Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Jake stood on the porch for a long moment after Callie walked away from him, staring blindly out into the yard.
He heard a dog barking his head off, but it didn’t penetrate his other more pressing thought—that Callie wanted this place to mean something to him, wanted him to understand how much it meant to her, to all of them working here.
“But how can I?” he said to the morning air, to his father’s ghost, to no one. Maybe if Richard hadn’t been so ornery and stubborn, maybe if he’d been willing to meet Jake halfway, maybe, maybe, maybe.
It was far too late for maybes with the man dead and buried.
But why had Richard left him this godforsaken ranch in the first place?
It was nothing more than a money pit for him.
Maybe it’d been a cruel reminder that Jake had never been the son he wanted.
Maybe it’d been a joke. Or, maybe it’d simply been a way to reach the son he’d never tried all that hard to reach in life.
And how pathetic was it that Jake wished for the latter.
He didn’t belong here in the land of Oz, where these people all had each other and looked at him like he was an alien.
That had been made painfully clear to him when he’d questioned everyone about Sierra.
They’d all stuck together with genuine care and affection, Eddie covering for his brother’s hangover, Stone covering for Tucker’s temper, and Tucker covering for Eddie being alone in the barn.
And each of them had vouched for Amy as well, a young woman they knew even less than they did Jake. He didn’t have to wonder if any of them would have done the same for him. They wouldn’t have.
And damn if he didn’t feel lonely as hell.
He also felt stupid for letting it all get to him. He should have left this morning. He still could, and he pulled out his phone to call Joe to tell him he was coming back as soon as he could get on a plane.
But Joe had left him two texts: “You got offered another firefighter calendar deal. Mr. July…can I have your autograph?”
And then the second: “Just heard from the chief…brace yourself for a nasty lawsuit.”
He also had a message from his attorney. Just an ominous: Call me today.
Rubbing his aching shoulder, Jake sighed. He would have to get up-to-date on the proceedings, and also pay for the nuisance. With what, he had no idea.
In any case, going home didn’t seem like a viable option, not yet.
The wild barking finally penetrated his thoughts, and shrugging off his own problems, he followed the noise around the back of the house. Callie stood in front of the basement entrance, facing off with a mangy old mutt who looked as if she hadn’t eaten in a week.
“Hey, there,” she murmured to the dog, reaching out her hand.
Teeth bared, the mutt growled, and Callie hastily pulled back.
Jake moved in and put himself in front of her. “You want to lose a few fingers to go with those bumps and bruises? Back up.”
“You never give up with the hero thing, do you?”
He could have argued that point. He sure as hell didn’t feel like a hero out here in the middle of nowhere, being needed by exactly no one. “Just move.” Hunkering down to the dog’s eye level, he smiled. “Whatcha doing, pretty lady?”
Callie let out a rough laugh. “That voice might work on the females of my race, but a dog isn’t going to”—she broke off with a frown when the dog relaxed her stance enough to sit—“fall for it.”
“So whatcha doing all the way out here in the middle of nowhere? You lost? Poor thing, you look hungry.” He held up his hand for her to sniff.
“What do you think she’s all up in arms about?” Callie tried to step beyond the dog to see past the open basement door, but the dog growled again.
Jake put his left hand out in front of Callie to hold her back from getting bitten, and ignored her irritated huff of breath. “You sure look like you’ve had a rough time of it.” At the sound of his voice, the dog stopped growling again. “Maybe if we fed you, you’d be happier. What do you think?”
The dog let out a long whine.
The sound was oddly heartbreaking. Jake tried to decide what could be disturbing her, but couldn’t see into the dark basement. “So what are you guarding?”
“We don’t use that space for much,” Callie said. “She could have cornered anything in there.”
Jake continued to hold out his hand to the dog, and took it as a good sign when she didn’t resume her growling. He let her sniff him again, then stroked her down her thin, scruffy back.
Her tail let out one weak wag. Permission granted, Jake moved around her and to the door, but when Callie tried to follow him, the dog once again bared her teeth.
“Wait here,” Jake said.
“But—”
Ignoring her, he pulled the door the rest of the way open and poked his head inside. There was a landing there, and then a set of stairs that went down about five feet, then turned ninety degrees and went down another five feet. It wasn’t the stairs that drew his attention, but the second landing.
