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“True,” he said, feeling like he was playing a game of Twenty Questions with her.
“I hate the city.”
Mike tried on half a smile, but Gerty didn’t melt even a little bit. “You don’t hate the city. You just don’t want to live there.”
“Right,” she said. “And Molly and Hunter live there sometimes.”
“No, they don’t.” Mike had seen the condo where Hunter sometimes slept. Hunter. Not Molly. “They have a mansion in the hills of Boulder.”
“Where she probably sleeps alone sometimes.”
“Sometimes,” Mike acknowledged. “Gerty, we’ve talked about me being the CEO.”
“I know,” she said. “I just guess—I guess I didn’t realize what it was really going to be until today.”
“Calls with France?” he asked, trying to be flirtatious. Again, she didn’t budge. Mike sighed. “I’m sorry, baby doll. It was an honest mix-up.”
“We’re both busy,” she said. “That’s not going to change.”
“Probably not,” he said. “I know you, and you don’t like being idle.”
She didn’t. She’d been working sixteen or eighteen hours every day to get the farm ready for her to move onto. If he wanted to see her, he went out there in the evenings, and he hadn’t been complaining about it.
Irritation fired through him. “I’m going to go change.”
She said nothing as he picked up his suit coat and tie and went down the hall. Mike should probably be looking for a house closer to downtown so he didn’t have to drive so far after a busy, exhausting day.
At the same time, he wanted to be wherever Gerty was. “That’s something,” he muttered to himself, even if he was annoyed with her.
She’d literally just told him she hated the city and his job, when she’d known his job was in the city.
He’d gone at her pace. He wasn’t going to bring up having her come live with him in the condo in the high rise, especially not with her farm. He’d assumed he’d be able to move in there with her.
As he pulled on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt, he wasn’t sure about anything anymore. He half-expected to find his living room empty, and it was. Gerty, however, stood in the kitchen.
“You don’t have to cook,” he said.
“I’m not.” She lifted the butter knife and started slathering spread onto a couple of waffles that had just obviously come out of the toaster.
“Gerty, we need to talk about us,” he said.
“Maybe we are a little bit too busy right now. Maybe we need to find time for each other again.”
He looked over to her, completely surprised to find her mouth hanging open. “What?” He hadn’t said anything too horrible…had he?
He really needed to talk to Hunter more about how to balance his work life and his family life, because Hunt hadn’t provided much detail about that. He’d said it was “hard,” and Mike could see that already and he and Gerty hadn’t evenstartedtalking too much about getting married.
He would, but he didn’t think she was ready.
She sprinkled salt over the buttered waffles and carefully cut a triangle in the pair of them. “You think I work too much.”
“Yeah,” he said. “And I do too.”
She pulled out her phone and pressed the button on the side of it. It chirped like she’d just gotten a message, but deep down inside him, he knew she hadn’t.
“It’s Daddy,” she said. “I have to go.”
“No.” Mike moved to block her, the military side of him roaring to the surface. “Let me see what your daddy said. He can’t need you somewhere.”
