Page 51 of Take Me Away, Cowboy

“Did you just call yourself my boyfriend?” she asked.

The corners of her lips tilted up as she said the word aloud. She liked the way it sounded, what it meant, and for the first time since she got back to Banberry, she didn’t think the words “for now” as she said it. It scared her how comfortable she was with him, with how comfortable she was with the idea of doing more than just sleeping with her hot neighbor. But it wasn’t a fear she could run from.

That surprised her more than anything else.

“I did. How’s that sound to you?” he asked. His voice was husky, his breath hot on her cheek as he slid his mouth to her neck, nibbling at her skin with his lips, gently using his teeth to make her crazy.

God, she wanted him.

“I like it. More than I thought I would.”

She meant that.

He moved his mouth to hers again, plying her lips open with his tongue. She marveled that he tasted the same as he smelled.

She was about to ask him back up to her apartment—her surgery release be damned—when her phone buzzed in her back pocket. She ignored it, kissing Owen back with all the passion she could muster.

The phone buzzed twice more. Twice more she ignored it, making a silent vow to verbally destroy whoever wouldn’t leave a simple voicemail message for her to tend to when she wasn’t wrapped up in the arms of her gorgeous neighbor.

When the phone rang a fourth time, Owen laughed, pulling back from her.

“I think you’d better answer that before whoever it is sends out a search party for you. I don’t think you want them to see what I have in store for you next, Connors.” He growled against her neck again, and she cursed the phone with its tether to the outside world in that particular moment.

She took a step back, knowing the only way she was going to do anything other than Owen was to create a little distance between her and her desire.

She sighed as the phone went off again, and without looking at it, answered a brusque “What?” Her hands sat perched on her hips, her lips pursed.

“Don’t you ‘what’ me, Paige. If anyone is going to start the conversation pissed off, it will be me.”

Shit.Aurelie.

“Hey, honey. How are you? I’m so sorry I haven’t been in touch. How was your mom’s service?” She’d sent flowers, but Paige felt like a genuine ass for not checking in on her friend afterwards. Not that she didn’t have an excuse, but still…

“It was fine. Expected. Not like finding out your best friend had surgery on acancerous tumor, and didn’t think to call me.”

Shit, shit, shit.

“Aurelie—” Paige began, but Aurelie cut her off at the pass.

“No, you don’t get to ply me with excuses and make me pity you so you can get out of feeling horribly guilty for what you’ve put me through. And then you don’t answer the phone? No. Not okay, Paige. I thought I’d get your family telling me you were dead.”

Owen gave Paige a quizzical look, one eyebrow up and a smirk playing on the corner of his lips. He raised his arms as if to ask, “What’s going on?”

She shook her head.

Not now, she mouthed.

He nodded and backed up a step, pretended to work on his fence, but she could see the concern etched in the hard lines on his face.

Page bit her lip and pinched her nose, feeling like a chastised child and her mother at the same time.

She let Aurelie finish her tirade, waited to see if she would be ambushed again.

“Well are you there, or did you actually die on me?”

“Aury, I’m here. Okay? I’m here, and I’m okay.”

The voice on the other end erupted into sobs, long and breathless cries that shook Paige to her core.

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