by Liz Isaacson
“It was exhausting.” She sank onto the loveseat in the small sitting area beside the bed. “I honestly don’t know how I’m going to survive the next three weeks.”
“I did try to warn you.” He sat beside her and lifted his arm over her shoulder, grateful and thrilled when she melted into his side. “I’ve wanted to hold you like this all day,” he murmured, and she tipped her head back to kiss him.
Finally, he thought as a sigh passed through his whole body. He wondered if he was in love with Becca, but he didn’t let his thoughts go too far down that path. It was one he hadn’t been on in far too long, and he didn’t know the dangers.
“I want to tell you something,” she said, breaking their connection and sitting up straighter. She pulled a couple of burgers out of the bag to get to the fries.
“All right.”
“It’s a personal thing.” She didn’t look at him but busied herself with opening a ketchup packet.
“I’m prepared for personal things.”
“I’ve only had one boyfriend longer than you.”
Andrew’s heart stumbled over its beat. “We’ve been dating for less than a month.”
“Twenty-four days,” she said.
“And that’s your second-longest relationship?”
“If we make it through the tour, you’ll be the longest.” She finally looked at him, and he found vulnerability and something else in her eyes. Something he couldn’t identify. “Men don’t like me for long, Andrew.”
He wasn’t sure how that was possible. He studied her, trying to figure out what to say to reassure her that he liked her.
In the end, he simply went with, “I like you, Becca.”
“I can’t figure out why.” She did seem genuinely confused, maybe a little sad.
He picked up a burger and started unwrapping it. “Well, you’re beautiful, for one. The smartest person I know. Determined to do what you think is right. You’re a hard worker. You feed strays. You love your family.” He took a bite of the burger, wishing his list wasn’t so superficial.
He swallowed. “I like that you came to ride horses with me when you hadn’t been on one in years. I like that you ask me hard questions. I like being with you, because you make me feel relaxed.” He shrugged, but at least those reasons felt more substantial than you’re pretty.
She put a few fries in her mouth, but the atmosphere between them felt charged now.
“And for the record,” he said, forcing himself to slow down with the consumption of his burger. “I like you more than any other woman I’ve ever met.” His throat felt sticky, like he’d never be able to swallow another bite of food or say another sentence.
“Thank you,” she said, and she lifted her burger to unwrap it too.
Andrew wanted to say more, convince her of how he felt, but he didn’t know how. He knew better than most that some things had to be worked through on a personal level. Just like he wasn’t ready for his mother to start dating again, but she obviously was, and none of his other brothers seemed to have a problem with it.
Even Eli had texted to say If it makes her happy, I think it’s fine.
Andrew hadn’t asked for more details about Admiral and his mom, but they’d gone out several more times over the past few weeks.
“Well, should we go over tomorrow?” Becca asked.
“Yeah.” Andrew added a sigh to the end.
“Hey,” she said nudging him with her shoulder. “It’s only day one.”
“I don’t like the tour,” he admitted, probably for the first time to anyone, even himself. “I feel like I’m…being fake. Like it’s all just a show.”
Her face lit up and she said, “It’s exactly like that. You’re really good at it.”
“Being fake?” That wasn’t what he wanted to be good at. He searched her face and found some truth there. “You think I’m fake.” He sat forward on the couch.
“You…have a lot of moving parts.”
“Look who’s being diplomatic now.” He scoffed, but a pinch of hurt started way down at the bottom of his lungs and worked its way up. “That’s all I’m doing, you know.”
“I know,” she said. “But I can’t decide who you are quite yet.”
“Who I am?” Andrew knew exactly who he was. “Who do you think I am?”
“Well, there’s the Andrew that wears fancy suits and shiny shoes, with never a hair out of place. And he’s all business, and everyone listens to him.”
Andrew’s heart raced listening to her. Was that how everyone saw him? He did work to make sure he was professional when he arrived at work. “Am I intimidating?”
“Not to me,” she said. “But I see you with your tie loosened, half-asleep on my couch, that tiny spicy chicken breath wafting all over me.” She grinned at him, and Andrew scoffed though he liked the way she teased him.
“You liked that tiny spicy chicken breath,” he said, slipping his hands around her waist and leaning over her.
She giggled and pushed against his chest fruitlessly. “Stop it,” she said, laughing fully between the words.
“Is my tie loose enough for you?” He unknotted it further, pulling it completely from around his neck. She stopped squirming and looked right into his eyes, her hands coming up to touch his neck. She trailed them along the collar of his shirt, sobering the moment further.
“And then there’s the cowboy version of you,” she whispered, moving her hand to his face in the most intimate gesture Andrew had experienced. He wanted to lock time on this moment forever, this softness between them perfect.
“I like him the best,” she said, her eyes dropping to look at his mouth.
“Yeah?” he asked. “Why do you like him the best?”
“Because he seems the most real.” Her gaze came back to his, and Andrew pressed his lips to hers, enjoying the way she cradled his face and kissed him back like he was wearing that denim shirt and cowboy hat right now.
