Crazy Heifer

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  I frowned hard. “I’m sure your version of fat really wasn’t that fat.”

  He pulled out his phone then and started swiping through pictures, stopping only when he found the one he wanted.

  Turning the phone around, he showed me the picture that he’d been searching for.

  In it was an enlistment ceremony picture.

  In it was Ace, Banks, Callum—or at least who I assumed was Callum—Darby, and Georgia.

  Callum and Banks were side by side, smiling wide for the camera.

  And yes, Callum was the heaviest person in the picture. He was also quite adorable, even then.

  “That’s adorable,” I admitted. “Where’s the graduation one?”

  He pulled his phone back and swiped another couple of pictures, turning it back around when he found the one he wanted.

  “This one was taken eight weeks later,” he said. “At our graduation ceremony.”

  Callum and Banks were side by side, Callum noticeably slimmer than he had been.

  The both of them were decked out in their official uniforms and looking sharp as hell.

  My eyes automatically strayed to Callum and stayed there.

  I admired everything about the man from his shaven jaw all the way down to his polished-within-an-inch-of-their-life shoes.

  “You look really good there,” I admitted. “Like you’re finally happy.”

  And he did.

  There was a significant ‘feel’ to the other picture. Although they’d all been smiling, you could tell that they were definitely sad.

  In the second picture, though, you could practically see that the pall had been lifted—at least momentarily.

  “I was happy-ish,” he agreed. “For a little bit, anyway.”

  It was like he was mirroring my own thoughts.

  “How long were you in the military?” I asked as I handed him back his phone.

  He took it and shoved it back into his pocket, his eyes taking in the ornaments around him.

  “Four years,” he said. “I might’ve stayed in longer had Ace not wanted to come back here and reopen the farm.”

  I smiled. “That was nice of you, doing that for him.”

  “I didn’t want him to come back here by himself,” he said. “He would have, too. And I’d have felt horrible about it.”

  The Valentine family had been the big tragedy of Kilgore, Texas.

  I hadn’t lived in Kilgore my whole life like most of the people here. But I had lived here long enough to hear about the Valentines.

  The townspeople felt awful that they hadn’t paid enough attention to be able to prevent the tragedy that plagued the Valentines. It haunted everyone—cops, firefighters, and even the regular Joes.

  Two of their siblings and their mother had perished in the fire.

  The five oldest children had been able to get themselves free.

  “Did y’all redo the house when y’all got home?” I wondered.

  I hadn’t actually seen the Valentine house, but I’d heard that it’d been almost ruined.

  “The main house was bulldozed. The barn and hands’ quarters was damaged, but the town and Nico had it fixed up before we ever came home,” he confessed.

  Without thinking, I reached forward and caught his hand in mine, giving it a little squeeze.

  “You have some really nice people here that love you,” I told him. “I’d heard a lot about you before I even met you. Though, saying that, I never expected you to be able to pick someone’s pocket before, or cheat them out of a wedding ring.”

  His lips formed into a wide smile. “Some people just deserve to have their shit stolen.”

  I was the one to laugh at that.

  “Let’s go decorate my tree. You can do Codie’s some other time,” he suggested.

  And that was exactly what I did.

  I ignored my to-do list, had an amazing meal that tasted magnificent and wasn’t healthy in the least, and spent the night with a man that was quickly reminding me that the man I used to have wasn’t much of a man at all.

  Chapter 5

  I want to be a nice person, but people are just so stupid.

  -Desi’s secret thoughts

  Desi

  There comes a time in life that one should just admit defeat.

  Like right now.

  I stared at the clock and inwardly groaned.

  Five in the morning.

  Five. In. The. Morning.

  Who in their right mind got up willingly this early in the morning?

  My phone chirped from the nightstand where I’d thrown it after turning off my alarm, and I looked at it hesitantly.

  Then last night all came back to me.

  Decorating the Valentine house with Codie, Callum, Ace, Banks, Darby and all the others.

  Surprisingly, despite my worry earlier in the day after our lunch, I’d had a great time. Callum and I had picked out decorations for a tree at Codie’s house, and he hadn’t even blinked an eye at spending over three hundred dollars on ribbon and ornaments.

  Even more surprisingly, he’d spent quite a bit of the time helping choose said ornaments.

  After decorating, eating dinner there and laughing my ass off with Callum and his brothers, I’d known that Callum could be a changing point for me.

  Smiling now instead of scowling, I rolled over and picked up my phone, grinning even wider when I saw Callum’s name on my phone.

  Callum: This is your wake-up call. Hope you actually managed to set your alarm and wake up. Don’t make me come over there and pull you out of bed.

  Mouth widening into a smile, I quickly typed out a reply.

  Desi: I’m up, but I can tell you right now that my mood is a hell of a lot worse than it was yesterday. Not only am I tired, but I’m craving a bagel and cream cheese like nobody’s business. Even one of my cakes is sounding good.

  Callum immediately replied.