In the far dusty corner. he found what the poor dog was trying so desperately to protect, and even as he looked, she pressed her cold nose under his arm to see as well, making him see double when she jarred his shoulder.
“Jake?”
Hearing Callie’s voice behind them, the dog growled low in her throat.
“Hang on,” he called back. “She’s got—”
“Puppies,” Callie guessed, sounding resigned.
As his eyes adjusted to the dark and he started counting the softly mewling puppies, the momma again nudged his arm with her wet nose, sending shots of fire down his biceps all the way to his fingers. “Yeah, I see your babies.” With his left hand, he patted her as they looked them over. “Five?”
The dog walked down the steps to the landing and whined softly, plaintively.
Jake moved in, then peered down the crack between the landing and the wall.
He heard the rustling in the dark. Reaching down, there was a whole new kind of pain, and he gritted his teeth as he paused to take a deep breath.
“One’s slipped down between the landing and the wall.
I’ll get it.” It cost him. By the time he set the puppy in the midst of its siblings and next to the mother who finally allowed herself to relax now that her last baby was back, Jake was a sweaty, shaky mess.
His shoulder was leaping with each heartbeat, pulsing with pain, and he felt light-headed. The weakness was humiliating.
“Jake?”
“I think you can come in now. She’s calmer.” He stayed where he was, on his knees in front of the dog and her puppies, waiting for his world to stop spinning.
Callie had run somewhere for a flashlight. When she scooted in behind him, with Shep pushing in as well, she also dropped to her knees to take a look. “Oh, Shep.” She sighed and put an arm around him. “They’re adorable though, aren’t they?”
Jake would have laughed if he could. Adorable isn’t what he’d call the mangy-looking things, but then any amusement backed up in his throat because Callie, so close he could feel her soft breath on his ear, put her hand on his shoulder.
“You’re shaking.” Her fingers lightly danced over the incision beneath his shirt, much like the motion he’d dreamed her doing, only this wasn’t a dream. “Torn rotator cuff?”
“Among other things.”
“Such as?”
He wanted to be big and strong. He wanted to not feel any weakness, but a man could only be so tough with a woman looking at him like she was. “Actually, it was a complete shoulder reconstruction.”
“Oh, Jake.”
Her expression made him want to touch her, cup her face, stroke his fingers over her jaw and sink them into her hair.
A shock, because it wasn’t just the usual surge of lust. Here was an opportunity he hadn’t even known he wanted—to talk to her, to have her know him, to convince her he wasn’t a jerk, because suddenly it mattered what she thought of him.
Suddenly he wanted her to be as warm and sweet to him as she was to everyone else.
Too bad he couldn’t move without whimpering.
“Probably climbing around after dogs and puppies is a bad idea,” she said, her hand still on him.
“Probably, but you shouldn’t be doing this either.”
“I’m fine.”
“Headache?”
“Only a little.” She glanced at the puppies now being fed by their mother, who still watched her and Jake carefully. “Looks like we got ourselves a new dog.”
So accepting. So willing to gather whoever and whatever to the Blue Flame.
Had his father been like that? It surprised Jake to feel sad that he didn’t know. “And six puppies.”
She sighed. “And six puppies. You were good with her; she didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“Animals like me.”
“Women do too.”
He slanted her a glance. “Most, but not all, I’m learning.”
She mused over that for a long moment. Dropped her hand from him. “Sometimes I don’t know what to say to you.”
“Then don’t say anything.” With a great effort, he leaned in so their mouths were a mere fraction of an inch apart. He put his left hand to the curve of her jaw. “Let’s try this instead.” And he put his mouth on hers.
Her hand slid up between them, until her palm settled against his chest. To push him away? Pull him closer? She did neither but let her lips cling to his for a long moment before pulling back.
“What was that?” she whispered.
“Just one little kiss.” He tunneled his fingers up into the wild silk of her hair, glad it was loose, and leaned in again, needing one more taste.
She held him back. “You said one kiss.”
Right, but he’d also said little. It’d been neither. He wanted more but he couldn’t move his other arm worth a damn. With his good hand, he slid his fingers down the length of her hair to the small of her back, nudging her forward into his body.
Her hand fisted in his shirt, gripping him tight, getting a few chest hairs in the mix. He didn’t care if she pulled them all out one by one as long as she stayed with her body up against his for another moment.