by Liz Isaacson
He got out and turned back to reach inside and get the painkillers and medical supplies he’d bought at the drugstore while Sophia watched. Marcy had said to take as much time as she needed to make sure her “friend” was okay, and a deep exhaustion pulled through Sophia.
She didn’t need to go inside with Ames. The color in his face had normalized by the time she’d called Colton, Cy, and Marcy and returned to the room. With nurses and doctors in and out, they hadn’t spoken about the girlfriend issue, and the only reason she’d followed him home was because she’d promised Lora she would.
Ames glanced in her direction, and she couldn’t decide how he was feeling. He wore a dark pair of sunglasses, and with the slightly longer hair and those broad shoulders, Sophia darn near swooned.
She climbed out of the car and closed the door, facing him. “Do you want me to come in?”
“If you want.” He didn’t move either.
It was far too hot to be standing outside in the Texas heat, Sophia knew that. “Why didn’t you call me at Christmas?” she asked anyway. No sense in going in if she was going to get her heart ripped out. Just because it happened in the air conditioning didn’t mean it would hurt less.
Ames took a few steps toward her but stopped at the end of his truck. Several feet still separated them. He drew in a breath and blew it out. Said nothing.
Sophia had never known Ames to hold back. He always said what was on his mind, usually in a brisk tone of voice that sent tremors of fear to the recipient. She could still hear him telling Patsy she had no right to hurt Cy.
“Well, you’re home,” Sophia said. “I don’t know if you saw Colton’s text. He said he’s going to come to stay with you. He’ll be here tomorrow.” She backed up and reached for her door handle again.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know why I didn’t call.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “You’re not interested.” She pulled open the door and used it as a shield between her and Ames. “I get it.”
“What if I am interested?”
Sophia paused, cursing whoever had invented sunglasses. She needed to see his eyes, because Ames told everything with those eyes.
She didn’t want to be the desperate woman who clung to him every time he happened to descend to her level to give her the time of day. Gripping the top of the door until her fingers ached, she lifted her head slightly. “My number hasn’t changed. If you’re really interested, you can call anytime.”
With that, she slid behind the wheel, started the car, and left him standing in his driveway with a couple of bags hanging from his left hand.
Chapter Four
Ames dipped the sponge in the water bucket and lifted it back up to the cabinet. He couldn’t believe he’d nailed his thumb to the wall. And to make matters worse, he had to run into Sophia at the drugstore?
How humiliating.
At the same time, he was thrilled that she’d been there. Otherwise he might have passed out and been found in the middle of the aisle by anybody. As it was, Colton would be arriving that afternoon, and Ames felt a mountain of foolishness descend upon him. He didn’t need his brother to come take care of him. He wondered if this was how Cy had felt when he went to Coral Canyon last year for a couple of weeks. Probably.
Ames needed to swallow his pride and make a plan to become the man he wanted to be. Was that someone who worked another man’s ranch? He wasn’t even sure if he was in the right place. Three Rivers had felt like home for the past few weeks. But was he in the right place?
He was so far from family when he needed help, and he hated that. Ames had never had this problem before. He knew what he wanted, and he worked to get it, just like Gray had done when it came to the Boston Marathon.
He wanted it. He worked and trained for it. He got it.
The problem was, Ames didn’t know what he wanted.
He liked dressing a little eccentrically sometimes. He liked making all kinds of different egg dishes. He loved being in charge of meetings and crews and people. At the same time, he could take directions too.
That was what he did at Seven Sons Ranch, and he had no problem listening to Jeremiah, or Orion tell him what he needed to do. He just did it. He didn’t mind putting his head down and getting the work done. In fact, it brought him a great sense of accomplishment, and he craved the feeling that he’d done something good at the end of every day.
“But what have I done good lately?” he asked himself. He also disliked that he was having this out loud conversation with himself as he scrubbed his own blood off the newly painted walls and freshly manufactured cabinets. Worse, he wasn’t sure what good he’d done lately.
He wasn’t sure he could remember much from last night and the things that Sophia had said, but something triggered in his memory. She wasn’t a permanent resident here.
He wasn’t sure why she’d come into his mind right now. He rinsed the sponge again, the blood almost gone now. But Sophia wouldn’t leave his mind. He’d enjoyed his time with her last fall, and his pulse had acted erratically when she’d called him over Christmas.
He’d said he’d call her back, and then he hadn’t. Last night, she’d seemed a little hurt by that, and he wondered if the chemistry and spark between them could be rekindled, or if he’d extinguished it completely when he’d ghosted her over the holidays.
“Probably,” he said to himself. “You’re not real great at keeping up with what women expect.”
When he was a detective with the Littleton Police Department, he knew what he did every day. He knew he kept bad people off the streets. He knew he kept his integrity intact. He knew he had friends he helped. He knew he texted his brothers, kept in touch with his mom, and did all that he needed to do to make sure he was on good standing with the Lord.
Since he quit his job, almost a year ago now, he wasn’t really sure what every day would bring. He didn’t mind working on the ranch, but he didn’t love it. He didn’t want his own ranch, that was for sure. He could definitely afford it if he wanted it.