  Callum: You should look into making cakes that taste good but are good for you. Ones that have no artificial sweeteners in them and won’t force me to run four miles after I have a slice.

  That was actually a really good idea.

  Desi: What do you think the demand would be for those? I’ve actually considered it before. I was asked to make a wedding cake a year ago for a diabetic couple. It had about two carbs per slice and ended up being fairly tasty despite not being able to use the good stuff in the cake.

  Callum: I’d buy one right now if it was available.

  Last night I’d learned that Callum was diabetic. He’d had Type 1 diabetes since he was a young kid. And since he’d had such a high carb lunch, he’d practically had to shoot himself up with insulin later that night.

  As I’d watched with surprise and a little bit of fear, he’d explained that although he was diabetic, his health didn’t stop him from indulging every once in a while.

  Desi: I’ll make you one. I just have to figure out how to make my legs and hands work first. I’m not sure I’ll be good at this Spartan preparation thing. I want to literally die, and I haven’t even made it out of bed yet.

  Callum: If you don’t show up at the gym, I’ll come looking for you. Trust me when I say that it’ll get better once you work out some of that soreness. Today is going to be all legs anyway since yesterday we focused on arms. Different muscle groups!

  I wasn’t sure that I cared at this point. Even though the workout didn’t focus on legs, they were incredibly sore regardless.

  So sore, in fact, that I dreaded sitting down on the toilet.

  But he was right. I’d feel better once I got started. I knew that.

  Sitting up with a loud sigh, I threw the covers off the bed and stood up with a loud groan.

  “Fuccckkk,” I grumbled.

  Everything, and I do mean everything, hurt.

  Even the muscles in my fingers hurt.

  How was that?

  Turning the shower on in my bathroom—
the bathroom that I’d picked out as ‘mine’ the moment that I moved out of my marriage bedroom—I waited for it to get hot and started stripping my clothes off.

  I looked at myself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror next to the bathroom and tried to picture what I’d look like if I lost weight.

  Not if.

  When.

  I would lose weight, no matter what.

  I’d also build muscle.

  I would. I would. I would.

  Confident now that I was in the right frame of mind, I stepped into the shower without taking my hair down.

  Once I was fully awake and ready to start my day, I got out, got dressed, and headed down the stairs to the kitchen with my tennis shoes and my socks in my hand, only to come to a jarring stop the moment I breached the threshold.

  I’d expected to go out to my kitchen and start the coffee. Not to go out to the kitchen and find my ex-husband sitting at the bar drinking my coffee and looking like he was there to stay.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked stiffly.

  Mal looked up, dismissed me as usual, and then went back to the paper—my paper—that he was reading.

  “Mal!” I barked. “What are you doing in my house?”

  Mal sighed and dropped the paper to the counter, and that was when I saw that he folded it in that annoying way that he did.

  Most people just read the paper in sections. Mal would read it, then dog-ear the sections that he read, then move to the next section in his hand. I hated it and always had. It always put a crease right through the middle of an article, smudging the words.

  “Yes, Desidara?” he teased.

  I gritted my teeth.

  “Get out of my house.”

  “Our house,” he corrected me. “And it’ll be our house until next month when I marry Margie. She’s decided it’s probably best for us to live apart until then.”

  “Actually,” I corrected him right back. “This isn’t your house anymore. It’s mine. It says so on the title, and we had it settled in court. Mine.”

  “My father helps pay for it,” he countered. “And my father is mine, not yours. So, therefore, the house is mine by default.”

  “It’s not,” I disagreed. “Now leave.”

  He leaned back in his chair, making himself more comfortable.

  I knew he wasn’t going to leave, either.

  My alarm beeped, signaling that I would have to go or risk being late, and I made a decision.

  Walking to the counter where I’d set all my stuff out the night before, I snatched up my stuff.

  I did, however, grit my teeth instead of tearing him a new one when I saw that he’d half eaten my protein trail mix that I’d made.

  Goddammit.

  “You better be gone by the time I get home from the gym,” I said to him.

  “Or what?” he questioned.

  “Or else,” I snapped.

  With that, I stomped out the door that led to the garage and got even more pissed when I found his stupid car parked right next to mine inside the garage.

  Therefore, item one on my agenda would be to get new locks. Item two would be to figure out how to unprogram his garage door opener.

  After making a call to his dad, I hung up and drove as sedately as my mood would allow to the gym, arriving only five minutes late instead of ten.

  By the time I got into the gym, I was in a very bad mood.

  I was also in the mood to start smashing the weights around and picturing Mal’s face as I slammed them.

  When I walked through the door, everyone was already started on their workout.

  I walked straight over to Codie and glared.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked as she slammed the sandbell down on the ground.

  Thankful that she’d set up my station for me, I started slamming the sandbell down onto the ground, wishing Mal’s head was on the ground where I was slamming it.

  “I walked out of my bedroom today and found Mal sitting at my counter, drinking my coffee,” I snarled.

