Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Callie
" T ell Ginge I tried some of her beer down at Tapped Out today."
My brother moves through Mom's kitchen like a whirlwind, grabbing a glass from the cupboard and shoving me aside as he moves past me to fill it with water from the fridge.
"It was really good," he continues, after gulping down half the glass. "Glad to hear she's doing so good with her business-- she still gonna marry that guy up on the Ridge?"
"Um, yeah. I think she's actually staying the night up there tonight."
I try to focus on the dishes I'm putting away after cleaning up from my dinner-- Mom and Dad usually eat before I get home from closing up the flower shop-- and not on my jealousy about how easy it was for my best friend to go after her happily ever after as soon as she saw it.
Putting the drying towel back on the hanger, I expect Rowan to have disappeared into the living room to visit with our parents.
He moved out to his own place years ago, but his animals are here at Mom and Dad's since they have the land and Rowan lives in town. Plus, my brother's still single too, so we see a lot of him.
But when I turn around, I'm surprised to find him still standing in the kitchen, silently watching me with a weird look on his face.
"What?"
With a ten year difference between me and Rowan-- my parents honestly thought they were done after one hell-raising toddler-- it took me going away for a couple of years for my degree for him to stop treating me like a little kid, but it's rare for him to get so serious around me as he is right now.
"What about you, Cal?" He asks in a tone much softer than I think I've ever heard him speak to me in. "You ever gonna get out of Mom and Dad's house and start your own family?"
My mouth gapes, but before I can even think of a way to answer that, Rowan's already switching up gears, acting like he never asked.
"Shit, guess I better start thinking that way myself, with another O'Leary about to fall, I'm gonna be looking for a new drinking buddy soon enough."
"Lance finally made a move?"
The entire town has a silent bet running on how long it's going to take for Archer's younger brother to pull his head out of his ass before the girl he's obviously in love with gets away.
But Rowan is shaking his head side to side.
"Archer Dean." He smirks at me, like he just let me in on the world's biggest secret, oblivious to way I sway on my feet with sudden nausea. "Man's got it bad. He was telling me all about it this afternoon. I think we'll be getting another wedding invite pretty soon from the way he was talking today."
"Dean?"
It's barely even a squeak that makes its way out of my tightened throat. My Archer Dean?
"Yup. Wouldn't tell me who she is, said her family doesn't like him much." Row reaches into the fridge and refills his glass, still talking nonchalantly like my whole world isn't falling out from under me.
Immediately, Jessica Reynolds comes to mind. I heard that she was seen out with Archer for a while when I was still at school, but as far as anyone knew it never went anywhere.
Jess is only a couple years older than I am, and I guess her parents didn't really like the idea of her dating someone older.
It tracks with everything Rowan just told me; younger girl, secret love, family that doesn't approve.
I'm going to be sick.
Fortunately, my brother's already lost interest in me and has gone further into the house to go find our parents for a visit before he heads home. At least he's out of hearing range so he can't hear my heart breaking as I make my way down the hall to my room.
Ginger was right, they're falling like dominoes, and I missed my chance to shoot my shot.
After a solid fifteen minutes of hard, ugly crying until I couldn't catch my breath, I find myself laying on my bed, staring at the ceiling and feeling-- numb.
Ginge is somewhere in Moonshine Ridge, getting cozy with a mountain man and not checking her messages at all.
Well; I did say that if Archer ever found his girl it'd be for the best. Now maybe, I can finally let go of this ridiculous crush I've had on him for half my life.
Rising with determination, I head for my closet, rifling through my options while doing my best to convince myself that it's just a stupid crush.
My feelings for Archer are part of my childhood and they belong in the past.
Maybe that's what he was going to tell me earlier today? When he came in for the flowers. He probably came to get those flowers for her, not his mom.
Shit! I am so stupid. This whole unrequited love thing is stupid, holding out for a fantasy that I should have known was always impossible.
Between my idiot brother that won't let a man anywhere near me, and me mooning over an older man who obviously never saw me as anything but his friend's little sister; I'm way behind the curve for a lot of life experience.
By the time I've washed my face off, done my hair and makeup, and put on the denim mini skirt and the red halter top I pulled out of the closet, I'm ready to do some catching up.
Problem is, Slow River is a small town and it's only Wednesday.
We don't exactly have a hopping club scene and the only place in town that stays open past nine on the weeknight's in O'Hare's, and Virgie's bar isn't the place you go dancing. Not to mention, everyone down there knows me-- and my brother.
My mood almost crashes, thinking I'm destined for a night at home with too much time on my hands that's only going to give me an opportunity to start feeling sorry for myself.
Then it dawns on me; The Tollhouse.
I've never been out there, but I know there's a bar off the highway going through Keller's Ferry. The Pereiras hang out down there a lot because the Lazy P is closer to the Ferry than to Slow River. It's got a reputation for being loud and having a crowd that gets pretty crazy, but I doubt it'll be that bad in the middle of the week.
And the only people I know who hang out down there are the Pereiras anyway, and I don't think they'll tell anyone if they see me there.
Problem solved, then, I think as I stash a few twenties and my ID in my bra and grab my keys on the way out the door.
Archer
The best thing about having your name on the operation is not having to be one of the guys on the ranch before dawn, so it's not unusual for me to still be up at this time of night.
The worst thing about having your name on the operation, however, is not having to be on the ranch before dawn-- which means that, on nights like this, I've got nothing to do with myself but think about Callie.
