Page 49 of Boston (Coral Canyon: Cowboys #12)

CHAPTER

THIRTY-TWO

C ora’s alarm had gone off twenty minutes ago, and she still had not left her office.

She still had more emails to comb through, probably a dozen to answer, and stacks of paperwork on her desk.

She took a moment to breathe, and she went through a quick list of tasks that had been top priority for today.

Payroll had gotten submitted, so everyone at the lodge would get paid.

She’d signed off on the hiring of two new horsemen, so that she could move some people into guide positions.

She’d gotten through three meetings today, and since she hadn’t heard from Boston since yesterday afternoon, if she left now, she’d have her whole evening open.

She stood and swiped her finger across the front of her computer screen, which turned it off. She grabbed her purse and her phone and hurried out of her office.

She had to go through the employee desks to get out, and her heart pounded that she might run into Boston there. They’d both been extraordinarily busy the last couple of weeks, especially since the babies had been born.

Only a few days after that, Boston had coordinated and worked a wedding and then a major family anniversary party. He’d spent Sunday down in Coral Canyon at church and with his family, and then he’d been gone on two overnight backpacking trips this week already.

Of course, he wasn’t even living at Silver Sage right now. Cora lifted her phone as she stepped out into the bigger area where people worked at desks and in cubicles. She held her phone in front of her face, pretending to text on it as she continued to stride through the area, her focus singular.

Get out.

Thankfully, no one grabbed her, and she found herself almost running toward her red SUV in the corner of the parking lot. Once there, she locked the doors and started the car to get the air conditioner blowing.

Boston should be back on site from his second overnight camping trip by now, but he also had cousin night at Cash’s house later today, and Cora had not been invited this time. He’d brought it up, and he’d said, “It’s usually just the cousins, at least until people get married.”

She could still see the concern on his face as he said, “That’s just how we do things in our family.”

Cora understood, because she and Boston had really only been seeing each other for six weeks.

“Less than that,” she muttered to herself as she looked out into the bright horizon. She reached up to the sun visor and grabbed her sunglasses. She put those on, and then flipped the visor down, and that reduced the glare.

This month had been a beast for everyone who worked at Silver Sage, and Cora had already vowed to never let a month like this be repeated. They could hire more seasonal help, for crying out loud. All it would have taken was a little planning and a little forethought, and someone with experience.

Cora hadn’t realized until it was too late, and hiring two people to start next week when there was only three days left in July felt like a major failure.

She’d do better next year, and she’d already put notes in her calendar in April to start looking for people who could work June, July and August on tours.

She could get high school students then, and she could put them in roles where they cared for animals or grounds, and move some of her full-time employees into guide positions seasonally.

She saw her mother and sister every night when she went over to Kat’s to give them a break.

Kat’s oldest son, Corduroy—they called him Roy—still struggled to eat.

Sometimes, Cora could get him to take two ounces, but it took almost an hour and left her exhausted.

She did love it when he then fell asleep on her chest, and she could close her eyes and find some semblance of peace and quiet, at least for a few minutes.

Her mother had stopped doing anything around the lodge at all as she helped Kat acclimate to having three children under the age of two.

Jeremy, who usually oversaw so much, had gone on paternity leave because Kat and the babies had to go to the doctor every other day.

Both babies still weighed less than five pounds, and that meant they couldn’t regulate their body temperatures very well.

Their second son, the cutest little thing who had been born with a shock of dark hair, they’d named Denim. And while Cora wasn’t crazy about the fabric names, they sure fit Wyoming and the Silver Sage Mountain Lodge and Resort.

Denim had had to go to the emergency room last week when a rash had broken out on his tiny three-pound body, and Kat had started talking about moving into one of the hospital condos until the babies were older. That would take Momma and Jeremy off-site completely.

“Not that it matters,” Cora said, as she finally pulled her seat belt across her body and clicked it into place. “You’re doing everything already.”

