Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
When Jake woke up, Callie was gone and he was alone. “Damn it.” He got up, dressed, and went outside.
Callie’s cabin looked shockingly normal, though the scent of burning wood still permeated the air. He took the extra few minutes to peek inside the front door to make sure everything was okay, and that there were no hot spots, but the firefighters had done their job well.
He looked at the burned floor, couch, and coffee table, remembering the utter horror of seeing Callie and Amy in the middle of it all, and felt tense all over again.
He crossed the grass without thinking, and Goose came running, eyes fierce as she honked her alarm. He tried Callie’s method and reached out to pat her on the head.
She nearly took off his fingers.
“Thanksgiving,” he muttered to her, and jogged up the porch steps. He went straight to Callie’s office and found her sitting behind her desk, propping her head up with one hand, the other on a steaming mug of coffee, staring glumly at an open checkbook.
“Hi,” she said, and wearily pushed away the paperwork.
“Hi yourself. How are you?”
She shrugged.
In her eyes was a sadness that broke his heart. She was cut and bruised, and yet here he was, about to make it worse. “I need to talk to you.”
“You took the offer,” she guessed.
“No,” he said, and watched her sag with relief. “Not yet anyway.”
Her eyes flew back to his, and he sank to a chair. “Hell, Callie, I don’t know what to do.”
“The offer is good.”
“Yes.”
She let out a long breath. “Well. We all knew it was only a matter of time.”
“They’ll keep all the employees on through the end of the year minimum. That gives everyone lots of time to figure out what they want to do.”
“And you’ll go back to San Diego.”
“My new job starts in one week.”
“Okay, then.” Callie got to her feet and moved to the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I want to buy this ranch, Jake. I’ve wanted that forever, but I have no collateral for a loan and no credible financial history to speak of. Any real bank would laugh me right out of their building.”
“Trust me, there’s no one I’d rather give it to. But I need to recoup the money I’ve sunk into it—”
“I know.”
“And I was hoping to set Tucker up with a fund from the profit, and—”
“Jake, I know. I know you have to get rid of it. Look, I’ll be back. I need to ride. Alone,” she said when he got up. “Please, Jake. Just let me go.”
The door shut after her and he let out a shaky breath. Let her go? How the hell was he supposed to do that?
He was still standing there when Tucker poked his head in the door. “How is she?”
“Gone for a ride. I need to talk to you.”
“Ah, fuck. You’re taking the offer.”
“It’s a good one, and I’d be stupid to turn it down. With the profit, I can get out of debt and have enough left over for both of us to be comfortable—”
Tucker’s eyes flashed. “I don’t want your money.”
“I want you to have—”
“What I want, Jake, is this job.”
“You’ve got it. The jobs are guaranteed until the end of this year.”
“And then?”
“And then you’ll have a nice nest egg, you can take your time finding another ranch—”
“I told you, I don’t want another ranch.”
Jake winced when the door slammed. “Well, that went well.” Feeling more alone than he had when he’d first gotten here, he sank back to the chair and rubbed his tired eyes.
Callie flew down the front steps of the big house. She’d told Jake she wanted to take a ride and that she wanted to be alone, and she’d meant both, but she didn’t get on Sierra. She got into her Jeep and drove to town.
She went straight to the offices of Lowell and Dawson and toward the receptionist, her sights set on seeing Matt. She should have gone to her ex-husband first instead of Michael, but she’d thought, mistakenly, that dealing with Michael would have been better for all the concerned parties.
She’d never been more wrong, but she could try to repair that error now. She had to repair that error now, because Jake was selling the ranch to someone else if she didn’t.
The receptionist, a pretty, perky little blonde, stood up, quivering indignantly as Callie walked right past her. “Hey, you can’t just—”
Callie didn’t stop.
“You’re supposed to stop and sign in, right here in my little book! Hello, he’s on the phone with his ten o’clock meeting!”
Callie opened Matt’s door. He was on the phone and looked up at her, executing a comic double take.
She assumed this was because after she’d divorced him, she’d stood outside the courtroom and warned him to stay out of her path for the rest of his life or she’d make him a eunuch. Clearly he’d taken her seriously, as he’d made sure to never run into her.
He’d known that she and Michael were close—something deep inside her pinged at the thought of Michael—but Matt had respected that closeness—and his penis—and had steered clear of any mutual gatherings.
Still talking on the phone, he lifted a finger to indicate she should wait a moment.
