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She flashed me an amused smile. “I think everyone on this ranch knew that except for you.” Opening a beer, she leaned against the counter. “I seem to be out of a bed.”
“You can always come home with me,” Gordon said with a wink.
I glowered at him. “Go home. We’ll schedule a meeting next week. And Gordon? Thank you. You did good work.”
He bowed just a little. “I always do good work. Good night, guys. Brendan, don’t make that woman sleep on the floor.”
As if there was a chance. When he was gone, I looked at her evenly. “What’s it going to be, Jillian? The floor or my bed?”
“Kim offered to share hers,” she said with a mischievous smile. “Seems big enough, and she promises that she doesn’t snore.”
Quick as a flash, I had her in my arms. “I don’t snore,” I grumbled as I moved my head down for a kiss. She opened to me easily and without hesitation, and I deepened the kiss until she sighed with pleasure.
“You do snore,” she whispered. “But that’s okay. You make up for it in other ways.”
She protested, but I sat her beer on the counter and swept her up in my arms. Tonight, she was going to be in my bed. Tonight, I was reclaiming her as mine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jillian
Brendan was pissed, but he was doing his best to hide it. I was grateful for that. Cindy had done little to temper her extravagance. It was barely midmorning, and she was perched on Ben’s desk in the stable office with a glass of white wine in one hand and her cell phone in the other.
First, she complained that her Twitter feed wasn’t loading fast enough, and when it did load, all she did was look at the posts congratulating the other actress on her big win the other night.
“If it upsets you, stop looking at it,” I said with a sigh as I tried to read the most recent emails from my advisor. It was starting to look like my most recent draft of my dissertation was going to be a winner, but I was too cautious to pump my hands in the air just yet. There were still things that needed fixing.
“How can I avoid it?” she wailed. “It’s all over Twitter! Sheryl Letter’s stupid face and everyone congratulating her!”
“Then close Twitter. Cindy, you’re at a horse ranch. Have you ever been to a horse ranch before?” I was about to look up at her when another email caught my eye.
Don?
“No. It’s not exactly on my bucket list.”
The disdain in her voice distracted me. “Cindy, no one dragged you out here. You came on your own, and Brendan is letting you stay even though he’s not happy about it. You’re a guest. Be respectful. Maybe do a little exploring while you’re here. What if the next big role you get is working on a ranch? You can say that you have a working knowledge of a ranch.”
Cocking her head, she slowly lowered her glass of wine. “Jillian, you are absolutely right. I should be taking this loss as a kick in the ass to work harder. Where is that hunky husband of yours? I’m going to grill him on his job.”
Whoops.
Grimacing, I tried to stop her. Not thirty minutes ago, Brendan had taken his paperwork, shot us both an ugly glare, and stormed out. I was sure the last thing he wanted was Cindy grilling him, but she was a hurricane, and I couldn’t stop her.
Not that I actually tried too hard. There was something going on with Brendan, and I had no idea what that something was. Maybe Cindy could irritate him enough to tell me what was on his mind.
Alone in the office, I pulled my email back up and stared at it. In the six weeks since we’d broken up, he hadn’t once tried to get in contact with me. I’d barely even thought of him, so what was this about? Were he and my advisor talking again about my dissertation? I thought I’d made it clear that I didn’t want Don reading it.
Steeling myself, I opened the email up and nearly fell out of the chair. It wasn’t a professional email at all. It was a plea for a second chance.
Well, plea was a strong word for someone like Don. Rather, it was a stiffly worded short thesis on why he believed we should give our relationship a second chance. In it, he’d outlined all the ways in which we were alike, and as I read them, I felt myself dying a little inside.
Professional.
Goal-oriented.
Motivated in both academics and application of academics.
Not distracted by personal emotions.
It read like a resume, and it made us both seem cold and robotic. Was that really the woman that I’d turned into? Someone who would have read this email and been flattered?
