by Liz Isaacson
Callie’s nerves took over, finally subduing the hormones that had prompted her to flirt. “I haven’t told anyone this. Not even Simone. But if I don’t get caught up on the payments by January second, the ranch will go into foreclosure.”
Alarm pulled across Liam’s face. “Let’s take care of that right now.” He pulled out his phone, as if such things could be taken care of with an app. Maybe they could. He’d be the one to know, as he did everything with the latest and greatest technology. “How do I login to make a payment?”
“Let me get my laptop,” she said.
“And then I want a tour of the house and ranch,” he called after her as she started toward her bedroom.
She paused in the mouth of the hall. “You’ve seen the house and ranch.”
“I’ve been over here,” he said. “I haven’t seen the ranch. I need to know what we’re working with.” He looked around the kitchen and living room, and foolishness rushed through Callie like a tsunami. Could he feel how outdated everything was? Would he insist on replacing everything?
Don’t argue with him, she coached herself as she went to get her laptop. After all, she’d literally just asked him to get her caught up on her ranch payments, so if he wanted to get new curtains, she didn’t know how to tell him no.
“All right,” she said, re-entering the kitchen with her computer. “We can logon here.” She sat next to him, surprised when he slipped his arm around her. So surprised, she flinched.
“Sorry,” he murmured, immediately removing his hand.
“I just…it’s fine,” Callie said, but her voice was too high. She hadn’t lied when she’d told Liam she hadn’t dated in eleven years. Over a decade without a kiss, without holding a man’s hand, without being in a place where a sexy cowboy like Liam could put his arms around her and she wouldn’t jump.
“I’m kind of a touchy-feely guy,” he said. “But I can see we’re not there yet.”
Callie cut a look at him out of the corner of her eye. “I like being touched.”
His eyebrows went up, and his expression danced with amusement. “Is that so?”
“That came out wrong,” she said, a laugh bursting from her mouth. “I mean, it’s been a while since I dated, remember? I just maybe need some time to realize that you’re my—” Her voice cut out, but she forced herself to keep going. “Fiancé, and it’s okay for you to put your arm around my waist.”
She tapped on the computer to wake it, and then she clicked to open the Internet. “It’s a little slow.”
Liam watched the computer struggle as it tried to bring up the web browser. “Is it the Internet service or your machine? Because this is not going to work for me, baby.”
She looked at him, realizing he was dead serious. “I honestly don’t know.”
He pulled out his phone and tapped. “I’m putting Internet at the top of my list,” he said.
“What list?”
“List of things that must work.” He got up and went around the island. “Can I get a drink?”
“Yeah, of course. Cups in the cupboard by the sink.”
He opened the right one and stepped over to the refrigerator.
“That doesn’t work, remember?” She nodded to the sink. “But there’s ice in the freezer in a real ice cube tray, and we just drink the water out of the tap.”
He lifted one eyebrow, which made her smile, and set down his glass. “Refrigerator.” His thumbs flew over the screen, and Callie’s embarrassment grew. She wanted to argue that the fridge they had worked fine whether it produced its own ice cubes or not, but she remembered his rule.
Open mind, she told herself. And Dear Lord, please help me to accept his help. Help me shelve my pride.
The website finally loaded, and Callie said, “A-ha,” as she leaned forward to type in the address for her bank. With that pulled up, she logged in while Liam cracked ice out of the tray and filled his water glass. “You want anything?” he asked, and Callie really appreciated that he’d asked.
“I’d love another cup of coffee,” she said, and Liam set about making that for her too.
“Cream or sugar?” He opened the fridge, but they still didn’t have any cream. “No cream?”
“We’re out right now,” Callie said.
Liam said nothing, but the way his thumbs flew over his device spoke volumes.
“Okay, I’m in,” she said, looking at the impossibly huge number indicating the amount she owed. She reached up and covered it, heat filling her whole body. “I’m so sorry, Liam. I feel like an idiot.”
