Page 2 of Snowed In with the Rancher
Nibbling on her lip, Triss brought up a new window on her computer and punched in the website for her favorite discount airline. A flight to Denver wasn’t that expensive.
And it wasn’t like she couldn’t deal with the Lorne and Echo stuff after Christmas when she got back. She’d been working crazy hours and long days for months since a lot of people had their therapy funding renewed in January, but the funding didn’t roll over into the next year, so they were scrambling to try to use up their funds. Which meant that they were asking her to work extra sessions. It was good money, but it was exhausting.
“Go to your apartment tonight. Box up everything and I’ll send my friend’s moving company to go and grab it all,” Hannah said.
“And take it where?”
“A storage locker for now? We’ll spend the week in Colorado applying for new apartments. Worst-case scenario, you live in an Airbnb for a month. But it’s not the end of the world.”
No. It wasn’t. But it still sucked.
“Fine,” Triss said, glancing out the window at the snow-covered trees and ground. It was beautiful, and she’d always loved the snow, but she wasn’t looking forward to having to move to a new apartment in it.
“I’m leaving Manhattan on the twenty-first, so plan to arrive in Colorado on the same day. I’ll send you my flight itinerary and we can coordinate.”
“I’m thinking maybe I should go see my parents for a night first, so I’ll fly out of Baltimore. But I’ll try to be there on the twenty-first, too.” She found a flight that worked with Hannah’s flight, since her very organized friend had already texted her the details, then before she could back out of the plan, she put in her credit card details and booked it. “You’re sure your uncles will be okay with another person showing up?” Triss asked.
“They hate everyone, so it will make no difference.”
Oh lovely. But that sentiment didn’t actually bother Triss that much. She was in a pretty crappy, people-hating mood, too, and misery did love company.
“There! Done. Flight booked.”
“Yay!” Hannah cheered. “This will be awesome. We’ll get hammered, pot is legal in Colorado and I’m pretty sure my uncles smoke a ton of it, so we’ll also get high as fuck. We can just forget our worries and get fat because we’ll constantly have the munchies. Then we’ll go out to the barn and snuggle goats.”
“I am due for a good goat snuggle,” Triss mused with a smile.
“I haven’t met a person who isn’t,” Hannah quipped. “All right, babe,” Hannah whooped, “You, me and the goats in three days. Go home and pack and feel free to steal all of Lorne’s shoelaces and dump out his favorite cologne. You have my permission to be petty and vindictive. It’s allowed.”
“I just want to get the hell out of there,” Triss said, closing her computer, getting up from her desk, and shoving her arms into her coat.
“And you will. We will find you something way better. I promise. I mean, if we’re being honest, Lorne was only an okay chef. There’s a reason the guy doesn’t have any Michelin stars or James Beard awards, let’s just leave it at that.”
“I’ll see you in three days.”
“Three days, baby. You, me, the goats and my crazy high uncles.”
“Sounds like a Christmas to remember.”
They disconnected the call and as Triss locked up her office, she caught herself smiling in the reflection of her colleague’s door window. Maren’s lights were off, so it turned the window into more of a mirror. Triss was smiling, and those lines around her eyes since Lorne dropped his bomb yesterday weren’t nearly as deep.
Maybe a week in Colorado with a couple of old cowboys, her best friend, and some goats was exactly what she needed to find some perspective and sort things out.
And if she didn’t find perspective or get anything sorted, at least she’d get in some goat snuggles.
“Good afternoon, folks, this is your captain speaking, we apologize for the delay, but the runway is finally clear and we are going to be landing in roughly thirty minutes. If you have any connecting flights, please know that most of the flights out and into Denver have been canceled due to weather. We apologize for the inconvenience, but your safety is our number one priority.”
Crap.
What did that mean for Hannah’s flight out of La Guardia?
Triss’s flight had been delayed for three hours, then they circled and almost had to land in Utah because of the freak snowstorm that was hitting most parts of the country. But here she was, about to begin her descent into Denver and go spend Christmas with a couple of miserable old cowboys and their goats.
God, she hoped her friend’s flight was not one of the ones to be canceled.
Up until she boarded, Triss and Hannah had been texting back and forth. Hannah’s flight had been delayed, too, but she was already supposed to be leaving two hours after Triss. So now, Triss would have no way of knowing whether Hannah was still in New York or in the air, or if her flight had been rerouted somewhere else like Kansas or Ohio.
If Hannah’s flight was canceled, did Triss even bother going to the ranch? Or did she just wait for a flight home to become available? She wasn’t that far from her sisters in Victoria, Canada in the geographical sense of things, maybe she could just head north.
