Andrew knocked on Becca’s door, a bag of food in his hand. The motions felt so familiar, as did her smile when she opened the door wearing a pair of yoga pants and one of her T-shirts he’d come to love.

“There are a lot of French fries in here.” He lifted the bag, and she took it.

“I love you,” she said, and he stumbled over the threshold of her room.

“I’m sorry. What?”

“Oh, that was the wrong thing to say?” She exhaled heavily. “I can’t talk without a written speech.” She gave him a flirty smile. “I meant thank you for the French fries.”

He relaxed, because of course she wasn’t going to profess her love for him after only three and a half weeks of dating. “We made it through the first day.” He let the door close behind him, and then he engaged the deadbolt.

“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.