“That should’ve been a rule of mine,” he said. “We don’t apologize to each other, unless we’ve done something to hurt the other. I don’t care how far in the hole you are. And you don’t care that I ate four cider doughnuts before I even made it back to the ranch.”
She smiled, glad when he returned the gesture. “But I still feel stupid. I feel stupid my fridge is broken and doesn’t make ice. I feel stupid my computer is so old or the Internet doesn’t work. Whatever it is. I feel so stupid that I let things get this bad.” She looked at him, everything she’d kept secret about to be blown wide open.
Liam took both of her hands in his, gently guiding the one away from the screen where she was trying to hide how much she owed. “Callie,” he said, very seriously. “We all make mistakes. We all do things we’re not proud of. We all feel stupid for something.”
“Oh yeah?” she challenged. “Name one thing you’ve done that you’re not proud of.”
“How about me groveling at your feet for the past nine months?”
“You—didn’t—you—” Callie didn’t know what to say.
“I’m pathetic,” he said with a gentle smile. “I feel stupid about that. I just keep thinking, she’s not going to want me. I can’t even control my emotions.”
“I don’t think that,” Callie said quietly.
“And I don’t think you should feel embarrassed because you got a little behind on your bills.”
“Liam,” she said slowly, really drawing out his name. “I’m not a little behind. Evelyn paid for a lot with her matchmaking income, and when she stopped doing that and married Rhett…I stopped paying the mortgage.”
He blinked a few times. “Oh.” He glanced at the computer, but Callie grabbed the lid and almost shut it.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, feeling stupider and stupider by the moment.
Liam’s eyes twinkled like black stars when he leaned closer. “It wouldn’t matter if you’d never paid the mortgage once, sweetheart,” he said. “I could buy this ranch with cash and have enough money leftover to buy another one. And another one. And another one. Now, please pass that computer over here and let’s make sure our home doesn’t go into foreclosure.”
Our home.
Callie had fought so hard to hold onto this place. It was her home, and she didn’t want to lose it. She reminded herself of that, and her desire to keep the Shining Star Ranch and the land it sat on in her family was more powerful than her humiliation.
So she did what Liam asked, and she cradled her head in her hands while he clicked and tapped and typed. Only three minutes later, he said, “Done. And will you email me everything I need to logon to this again and pay the mortgage moving forward?”
Callie could only nod, her gratitude so deep and so wide. She leaned into Liam, glad when he enveloped her in his strong arms. “Thank you, Liam.” She’d never known such relief—nor such comfort. Being held by him, she could feel his strong feelings for her. Could he feel hers?
His lips touched her hairline, and Callie leaned into the kiss. “Anytime, sweetheart,” he said. “Anytime.”
“Hey,” Simone said from behind her, and Callie straightened, causing Liam to release her.
“I brought you a brownie,” he said. “I heard you loved the double fudge.”
“Oh, wow,” Simone said with a smile. “Thanks, Liam.” Her eyes held dozens of questions as she joined them in the kitchen. “What’s
going on here?”
“You didn’t tell her?” Liam asked.
“Simone is the best sister ever,” Callie said, meeting her sister’s eye. “But no, I thought we could tell her together.”
“You didn’t,” Simone said, her voice hushing. She looked back and forth from Callie to Liam and back. “She said yes, didn’t she?” Glee poured off of Simone in waves, and while Callie had known there was more at stake if they lost the ranch than just her life, she’d never felt it as keenly as she did in that moment.
“Yes,” Liam said, grinning as widely as Simone. “She said yes.”
Simone lifted her hand, and she and Liam gave each other high five. “Hey,” Callie protested. “Were you two in on this together?”
“Of course not,” Liam said. “I tried to contain my humiliation to my own ranch, thank you very much.”