And dang, if he didn’t want to be a cowboy for her. Every day of the week, at all hours. He let himself kiss her for several long moments, and then he pulled away and sat up again, every cell in his body supercharged and wondering if maybe he’d fallen in love with Becca and didn’t know it yet.
She sat up and straightened her hair before reaching to extract a folder from her briefcase bag. Smoothing it on the table, she said, “Tomorrow we’re in Star Valley, then Kemmerer, where we’re spending the night. The next day we hit Evanston, and then it’s a straight shot for days down the interstate to Laramie and Cheyenne.”
“It’ll be a small crowd in Star Valley,” he said. “We don’t dig much there, and it’s a small population.”
“Yes, but their reception rating is a nine.” She showed him a paper he barely looked at. “Kemmerer is a six, and we’ll be lucky if the questions stop before an hour has passed.”
“Lots of drilling in the towns north of there,” he said. “We expect the people to come down the road for the meeting, since we aren’t going up into the Boulder area.”
“And then once we head north again from Cheyenne, the reception ratings go way down again.” She shuffled some papers he’d looked at dozens of times. Exhaustion hit him hard, especially now that he’d eaten something and then held Becca in his arms.
“I’m going to head to bed,” he said. “I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“Okay,” she said, still looking over something from her folder. Andrew took another long look at her from his position in the doorway, then he unlocked the deadbolt and stepped quickly into the hall. His room was down a few doors, and he went inside and removed his jacket, his shoes, and his belt before the door had even swung closed behind him.
As tired as he was, he still took time to offer his nightly prayers as well as spend a few minutes thinking about Becca and the depth of his feelings for her. He couldn’t quite find the bottom, and he didn’t know what that meant.
There were no surprises in Star Valley, nor Kemmerer. The crowds there were four
times as big as Coral Canyon or Star Valley, and the questions did come for quite a long time. But the people simply wanted to know.
Every time Andrew felt his patience waning, Becca would answer questions for a while, the slight touch of her elbow against his a constant reminder to keep his diplomatic face on. She showed up at his door with two boxes of pizza that night, a pair of flip flops in place of her heels and those yoga pants and T-shirt as sexy as the dark-colored dresses and skirts she wore to stand at podiums and make speeches.
“One of those better have olives on it,” he said, eyeing the boxes in her hand.
“I got a supreme, Mister Picky Pants.” She grinned at him, and he stepped back to let her in. “Olives and green peppers and mushrooms, along with all those meats you like.” She set the boxes on the little table in front of the even smaller couch in his hotel room.
She drew in a breath and turned to him, and he swept her into his arms, his mouth already searching for hers. “Spending all day with you and pretending is really hard,” he said, his lips touching hers again.
She only answered him by kissing him back.
The tour continued, and honestly, most of it became a blur for Andrew. When the second week started in Laramie, Andrew hoped these bigger crowds would be as receptive to their presentation as the more rural areas had been.
Their biggest challenge was those smaller cities, but some of the big stops along the interstate had drawn some of them down. Becca had constantly been checking the online polls she’d sent to those towns, and the numbers of interested people were dropping.
“I honestly think it’s because they’re coming to our other meetings,” she said. “I’m not changing the reception ratings.”
“Fine, don’t change them,” he said, playing a game on his phone. He found he really needed some downtime in the evenings. No conversation. No plans. No kissing. Just blind staring as he tried to line up three fruits in a row.
“The mayor of Denver has requested we come there.”
That got Andrew’s attention, as did the excitement in his girlfriend’s voice. “Denver?”
“There are twice as many natural gas drilling sites from Cheyenne to Denver as there are in almost the whole state of Wyoming.”
“They don’t all use fracking,” he said. “And they’re not all ours.”
“So we’re not going to sell SonarBot?”
“No,” Andrew said slowly. “SonarBot is ours. It’s Graham’s. We’re not selling it or the technology behind it.”
“It’s sonar.”
“It’s a lot more than that,” Andrew said, tilting his head. “We can do a presentation for them, but not until the New Year.” Just the thought of packing another bag after this tour…yeah, that wasn’t happening.
“And even then, it’ll just be a basic, this is what we’ll be using at our drill sites.” Andrew closed his game and set his phone aside. “Now, if we get control of some of the drill sites in Denver—or anywhere else for that matter—then we’ll use the SonarBot there.”
“So how many will there be?”
“You answered this question at the last meeting.” He smiled and stood. “Come on. Let’s go get something to eat. I’m tired of eating on a tiny couch.”
“All right,” she said. “But I’m bringing the folder for tomorrow’s agenda. Laramie will be our biggest crowd yet.”
“If only my family could see you now,” he said.
“What does that mean?” she asked, shrugging into her jacket.
“It means they’ve told me I work more than any person alive, but girlfriend, that’s you.”
She laughed, and latched onto him. “I like it when you call me your girlfriend.”
Andrew liked it too, and he felt himself slipping a little further in love with the beautiful Becca Collings, sure she’d stolen his heart while he was asleep.
