Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Callie ran to her cabin, mind whirling. Three or four months. Had he lost his mind? Jake Rawlins was a city man, through and through, and a firefighter who loved his work. She knew those two things about him at least.
Clearly, he’d been messing with her. She stepped inside her cabin and let herself be soothed by the interior.
She’d painted the walls the color of sand, with adobe-colored trim, and had hung a few tapestries she’d picked up from the occasional art shows around the area.
Everything was clean and in its place. “Anal,” Richard had called her fondly, and she had to agree.
She washed up and changed quickly, and then stepped back outside into what had begun as such a glorious day.
She inhaled the fresh, crisp air that held a hint of the warmth to come and looked at the row of cabins.
Tucker had the one next to hers. Then followed Stone’s, Eddie’s, Marge and her husband Lou’s, and lastly, the newly hired Amy’s. There wasn’t an extra cabin for Jake.
Instead of crossing the poor grass, which had taken a beating that day, she took the path up to the big house, wondering what to do. There were twelve guest rooms on the second floor, all booked by the Japanese businessmen coming tomorrow, each excited about their first time out in the wilderness.
Which left Jake out in the cold.
Or sharing with Tucker—
That would have to do. Callie could handle him there for several nights, but several months…the thought boggled her mind. She wondered how Tucker would feel about it.
She stopped to check on the horses. They had twenty in all, though four belonged to her and the crew, and one was Richard’s old horse, leaving fifteen for their guests.
Most of those fifteen would be riding out with their guests tomorrow on a mock roundup that wasn’t really a mock roundup at all.
They really did need to gather up their small but valuable herd of cattle and get them back to the main arena area for their inoculations before shipping a portion of them off to market.
What the businessmen couldn’t handle, Eddie, Stone, and Tucker sure as hell could, with Lou’s help if they needed it, so Callie wasn’t worried.
Not about that anyway.
She checked on the poor hens next, fully aware she was stalling. But the pigs had riled the hens up, and many were still clucking and fussing and pulling at their own feathers. “Poor babies.” She scattered out some feed as a treat. “That was worse than letting in a handful of roosters, wasn’t it?”
She glanced at the big house, painfully aware of the rooster in her henhouse.
With a grim sigh, she passed by the pigs, all now perfectly content to be in their place and looking quite innocent.
“Don’t think you’re off the hook,” she whispered to the littlest one, then headed up the porch steps, wondering what Jake was up to, what he’d really come for.
Her heart pounded uncomfortably in her chest as she let herself in.
She looked around at the wide, comfortable arc of couches in her living room, empty of one big, bad, sexy-but-irritating San Diego firefighter.
He wasn’t in the small weight room, either, or in the game room playing pool.
She tried the kitchen next. Large and roomy, it smelled like…
she took a big breath…blueberry muffins?
Having skipped breakfast, her mouth watered.
Amy had been a desperate hire—on both their parts, she suspected—but the incredible scent gave Callie hope.
She searched until she found the big, fat muffins in a basket on the counter and then nabbed one.
It melted in her mouth, and she stopped to let out a moan.
Oh yeah, Amy was going to work out just fine.
She left the kitchen and put her hand on the wood banister.
Upstairs were the bedrooms and bathrooms, all clustered around a central hall, but at the sound of bubbles behind her, she turned.
Reversing her steps, she went back into the dining room and headed directly to the sliding glass door there, which was ajar.
Just outside it, on the back wooden deck, she found her rooster.
Jake sat in the large hot tub, head back, body sprawled out, covered by the frothing, bubbling water.
Was he lying there trying to figure out how to tell her he’d already sold the place?
Just the thought made her want to throw up.
She couldn’t handle the suspense. Stepping outside, boots clunking on the wood, she hunkered down at his side.
He cracked a slate gray eye.
“Did you sell?” she asked. “Just tell me.”
“What?”
Reaching out, she hit the large red button that turned off the bubbles. Silence descended. She kept her eyes on his and off his body. “Come on, Jake. You’re not here to relax. You hate this place. You always have. Are you here to sell or what?”
“No one’s going to buy it until I fix it up.”
