Chapter 18 Cal
EIGHTEEN
CAL
Ihoped my half brother’s warning about getting Amy home by midnight had been a joke, because it was around one in the morning when we drove onto the ranch.
Every minute of our practice date had been amazing.
I’d spent the first half of the evening searching for clues that she was holding on too tightly to her grief to ever let go.
Rafael’s warning about that had stuck with me.
But I’d seen no sign of it. My other concern was that she was trying to recreate a date with Luke since we looked so much alike, but I didn’t think that was happening either.
Amy seemed to see me for me. The only time Luke’s name had even come up was when she talked about going to grief counseling. Her point about that was she’d gotten help so she could move on and build a better life for herself and her son.
After I realized that, I’d thrown myself into getting as much enjoyment out of the evening as possible.
I liked treating her like the vibrant and beautiful woman she was and not the off-limits widow of a brother I never knew.
Because I liked her, more than I could ever remember liking a woman on a first date or fifth date or even the tenth.
It wasn’t just physical attraction between us—it was so much more than that.
When my arms were around her waist on the dance floor, I’d been in seventh heaven.
But as I pulled up to the ranch house, I had to accept that the evening was over.
All I could do to prolong it a little longer was to be a gentleman and see her to the door.
I got out of the truck and went around to her side to open the door.
“I can’t thank you enough,” she said softly as we walked up the steps onto the porch. “You completely restored my faith in my ability to date.”
“Glad to hear that,” I said, feeling my spirits sink a bit at the reminder that she only saw the date as practice. “I’ll leave you then. Goodnight, Amy.” I bent to kiss her cheek, but she turned her head, so my lips connected with hers, catching me off guard.
It was a sweet kiss, tentative and chaste.
And, God help me, I wanted more. She was looking up at me, her cheeks flushed in the glow from the porch light, her lips slightly parted as if ready for another kiss.
I should step back and let her go into the house.
I should get in my truck and drive away, but I didn’t want to, not when her eyes were on me like that.
A second later, I gave in to temptation and put my hands low on her waist to bring her upper body snugly against mine.
Slowly, I lowered my lips to hers, but this time I controlled the kiss, and there was nothing chaste about it.
My tongue swept along the seam of her lips and, with a small sigh, she opened to me.
She was a little shy, but I coaxed her into the hot kiss.
She sighed again and seemed to melt into me when I sucked on the tip of her tongue.
I didn’t know how much time passed before I gently separated us.
My heart raced with the realization that I wanted her badly, but I had no idea what her reaction to the kiss would be. Had I gone too far?
“I’m sorry,” I said, touching my forehead briefly to hers. “I shouldn’t have done that without asking first.”
She stepped back and put her hand on the doorknob. “It’s okay. I mean, you were just pretending, right? Goodnight, Cal.”
Did she truly think that was just a practice kiss to end our practice date?
Before I could say otherwise, she slipped inside.
I wanted to pound on the door until she came back so I could tell her that there was nothing “pretend” about our kiss, or the date.
But waking the whole house wouldn’t do me any favors with any of them, and I wasn’t about to cause problems for her.
I drove away trying to categorize my emotions and got nowhere. There was only one other time in my life when I was obsessed over a woman, and it was nothing like this. So this feeling was unfamiliar and unsettling.
That feeling stuck with me into the next day. On the outside, I tried to act normally when I met Rafael and both of my half brothers for lunch. On the inside, my thoughts continued to churn.
“Come on, Rafe. It can’t be that big of a deal,” Jake said as he shoveled salsa and chips into his mouth.
Rafael rolled his eyes. “She’s the textbook company’s expert on Colorado history and she doesn’t seem to understand the importance of the Sand Creek Massacre. When I told her why she was wrong, she insisted I was the one who didn’t understand.”
“The gall of this woman,” Jake said with a shake of head. “What’s her name?”
“Gail something. Why?”
“It’s easier to call her by a name than ‘the woman.’”
Rafael waved that off. “I’m not giving up. I’ve got my next email composed including links to primary sources and scholarly articles, along with contemporaneous accounts from the survivors. I’m waiting until later to send it in case I think of something else to add.”
“You’ve spent a lot of time on this,” Brian said, pouring ketchup onto his plate. “Maybe you ought to relax.”
“Would you relax if your deputies misrepresented something on their logs or reports?” Rafael shot back.
“Well, no,” Brian said, “but those are legal documents. If a case goes to court, they’ve got to stand up to any kind of scrutiny.”
“Don’t you think intentionally misrepresenting historical events to kids is a crime?”
“I suppose,” Brian admitted. “But there’s no judge and jury.”
“Of course there is,” Rafael insisted. “Everything we know about society is in jeopardy. Cal will agree with me.”
“Huh?” I’d listened to the conversation with half my attention, and I wasn’t sure what I was being expected to agree to.
“What’s on your mind, anyway?” Rafael peered at me.
“Nothing. Just listening to you rant,” I said.
