However, I was a smart woman. I’d already been burned once. There was no burning ever again—at least when it came to an attractive man.
And Callum Valentine was the most attractive man I’d ever seen in my life.
Even his older brother, Ace, wasn’t nearly as attractive as Callum.
I didn’t know what it was about Callum, either. His magnetism. His sex appeal. His smile or the look that came into his eyes when he spoke to me.
All I had to do was turn my eyes to him, and I started feeling strange.
“Whew.” Callum fell into my car, startling me. “It’s cold.”
I licked my lips.
“Very cold,” I agreed. “It’s supposed to drop into the twenties tonight. Hey…”
He looked over at me while also pressing the button to start my car.
“Yeah?” he rumbled.
“Do you think when the news people say bring your pets inside, they also mean farm animals?” I questioned.
Chapter 6
I might look like I’m listening to you, but in my head I’m thinking about a nap.
-Callum to Ace
Callum
When I’d seen her come inside the gym in a rush this morning, looking pissed as hell, I’d felt something deep inside of me shift.
Change somehow.
I wasn’t sure what had changed at this moment in time, but I know that the idea of her having to deal with Mal in a place that was supposed to be safe to her had really, really pissed me off.
So much so, in fact, that I’d found myself volunteering to go to her place when I had miles of fence to run with my brother.
Banks was going to be pissed, but he’d get over it.
“You want to know if farm animals count as pets?” I asked. “Or do you want to know if I should be telling you to bring your backyard cow inside?”
Her lips twitched as I accelerated out of the parking lot and to her house.
I knew exactly where she lived because I’d done a few summer jobs for the Scryvers back when I was a young kid looking to make a few extra bucks.
My mother had realized that the only way her kids were going to get anything good was to pay for it themselves, so she approved me having a job so young.
The Scryvers were also one of the only people that would be willing to hire a kid to bale hay and mow their back pasture with their tractor without first questioning my father to see if it was okay.
“Yes,” she said. “I have eight chickens in a pen outside my door, and I want to know if I can leave them in their coop tonight, or if I should move them into the garage or something.”
I thought about that for a second.
“They have an enclosed coop?” I asked.
She nodded once.
“Then I’d just leave them. They’re animals. If it was going to be in the negatives and snowing, I’d definitely suggest possibly bringing them inside, but since we live in Texas, and it’s only going to be in the twenties for a short amount of time, then I wouldn’t worry about it,” I answered.
Her shoulders drooped.
“Or, if you want to bring them inside, bring them inside. It’s not going to matter any. Other than you not having anywhere to put them,” I explained.
She seemed to perk up at that.
“You like your chickens?” I guessed.
She smiled then.
“Yeah,” she answered honestly. “I do. I got them after Mal left. He never wanted chickens. Said they were nasty. And they are gross—or can be—but mostly I enjoy the hell out of them.”
“Chickens are fun,” I agreed. “Until you start getting a shit ton of them like we have, then they just become work.”
I pulled around the last bend in the road that led to her house, and she pointed at her driveway.
“That’s my gate,” she said.
She reached up and opened the gate with her garage door opener, and I pulled to a stop just inside the gate.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m going to change this code, too,” I answered. “Bring that opener here and we’ll get it fixed up.”
She did, standing next to me, slightly shivering as the sweat started to dry on her clothes.
The wind really was brisk, and with the cold front blowing through and the temperature already dropping, it would only be a matter of time before I’d need a jacket myself.
Luckily changing the code to get in was easy, and I handed it back to her moments later.
When I rounded the car and dropped inside, it was to find her staring at the garage door opener with a look of frustration on her face.
“What?” I asked.
“I had no clue that he’d do this,” she admitted. “When he left, he made it sound like he was really done with me. But he’s done nothing but make my life a living hell since he left.”
“I have a feeling that Margie is mostly responsible for that,” I admitted. “I remember a few times when she went out with Ace. God forbid Ace choose to hang out with his brothers over her. She’d find a way to make him feel like shit. Or to call him. Or to insinuate herself into our plans, making it about her and not about family.”
“I hate her,” she said. “I’ve hated her since the minute I found out that she was the other woman.”
“That’s a good enough reason right there,” I admitted as I accelerated down her driveway. “She just makes it too easy to hate her.”
“She really does.” She sighed when she saw the front door. “Malloy is here. And so is Mal.”
I grunted out a reply and parked the car where she indicated. “This your other car?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s Mal’s.”
I gritted my teeth and didn’t say a thing until we reached the door.
“Just go with what I’m about to say, okay?” I hesitated at the threshold.
She looked at me with wide brown eyes and then nodded once.
“Yes,” she breathed. “Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it.”
Why did that one statement make me feel like I’d been poleaxed?
“Let’s go,” I croaked, taking her hand.
When I entered the kitchen, I was surprised by the opulence of it.
The place didn’t look like something Desi would like at all… not that I knew her that well or anything, but I felt like I knew her enough to know that her taste wouldn’t be stuffy and opulent.
