Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
CAL
T he ranch foreman’s wife went into labor same day as the cows. Typically, there was little to do, as the heifers did all the hard work, but the foreman monitored the cows to make sure they were progressing, and I took on this responsibility when the foreman left. I used to help my grandad with this when he ran the ranch. Sometimes we’d spent the entire night in the barn, taking turns sleeping—the hay a soft bed—as we made sure all the heifers were okay.
Since the attack on my company started, I’d often asked myself who would I be if I lost my company, because if that happened, I would have lost my purpose. And who was I without that? I’d begun to think this little side trip to the ranch was showing me exactly that.
The day my dad had showed up at my hotel room in Vegas, I knew something bad was about to happen. There were storm clouds in the sky and a rancid smell in the air. When he’d laid out all the papers—his plans on what he’d do to Travis and Sabrina if I didn’t walk away—I’d been stunned. For years, I’d raged against my dad, exclaiming that he didn’t know me or what I wanted, but he sure knew that night. He hit a home run with his threat. His only mistake was to not attach the contingency that I work for the company. So I’d done as he asked and then disappeared from his life—from everyone’s, really—disgusted with every part of what had happened and with myself.
It had always confused me that a guy who could not have cared less for his family was so determined to keep us close. Was it to hurt us? Yeah. To control us? For sure. And maybe also because he was a paranoid SOB, and whether he liked us or not, we were blood, and only blood could get his company. But I wanted no part of it and no part of him.
Sabrina was the first thing I had ever wanted and hoped for. And he’d forced me to give her up. And now he knew every whack he took at her was like a gunshot to the heart for me. That was why he was hitting her hard. I would have bet a part of him wanted me to keep my company. I rubbed elbows with some of the richest and most powerful people, and good old Dalton Beckett would see that as a benefit. Then we’d handed him my Achilles heel on a silver platter.
I rubbed my chin as I tried to separate my emotions so I could go at this strategically. I stared at nothing, lost in thought, as I sat on two stacked bales of hay and pondered. Then I noticed that Rod, next to me, was rubbing his chin as well.
I pinched my nose. He pinched his.
I faked a yawn, and he did the same.
I did an over-the-head arm stretch. “I am a weasel, and my name is Rod.”
He’d started mimicking me before I finished the sentence. “Hey, I’m not a weasel!”
“Gotcha, though, didn’t I? What’s up with you?” This kid. He worked better than some of the hands, and he certainly knew the ranch well.
“What do you mean?” Rod lay back on the bale of hay with his hands under his head.
“Isn’t tomorrow a school day? Don’t you have homework? Why are you hanging out around here?” Since when do kids go outside and do stuff instead of staying inside, playing video games?
“You want me to leave?” He side-eyed me.
“Nope, you can stay.”
“I don’t have homework, and even if I did, I wouldn’t do it, because school is stupid, and I don’t understand why I have to go.” Petulant, he grabbed up fistful of hay and tossed it to the ground.
“Wow, it’s a little soon to be saying that. You’re... what, first grade?” Had he not been pint-sized and young, he could have easily been mistaken for a rancher or ranch hand.
“Second, and it sucks. Everyone there is an asshole.”
“Whoa, are you allowed to say asshole?” He’d definitely picked up the ranch language.
“Who’s gonna stop me? My dad’s not here.” He looked away, his eyes shiny with moisture.
“I think Mrs. Claudia would not like to hear any bad words out of your mouth.” What do I say to a kid whose dad needs to take a break from life a couple times a year without thought for his kid?
“Yeah, she would be ticked.”
“And then she’d probably stop making all those good desserts.” Mrs. Claudia was an exceptional cook and an out-of-this-world baker.
“Those are for you all.” He eyed me warily.
“Nope, all for you. She won’t let any of us touch them until you’ve had yours. She used to do the same for me when I was a kid. She does it because she wants to see you smile.” I hadn’t realized it then, but what Mrs. Claudia had done for me as a kid had only added to the magic that was this ranch, all an effort to make up for the one thing we wished we had: a loving father.
Rod smiled, his ears a little pink with embarrassed happiness.
