Chapter 16 - Chase Me, Cowboy

I sit on the couch and watch the storm, the faint sound of Serena on the phone coming from the bedroom.

I know I said one more night, but I really want two more days. Then she can go home, and I’ll consider this resolved. For the next forty-eight hours, I won’t think about driving her to the airport.

Crash.

The floor shudders. I get up and go to the window. This is my favorite season, when the wind whips up over the water. It suffocates the rest of the world and holds it at bay. It would be even better if the storm would take out my phone signal. Then, I’d have a perfect excuse to block everything out, and I don’t get yelled at as badly when it’s over because signal outage is something that makes sense to clients.

Personal time…they’re far less forgiving.

Her feet pad on the floor. I turn, watching her tap her phone into her palm.

“What’d she say?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I mean…I’m a grown-ass adult. She can’t make me come home.”

“But she disapproves?”

“No, not really.”

That surprises me. My only experience with her family is Bill, her gruff, closed-off father who didn’t seem to like my presence on the ranch as well as I thought he might. He was good friends with my father before he passed. But that might have changed as his daughters got older. From what Coen’s said, he’s pretty damn protective over the girls. It would probably send him into cardiac arrest if he knew Serena was in Maine with me instead of with her mother.

Doesn’t matter. She’s right—she’s a grown woman.

“Alright,” I say. “Then get your ass back in the bed. Time’s wasting.”