Page 3 of Boston
His mother had taught him not to gossip, that doing so was like dipping his hand in tar and then trying to change a pillowcase without getting it dirty.
Impossible.
She’d told him that gossip and rumors didn’t serve anyone but their own ego, that they made him soiled in his soul, and Boston had tried to keep his hands clean as much as possible.
“Have you met Cora?” he asked.
“Sure,” Cotton said easily, but everything he did came out easy and calm. “I’ve got a list of horses for you to have ready. She likes Marigold.”
“Oh, I love that horse,” Boston said. “Goldie is really calm.”
So it wouldn’t matter that Cora hadn’t been home in a year and hadn’t ridden the horse in probably longer. Any of the horses here were used to strangers riding them once and never meeting them again, but when Cotton asked, “Who do you want?” Boston cocked his eyebrows.
“I can have anyone I want?”
“Anyone but Two Wolves,” Cotton said. “He did a ride this morning, but everyone else has been grazing and getting fat.” He threw Boston a grin. “So yeah, choose anyone you want.”
“Coach,” Boston said without hesitation. He loved the pretty bay with a gentle-giant spirit.
“Coach is yours,” Cotton said as he moved over to the wall and lifted a clipboard off the nail there. “Your paper is here for the other horse assignments. Darren will need the stool, and Mae wants you to bring water and snacks and be ready to do a campfire and make lunch.”
Cotton handed him the paper. “Everything you need is here, and the chefs know. They’re expecting you in the morning.”
Surprise streamed through Boston, because he’d never done that on the Wicker Road Trail either. But he simply said, “Okay,” and looked at the paper. On the back, a map had been included, and the spot for the campfire clearly marked.
“Thanks,” he said to Cotton, and then he went to saddle his horse.
As he set out, everything inside him relaxed and soft now, Boston started thinking through where and how he could meet someone he might find interesting enough to date. He lived and worked full-time here, and he spent his free time driving down to Coral Canyon for family event upon family event.
Birthday parties, cousin nights, get-togethers for coffee and dinner and dessert. The Young family was huge, and Boston wanted to maintain and keep building those relationships.
It was the whole reason he’d snapped up this job closer to home.
But as he tipped his head back and drank in the blue, blue sky, he prayed, “It would be nice to meet someone special, though, Lord. So guide my feet to that, if it be Thy will.”
CHAPTER
TWO
Cora Silver could feel eyes on her, though she’d left her cabin, where she’d been meeting with her mother, her twin sister, Katherine’s husband, and the three managers of the family lodge for the past few hours. She had been on the ground in Wyoming for a little over twenty-four hours, and she couldn’t say she was happy about it.
The sun shone, but it wasn’t nearly the same hot, vibrant Miami sun that Cora had fallen in love with and lived under for the past decade. She tried smiling, because she saw no reason to wallow in the situation longer than she had to.
She’d known she’d have to return to this sprawling piece of property where she’d grown up sooner or later. She kind of hoped that she would get married and start having a family first, but deep down, she’d always known that Katherine would win that race.
Kat was married, with a two-year-old little girl and twins of unknown gender on the way. She had been working at Silver Sage Mountain Lodge and Resort all the time that Cora had gone to college and then taken over a luxury boutique hotel in Miami.
She’d been telling herself for a couple of months now that the job here was the same, but the towering Teton Mountains in thedistance told her it wasn’t, and the scent of horse flesh and hay and manure also testified as much.
The fact that the walls of her home were made of blonde pine planks also told her that she’d left Miami in the rearview mirror. No more couches with zebra print, or flashy lights in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon, or little cocktail glasses full of pink liquid and umbrella straws.
She’d never really gotten into the beach life, though the hotel she managed sat right on the sand. She’d seen plenty of trouble come through the front doors, and truth be told, her soul needed something a little slower, a little quieter, and a little more wholesome.
She just wished it didn’t come with a winter quite as biting as Wyoming’s. “You’ve got six months until winter,” she told herself, and then quickly amended it to four. Sometimes it snowed before Halloween, and it would be October in four months, and Cora would have to get a whole new wardrobe before then. She certainly didn’t own any cold weather gear coming from Florida.
Her father had passed away several years ago, and while Cora’s momma had always played a huge role at Silver Sage, she’d been leading the staff of over one hundred here ever since. She and Daddy had tried for ten years to have babies, and finally, through the miracle of modern medicine, they’d gotten two girls at the same time.
Cora was older by six minutes, and she’d known her path. All paths led back to Silver Sage Mountain Lodge and Resort. She didn’t have to like it, though, especially not on day one.