  Codie stopped and stared at me. “What?” she shrieked, garnering the attention of those around us.

  “Yeah,” I continued to snarl. “He was there because he and ‘Margie’ decided to live apart until they get married next month. And he decided that since I’m living in our house alone, he’s going to live there!”

  Codie picked up her sandbell and started to slam it down.

  Colt called a halt to the movement then began to explain the next exercise.

  “And what did you do?” she asked.

  I gritted my teeth and sat down on the mat before going into the plank hold just like Colt described.

  “I left him there in the kitchen because he wouldn’t leave,” I admitted. “But on the way, I called his father and told him to get him out before I brought a gun home and shot him.”

  “What did Big Daddy say?” she panted. “And have I told you how much I hate you for making me do this today?”

  My eyes came up and lit on Callum, who was doing his own workout in the corner separate from us.

  “No Ace today?” I asked.

  She shrugged.

  Knowing when to take a hint, I told him what Malloy, aka ‘Big Daddy’ to Codie, had to say.

  “He said that he would get him out immediately,” I sighed. “I wish I didn’t have to keep involving him in our shit.”

  “Time,” Colt bellowed. “Burpees are up next!”

  There was a collective groan that filled the room.

  ***

  “Hey, Des,” I heard called from behind me.

  I looked over my shoulder, hitching my bag up higher, and blinked when I saw Callum staring at me with concern.

  I stopped in the middle of the doorway and stared.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I thought about lying.

  Really, I did.

  But then the truth started to pour out of my mouth.

  And when I was done explaining my bad day, I was even more surprised that I felt better afterward.

  Also, that Callum looked downright pissed.

  He turned to look at his brother who was busy talking to Codie and called, “Hey, Ace. I’m going to ride home with Des.”

  Ace tipped his hat at his brother then went back to his conversation with Codie, who looked more than miffed.

  “Let’s go.” He grabbed me by the back of the arm and started steering me toward the parking lot before I could even process his words.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, not fighting him in the least.

  “We’re going to go back to your place,” he said. “And we’re going to figure out what the fuck is going on.”

  I frowned. “I know exactly what is going on.”

  He made a sound in the back of his throat.

  “Your ex-husband shouldn’t be able to get into your house at all,” he said as he walked me to my car. “Give me your keys.”

  I handed them to him without thought or question, then blinked.

  What was it about this man that made me do things unquestioningly?

  I was not this woman!

  I always had questions.

  Always!

  Yet, five minutes later, I found myself sitting passively in my passenger seat—a seat I’d never occupied before—and giving him directions to my house.

  “That used to be all fields when I lived here as a kid,” he said. “How new was the house when you bought it?”

  I thought about that for a few long seconds.

  “About a year and a half, I believe,” I admitted. “We bought it from his uncle and aunt who built it new. There used to be an old farmhouse about two or three acres over from the house now. Do you remember the Scryvers?”

  “We used to own the land that butted up against your property,” he said. “I remember the Scryvers. They were assholes who used to hate us.”

  I snorted out a laugh.

/>   “They’re still assholes,” I admitted. “Can you believe that when we bought the house, April tried to instruct me on what I was and wasn’t allowed to change?”

  Callum rolled his eyes, making me want to laugh all over again.

  The ridiculousness of the comment from April the day that we’d signed the title had made me laugh, too.

  The sad thing was, Mal didn’t want to change it because he thought it ‘meant something.’

  It didn’t.

  It was all gaudy crap that I’d hated the moment I saw it.

  And when Mal moved out last year, I’d taken no time in ripping off the ostentatious wallpaper, and the wall sconces that made me want to vomit.

  The crown molding would be the next to go if I had to continue to live in that house.

  “Did you change the locks when Mal moved out?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I did. I gave a key to his dad, though. Which I assume is where he got the key to get in.”

  “Do you have a security system?” he questioned.

  I nodded.

  “Did you change that passcode?” he asked.

  I opened my mouth to reply, then closed it.

  I winced.

  “No,” I cursed.

  “I’ll help you do all that.” He pulled into the hardware store’s parking lot. “Let’s go get some new doorknobs and locks.”

  Before I could get out, he held up his hand. “You stay here. Not to say you look like shit or anything, but…”

  His eyes went to my chest where I had quite an ample amount of boob sweat going on.

  I burst out laughing.

  “Thank you for that,” I teased. “I would’ve hated heading out to a hardware store with boob sweat.”

  His face flushed. “I just…”

  I snickered. “I know what you just. Go, I’ll wait in the car like a good little girl.”

  His eyes took me in, then he shook his head. “I wouldn’t call you a girl. Quite far from it, actually.”

  With that, he took off while gently slamming the car door closed behind him.

  I flushed to the roots at his veiled comment.

  Holy hotness, Batman!

  Had Callum Valentine ever shown me any desire before Mal, I would’ve jumped all over him like white on rice.