask me to marry him.” She sighed and squeezed his hand as her fingers settled between his, locking into place. “It’s okay. I knew Wyoming was calling, and when I look at the situation correctly, being here feels like a blessing.”

“Maybe a fresh start?”

“Yeah.” She smiled at him. “A fresh start.”

“Well, then, your break-up is great news for me.” He expected a semi-sarcastic, half-flirty comeback like the ones that had confused him previously, but she simply took a breath and released it, relaxing further as she did.

“I like your shoes,” he said.

She lifted her head, everything about her brightening. “Yeah?”

He smiled at her. “Yeah.”

“I love shoes,” she said. “The worst part of moving was I couldn’t bring all my shoes with me.”

He chuckled, though he couldn’t imagining owning so many shoes that he had to leave some behind when he moved.

“This doesn’t sound like a meeting,” he said, though he certainly didn’t want to change the subject to work.

At the same time, he totally did, because he wanted his mac and cheese date , and that meant they had to have their meeting now.

She cleared her throat. “You’re right. Let’s talk about Silver Sage now, so we can enjoy some cheesy goodness later.”

“I can’t believe there’s so much going on at Silver Sage,” Cora said.

Boston had only been there for four months, but he’d known about the luxury lodge and resort for a lot longer than that.

“Yeah, my parents used to take us as kids,” he said.

“I grew up in a place out on the southwest highway, and anything that took longer than fifteen minutes in the car felt like a vacation.”

He smiled over to her. “We’d go to Jackson sometimes, and then up to Silver Sage. We loved to play in the pool and hike and ride horses.”

“Your family doesn’t own horses?” Cora asked. “I find that surprising.”

“I mean, I got cousins who have horses,” he said. “And uncles who do, but we didn’t have any on our property, no.”

He’d pulled into the parking lot at Cheese Whiz fifteen minutes ago, but neither one of them had made a move to get out of the truck. He wanted this meeting and talk of work to be completed before they went inside, though Cora had definitely asked him personal questions in the last several minutes.

She looked down at her lap, where she had a notebook she’d been scrawling notes in with neat, slanted handwriting. Boston didn’t mind the questions, and he’d gladly meet with her again concerning anything to do with Silver Sage.

“One last thing,” she said, and he worked to tamp down his hunger and irritation. “You mentioned something about going out next week to a bird-watching place?”

Pure joy and excitement filled him. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s actually one of my favorite things at Silver Sage.”

“I don’t see anything like this on the schedule.” She frowned at her phone and swiped.

“That’s because I’m still trying to develop it,” Boston said.

“There’s an eagle habitat that I’ve gone to for a few years now.

Up on Ramsfire Ridge? Anyway, it’s mostly on public land, and they close it during nesting season.

But when I started at Silver Sage, I found out that there was a little cabin on the very northern edge of the property, and it’s right on the edge of the eagle habitat. ”

“You’re kidding,” Cora said.

Boston shook his head, his smile filling his whole face. “I have to tell the Wyoming Wildlife Division when I’m going to be there,” he said. “It’s still protected because bald eagles are endangered, and they’re fine because I stay on Silver Sage property. They just want to know.”

“And you’re going next week?” she said.

“Yeah. It’ll only be the fourth time,” he said. “Because of the snow conditions and wind, I’ve only been a few times. But I’ve made sketches of the cabin and some rough notes of what we can do with groups, how big they can be, where they can sleep—all that kind of stuff.”

Boston loved bird-watching, but he didn’t say so out loud. It didn’t seem like a very cowboy thing to do, but he’d taken to it as a way to get out of the house, away from the family chaos, and tap into who he was.

He’d learned a lot about himself while alone in the wilderness sketching birds, making notes, and then looking them up later.

“I love eagles,” he said. “Bald eagles are my favorite, but I like all kinds of raptors. There’s something just so….” He trailed off, trying to find the right word. “ Majestic about them.”

Cora watched him closely, but he didn’t see any judgment in her face. “You’ve never taken a group up there?”