I was annoyed with myself for being a lousy friend and not paying attention, but at the same time, I was so damn distracted by what probably wasn’t happening between me and Amy.
Our kiss had hit me bone deep and I wanted more, but Amy wasn’t the type of woman I could have a fling with.
I felt bad even thinking about it while I sat at the table with Jake and Brian.
They’d kick my ass into next week if they knew where my thoughts were going, I was sure of it. They treated her like a sister.
Besides, she didn’t appear to want any kind of relationship beyond friendship with me, which was wise of her.
She deserved a real commitment, and I knew I wasn’t capable of staying in a small town like Poplar Springs.
I’d learned that lesson the hard way. I’d fallen hard for Angie, a rodeo medic, and she’d felt the same way about me.
When she got the chance to work at a practice in a small town, her dream job, she’d left the rodeo and I’d followed her, figuring love would see us through.
I couldn’t have been more wrong. Without the excitement of the rodeo circuit, I’d been bored and restless in the small town.
Thanks to my upbringing, it had been easy enough for me to find a job in construction, but while it paid the bills, I was bored, constantly on edge, and couldn’t seem to fit in with the crew or the town.
I was a person who’d always found it easy to make friends, but not there.
Everything had been a struggle, and the longer I was there, the more frustrated I’d become.
My dissatisfaction had quickly soured things with Angie.
She’d wanted me to try harder, but I hadn’t seen the point.
I’d been unhappy and so long as I’d remained there, I’d been sure that my mood wasn’t going to change.
Our breakup had been about as amicable as it could be, which meant it wasn’t.
One day, Angie had left early for work and told me not to be there when she returned.
I wasn’t sure if she expected me to simply move out, but I’d packed my gear into my truck and left everything else behind, not looking in the rearview mirror when I headed out of town.
She’d reached out to me a few days later asking if I was planning to come back for the large screen TV and gas grill I’d left behind.
I’d told her to keep it or sell it—that it didn’t matter to me.
Angie hadn’t bothered to respond to the message, and in the time since then, I hadn’t heard from her again.
I’d made it to Waco in time for the Roundup and paid the fee for the single competitor events.
The minute I’d raced my horse around the barrels and threw the rope, I’d remembered what I loved about that life, and had vowed to never leave it again.
I’d learned a valuable lesson about life and relationships.
Even one that looked perfect to the outside world was doomed for failure if half the couple didn’t belong in the place they’d chosen as their home.
Cozy small-town life wasn’t for me. And that meant I couldn’t shoehorn my life into the confines of Poplar Springs, not even for Amy.
Which I shouldn’t even be considering, since she apparently viewed our date and kiss as practice. She’d had fun on the date. I was sure of that. I hadn’t imagined the flush on her cheeks, the hitch in her breathing. But I couldn’t ignore the way she’d declared it pretend.
It hurt in ways I didn’t want to dissect, which was probably a sign that I needed to stop trying. To stop thinking about it. There couldn’t be anything between me and Amy. Period. Done. I wasn’t going to think about it anymore.
Until I saw her dash across the street and enter the Bite and Brew. I stood up instinctively as she came toward me. Before I could greet her, she flung her arms around my neck.
“You are my hero,” she said as she hugged me and planted a kiss on my cheek.
What was this about? And whatever the hell I’d done, I wanted to do it ten more times if that was her reaction. “I like the sound of that, but what did I do?”
She released me, stepping back just a bit. “We just topped the seventy percent mark on ticket sales and,” she held a finger to keep me from interrupting, “we got offered an interview on Denver AM, the highest rated morning show in the whole damn state. It’s not definite yet, but it looks good.”
A cheer went up in the diner where everyone had stopped eating to listen to Amy. This was big news in a small town. Denver was more than a hundred miles away, but that wasn’t a long trip in the minds of folks looking for a good rodeo.
“Good job, brother.” Jake stood up and slapped me on the back, and Brian tipped his hat.
That was the second time Jake had referred to me as brother and it gave me pause.
But it was Amy’s smiling, upturned face that truly held my attention.
Wild, crazy thoughts filled my head—like the question of whether I could fit in here in Poplar Springs after all.
I had friends in the three men at the table.
I was already planning a career change. And most importantly, there was Amy.
If I was willing to live here long term, was there anything stopping me from pursuing a real relationship with her?
I felt like I had whiplash with the way my thoughts were going back and forth. I’d barely managed to convince myself that being stuck in a small town wasn’t for me, and then a chaste kiss from this woman instantly has me rethinking it.
“I owe you a million thanks for convincing Cal to help us out.” Amy turned to Rafael, giving him a hug as well.
“Glad to have him around,” Rafael said, returning the hug.
“And I don’t know why I’m hugging you two.” She flung her arms around Brian and Jake. “But it seems like the thing to do.”
I stood back and watched her. She was joyful and beautiful, which made my decision easy. I was going to ask her out again, and it would be for real this time.