Simone unwrapped her brownie and took a bite. She chewed and swallowed while Callie thought about what Liam had said. He’d done a lot of things over the past several months that had annoyed her. She’d turned him down several times, from his offers to buy the ranch, to his offers to take her to dinner. She’d flat-out denied feelings for his brother and insinuations that she and Jeremiah had been having a secret relationship. After that, she and Liam hadn’t spoken to each other for twenty-six days, and that had ended when he’d come over and apologized to her.
No, he wasn’t perfect. But he was patient, and he was kind, and another blast of regret hit Callie that she hadn’t been nicer to him. That she hadn’t been better. And she wondered why he’d kept coming back…
“Let’s take that tour now,” Liam said. “Unless you’ve got another pressing chore.”
Giving the tour would be a pressing chore—something that would press the life right out of her lungs. But the man had literally just paid over twenty-five thousand dollars to settle her account. If he wanted a tour, he was going to get one.
“Everyone’s fed,” Simone said, but Callie knew there was more to ranch work than just making sure the horses and cattle got enough to eat and drink. The reason they couldn’t pay their bills was because they had to buy hay and other supplies from someone else. Most ranches produced their own hay, but Callie couldn’t plant, cultivate, and harvest enough. Her equipment was old, and what she could do with just her two hands wasn’t enough. Wasn’t even close to enough.
“Let’s take the tour,” Callie said. “And you better bring that phone and a portable charger. I think you’re going to be taking a lot of notes.” Her stomach felt like she’d swallowed a brick instead of a delicious candy cane cookie, but she couldn’t back out of their arrangement now.
In fact, she didn’t even want to. As she left the house through the back door, all she could think about was where her first kiss with Liam Walker would be. And those weren’t the thoughts of a woman who was being forced to do something against her will.
“Okay, so as you can see, we don’t keep up great with the yardwork,” she said, gesturing vaguely to the lawn.
“It’s winter,” he said. “We won’t worry about that until spring.” He glanced back to the house. “Does Simone do anything on the ranch?” He looked at Callie, and she couldn’t find any judgment in his face. “Not that I care. I’m just trying to get an accurate picture of what I’m dealing with here.”
“Not much,” Callie said. “She spends most of her time in her antiques shop or looking for more items to refurbish. She’ll help with feeding and stuff, if I need her to.”
Liam nodded, his mouth drawing down. “Okay, got it.”
Callie looked out over the Texas landscape she loved so much. “All right, let’s get this over with.”
Please let him still want to do this once he sees the disaster this ranch is, she prayed. She really needed God to hear and answer this one prayer more than any other she’d ever uttered. Because she desperately needed help, and not just financially.
Chapter Six
Liam couldn’t help feeling like he’d been duped, just a little. He knew the Foster sisters worked hard, but it honestly felt like neither one of them knew how to run a ranch. Callie and Simone didn’t want to lose it either, but they sure didn’t seem to even like ranching.
“Why do you want to keep this place?” he asked as they went through the back gate and onto the ranch. Everywhere he looked, something needed to be fixed or done. Jeremiah would go crazy over here, and Liam had been thinking about bringing his brother over for a consultation.
This ranch needed a foreman, and at least six cowboys working full-time to get it back in shape. Get everything cleaned up and cleared out. Go through inventory in the tool shed, the equipment shed, the hay barn. He had no idea when the last time the cattle had been checked by a vet, let alone the horses. Did she shoe them herself? Because farriers weren’t cheap.
He wouldn’t take notes, because honestly, he couldn’t type that fast. Literally everything needed attention, and he could’ve typed that in and been good.
Everything.
“I grew up here,” Callie said. “My momma died here. The ranch has been in the Foster family for four generations.”
“Old ties,” he muttered, halfway to himself. He understood those. He did. “Do you even like ranching?”
“Uh.” Callie’s hesitance answered the question.
“So you just want to keep the ranch,” he said. “But you don’t want to actually work it.”
“I don’t…know?”