He likes horses—you like dogs.
He’d thought about training police dogs in the past, but he’d never pursued the idea. Sophia fostered dogs from a facility in Dog Valley, and she’d told him about what she did. Her job was to socialize the dog and teach it the skills it needed to be placed with a family. The animals were able to get adopted more easily than before if they were potty trained and crate trained and good with kids.
Perhaps he should do something like that. He had plenty of money. He could buy a piece of land somewhere. “Not Wyoming,” he muttered.
In Colorado, he oversaw canine officers, so he’d worked with a lot of K9 police dogs. He usually had a German Shepherd that he was training and working with, and he loved them. He himself was not a canine officer, but they were part of his crew, so he needed to know the dogs. He needed to know that the officers and the dogs he paired them with worked well together. Some officers patrolled lonely highways with only their dogs for partners. And if that man got in trouble, his dog would be the one to save him.
“Train police dogs,” he said, and the idea had real merit.
His mind moved on to other things, including his schedule for the next few days. A lead weight settled in Ames’s stomach. “Cy’s wedding.”
Come Monday morning next week, Ames would be the only Hammond brother without a wife. He knew he hadn’t failed. Intellectually, he knew. But somehow, a heavy weight of failure lingered around his neck.
His mother had stopped saying things to him after he’d sat her down and said, “Mom, I’m doing the best I can.”
I know I’m not Wes.
I know I’m not Gray.
I’m not as good as Colton, and even Cy has been able to find someone who can love him and stand by him.
I’m trying, Mom.
It’s hard out there, and the last thing I need is you badgering me when I already feel bad enough about myself.
It been a hard conversation f
or him to have with his mother, who he loved so much. A sense of fierce missing overcame him, and he knew he needed to call his mom and find out how things were going on the farm.
It was summer now, which meant Gray and Elise had left and gone to Coral Canyon, where they lived for several months out of the year. While it was warm in the Tetons, they took their kids, Hunter and Jane, and experienced life in the mountains.
Ames knew his mom would be lonely, even though she still had her husband and her mother-in-law. Ames was actually surprised Grams was still around. She would be one hundred years old in November, and he couldn’t wait for that celebration.
He wondered if anyone was even planning it. He decided he better say something to Colton or Gray so that celebration could happen. In fact, he thought that might be a really great thing for him to spearhead to bring the family together.
Ames finished scrubbing the wall and dropped the sponge in the bucket. Then he pulled out his phone to make the call to his mother, but he stalled, staring at the screen. Wondering if perhaps he should make a phone call to another woman instead.
He wasn’t even sure if he’d thanked Sophia. She hadn’t come in the house last night, and he’d been on some pretty heavy duty painkillers.
Maybe he should just call and make sure that she knew he was grateful for her help. Even if they couldn’t be more than just friends, he should say thank you.
He’d see her at the wedding, because she was Patsy’s best friend. And Patsy was marrying Cy.
He looked up, sighing. Ames thought everything would just be so much simpler if the Lord would just tell him what to do.
Ask out Sophia. He could check that box.
Get to know her. Check.
Be patient. Check.
Fall in love. Check.
Ames loved lists. He loved having steps that he should take to get something done. He was very good at following a checklist.
The problem was, Ames didn’t know how to fall in love. Sometimes, he barely felt anything, and he’d have to feel something in order to fall in love.
He seemed to know when Cy wasn’t doing well. He was able to text him and follow up with him. But doing those things for himself was a lot harder than Ames had anticipated.
For so long, he thought he’d been happy by himself, and he had been. He loved running. He loved his job in Littleton, he loved living in the Denver area and driving out to Ivory Peaks to the farm where he’d grown up to visit his family.
But that was when everyone lived in Colorado. That was when Wes ran the company, and Colton did all the social media, and Gray was the corporate lawyer.
That was when there was only one grandchild, and when none of the brothers had wives or significant others.
That was when he fit with everybody else.
Now, Ames was constantly looking for a space where he belonged. Just like he had at Gray’s house after Cy’s grand opening. His brother had built him a custom motorcycle, and Ames really needed to be on it. It was a heavy machine though, and he wasn’t sure he could handle it with his thumb wrapped up as it was.
He looked at his fingers and a twinge of pain moved up his arm. He wasn’t sure how he hadn’t felt it last night. He wondered who had put away all the things that he’d frantically gathered from the shelves. He probably needed to go back there and apologize for whatever mess he left behind.
He started tapping on his phone and his fingers had a mind of their own, because the next thing he knew, the line was ringing, and Sophia’s name sat on the screen.
She picked up with the words, “Ames. Hello,” and nothing more.
“Hey,” he said, not really sure what to say after that. “I just wanted to say thanks for helping last night. I’m not really sure what happened. But I do know that you were there, and you got me home safe, and I appreciate that.”
He nodded to himself and looked out the big windows at the front of the house. “And that’s all. I wasn’t sure if I said thanks, and I wanted you to know that I appreciated your help.”
“Sure,” she said. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“Okay,” he said. “I feel really stupid. I’ve never done anything like that before, and I’ve built plenty of things over the years.”
