It Had to Be You (51 page)

He took her hands and forced her to look at him. “No one is responsible for what happened tonight except Michael.”

“He’s sick, Jake.”

“Don’t defend him.”

“I’m not. He’s gone to jail. He’s going to have to pay.”

“Yes,” Jake said grimly, thinking of what could have happened to her tonight. “He is.”

Her hands, still in his, spread wide. She looked so exhausted a small breeze could have knocked her over. “I just can’t believe it.”

“I know. Bed,” he decided when she wobbled on her feet. He led her to his cot. “Want one of my T-shirts?”

“Please.”

She dropped the towel as he settled a shirt over her head, smoothing it down her body. Having his hands on her would have been a pleasure if tonight’s fire and the weight of the offer he’d received on the ranch hadn’t combined to make him as exhausted as she. He pulled the blankets over her and stepped back but she grabbed his wrist. “Where are you going?”

“You need sleep.”

“I need you.” She lifted the blankets. “Please,” she whispered, her eyes and voice so hollow it broke his heart. He stripped down and slid in, carefully pulling her against him. Her bare legs tangled with his. He tunneled his fingers through her hair, his other hand drifting up and down her back in a gesture he hoped was soothing her, but was having the opposite effect on him. The T-shirt had bundled up around her waist. Panty-free, he palmed her extremely palmable ass and snuggled her in closer so that the heat of her cupped his groin.

“Mmm,” she mumbled when she realized he was hard, and cuddled in closer. “Nice.”

He rocked his hips to hers, then forced himself to stop. “Callie?”

She tucked her face into the hollow of his neck and sighed shakily. “Hmm-mmm…”

He kept running his fingers up and down her back, waiting for her to look at him. “With all that’s happened, maybe it’ll be easier for us to talk about the offer I got on the ranch.”

She said nothing, but she didn’t pull away, either, which he considered a good sign. “I’m sorry, Callie. So damned sorry, but I have to make a decision, and I really wanted to talk to you first.”

Nothing.

“Callie?”

A soft snore shuddered out of her, warming his neck. He pulled away and looked down into her face.

She was fast asleep.

W
hen 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 burnt 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 the 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 pen and a pad.

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 cell 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.”

But she missed this one, and as he pitched in and helped, working with the entire crew, he realized how much he’d learned over the past two months. He knew how to coax the guests into enjoying themselves, he knew what and how much to feed each of the animals. It was all second nature.

Now he stood in the corral with Stone, Eddie, and Tucker, getting the horses ready for an afternoon ride with the guests. At two o’clock on the dot, Eddie and Tucker both looked at their watches, then patted Stone on the back.

Jake looked between them, confused, and Eddie said proudly, “He’s gone two weeks without a drink.”

Stone nodded. “Fourteen days.”

“That’s…” Tucker stopped to count. “Over three hundred hours.”

“Three hundred thirty-six,” Stone corrected, and snagging his arm around Eddie’s neck, kissed him noisily on the cheek.

Eddie swiped at the spot with the back of his hand. “What was that for?”

“For being my brother.” Stone grinned. “Love you, man. Love you all.”

“Jesus, you sure you’re not drinking?”

“Tell me you love me back,” Stone said with a grin.

“Shut up.”

“Come on, tell me.” Stone made kissy face noises near his brother’s ear until finally, laughing, Eddie shoved him away. “Fine, you idiot. I love you. Now you’d better remember that cuz I’m not going to repeat it.”

Tucker laughed, too. “You’ll repeat it, soon as you need to borrow some money.”

Jake smiled, but, damn, he’d really wanted this place to be nothing more than a plot of dry land filled with a bunch of animals that ate too much, and a big house that drained him dry.

But there was more, so much more. A family lived and breathed here, a family and a group of people he cared about deeply. While he stood there absorbing that, his cell phone rang. “Jake,” his real estate agent said, “you have another offer. A bigger one.” When she rattled off the terms, he stood there, dazzled and stunned. “Jake? All it takes is a yes from you and I’ll get the paperwork going.”

Eddie and Stone were now helping two of the guests get on horseback. Everyone was laughing, taking pictures. Tucker showed yet another guest how to put on a bridle. Marge and Lou were handing out hats and gloves. Amy had come out, too, and sat on the fence watching, smiling.
Smiling.

“Jake? You there?” came his agent’s voice.

This place had come to mean more to him than he could have ever dreamed, and if he felt that way after only six weeks, he could only imagine what Callie and these guys all felt after spending years here. This was their home, their life. “I’m sorry,” he said into the phone. “Turn the offers down. Both of them.”

Callie sat staring at Matt in shock. She was still in his office. She’d planted herself there, refusing to leave until he secured her the loan she wanted, and then called Jake’s Realtor on her behalf to make the offer. “What did you just say?”

“I’m sorry, Cal. He turned down the offer.”

“Why?”

“The agent said the ranch was already sold.”

“He really did take that other offer.” She dropped her head into her hands. “How could he?”

“He can do whatever he wants. It’s his place. Look, you gave it your best shot, but it’s over. Fini. The end.”

Stunned, she shook her head. “It…can’t be.”

“Maybe you should have let me tell him who was making the offer.”

“I told you, I didn’t want him to know it was me, because I wanted to do this fair and square. Without emotional debts or attachments.”

Matt sighed. “You and I both know it’s far too late for that. If he’s in your life, you’re attached. Just as you’re attached to that godforsaken piece of land, and all the people on it. Everyone knows this about you, baby, so it’s time for you to admit it. You leap with your heart, and just let your brain along for the ride.”