The place was all crown molding, gaudy gold light fixtures, highly detailed cabinetry, and a hunter green granite countertop.
It screamed money in the worst way.
And there, sitting at the counter, was Mal.
Malloy, his father, saw me before Mal did, otherwise Mal wouldn’t have said what he said next.
“I don’t see why I can’t stay here, Father,” Mal said. “It’s not like the fat ass needs all this space.”
I clenched my teeth and barely resisted the urge to yank him off the barstool by his hundred-dollar haircut.
Instead, I raised my brow at Malloy, waiting for him to correct his son.
Which he did in the next second.
“I will not entertain you talking about my daughter like that,” Malloy growled.
Mal rolled his eyes. “She’s not your daughter. When we divorced, she ceased to be anything to you but a nuisance.”
“Funny,” I drawled. “That’s the vibe I’m getting when I think about what you are to Desi. A nuisance.”
Mal stiffened and turned, his eyes coming to me.
“Callum,” he said. “What a surprise.”
His lie tasted bitter, even to my own tongue.
Little fucker.
“Callum Valentine, as I live and breathe,” Malloy drawled as he rounded the counter and came straight for me.
I offered him my hand when he got close enough, grinning like a fool at the old man.
Malloy Stevens taught me a lot of things when I wa
s a kid. How to throw a baseball. How to swim. How to pop open a beer that didn’t have a twist-off top.
“How’s it going, ol’ man?” I asked him, taking in the exhausted look in his eyes.
Something in Malloy’s face changed.
“I’m good,” he lied through his teeth.
My brows rose as I called him on his lie without verbally voicing the words.
He shook his head at me, asking me without words not to pursue it with who I guessed was his kid around, and I nodded at his request.
I may not address it now, but now that I knew that something was going on, you damn well better bet that I’d be checking up on him the next chance I got.
“Well then, maybe you can tell me why my woman came to the gym today telling me how her ex-husband had walked into her house while she was asleep and refused to leave?” I asked, sounding just as dangerous as I’d hoped.
Mal stiffened.
I turned my gaze solely on him. “I told you to leave her alone when I saw you and your woman at the diner.”
Mal blinked. “I thought you were joking… why on Earth would you be with her?”
The way he sneered at the woman who was silently trying to tug her hand from mine made me want to ram my fist straight into his esophagus.
“I wasn’t,” I said, deadly calm.
Malloy cleared his throat.
“Desi, dear.” He smiled at her. “How are you?”
I didn’t let her hand go when he went in for a hug, causing Desi to awkwardly pat his back with one hand, and then frown when she felt the bones underneath his clothes.
“Malloy, you’re losing weight,” she said softly. “Are you trying to?”
Mal snorted from his seat. “Maybe you’re just getting fatter.”
The way he said it so low under his breath made me think he didn’t want anyone to hear what he had to say, but unlucky for him, I’d always had superb hearing.
Letting Desi’s hand go, I walked to Mal and said two words. “Leave. Now.”
Mal stiffened even further. “I will not.”
“If you don’t leave, I’ll make you leave,” I snapped harshly. “Now go, or else.”
“Or else what?” he snapped.
Not wanting Malloy to see his son get beaten to a pulp, I grabbed Mal by the collar of his Polo shirt and helped him from his seat.
His hands went to my wrist to tug my hand away, but I held strong and frog-marched him out the door.
When the garage door closed behind us, I tossed him unceremoniously in the direction of his car.
He slammed against the panel so hard that a small dent appeared where his elbows hit.
I grinned at the curse that came out of his mouth.
“Leave, and don’t come back,” I ordered. “This is your one and only warning. I know for a fact that your father would willingly take you in. Try going there next time Margie gets a wild hair and kicks you out.”
Mal narrowed his eyes and stiffened his jaw, and I knew that there were some words that were about to escape his lips that I wasn’t going to like.
And he didn’t disappoint.
“That fat bitch doesn’t deserve your concern,” he snapped. “And this has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with us.”
I snorted. “It has everything to do with me when I’m the one who’s sleeping in bed next to her.”
His eyes narrowed. “She hasn’t been dating you long. It’ll pass when you realize what a fat slo—”
I was on him in seconds.
“Don’t,” I snarled. “Just get in your car and leave, last warning.”
“Mal, leave,” Malloy ordered softly. “It’s done. You can go to my house, and we’ll discuss this further then.”
Mal turned his nose up at me, then got into his dented car and accelerated way too fast down the driveway, narrowly missing taking out Desi’s back bumper before he swung it wide to pull forward.
“My son…” Malloy started.
“Is a dick bag, and always has been,” I finished for him. “The only reason he’s not in jail right now is because you literally do everything but wipe his ass for him.”
Malloy didn’t say anything.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Mal’s not here, which I’m assuming is the reason you didn’t want to say anything inside. What’s wrong, and what can I do to help?”