“Is that true?” she asked. “I didn’t know you were a carpenter.”
Ames cocked his head, because he thought she might be…flirting with him. “Well, I wouldn’t call myself a carpenter,” he said, sitting down at the bar. Maybe having a conversation wouldn’t be so hard. Maybe he could be like Wes and fall in love on the phone.
When he was face-to-face with Sophia, all he wanted to do was hold her hand and kiss her. He did like talking to her and they had become friends in the few weeks that he’d been in Coral Canyon last year.
She hadn’t wanted to relocate, and he’d been vehemently opposed to leaving Colorado, and yet…he’d left Colorado. He suddenly wondered what kind of message that sent to Sophia.
“If you build things with wood, aren’t you a carpenter?” she asked, bringing him back to the conversation.
“Yeah, well I don’t have any degrees or certifications or anything like that,” he said. “I don’t have a wood shop, and I don’t really have power tools either.” His thumb throbbed as a reminder that he was not well-versed with a nail gun, but somehow, he wondered if he could become a carpenter.
He could clearly see what all of his brothers had done. And yet his future, as well as his past, still seemed muddy and unclear to him. What had he really done? Save a few lives on the streets by handing out tickets?
He didn’t think that was that great of a legacy. Not compared to Colton working on the Human Genome Project, and Wes and Gray dedicating so many years of their life to the family company, which would hopefully continue as their family continued to grow. Currently, Ames’s uncle’s children ran HMC. But he knew that the family ownership shifted every fifteen to twenty years. It wouldn’t surprise him at all if he found Hunter at the helm of HMC in another couple of decades.
Hunter was an amazing child who had been through a lot in his short life already and come out the victor many times. Ames had taken him to counseling several times last year. He’d watched the boy come alive as he figured out how he felt, why he felt that way, and what to do about it.
Ames had another realization while Sophia said something about what she wanted to buy when she owned a home of her own.
Perhaps he should go to counseling too.
He’d been pushing Cy to go for so long that Ames had never realized that maybe he could benefit from the same type of therapy that his brother did. Compared to Cy, Ames always thought he was the more normal one. He didn’t suffer from the same anxiety. He didn’t have depression. He didn’t worry that much about what others thought about him at all. He didn’t really care if he was liked.
He did the best he could, he was kind to others. He worked hard, and he served. He’d always thought that had been enough, and it had been. But maybe he was a lot like Hunter, who’d told Ames that he was worried he didn’t feel things the way normal people did.
He’d rather bury himself in a crossword puzzle, or out on the lake while he fished, or even out in the barns working with the calves and the goats than spend time with other people. He had friends, of course, and what had really spurred him into wondering if he was normal or not was when he had his first kiss with his girlfriend, Molly.
Ames hung his head, because even his fourteen-year-old nephew could get a girl and keep her for longer than six months. Ames wondered if he’d ever be able to do that, and he was forty years old.
“I feel like I lost you,” Sophia said.
“Sorry,” Ames said, rubbing his hand up the back of his neck. “I’m not really sure why I called, but I’m wondering if you have time for lunch.” He had no idea what he was doing. Only that the words were there, and he decided to speak them.
“I don’t think so, Ames,” she said. “We’re getting ready to leave for Coral C
anyon in the morning, and I’ve got the boys with me at the park.”
“I can come to the park,” he said.
Sophia said nothing, and Ames wondered if he should take that for permission. He’d done that a couple of times when he’d leaned down to kiss her in Coral Canyon. Ames knew he liked Sophia. What he didn’t know was why he was so resistant to starting and maintaining a real relationship with her.
No end date, he thought.
Ames did love end dates. He loved knowing when things would start and stop, and how long he had to endure something so that he could then get on with his “real life.”
It was as if God had opened the heavens and sent lightning bolt after lightning bolt of realization to Ames’s mind. He knew now that he viewed Sophia as a complication.
Not her as a person, but a real relationship with her. It would complicate his life. He would have to choose where he wanted to live. He would have to choose what he wanted to do. He would have to be someone that a woman like Sophia would want.
“I think I’m up for the park,” he said, making a decision. “I’ll bring lunch. Do you have lunch?”
“We were gonna grab hamburgers for lunch,” she said. “There’s a food truck here.”
“Great,” he said “I’ve got a wallet. I’ll be there in ten minutes.” He almost hung up and then asked, “Wait, which park?”
Three Rivers had a lot of parks, because it was in the panhandle of Texas, and the founders had wanted it to be an oasis in the part of Texas that was mostly desert, dirt, and dust.
“We’re down at the Founders River Park,” she said. “There’s a little stream here the boys like. We’ve got both of Jeremiah’s dogs with us today. We’ll probably be here another hour is all, Ames. You really don’t need to come.”
“I want to see you,” he said, feeling his bravery and boldness rise up within him. “So you tell me if you don’t want to see me. Just say, ‘I don’t want to see you.’ And I won’t come. But if you wouldn’t mind seeing me, I really want to see you.” He took a breath and kept going. “I’m really sorry that I didn’t call you over Christmas. I had some things I was dealing with.”