Chapter 8 – Tag
EIGHT
TAG
I walked through the front door of the house I shared with my dad.
Pop was given this cabin the summer he saved Leroy during a flash flood in Heartbreak Canyon.
They’d been rounding up strays, and Pop had only been working for the McGraws for one season, but Leroy was so grateful, he gave him the A frame line cabin on the southwest corner of the land.
These days, however, Dad spent most of the year in Florida. He had a condo and a lady friend down there by the ocean. But for three months out of the year, he was up here in my hair yapping about all the changes I made to the place like…central air and a functioning kitchen.
“Pop!” I called out, shutting the door behind me. The guy liked to bitch about the air conditioning, but he kept it like an icebox in here during the day.
“What?” he shouted back, from around the corner in the kitchen that I’d updated with new appliances and countertops. I’d gotten talked into a quartz top island, which I actually thought was pretty slick.
“I’m home,” I said, scraping the mud off my boots before taking them off and leaving them in a cubby by the door. Another little addition of mine. Dad refused to use the cubbies, so I picked up his old boots and put them in the other cubby.
The key to cabin living was that everything had a place, and everything needed to be in it.
“I know you’re home! I’m not deaf, am I?”
I smiled. We’d picked up some bad habits, the two of us bachelors living together. Shouting at each other all the time being one of them. But I loved having the old man around. Of course, I also loved when he left and I wasn’t picking up after him anymore.
He was at the sink washing dishes, his back to me. I came up behind him and wrapped him in a big bear hug. He went rigid as a fence post.
Dad was not a hugger. But after a day when I watched a woman find out her life was a lie, I was happy to have a dad, who was in fact, my dad.
“What in the Samhill are you doing?”
“Just showing gratitude you’re my pop. A son can do that every once in a while, can’t he?”
I let my dad go and he whirled around like he was going to take a swing.
That was something I never had to doubt. There was no question Pop was my pop. It was like looking into the future. Same height and build. Same eyes. His dark hair now completely silver over the same sun-weathered face of a cowboy.
Even though his shoulders slumped a little lower and his knees were bowed after years in the saddle, he was still the toughest, strongest son of a bitch I’d ever known.
When it was his time to leave this earth, there would be none of this ridiculous will drama.
No secrets revealed. What you saw with Jeremiah Taggert was what you got.
“Seems sus,” he scowled. “Sus is what the kids say, by the way.”
“You have no clue what kids say,” I said, as I stepped around him to open the refrigerator.
Tonight, I deserved a beer. Wasn’t every day I took a private jet from New York to Wyoming, watched a woman’s life get turned upside down, smacked her ass silly, and made her come like an explosion on my tongue.
Did I mention her panties were in my back pocket?
I smiled at the memory of it. Watching her wiggle out of them, pushing them down her legs. The way she spread them out on my thigh.
So much trust there. In a really short amount of time. That didn’t seem like her, and it honored me that I was the one she trusted.
“How did the Odd Calloway sister handle the news she’s a bastard?”
My dad was a million times the man Leroy McGraw had been, but he also had one foot stuck in the 19 th Century.
“She’s not odd, and I don’t think anyone calls innocent children bastards anymore,” I said, taking a long draw on my beer.
“She was never like her sisters. Should have guessed she was different when she wasn’t a red head.”
I shook my head. “She is a genius, Pop. And this rinky-dink town didn’t know what to do with her. Also, she’s grown up some since you last saw her. I don’t think odd will be the first thing you think of when you see her again.”
“Oh,” he turned to lean against the sink, his white eyebrows raised over his dark eyes. “Do I sense some, dare I say it, interest? And here I was, starting to think you’re one of them asexual types.”
“You don’t know what asexual means.”
“You don’t know what I know. There’s a kid at the condo complex in Florida, they’re teaching me all about this stuff. Now, you interested in this girl?”
Was there interest? Obviously. I could still taste her on my tongue.
But that was sex. Totally different from what my dad meant by interest . He wanted to see hearts in my eyes and settling down. He wanted grand babies.
None of that was happening for me. Not with Sunshine. Not with anyone.
Sunshine had a whole other life as Kaitlyn, back in New York.
One of the things every cowboy understood was always, always, choose a local woman as a wife.
The second a cowboy fell for a tourist, or a visitor, or a person who didn’t have this land deep in their soul…it was the first step towards heartache.
“Sunshine Calloway is too smart and too damn rich for this cowboy,” I said. “What did you always say? The help should never fall for a member of the family. She’s a McGraw now.”