Malloy’s eyes stayed on his son all the way down the driveway, then winced when he screeched out of it and accelerated up the street.
“I have stage four pancreatic cancer,” he said quietly. “And I’m dying.”
I swallowed hard. “Have you been to the doctor? What did they say?”
That’s when I saw Desi, looking devastated in the doorway with her hand covering her mouth and tears forming in her eyes.
My gaze went from her back to Malloy, who was looking at the driveway blankly.
“They found it on a fluke test that they ran.” He shook his head. “I went in for a crick in my neck and came out with stage four cancer. They said that I could try to fight it but… there’s no use. They say that even with trying to fight it or keep it contained, it’ll still kill me. It’s too far advanced. I could live for another three months max.”
“Malloy,” Desi whispered.
Malloy’s head dropped and he groaned.
“Dangit,” he said.
That was when Desi wrapped her hands around him from behind.
He sighed, long and loud, then turned in her arms and wrapped her up in his large frame.
“It’ll be okay, darlin’,” he murmured.
She shook her head. “But I’ll miss you.”
“And I’ll miss you,” he answered right back. “But, saying that, you don’t need me now. You’re free of my son… which is all I’ve ever wanted.”
My eyebrows shot up at that announcement.
“I know,” she murmured.
Malloy, who was resting his cheek on the top of Desi’s head, looked at me and grinned.
“She didn’t tell you that I told her not to marry my son in the beginning?” he asked.
I shook my head.
There was a lot of stuff that Desi and I hadn’t talked about seeing as we weren’t really seeing each other. But Malloy didn’t know that.
“I did,” he said. “I tried to warn her, but at first, she thought it was because I didn’t want her marrying my son. That she wasn’t good enough. But I couldn’t have her thinking that, so I had to enlighten her to my son’s true character. Unfortunately, she didn’t heed my warnings and ended up hitching herself to a man that was still quite unable to take care of himself.”
For a big bad rancher like Malloy, he sure did talk eloquently.
And he cared.
Boy, did he care.
He followed up with us more after what happened with my family than Mal did. He called every Sunday to talk to each of us boys. Checked up on Georgia. Honestly, I was fairly sure that he was the one responsible for fixing up the old homestead that our grandparents had lived in once upon a time, and restored it back to livable conditions.
“What now?” Desi asked, wiping her eyes as she pulled away from Malloy.
“Now we get your house paid off so you don’t have to live in debt. Because I’m fairly sure after I’m gone, Mal’s not going to pay for your house out of the goodness of his heart.” He paused. “I’ve started a new will… but the bulk of the money is going to my son.”
Desi nodded as if she understood completely.
“Honestly,” she said softly, “I could sell it to you. Then he can have that, too. That’s all he wants.”
His eyes went thoughtful for a moment.
“He wants this house because it means something more to him than he’s willing to admit,” Malloy explained. “He’s bitter because you got the house. He’s mad that I suggested that you get it in your name only, because if he’d had it in his, y’all would’ve had
to split it. He thinks that I choose you over him, and honestly… he’s right.”
“Then why leave your fortune to him?” I asked curiously.
Malloy looked down at Desi, who looked away.
“I will not be the reason Mal hates me even more,” she said stubbornly. “When he told me he was leaving the money to me after the divorce, I kind of threw a small fit.”
Malloy let out a hearty laugh. “A small fit.” He chuckled. “Oh, that’s rich.”
Desi scrunched up her nose.
“Her small fit was not speaking to me for two weeks,” he explained. “And I hated it. So, I agreed. Albeit reluctantly.”
Desi shrugged. “Mal already hates me. I don’t need to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life.”
“He would never do anything to harm you,” Malloy explained, trying to defend his decision.
“No?” she asked. “Then why was he in my house this morning when he knew I didn’t want him here? Why is he making checks out with him and his new fiancée on them? Why is he stealing my mother’s engagement ring and giving it to his new fiancée? Why is he doing anything that he’s doing?” She paused. “I have no idea what I did to him. None. But he feels that I’ve wronged him in some way, and I will not continue to lord the things you give me over his head… which is why I want you to buy the mortgage. Take over payments. Whatever. I know that you’re friends with the bank manager that gave me the loan. If this is what he wants… he should have it.”
He blew out a breath. “My son has always been jealous of my time. When I remarried, he went off the rails.”
I snorted, remembering that vividly.
Mal hadn’t just gone off the rails. He’d gone off his rocker.
He’d done shit that should’ve never, ever been done to another human being.
He made his new stepmother’s life a living hell, and eventually Malloy was forced to choose his son’s well-being over his love for his new wife.
Pretty much, Mal had ended up being his normal usual asshole self when he didn’t get what he wanted—his father’s undivided attention—and had proceeded to drive a wedge between Malloy and his new wife until she was forced to make the only decision that she could—divorce.
“So you’re saying that when Desi came into the picture, and you started treating her like your daughter-in-law, he started to resent her?” I guessed.
Crazy Heifer Page 5