And she was. Jeremy had had to order a new bed as the one he and Kat had had been stained pretty badly from the birth, and it felt like everyone on Family Row was drowning for different reasons, but drowning all the same.

She drove out of the employee parking lot, and when she normally turned right to go down the dirt roads that led further onto the property, she turned left instead. She had to get out of here, and she’d carved out a few hours for herself by some sheer miracle.

Her heart hurt that she and Boston’s relationship had been put on hold. Even when she texted him now, he answered in short sentences or single words. He texted her too, so she didn’t feel like he’d given up, but she also didn’t have much time for flirting sessions or late-night chats.

When she reached the highway, she once again turned left when she normally went right—south to Coral Canyon.

Now she drove north toward Rusk and beyond.

She let the openness and wildness of Wyoming into her little red car, whom she still had not named.

It drove great, and she arrived at Little Brown Bear Stream about a half-hour later.

A couple of cars sat in the gravel lot, and Cora reached for the big sun hat and her bottle of water before she got out.

She could hear the river already, but the best spot to see the salmon sat about a half-mile back from the parking lot.

The path was flat and kind of meandered through the woods, and if she hadn’t been able to hear the rushing water, she’d wonder if she’d gotten lost.

As it was, she kept going, letting her mind mull through problems at Silver Sage, her desire to be a good sister and daughter, and the feelings of loss that she had over Boston that made no sense.

She could have asked him if he could escape with her this afternoon. She hadn’t, because she’d started to doubt if having a relationship with him at this time of her life, when she’d just returned to the resort and needed to focus so much attention on it, was the right thing to do.

She couldn’t give him the attention he deserved, and since he worked there too, and had been doing six days a week all month, he certainly didn’t have anything left to give to her, either.

So while she felt guilty on top of neglected, she also asked herself, What else did you expect?

She finally managed to shelve thoughts of him when she reached the end of the trail and the stream bubbled merrily in front of her. The bank extended left and right for several yards in each direction, and Cora took a deep breath as she stretched her arms over her head and looked around.

No bears feasted on the upstream-swimming salmon in the river right now, something she was actually grateful for. She’d prefer to see them on nature cams than live and in color in front of her.

To her left, someone had set up a fancy camera and trained it on the river. The older gentleman raised his hand to acknowledge Cora, and she did the same in return. He was the only person there, despite the other cars in the lot, and Cora moved to the right to find a place to just sit and be.

Fallen logs and rocks and stumps lingered back near the tree line, and Cora perched on one covered in shade. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d willingly gone into nature like this, with the silence and the wind in the trees and the soothing rushing of water.

She’d loved Miami, but as she sat next to the Little Brown Bear Stream, she realized that she had forgotten part of herself. Miami had beaten it out of her and made her believe that the country girl she was wasn’t good enough.

She’d had no time to attend church, but as she closed her eyes and centered her thoughts, Cora realized that sometimes those outward actions were only that—actions. Sometimes they reflected an inner belief, and sometimes it just meant people were going through the motions.

She wanted to attend church and hadn’t been able to find time yet. She would go when she could, and when she couldn’t, Cora had found herself turning to journaling, prayer, and the scripture cards that she’d once used as a teenager.

Each one contained a single verse and was supposed to help her center her focus around a principle for that day. Sometimes Cora had used them for a whole week or longer as she tried to ponder what the scripture was trying to teach her.

She hadn’t read one since the babies had been born, and she realized that she had a lot of voids in her life. Boston, yes. A lack of support at work, absolutely.

But she could also pull a card out of that file and read it every day. It would only take ten seconds, and perhaps her mind would revolve around it in the moment she needed it.

Sitting by the stream, Cora made a renewed commitment to read at least one scripture from one card each day.

Even if it was the same one every day for consecutive days, until she felt like she understood what was being taught, that was fine.

But she couldn’t continue to ignore the spiritual side of herself. It needed to be fed too.