About the way she looked today in that pretty sundress she was wearing under her apron. The way all those flowers made a nice backdrop to the messy bun pinned high on her head to hold back her caramel brown hair and the bright, hazel eyes that always seem like they're looking right inside of me.
The way her skin felt so soft under my rough-ass hands when I touched her arms.
All the things that were on the tip of my tongue right then and how close I came to saying them out loud when Rowan walked in honking like a goose over Jake and Jerry's comments about his sister.
On the coffee table, my phone lights up and dances across the surface while it buzzes with a call from an unknown number.
Nobody I know needs to be calling me after ten p.m. on a weeknight. With a flick of my thumb, I send the call to voicemail and go back to not paying attention to whatever show I've got running on the TV in the background of my thoughts.
Things can't go on like this.
On one side, I've got Mom insisting that me and Cal would be a good couple-- and I can't tell her how right she is on that. On the other side, I've got Rowan telling me to throw good sense to the wind and stake my claim on a woman he doesn't have a clue is his sister. Boxing me in on every other side is my duty to not pissing off one of our suppliers and getting the ranch cut off from local sources that we rely on.
My phone goes off with another call from the same number. This time it calls back again as soon as I cancel it, and again when I cancel the next call.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" I shout into the microphone when the number calls right back, "Whatever scam you're pulling--"
"Yeah whatever, man. Look, Calla's out here. She could use a ride back to Slow and I don't wanna get Rowan involved in this." The deep voice on the other end of the line drawls with a faint hint of slur that tells me that where ever "out here" is, there's alcohol involved.
"Who's this?" I demand of the unfamiliar voice, ice prickling my spine and driving me into action even before I understand what's happening.
"Look, man, it's Rowdy--" there's a pause after the Ralston introduces himself, probably knowing my first impulse is to hang up on the bastard. "Like I said, she don't belong out here. Someone needs to come get her before she gets into trouble. If I call Rowan, he's gonna come in here swinging and get his ass beat. This isn't a crowd that you fuck around with."
"Tollhouse, right?" That's the only place out of town where a Ralston would be drinking on a weeknight, and the only place where the regulars don't already know Callie and wouldn't hesitate to break Rowan's spine.
"Yeah, man. Thanks for taking care of this."
The line goes dead before I get a chance to ask him how the hell he has my personal number.
That's something I can figure out later, right now, I have to cut the forty minute drive to the bar in the next town down to three minutes without getting stopped by the sheriff or ending up in a ditch.
The truck flies down the two lane highway that runs out to Keller's Ferry while I try to call Callie, but her phone is going to voicemail.
Rowdy's right; the last person we need knowing about this is Rowan.
Keller's Ferry got its name from the land ferry service that operated in the eighteen hundreds when the road between the toll station there and the then-mining settlement that became Moonshine Ridge was a single lane, dirt track that could only handle one way traffic up and down the mountain.
I don't know if the roadhouse bar out there called the Tollhouse has any historic connection to the actual toll station that eventually led to the small town's establishment-- and I've never cared to find out.
The Ferry isn't much more than a glorified cross roads. Being higher in elevation than the valley, it's home to some orchards and the farms that tend to them. It's a great place to sneak off after a high school game if you've got a girl or managed to score some beer or both, if you're lucky.
I think everyone I know has at least one good memory of a bonfire somewhere in the Ferry's pitch black fields that they'll never tell their folks about, but the Tollhouse bar is a whole other story.
It's not the sort of place you go to hang out after work with your buddies for a pitcher and a game of pool. It's a place for getting good and fucked up, first on cheap booze, and then in a fight.
Last I heard, it's caught in a turf war between motorcycle clubs that both want to claim it as their hangout.
Even the Pereiras have been coming into town to do most of their drinking at O'Hare's lately, and that says something about the place, because those guys are idiots who get thrown off bulls for fun.
It takes a lot for the Lazy P to decide your bar is too rowdy for them.
What the hell is Callie doing out there?
Somehow, I manage to get to the blinking red light at the intersection that marks the town of Keller's Ferry in twenty minutes. Unfortunately, the Tollhouse is up in the foothills, another ten miles of winding, country, backroad out of town.
Cal's little hatchback is easy to spot out front. Pulling into the empty lot that serves as the bar's parking lot, the truck skids to a halt, throwing gravel out from under the tires from my hard braking.
A few motorcycles are parked along the fence that walls in a large outdoor area around the building.
Out at the far edge of the lot, there's an early seventies Chevy Blazer with the top off that looks like it used to be blue but now it's wearing a proud coat of rust and dust. I can make out half the Flying R's brand on a peeling sticker on the bumper.
The Ralstons are technically our neighbors to the south, with their ranch, the Flying R, taking up several thousand acres on the other side of an outcropping of rocky foothills where the river finds its way back into one channel after the false delta that gave our ranch its name.
But we don't interact with them as much as we can help it. No one in Slow River does.
We're a town with a long memory and we hold grudges, and the Ralstons burned their bridges four generations back.
People around town tolerate them as far as we have to when they come around for whatever purposes bring them in, but that's about as far as it goes.
The brothers who inherited their family's ranch inherited the reputation that goes with it. Everyone knows the Ralston name and no one's keen on hearing it.
From beyond the door of the bar, propped up by a bucket of concrete that appears to serve as an ashtray for those who bother to use one, I hear shouting. The raised voices are followed by the kind of laughter that sounds like people having a good time at someone else's expense.
The Tollhouse isn't the kind of place you walk into alone.
Squaring my shoulders, I pull myself to my full height, making myself as big as I can-- like I'm facing down a goddamn mountain lion-- and head inside.