Page 61 of The Maverick's Homecoming

Kenzie met his eyes across the table. “Not even going to check and see who it is?”

“It’s too early for phone calls.” And no way he wanted to be interrupted while he was with her. “I’ll check my voicemail later.”

He said yes to more coffee and fantasized about dragging her back to bed.

But there was recovery practice to deal with. Too soon, he was on his way to his place, where he jumped in the shower before heading to the high school.

After practice, he cleaned up and hosted an open house right there in town. He had a steady stream of visitors. Back at the office later, he checked messages and discovered that the call earlier that morning had been from his dad. He actually considered just ignoring his father’s voicemail. Because no message from Finn Sr. ever made Finn’s day brighter.

But just maybe his dad was calling with family news. Maybe one of his brothers had gotten engaged. Or what if someone was seriously ill or had been in an accident?

He played back the message.

“Finn. Congratulations on your recent wins—two of them, I hear. And the win last night… Wow, thirty-eight to nine. Impressive. Plus, I’ve read those interviews you gave last week. Son, you can’t fool me. I know what you’re doing. Don’t give me that crap about how you’re just pitching in, helping out the home team. Don’t try to tell me you plan to sell run-down ranchettes out there on the prairie for the rest of your life. You’re making a move. You can’t fool your old man. Call me back. We’ll talk strategy.”

Finn almost threw his phone at the far wall.

His dad did that to him sometimes. Made him want to break things, made him want to toss back his head and scream at the ceiling like a toddler throwing a tantrum.

Finn Sr. made decisions about how things should be and then obstinately expected everyone to go along, to do whatever he wanted them to do. To change their lives to suit his own personal ideas about who mattered and what counted.

Finn should probably just call him back and tell him to get the hell over himself, maybe even try to make him see how far off-base he was. But hadn’t he done exactly that the last time the old man called?

He just didn’t feel like trying again right now.

Finn deleted the message and got on with his day.

* * *

Kenzie made it through Saturday night and Sunday morning without giving in to her ridiculous eagerness to reach out to Finn, to ask him if maybe he had a little free time that afternoon. They could hang out with the kittens. Take a walk around town or sit out on the back deck at his place watching the prairie grass rustle in the wind, maybe spot a hawk or an eagle soaring high in the clear blue sky.

Somehow, she kept herself from contacting him. Yes, they were friends—good friends, with benefits. But they both needed their space, after all. They both needed to remember that they had separate lives, and alone time was a good thing.

On Monday, Finn was already on the field when she arrived for practice. Her silly heart actually skipped a beat when he spotted her and came jogging over.

“Good weekend?” he asked.

“It was thrilling. I cleaned out the refrigerator and mopped the kitchen floor.”

He stepped a little closer. “Tom and Ed were glad to see me today when I dropped in at noon.”

She truly did love that he checked in on the kittens when she couldn’t be there. “Thank you.”

“Hey. It’s Tom and Ed. I should thankyou.”

“Right… But you will let me know if stopping in to see them gets old, right?”

“You bet. But it hasn’t happened yet.”

For a long, weirdly wonderful moment, they just stood there by the bleachers, grinning at each other.

He broke the smile-fest. “You free tonight? Let’s get some dinner. We could go out or—”

“Come to my house,” she said, sounding ridiculously eager to he own ears. “I’ll, um, fix us something.”

He looked at her like she’d offered him the moon, but then he said, “Come to my place instead.”

“I really shouldn’t.”