evening as Taylor showed her how to make a quick pasta sauce using fresh tomatoes and basil, “or he would have gone through life eating fried meat and bagged lettuce. Oh…and canned soup. That’s also in his repertoire.”
Now, Cole eased Max to the side so he could share the chair with the cat and pulled on his socks and boots. Taylor propped herself up on one elbow. “Are you sure you want to go to the trouble of moving a mattress?”
He paused before pulling his second boot all the way onto his foot. “Too much of a commitment?”
“Maybe?”
He got up from the chair and came over to bend down over the bed and kiss her. “We agreed to being in the moment, and when I’m in the moment, I want to be comfortable.”
It made sense. No reason for her to feel edgy. She tried a smile. It felt genuine. She was simply not used to this kind of situation—one that defied neat classification.
She couldn’t sleep after Cole let himself out into the crisp early morning air for the short trip to his much-bigger bed. She turned on the electric heater and wrapped up in her robe, then settled into the chair with her laptop. The job search had become less of a priority during the past week and a half—since the time she’d first slept with Cole—but she had an interview with a Bozeman accounting firm later that day and she wanted to brush up on a few more company facts and figures before she got ready.
She wanted this job. Her feeling of professional self-worth was taking a hit, while, ironically, her sense of personal self-worth was doing okay.
How could it not, with a guy like Cole sharing her bed? He wasn’t a talker, but she knew she turned him on. Knew that he found their new relationship as satisfying as she did.
What she didn’t know was how he planned to handle their future…any more than she did.
A very good reason to stay in the moment.
* * *
“YOU KNOW,” JANCEY said as she set a cereal bowl onto the table where Cole was reading through the last batch of bank statements, “I don’t care if Taylor stays here.” Cole’s gaze jerked up, and his sister gave him an ironic look. “I mean, really. Why all the subterfuge?”
Cole blew out a breath as he pushed the bank statement aside. Oh, yeah, this wasn’t uncomfortable or anything. “I guess because I wouldn’t be wild about you bringing a guy here.”
Jancey filled her bowl as she considered his words, then carefully closed the cereal box. “I get that, but you two are thirty. Thirty.”
“You’ll be thirty before you know it.” And Taylor was only twenty-eight.
“And when I am, I won’t be sneaking around like a high school kid,” she said before twisting the cap off the milk jug.
“Jancey?” She raised her gaze to his. “Tell you what. I’ll focus on my personal life and you focus on getting a job. Okay?”
“Fine. Just close the door more quietly when you come in, okay? It always wakes me up.”
He thought he had been closing it quietly.
“Hey,” Jancey said after taking her first bite. “Do you know who owns that little white dog?”
Cole breathed a quick prayer of thanks at the change of conversation. “Mrs. Clovendale’s sister. His name is Chucky, and he’s an escape artist.”
“I think he’s cute. I caught him yesterday, but when I put him down, he took off. If I catch him again, I’ll take him home.”
For all the good it’ll do. Cole smiled at his sister. “Are you ready for today?”
She’d snagged an interview for a position as a warehouse worker for a local distribution company. The pay was good, the benefits were good and she’d be able to save a lot more for her schooling than she would have been able to do working on the guest ranch.
“I am so ready. I researched the company, and I have some questions to ask them.” She jabbed her spoon into the cornflakes with a loud crunch. “And they hire summer after summer, so if I get on with them, then I can move back here next summer.”
“Sounds like a job you need to land.”
“Oh, I will land it.”
She reminded him of Taylor during her string of interviews that had gone nowhere, but these were different circumstances. Magnus Distributing hired summer workers to load and drive. They weren’t expecting their hires to be there forever, as US West Bank had.
“I’ll wish you luck now. I have to mow the edges of the field today. Weeds are popping up fast.” And Taylor had an interview later that day in Bozeman.
Bozeman wouldn’t be a bad place for her to land. A little more than a three-hour drive away, it might make Taylor feel more secure as she worked through the situation—give them both some autonomy and time to decide if they wanted to move forward with this thing that was growing between them. Whether Taylor liked it or not, it was growing.
It’d been a long time since Cole had felt this kind of connection with a woman, and the fact that it was Taylor blew him away. The princess had turned out to not be such a princess after all. She still had an air of privilege about her, but now, instead of putting his back up, it made him want to play with her, bring her down to earth. As she relaxed and as they worked, he saw more and more of the down-to-earth side of her. Saw it and liked it.
Wanted more of it.
If she returned to Seattle, what would happen to down-to-earth Taylor? Would she disappear as business Taylor took over again?
Or maybe once freed, she was there forever.
Maybe she wasn’t so anxious to go back to Seattle anymore…
Cole pushed the thought aside and headed out the door to his tractor. When he passed the bunkhouse, he could hear the shower running. Taylor was getting ready for her interview, and he wasn’t going to distract her, as tempting as that thought was. He’d wished her luck last night in the best way he knew how, and now it was all on her.
* * *
“I THINK I nailed it,” Jancey said as she chopped onions for the beef stew that she and Taylor were making that night. When she’d reminded Cole a few nights ago that she was supposed to be earning her keep, he’d suggested she give Jancey cooking lessons, since his sister was determined to learn to cook and the results were closer to miss than hit. “The interview, I mean.”
She scooped the onions into a pan, and they began to sizzle and pop. “You want to cook these slowly.”
Jancey bit her lip and adjusted the burner. “Right.” Once the onions stopped popping, she glanced over at Taylor. “How’d yours go?”
“Well.” Her interview had gone well, but she hadn’t been wild about the company or the committee that interviewed her. Still, she needed to get back into her own world. A place where she felt as if she belonged.
“But…”
“Not my kind of company.”
Jancey stopped peeling a carrot. “What was wrong with it?”
“Hard to explain.” Especially for someone so hard up for employment. “It felt wrong. I’d take a job there if offered, though.”
“For a place you don’t love?”
“It’s a job,” she said.
“That’s where I am, too. I used to love working for the ranch. Then my uncle died and Miranda went all power mad.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d heard that story.
“She looked as if she’d be a difficult person to work for.”
Jancey held the burger over the pan and glanced over her shoulder at Taylor, who nodded. The