Page 12 of Boston
“This is not common knowledge, so I’d appreciate it if you’d keep it to yourself.”
“Can I tell Coach?”
The next thing Cora had been about to say dried right up. “Coach?”
“I tell Coach all my secrets,” Boston said seriously. “And sometimes my daddy, but I don’t have to tell him.” He gave himself a little shake, which Cora found absolutely adorable. “It’s just…I don’t like keeping things inside. They sort of eat me up, so if I can tell Coach, then I won’t have to tell anyone else.”
Cora glanced over to the medium brown horse, who had his head down lazily, his tail flicking left-right-left-right in a slow pattern. “I suppose you can tell Coach.”
“Okay, then.”
“I know my momma, and she’ll want me to work with someone.” Cora sighed. “I suppose I could ask Jeremy, but I was thinking…maybe you and I could…I don’t know.” Cora’s courage failed her, and she couldn’t ask for his number.
She wanted it for work purposes, sure, but also so she could text him about anything and everything she wanted. Just to have this man’s number would besomethingin a world where Cora had very little.
“I’m not even sure what you’re asking me.” Boston took a step closer, glanced over to the fire pit, where everyone else still sat. “I work with groups on excursions and hikes, hunting parties, stuff like that. And I work in the office sometimes, dealing with the conference and event side of the lodge.”
Cora nodded. “All the things I need to learn about. There’s just so much more here than when I left ten years ago.”
“And you think I can….” His eyebrows went up. “What? Mentor you?”
“You could at least, uh, meet with me and start to outline some of these types of things. Then, when I meet with my mother and sister, I won’t feel like I’m drowning.” She swallowed, and with her throat so dry, she didn’t think she’d ever feel like she could drown.
Boston inched even closer, the scent of sunshine, horses, and leather coming with him. Cora tried not to take a deep breath of it, and failed. She committed it to memory, so she could smell this when she imagined him laughing.
“I could probably do that,” he said. “As long as it doesn’t interfere with the other things I have going on at Silver Sage. I really like this job, and I don’t want to lose it.”
She nodded. “Great,” she croaked out. “So sometime before we part ways today, maybe I could get your number.”
“Sure,” Boston said easily, and then he let his gorgeous cowboy smile out. “Now, come on. We’re having roasted corn on the cob and the best hot dogs on the planet for lunch, and I’m starving.”
He stepped around her and took the water over to the table, then hand-delivered a bottle to everyone around the fire pit, where he tended to the fire and started building a bed of coals for roasting.
Cora watched him, starving for something else entirely. Acceptance. Belonging. The human touch.
“No,” she grumbled. “Not any human touch.” Because her sister and mother both hugged her. They were both thrilled she’d come home.
Mm, she wanted a thrilling, warm touch from Boston Simpson, and Cora wondered if she’d lost her mind completely. She hadn’t come back to Wyoming to find a cowboy boyfriend, especially not one who worked for her.
She gave herself a powerful shake then and put an extra foot between her and Boston when he came to the table and started wrapping ears of corn in tin foil.
She had a job to do here, and it wasn’t to flirt with handsome cowboys. She’d get his number, and she’d learn what she could from him—and if she could do that while basking in the beauty of those blue eyes, all the better.
But she wouldn’t dive into them. Oh, no, she would not.
She went with him to put the corn in the fire, and when she straightened after handing them all to him to nestle down into the coals—which he did with his bare hands—her mother said, “Come sit, Cora.”
“I’m learning,” she said.
“Yes, that’s what I want to talk to you about.”
Cora gave a weary sigh and sat next to her mother in the only available chair. That meant Boston didn’t have one, and she toldherself not to watch him walk back to the table to do the next thing. He was working here, and he wasn’t going to sit down with the guests.
“I’d like you to work with someone,” Momma started. “Kat and Jeremy can still meet with you, and I’ll be there too, of course.”
“Of course,” Cora murmured. “Momma, I’m planning on being everywhere and learning as much as I can.” She didn’t need a babysitter.
“What about Boston?” her mother asked just as he returned.
