I snorted. "So you just get shipped out to fix strangers?"
"It's not usually like this."
"No?"
She smiled a little. "I mean... I don't usually have family dinners every night. I'm really going to miss that chicken."
"Don't let Dad hear you call his chicken special."
She laughed. "He's a good cook."
I looked back up at the stars. "You ever think about doing something else?"
"All the time."
"Like what?"
She was quiet for a second.
"I used to think about starting my own perfume line. I had all these ideas. Different scents for different moods and seasons. I even sketched out bottle designs."
"Why don't you?"
"Well, Mara's tuition comes first, so maybe in two years when she finishes university. If I've saved enough."
Two years.
She'd be doing this for two more years. Some other guy who'd said something stupid or couldn't keep his temper in check. She'd show up with that phone and that look she got when she was about to tell you you were wrong. She'd learn someone else's schedule. Make someone else do a statement video they didn't want to do.
I didn't like that. I didn't like that at all, which was stupid. She wasn't mine. She was doing a job, and in two weeks that would be over. Then she'd be back in Chicago, and I'd be back to fixing fences alone, and everything would go back to normal.
The wind picked up. Her hair blew across her face, and she pushed it back with the sleeve of my jacket. Whatever was left of that perfume hit me again.
"You'd be good at it," I said. "The perfume thing."
She looked at me sideways. "You told me to stop wearing it."
"I told you to stop wearing it outside. Because of the bees."
"So you do like it."
I didn't answer that, because headlights appeared on the horizon, bright and bouncing. Colt's truck. Of course he'd made it in under two hours. Probably broke every speed limit between home and here.
The tailgate was cold against my hand as I stood. I didn't look at Sienna. Didn't trust what my face was doing.
eight
. . .
SIENNA
Colt talked the entire two-hour ride back to the ranch, blasting the radio, cracking sunflower seeds, and oblivious to the heavy quiet in the cab. Wren was always complaining about how fast he drove, but with Brock’s truck hooked up behind us, even Colt had taken the turns slower than usual.
Brock didn’t say much, he’d just stared out the passenger window, leaving me in the backseat wrapped in his oversized jacket, my stomach tied in a knot I couldn't untangle.
The next morning, that knot was still there.
I stood in my bedroom, staring at his jacket draped over the back of the chair. I tried to tell myself I should be relieved. We had reached a breakthrough. He had opened up in the dark. He’d let me sleep on his shoulder. It was a professional victory.