Callie took a seat and studied him. He was still way too gorgeous, with that dark, bed-tousled hair and those sleepy bedroom eyes that could seduce a nun from across the room.
At five foot ten, he wasn’t overly tall, or even gym buffed out, but his body looked damn fine in clothes, and he knew how to dress.
Women still fell all over him, she was quite certain, but inside that beautiful exterior beat a fickle heart.
He hung up the phone but didn’t look directly at her. “You wouldn’t believe the shit Michael got me into. It’s all falling down around me. The business is screwed. I’m screwed.”
“Yeah, he only tried to kill me. I’m fine though, thanks for asking.”
“Uh…yeah.” Matt winced and met her gaze, with apology in his. “Are you really fine? Because you look like shit.”
“I’m going to live. Look, I’m sorry about Michael, and the business.”
He sighed. “Yeah. Me too. You didn’t come here to tell me you’re sorry I got hosed.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“You hosed me once, remember?”
“That was a long time ago—”
“You hosed me bad.”
“Not that bad—”
“On our wedding night I went out to get us pizza because you begged me to, you said you were too tired to drive. I came back and you were banging the desk clerk. In our honeymoon suite.”
“Yeah.” He grimaced. “Uh, this isn’t a great day for a trip down memory lane—”
“And then the next day, I came home—”
“Unexpectedly,” he pointed out.
“—And you had the mail lady in our bed!”
“Do we really need to talk about this?”
She crossed her arms. “You owe me. You know you do.”
“All right!” He tossed up his hands. “I made a terrible husband. I knew I would, it’s just that you were so different from the others, I really thought I could—” He shook his head. “I was sorry then, and I’m sorry now. But, Callie, how long do I have to be sorry?”
“Until you remember telling me that if there was ever anything you could do…”
“I meant it.”
“Good. Give me a loan.”
“For how much?”
“Half a million dollars.”
Matt laughed. He laughed good and hard, then stopped abruptly when she didn’t so much as crack a smile. “That’s…not a joke.”
“No.”
His smile faded. He looked a little worried. “You know I love you, Cal—”
Now she laughed.
“Hey.” He actually seemed hurt over that. “I know I was an ass, but I really did care about you.”
She shook off any momentary softening she might have had because she knew he had a way of turning things around to suit him.
“I know today sucks, Matt. You want me out of here. No, don’t shake your head, you do.
Your current bimbo—er, your receptionist—is already pissed.
You want me gone. Michael let me think he’d give me a loan.
He strung me on for a month and a half. You get me a loan today, and I’ll leave. ”
He looked at her for a long time, then sighed. “Shit.”
“You can do this for me. I know you can.”
“Shit,” he said again, but reached for his keyboard.
Jake paced around on the ranch, unsettled and unhappy. When Joe called, Jake didn’t feel like talking. “I’m sorry, Joe, but it’s a bad time—”
“I know. Just listen, you got to hear this.” Joe sounded jubilant.
“We just found out Billy has a fascination with fire, a fascination that predates you. In fact, over the past two years, the kid started no less than three fires at his school. Can you believe it? No way will any case against you or the department or anyone stand up to that. Celebrate, man, ‘cuz it’s over.”
Jake stared at the phone. “Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
Jake didn’t quite know what to do with himself after that. He pocketed his phone and paced around some more. He wanted to be excited, but he also wanted to share it with someone. With Callie. But two hours later, she was still gone.
She’d called in and talked to Amy, saying she wasn’t going to be back in time to do the meet and greet for the new guests, or even the afternoon ride, but the crew would show Amy what to do.
Amy had looked so proud to be given this job that Jake had to swallow his frustration when Amy had hung up without finding out where Callie was.
And why she couldn’t come back.
And why she’d taken the Jeep for a ride, instead of Sierra. He managed not to hassle Amy, but he didn’t have to be so gentle with his own brother. Jake grabbed Tucker and pulled him aside. “Where the hell is she?”
Tucker didn’t speak for a moment, and when he did, his voice was utterly void of the derision and sarcasm Jake expected. “She’s probably upset, and doesn’t want to upset us. She’ll stay away until she has it together.”
Jake stared at him, searching for any sign that Tucker was lying, that maybe he really knew where Callie was, but his words sank in, as well as his sincerity. “Damn it.”
Tucker actually looked sympathetic. “She’ll be okay.”
Yeah, but would he? “She’s got guests coming.”
“I know.” Tucker scratched his jaw. “She’s never missed a meet and greet before, not even after Richard died.”