“It’s okay to want to keep it and not work it,” he said gently. “I just need to know so I know who to hire and what to have them do.”
“I grew up as the oldest,” she said, her voice heavy. “Daddy didn’t have any boys, so he taught me and my sisters to work the ranch. I never had the option to do anything else. Not like Evelyn or Simone did.”
Liam heard a touch of bitterness in her voice. He wasn’t the oldest, so he didn’t understand those expectations. His life had always been up to him, and he’d chosen what he loved and was good at.
“Callie,” he said. “I don’t care if you stay in the homestead and watch TV all day, just so we’re clear. But you want the homestead and the ranch, right?”
“Yes,” she said.
“So you define what role you want to have, and I’ll get people to do the rest.”
“Well, I don’t even watch TV, so that’s not what I want.”
“You don’t watch TV?”
“Who has time for that?”
“Oh, I love a good British murder mystery.”
Callie burst out laughing, and Liam was glad he could make her do that. “Shut up,” she said. “You do not.”
“I so do,” he said. “I sometimes watch them while I’m working. They’re awesome.” He reached for her hand, glad she didn’t flinch away from him this time. “Do you know what you’d like to do?”
“I haven’t thought about it,” she said. “I’ve always just done what I could.”
“What you thought you were supposed to,” he said, his heart bleeding a little bit for her. “But if you could do anything, anything at all, what would that be?”
“I like to cross-stitch,” she said.
“That’s a hobby, sweetheart,” he said. “Not a career. Like a job. what do you want to do for a job?”
“Nothing?” she guessed. “I don’t know, Liam. That’s a hard question.”
“It shouldn’t be,” he said, looking over at her. Callie was a strong, beautiful woman. He’d always liked her generous spirit and quick, kind smile. She’d taken all of the brothers under her wing and taught them about small-town Texas without a single complaint. She put up with their loud parties next door, and all the new construction at Seven Sons that had taken about a year to complete.
She loved her family fiercely, and she loved this ranch. But he couldn’t understand how she had no idea what she wanted her life to be.
“When you look around this land, and think about the house,” he said. “What do you see yourself doing?”
“Taking care of the cowboys,” she said.
“So you want to be the ranch matron.” That role fit her to a T, and he smiled at her. “That’s the perfect job for you. Feeding them lunch and making sure everyone feels important and cared about.” He squeezed her hand, a slip of peace entering his soul. “You’re really good at that.”
“Am I?”
“Yes,” he said simply. “And we get a foreman to run the ranch. You have cowboy cabins, I assume?”
“Yes,” she said. “They’re over there, tucked against those trees.” She pointed west, but Liam couldn’t see them from this far away.
“How many?”
“Five or six,” she said. “No one’s lived in them in years.”
So they’d need a lot of work, and Liam hoped Micah would move to Seven Sons sooner rather than later. Then Liam could employ his carpenter brother’s hands to help him get everything back in good repair.
“Horses here,” Callie said, and Liam saw five or six horses in the pasture in front of him. It did look like someone took care of it, and bit of relief moved through him.
“I’ll admit I don’t know the first thing about ranching,” he said, putting his foot on the bottom rung of the fence separating him from the horses.
“You don’t? You work at Seven Sons, don’t you?”
“Uh, a little.” Liam shrugged and held his hand out to one of the pretty bays that came toward him. “The cowboy hat and boots are more for show, sweetheart.”
Callie laughed, and Liam liked that. “I don’t believe that. I know Miah’s told me you’ve been out on the ranch before.”
Liam turned toward her and slung his arm over the top rung of the fence. “Oh? You been askin’ about me?” He grinned at her, but part of him wanted to know.
Callie tucked her hair and ducked her head. “I mean, there was a time when we weren’t speaking, you know? I had to know where you were so I wouldn’t run into you.”
All of the air got punched out of Liam’s lungs. He wanted to say so much, but it took him a moment to draw in a breath. “I hated those times,” he whispered.