Sixteen
Becca pressed her elbow into Andrew’s, wishing the man at the microphone would take a breath so she could interrupt. But he had lungs of iron, and her patience with his complaints was going to run out before his air.
Andrew kept his arm solidly on the table too, and she didn’t have to look at him to know he was irked too.
“Sir,” Becca said, but the man barely flicked his eyes in her direction. He seemed to only want to hear another male speak, but when he finished, Andrew remained as tight-lipped as a clam.
“Sir,” Becca said again. “Your concern over the noise will be nearly solved with the introduction of the SonarBot. The decibels it emits are well within city and town ordinances for all of our mines.” She did know how to take a breath so she’d sound professional and polite though she wanted to lunge across the table and make that man move back. The line behind him at the mic was easily twelve people long and they’d been answering questions for an hour already.
Becca really was quite tired of it all. Sure, she enjoyed seeing what color Andrew’s tie would be, because he never wore the same one. She liked seeing what he’d find in that town they could both enjoy for dinner. She’d learned a lot about his eating habits being on tour with him, and if he didn’t get a hot breakfast, someone would probably lose their head by ten a.m.
He’d learned not to put onions on her burgers, and nothing but pepperoni and sausage on her pizza. She could order his coffee with perfection, no matter which shop they stopped at, and he could do the same for her.
By the beginning of the third week of the tour, Becca had reached another milestone in her life. She and Andrew had been dating for forty days, and that was one day longer than her relationship with Jarom.
She didn’t say anything to Andrew, because she didn’t want to jinx anything. The tour was tiring, that was for sure, but she hadn’t hated it.
Until tonight. She’d pegged these mining towns north of Cheyenne exactly right, and this meeting they were currently conducting had a crowd receptive rating at three.
In Becca’s opinion, she should’ve given them a one, because every person who stepped up to speak was negative. Not only that, they didn’t seem to have listened to a single thing she or Andrew had said in the presentation.
“What about our jobs?” someone asked, and Becca refrained from rolling her eyes.
“No jobs will be affected by the introduction of the SonarBot,” she said, working hard not to speak in a dry monotone. “If anything, we’ll need more people to run the robot, interpret the findings, and make decisions for the crew.”
The woman stepped away, and someone else moved up to the microphone. “Will there be certain hours for the sonar to be used?”
“Business hours,” Andrew said into the mic in front of him. “I’m sorry folks, we only have time for three more questions.”
Relief sighed through Becca’s whole body, and she let him answer the rest of the questions. They stood and followed a couple of local cops out the front of the gymnasium, where their meeting had been held.
She exited the building to find darkness had claimed the day. Quite a while ago too, if the depth of blackness surrounding her was any indication. She took in a deep breath, enjoying the fresh air out here in the more wild parts of her home state.
“Well, that could’ve gone better,” he grumbled. They hadn’t eaten for hours, and Becca understood his foul mood.
“But we did it.”
“Three more days,” he said as he started for the car.
Glinting lights across the street caught Becca’s eye. A church, with the front doors flung wide open.
“Andrew,” she said. He turned back to her and she pointed to the church. “Will you wait for me?”
“I’ll come with,” he said. He spoke to the driver momentarily, and they crossed the street together. She wanted to reach over and slip her hand into his, lean into him and giggle. Well, maybe not giggle. She was so tired she wasn’t up for giggling.
They climbed the several steps to the doors of the church and then hesitated. Singing came from inside, and she entered first and move
d through the lobby and into the chapel, taking a seat on the very back row.
A choir stood up on the dais at the front, and though they didn’t wear their robes, they sang with the voices of angels. Becca’s weary soul was immediately soothed, further sighing in comfort and peace when Andrew joined her on the end of the bench.
They simply sat there and listened while the singers practiced their songs, while the director gave corrections, and as Becca’s heart filled. She could make it through the next three days. She could.
The call of her own home, her bed and puffy comforter, and her dog had never been so loud, but somehow the choir had drowned it out.
Andrew’s phone buzzed, and she glanced at him. “Be right back,” he whispered, sweeping a kiss along her forehead as he stood and left. “Hey,” she heard him say when he reached the lobby only a few steps away.
She stayed for another song, and then choir practice started to break up. She felt like perhaps she shouldn’t be caught in the back row, so she got to her feet. They protested against her heels, but she managed to tiptoe out into the lobby without anyone shouting for her to come back.
Andrew sat on the front steps, his phone still at his ear. With the country stillness and the choir being finished, she could hear him quite clearly.
“I’m sure that’s not true,” he said.
Becca paused, not wanting to interrupt him, but not wanting to eavesdrop either. She hadn’t caught the name on the screen, and it didn’t sound like one of his brothers.
“Dwight, it’s simply not true. Can you imagine anyone being attracted to Becca Collings?”
His voice struck her like a thousand-pound weight in the chest.
“I don’t care what someone thinks they saw. I’m not dating Becca.” He added a chuckle as if such an idea was utterly ridiculous. And Becca just stood there and listened, his words sinking way down deep into the soul that moments ago had felt whole.