Right. Good. Okay. Part of her wanted to ask him to wait on her, until she’d saved just a little bit more, until she could get a loan to buy it herself, but she took a deep breath and fought with her own ego because she couldn’t bring herself to ask him for anything, especially help in buying the ranch.
She’d do it on her own, without anyone’s help, especially his.
“Are you here to do that then? Get the place fixed up?”
“If I can do it for cheap.”
“You’re having money trouble?”
He sighed. “I have a heavy mortgage on my house and…some other unexpected expenses. This place drains me dry lately—”
“It’s going to do better now.”
“You mean for this month, but after that, you don’t know for sure.”
No, she didn’t. She stared at him, gauging him for honesty, and he stared right back.
Guileless but not innocent. She doubted he’d ever been innocent, but she decided he was telling the truth.
He hadn’t done anything toward actually selling.
Yet. He needed to, though. More than she’d thought, which made her relief short-lived.
“So you’re hanging here in the hot tub figuring out how to get this place renovated for cheap? ”
“You did say I should make myself at home,” he reminded her, and ran his wet fingers through his hair.
Now it stood straight up, which should have made him look ridiculous but didn’t.
“Don’t tell me that was one of those female things, where you say what you don’t mean, because at the moment I’m too exhausted to play that game. ”
“I’m taking it by that sexist statement you’ve dated some real winners.”
He laughed.
She didn’t. Up close, she believed his exhaustion claim.
He had fine laugh lines fanning out from his eyes, the kind that gave a man character but only aged a woman.
There were dark smudges beneath his eyes.
His mouth, now that it wasn’t smiling, seemed grim, tired.
And he hadn’t moved an inch of his body, not so much as twinged a muscle, as if he just didn’t have the energy.
And still, he took her breath.
She’d changed into fresh jeans and another tank top, and had hastily splashed her face clean in her bathroom, but she hadn’t taken the time for a shower. Just looking at him in that clean, frothy water, when she’d been bathing in pigs and mud, made her feel…grimy.
It didn’t help that he was truly one of the most attractive men she’d ever met, with all the dark, unruly hair clinging to the back of his neck, those see-all eyes, that smile that could kill a woman at ten paces.
She’d once kissed that smile and had never quite managed to forget it.
Actually, she’d kissed a lot of that long, hard body, now quite visible through the hot, steaming, still water. Damn it.
He smiled again. “You’re looking at me.”
“I’m thinking you don’t seem all that exhausted.”
A speculative look came into his eyes. “Depends on what you have in mind.”
Her tummy quivered. Bad body. Down body. “What I have in mind is putting you to work.”
“Now that’s no fun.”
“Everyone pulls their weight around here.”
He sighed, gave her the puppy dog look, but she didn’t back down. She had a feeling he was used to getting his way from any female in his path, but not with her.
“Fine,” he finally said, sounding resigned. “If you really need help, I suppose you could count me in. If it’d get us some more guests with money in their pockets.”
“It’s all easy enough. You can feed the pigs, brush the horses, rake the hen pen…”
“Yeah.” He looked decidedly unenthusiastic. “I guess.”
“You look like you’d rather leap into a burning building.”
“Yeah. Just not off of one.” With another sigh, he straightened and then stood so that water sluiced off him.
He had one of those chests that could make a woman drool.
Solid. Ripped without being overly muscular, and just enough chest hair to be incredibly masculine.
Then her gaze caught on his shoulders, specifically his right, and not just because water was running off it so nicely, but because of the scar running from the top of it, slashing downward, vanishing into his armpit.
It was a quarter of an inch wide, and still pink and shiny. New.
Before she could ask about it, the sliding door opened behind them, and out stepped Tucker Mooney.
“I thought you were in town,” Callie said, surprised.
“Just got back.” Tall and lean, body-wise he was a younger carbon copy of Jake. But Tucker was blond, not dark like Jake. Apparently Tucker had gotten their mother’s coloring, along with his father’s, whoever he’d been.
At age twenty, he had an attitude to match his age—unless he was working with the horses, that is, in which case Callie had found him to be a beautiful, patient old soul.
No horses here, however, and at the sight of his older half brother standing with one foot in and one foot out of the hot tub, his jaw tightened.