Page 20 of Falling for Sierra

“It would have been nice to see you sooner, but I don’t know how much time we would have had together. I worked all week.”

He tilted his head to one side, watching her a moment. “Do you ever have any time off?”

“Of course. I take time off all the time.”

“Regular days off?”

“Yeah, why do you ask?”

He frowned. “You said you worked all week, and I know you worked all last weekend and planned to do it again this weekend. As much as I like the time I spend with you, I don’t delude myself into thinking the time we spend with you showing me properties isn’t work for you. I hate the idea that I’m stealing your time off. I can schedule my visits during the week.”

“I do take time off. I showed you places last weekend, but took Monday and Tuesday off then worked the rest of the week. I’ll likely do the same thing this week, too, though sometimes I switch it around. I end up showing houses a lot on weekends because that’s when people have time to look.” She couldn’t help but smile at his concern for her. “Do you have to go right back this week, like last week?”

Sierra hoped not. She liked spending time with him, and it would be great to have more time together to have fun than just the evenings after she’d worked for him all day.

“I’m supposed to go back Sunday evening, but if you’re off Monday and Tuesday, and don’t mind my hanging around to spend it with you, I’ll see if I can shift things around to stay, at least through Monday.”

“I’d love to have you stay.”

Blake pulled out his phone and started typing on the screen. Before he’d finished, Anna appeared with their food, setting it in front of them. She had just placed the last dish when Blake tucked his phone back into his pocket. He gave her a dazzling smile and thanked her before turning back to Sierra. “I set my assistant to trying to get everything rescheduled. He’ll let me know if he can’t get it done.”

“You’re not working on the weekend. You want to make sure I’ve got time off, but your assistant is still working at—” she checked her watch “almost ten p.m. on a Friday?”

“I have two assistants. One who works mostly normal hours, and one who works odd hours and is on demand. I’m more than a little demanding on their time, but I pay them well for the inconvenience.”

“Two assistants?” Sierra didn’t know if she’d ever heard of someone paying for two assistants, at least when they didn’t run them both ragged. She hoped Blake wasn’t one of those. She also couldn’t help but wonder how the two worked logistically. Did they each handle different parts of his life, or did they work together on anything he gave them? She didn’t want to ask, because at this stage, she felt it would be nosey. Instead, she shook her head and changed the subject. “I’d love to spend more time with you. I’d love to show you some of our area other than just homes for sale. It would be fun.”

CHAPTER 14

They finished dinner, chatting about their week and things they could do together next week when they were taking their time off. He didn’t really care what they did if he got to spend it with her.

When they left the Round Up, he grabbed the backpack he’d brought in with him and carried it out to the car. He’d hoped to put it in Sierra’s car before going inside, but she hadn’t been responding to messages when he’d arrived, so he’d taken it inside with him after the kid had dropped him off. He wasn’t sure who the kid was other than some teenager who had seen the helicopter land on the high school football field and had gone to see what was going on. He’d noticed there was no one around to pick Blake up and offered to take him wherever he needed to go.

Blake had been worried about Sierra. It wasn’t like her to not respond to calls or texts. He was going to have the kid, whose name he should have asked, but he had been thinking about Sierra not being social.

When he’d spotted her little SUV in the parking lot of the Round Up, he’d asked the kid to drop him there, and found her so engrossed in what she was writing, she hadn’t even noticed him sitting across from her. Or Anna talking to him.

He admired that kind of focus. He had it, sometimes, though rarely recently. In some ways, he missed it. In others, not at all. He liked the way when he became focused on something, the world seemed to fall away until he never heard what was going on. But he didn’t miss that he’d felt the need to do it in order to get ahead.

He loved seeing Sierra focus so that the world fell away because he could tell by the way she talked about her writing that it was something she was passionate about. She loved writing and her stories, and it showed when she told him about it. He loved that she had something she felt that way about.

He would love to come anywhere near that level of interest for her, but it was too soon for that. Too soon to hope that she might be as drawn to him as he was to her.

If he kept coming every weekend, he’d have to rectify the transportation problem. He’d been hoping to hold off until he bought a place, but if he was coming to see Sierra, bumming rides would get inconvenient fast.

He sent a message to Spencer to see about having a vehicle delivered in Hawthorne and what he would need to do about storing it when he wasn’t here. He was stuffing his phone back into his bag when Sierra pulled into the garage at her place, then closed the door behind them.

“What did you have in mind for tonight? Do you have anything you need to get done tonight?” she asked as she took the key from the ignition and opened her door.

Blake exited the vehicle and followed her into the house and through the kitchen.

“I didn’t have anything in mind but spending the evening with you. What little I needed to get done, I did on the helicopter.”

“I’m sorry again that I didn’t notice you arriving.” She flushed.

Blake set his bag on the bar and moved closer, gently lifting her briefcase from her hand, and setting it on the counter next to his. Once she didn’t have anything in her hands to worry about, Blake tugged her into his arms and kissed her with all the pent-up desire he’d held in check while he watched her. Everything that had built in him while they’d had dinner and exchanged small talk about their respective weeks.

He didn’t like her thinking she owed him her time. It was one thing when he was paying her to show him homes, but not when it was their leisure time. She owed her personal time to no one. He would make sure she knew how much he appreciated every moment he spent with her, whether he was the center of her attention or not.

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