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Why wouldn’t she answer him?
“Listen,” he said, sighing. “If we can’t be friends, I’m not sure you should take the job.” He couldn’t stand to watch her walk out of his life again, not when she’d only been back for ten minutes. Working with her when they couldn’t have a conversation would be torture, though.
“Well?” he asked, unsettled by Gina’s long silence.
CHAPTERTHREE
Gina’s skin tingled with the chemistry between her and Blake. That hadn’t changed about this place, about this man. He’d changed over the years, sure, but his eyes were still deep and dark, like the night sky full of stars. His beard had grown long, as had his hair, and she wondered if he still did that to irritate his mama.
When he let it get long, it curled around his ears and across his forehead, and she watched as he pushed his hand through that hair and sighed.
“Yes,” she said, finally finding the word in her vocabulary. “We can be friends.” She put a smile on her face and semi-lunged at Blake. He grunted as he caught her, and her arms went around him easily, the way they always had.
He eventually settled his hands on her lower back, and his chest expanded as he breathed in deeply. Gina pressed her cheek to his heartbeat and breathed too, maybe completely and fully for the first time since she’d learned her job in Dallas was no more.
“Thank you,” she said, stepping back, a keen sense of awkwardness filling her. Friends didn’t hug and breathe in deeply together, swaying slightly. That behavior existed in a living room prom, with a fake disco ball throwing rectangles of light onto the walls while a cheesy eighties ballad played.
This was an office—her boss’s office.
“I’m not your boss,” he said gruffly, as if he could read minds. “Starla is, and you’ll be reporting to her. She reports to me, so I’ll know if there’s any problems.”
“There won’t be any problems,” Gina promised, even reaching up to cross her heart. Instant embarrassment heated her face, and she turned away from Blake so he wouldn’t see. He used to tease her relentlessly when she blushed, and she’d already inserted herself into this office and basically demanded he give her the job. Not only that, but she’d questioned his right to interview her.
She pressed her eyes closed and breathed in through her nose as she reached the doorway. She looked left and then right before moving, and she’d barely lifted her foot to step before Blake said, “Right, Gina.”
She twisted to look at him, her foot coming down on the floor while she wasn’t watching. Her ankle decided that was a great moment to give out on her, and her knee and then hip buckled too. She scrambled to find a grip on the doorjamb, but that thing might as well have been polished with butter.
Gina hit the floor as a cry left her mouth, and Blake arrived at her side in less time than it took for the pain to flash through her body.
“You’re okay,” he said, his voice tender and soft, as it had been many times before when he’d spoken to her. One hand went around her back to support her, and the other held onto her forearm. He lingered so close, she could smell his cologne and the Ashe juniper—bitter, fresh, and sappy.
She looked up at him, and suddenly everything was okay. “Sorry,” she said.
“Still a bit directionally challenged,” he said with that trademark smile. That hadn’t changed. Gina wondered if she’d be categorizing what had changed and what hadn’t here at the Texas Longhorn Ranch forever. She hoped not. “And klutzy.”
“That’s why you’re around,” Gina said, leaning into him and using him to stand. He went with her, finally pulling his hands back to himself. She cleared her throat, the moment turning heated and intense quickly. “So what time in the morning?”
“Starla does her staff meetings before breakfast is served,” he said.
“And that still goes from seven to nine?” Gina asked. “Right?”
“Still does, yep.” Blake pocketed his hands and rocked back onto his cowboy boot heels. “So six.” His eyes glittered with those stars, clearly asking her if she got up that early.
Gina swept her stick-straight hair over her shoulders and said, “Great. I’ll be here at six.” She stepped around Blake and went down the hallway toward the room where she’d left Baby John. He wasn’t there anymore, and as there was only one hallway leading out of this room, besides the one she’d just come down, Gina knew the way back to the front of the lodge.
A few more people worked in the big main room, but none of them paid Gina any mind. She didn’t want to talk to anyone anyway. She just needed to make it back to her car, and then she’d come up with a plan for how she could be at the lodge by five-forty-five in the morning.
* * *
“You’re up early.”
Gina turned toward her mother’s weathered voice and found her in her fluffy red robe and slippers. Fox trotted in front of her and went straight to the back door, his master following.
“So are you,” Gina said as she returned to filling her travel mug with coffee. She’d need the whole thing to make it through breakfast, and she was sure the day held a lot more for her than that. “I could’ve let out Fox.”
“Oh, we have our routine,” her mom said. “You’re dressed and everything.” She reached the back door and let out the dog.
“Yes, Mom,” Gina said as gently as she could. “I’m starting my new job this morning, remember?”