“If she asks you if you have any favorites, tell her you want to try a Boston cream pie.” That was my favorite.
His face scrunched up with uncertainty. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s the best. Vanilla cake with crème in between and chocolate on top.” I licked my lips. “Crème is like pudding,” I clarified in response to his curled lip.
“I thought you said it was a pie.”
“Yeah, those Northerners name things weird, but trust me on this. It’s good.”
He eyed me suspiciously, then gave a nod. “You like Ms. Sabrina, dontcha?”
“I’ve known her a long time. She’s a very good person.”
Rod rolled his eyes. “Not like that, dumb-dumb. You like her the way Bobby Weyman likes Abigail Fetter. Only he’s always trying to look up her dress.”
I choked on a laugh. “Well, I think Sabrina would punch me if I tried to look up her dress, which is a pretty uncool thing to do, by the way—look up a girl’s dress.”
“She punches him, too, but he doesn’t stop. It’s really annoying.” His stomach rumbled.
My watch told me dinner was soon. “Maybe tell a teacher.” I didn’t like that this Bobby kid was getting away with that kind of behavior. Respect and consent needed to be taught and modeled early.
“They tell us that we shouldn’t tattle.”
I stared at Rod and wondered how it was that kids grew up knowing anything when the message was mixed all the live long day.
“Maybe I’ll ask the principal if I can do a presentation for the school and get the message across to this kid and any others like him.” As I said it, I knew this was a good idea. I pulled out my phone and texted Paul to set it up.
“Seriously?” He sat up.
I showed him my phone. “Yeah, I just told my guy to work on it.”
“That would be awesome.” He glanced over my shoulder. “Oh, here she comes. I think she likes you too. She watches you like you watch her. Abigail doesn’t like Bobby—I can tell.” He raised his arm and waved. “Hi, Ms. Sabrina.”
Sabrina crossed the barn, carrying a basket. “Rod, Mrs. Claudia is looking for you. Dinner is ready, and she made lemon meringue pie.”
Rod slid off the hay. “That’s my favorite.” He headed out the door, getting his hair tousled by Sabrina as he went.
She was lovely, standing there in the evening shadow of the sun, her long hair flowing over her shoulders. Something had passed between us the other night at line dancing—a truce at worst, a fresh start at best. Whatever it was, I liked it.
She sat next to me and handed me the basket. “Dinner for you. How’s it going in here?”
“There are seven new calves, and they’ve bonded with their mothers. I have two I’m watching to make sure they progress. They’ve been at it awhile now.”
“How do you know when to intervene?”
“When they start showing signs of fatigue. Sometimes you’ll see them stop trying for long periods, like fifteen minutes. Other than that, though, we try to let them do their thing. They know better what to do than we do.”
“Which one are you watching?”
I pointed them out. I showed her the old-school clipboard we kept to mark progress.
“Mind if I stay out with you?” She chewed her lip as she waited for my response.
“I’d love that.”
Sometimes I was caught off guard when I realized Sabrina was within reach. Like this moment. I’d never thought she’d ever be in my life again.
“How did you get into matchmaking?” I asked as I snacked on treats from the basket and watched the cows.
As she pondered the question, she twisted and untwisted a lock of hair around her finger over and over again. It was mesmerizing.
“I think being able to read people came from my dad. He was always talking about paying attention. Kind of like your situational awareness. But he always noticed different things, like the cut of their clothes or where their attention was drawn to. He looked for what they were trying to ignore. He was so good at it.” She paused in her twirling, probably remembering something, because she smiled as she blew out a breath through her nose, then started the twisting again.
“But pairing people up…?” I asked.
She was next to me on the bale, leaning back on her elbows, one leg swinging out and in.
She shook her head at me. “You don’t want to hear it.” Then looked at the calves.
So it had something to do with me? Now I really wanted to know. “I do actually.” But she wasn’t going to tell. “Did it have something to do with us?”
Her eyes swept over me, then she dropped her hand from her hair so she could push off the bale. She walked to the gated portion, where the mamas and babies were kept. “Yeah, it does.”