He shook his head and grabbed my beer from my hand. Took a swig and handed it back.
“Bullshit.”
My dad always did know when I was lying.
“Is that a handkerchief hanging out your back pocket?”
I reached for my left back pocket and felt the thin, silky fabric between my fingers. I quickly shoved it deeper and tried for innocence .
“Nah, just some trash that flew by, did you leave any leftovers for me?”
“Franks and beans.”
“Seriously, Pop,” I groaned. “They’re called vegetables.”
“Seriously, kid,” he said. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
I set down my beer and opened the fridge to see a bowl covered with clear wrap on the top shelf. It was surrounded by a whole lot of nothing. I took the bowl and popped it into the microwave over the stove.
“That girlfriend of yours come up with any ideas to save the Swinging D?”
I’d filled Dad in on some of the will drama, but he’d waved me off before I got halfway through the story. According to him, Leroy McGraw had always been more trouble than he was worth.
“Pop,” I barked at him. “She’s not my girlfriend. She’s not my love interest. She was an assignment.”
“Hmm. Your assignment. Not her mother’s or her sisters’.”
“Because I volunteered,” I reminded him.
“Hmm.”
“Because everyone is so freaking afraid of this woman,” I said, in a burst of frustration.
“She’s not that intimidating, she’s just smart.
She’s not mean, she just thinks faster than most people, so she comes off as curt.
Truth is, she spent a lonely childhood here because everyone in this town, including her own damn family, wrote her off as odd. ”
“Right,” Pop drawled. “But there’s no interest there.”
“I’m taking my franks and beans and going to my bedroom,” I announced, as soon as the microwave beeped. I took the bowl, a napkin and a spoon.
I needed space and I wasn’t prepared for any more of Dad’s hmmms and questions. These last few days had been…well, a lot.
Like a bull in heat, I was sexually charged, but I had nowhere to go with it.
What I’d told Pop was the truth. There was no point in having any interest in Sunshine Calloway.
She was as untouchable as any woman I’d ever met who wanted to spend some play time with a cowboy. I went along for the ride because I could see all the pain, hurt and vulnerability stuck inside of her, with no release.
I’d wanted to give her that. At least that. One good memory in this town to try and make up for some of the bad ones.
I took my food down the narrow hallway to the back of the cabin. There were two bedrooms and a bathroom my dad and I shared. Small, sure, but it had everything we needed.
My bedroom was big enough for a king size bed, a mounted flatscreen on the wall and a comfortable chair where I liked to read. Best of all, it had a door that kept Dad and his know it all questions out.
I sat down in my reading chair and ate the franks and beans, in what was actually a decent gravy. My dad had a few flavor tricks up his sleeve when it came to cooking.
Tricks he had to learn since my mom had taken off. Cooking, teacher meetings, nightmare chasing, signing me up for junior rodeo.
He’d never wanted me to feel like I’d missed out on something. But a boy doesn’t grow up without a mother and not miss out.
On freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and someone cheering me on at my first barrel racing event. On having someone tell me my shirt doesn’t go with my shoes, or shit like that. Having someone always take my side in any argument against a friend or classmate or teacher.
Mrs. McGraw had her flaws, but she always stood by her boys. Some would say she spoiled them – Seth and Mac, in particular, but she’d been there. She’d stuck it out.
Had she known about Sunshine?
I did the mental math. Carter was six years older than Sunshine. Ethan a few less than that. She and Seth were the same age. Young family. Young mother managing a household and an asshole husband. Just a few years in, and he’d already stepped out on her.
Monica Calloway had broken down at the second will reading when her secret was revealed. She’d felt the guilt of their affair. Had Leroy?
Either way, it wasn’t my business. In fact, now that I’d completed my mission, none of this was my business anymore.
I thought of the panties tucked in my back pocket.
I hadn’t lied to Sunshine. I wasn’t the type of guy to take advantage of a woman’s vulnerability.
Truth was, I didn’t need an advantage to get laid. Despite my dad’s concern about my lack of pussy, when I wanted it, I crooked a finger and it was there.
Didn’t have to chase it. Didn’t need an angle to work it.
A smile, some flirting. Being nice and attentive. It wasn’t that hard if a guy wasn’t an asshole.
So the smart call would be to give her back her panties, kiss her on the cheek, and stay the hell away from her for as long as she was in Last Hope.
Yeah, that would definitely be the smart call.