She sighed when he got out of the truck and she waited for him to walk around to open the passenger door. She wasn’t nearly as sure of everything as she’d been when she arrived here. And the only way she was going to determine what was best would be to stay with Blake on the ranch and give herself the time to sort it all out.
Six
On Sunday morning when Blake walked back into the foreman’s cottage after getting their breakfast from the bunkhouse cook, Karly was seated at the table waiting for him. “I thought you’d still be asleep,” he said as he set the containers of food on the kitchen island.
“My phone woke me,” she said, her tone pensive. He noticed her tightly clasped hands resting on the table in front of her. Her knuckles were white and she looked like she had something pretty heavy on her mind.
Without giving it a second thought, he walked over to where she sat, took her hands in his and pulled her to her feet. “What’s wrong?” he asked, loosely holding her to him. He wasn’t sure why, but it bothered him to think she might be worried about anything at all.
Instead of her backing away as he thought she might, she wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head against his chest. “The strike at the Denver airport is over. The airline can get me on a flight out of Cheyenne tomorrow morning.”
She didn’t sound overly happy about it and he took that as a sign that despite what she’d said last night on the way home from the main house, she wanted to stay with him a little longer. And that was just fine with him. He told himself that he was okay with it because he hadn’t yet discovered what had originally changed her mind about them. But if he was perfectly honest with himself, he would have to admit that he wanted to spend more time with her before he had to say goodbye and watch her drive out of his life for good. The way he saw it, having one more day with her was worth whatever hell he would have to face of a lifetime without her.
“You don’t have to leave.” He put his index finger beneath her chin to tilt her head up until their eyes met. “Why don’t you stay a few more days?”
“I can’t afford to miss work,” she said, shaking her head. “I only have a couple of vacation days left and I’ll need to use those for the stop in Lincoln County to file the...d-divorce.”
She stumbled over the word and he would bet nearly every dime he had that she was starting to second-guess her decision. “Can you work from here?”
She looked thoughtful. “You mean telecommute?”
He nodded. “The signal here is good, but it’s a lot better over at the main house. You could work from there.”
“As nice as your boss is, I’m sure he’ll draw the line at some stranger using up all of his bandwidth,” she stated.
Blake shrugged. “Like I said, he’s not staying there right now. When he had the Wi-Fi installed, he made sure it was unlimited usage with no slowdowns.” He purposely omitted that Blake himself was one of the internet company’s principal shareholders.
She looked thoughtful a moment before she shook her head. “I didn’t bring my laptop.”
“Not a problem,” he said, smiling. He knew she was giving it serious consideration and he was determined to convince her to stay on the Wolf Creek Ranch a little longer. “You can use mine.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. “You might have something on it that’s private.”
He shook his head. “I only use it for breeding records and to keep track of the cattle we’ll be sending to market. There’s more than enough room on the hard drive for anything you’ll be doing and if you need a special program we can always download it.”
“I’ll have to call the office on Tuesday morning and explain that I’m going to be working from here for a few days,” she said, her expression thoughtful. “I’ve telecommuted in the past, so it shouldn’t be a problem to set it up. And I’ll need to email one of my coworkers to have her send me a couple of files I’ll need.”
“Then it’s settled,” he said, refusing to acknowledge just how important it had become to him that she extended her stay. “After breakfast we’ll go over to the mansion and get everything arranged in the office.”