“Okay, so…?”
She looked at me over her shoulder and grimaced. “We’ve just found good space between us. Talking about it feels like dredging it all up again.” Her hair was falling all around her, and she kept pulling it together, twisting it, then tucking it over one shoulder. But it didn’t stay like that for long, coming unraveled. She did this a few more times before pulling it into a ponytail, and I was hit with a flash of a memory I’d long forgotten.
“Come here.” I crooked a finger at her. I patted the space between my legs. She came back to stand in front of me, so I grabbed her hand and turned her around, pulling her by the hips to sit. “I’ll braid your hair.”
And just like that, we were back in time, in college, at Christmas break during an unexpected snowstorm we’d gone out to enjoy. Sabrina had fallen on a patch of ice and hurt her shoulder. Highlights of that time included showering together and washing her hair, after which she’d taught me to braid to make things easier for her.
“Cal.” She grabbed my hand to stop me.
There was a push-pull dynamic between us. I could feel it. I knew she could feel it too. Though we both wanted to push together, heartbreak made pulling back a natural reaction.
“Come on, maybe this right here—us reconnecting and healing the past—is the best revenge against my dad.”
She narrowed her eyes as she thought about all that I was asking. It was old us meeting new us, and that didn’t come without a little sadness. She let go of my hand, and I let her hair out of the ponytail.
“Tell me about matchmaking.” I made three sections. I was not a master French braider, but I was decent.
“After you left, after I graduated, I really didn’t know what I was going to do with my degree. One of the casino owners in Vegas offered me a marketing job, mostly because he was good friends with Dad. The owner said he felt like things were stale, so I pitched the idea of doing themes. Singles night, speed dating, romance-themed game shows—you name it. Because gambling on love is no different than other gambling, in my opinion.”
She paused, maybe waiting for me to object. I didn’t disagree.
She continued. “I was really good at pairing people up and word started to get out. A number of the couples I paired had married. And that’s when the casino owner asked me to help him find a wife. Which I did. They are still married today. Then word of mouth happened, and all of a sudden, I was full with requests and clients. So I left the job and went back to Texas to be near Dad.”
“So you fell into it? Why do I think there is more to it than that?” I’d paused my weaving, waiting for her to fill in the blanks.
She blew out an exasperated sigh. “Fine. After you left, I questioned whether love was real. Sure, my dad said he and my mom had the real deal, but I was three when she died. Who knows what time might have done to them? So I started these love-themed events to prove that love wasn’t this magical thing that happened once in a lifetime, that it could be cultivated. That people with shared interests and of like minds actually made better life partners than those swept away by passion.”
That had been us, swept away by each other, and it sure had felt damn near magical.
“And…?” I asked.
“And I was right. All that burning need flames out, and then you’re left there standing next to someone who hums when they eat and uses a body soap that is too strong, and you wonder what the hell you’ve done and how can you escape and escape fast.”
Is that what she thought of us? I had the urge to sniff my body to see if my soap was too strong.
“So you don’t do it because you’re a romantic?” I asked.
“No, not anymore. I’m very pragmatic about it.”
“But Jace and Meredith?”
“Proof that heat and passion don’t always have to be the first sign. Those two needed someone, and I could not see any better person for them than each other.”
I picked up the hair tie and twisted it around the ends. She wasn’t a romantic anymore. Logically, I knew it was because she’d chosen to have those beliefs, but it didn’t give me comfort that I had contributed to the act that had made her question all that to begin with.
I was about to apologize when I heard, “Wait just a second! You can braid?”
We both turned to find my sister had come in and was holding a large thermos of what had to be coffee.
She stomped her foot. “All this time, you could braid, and you never once braided my hair? I’m insulted.”
I smiled. “Do you want me to braid your hair now, Brynna? Would that make you happy?”
“It’s a start.” She tried to shoo Sabrina away.
“Oh, look.” Sabrina pointed to a heifer. “A baby is coming, I think.”
Brynna and I said the same thing at the exact same time. “That’s not good.”
I pointed to the heifer for emphasis. The calf was coming out the wrong way.