“Then I should be honest, too,” she said. “I’m afraid, Tyler. Of myself. Of what might happen.”
His hand gently cupped the side of her face and Callie wondered if a person could actually melt like ice cream in the hot sun.
“Nothing is going to happen unless we both want it to happen,” he murmured softly.
Maybe not physically, she thought. But what about her heart? With each minute she was with this man, she felt a little piece of it being lost to him. How much more of it could she stand to lose?
When she made no effort to reply he said, “You believe me, don’t you?”
She had to believe him. The connection she felt to him was too deep to start running scared now.
Don’t be afraid.
Winona’s words zinged through her mind, but just as quickly flew out of her head as she watched Tyler’s lips slowly lower toward hers.
The contact set off a tiny explosion inside her and this time Callie didn’t worry about who or what was on his mind. Nor did she try to tamp down her heated response to his kiss. He wanted her and she wanted him. Nothing else mattered.
As his lips probed hers, she felt his arms tightening around her, drawing her closer to the hard length of his body. He smelled like a man. Tasted like a man. And Callie couldn’t get enough of him.
She was close to running out of oxygen when he finally lifted his head and she opened her eyes to see his blue eyes were half closed and clouded with desire.
“Let’s go back to the couch,” he whispered.
Nodding, she reached for his hand and led him out to the living room. A quick glance in Maeve’s direction told her the baby was still sleeping peacefully.
Tyler’s gaze followed hers and he spoke quietly, “She isn’t going to wake anytime soon.”
He tugged her down on the couch and straight into his arms. Callie sighed with longing as he pressed his cheek against hers and threaded his fingers through her hair.
“This feels so good,” she whispered against his ear. “To be close to you like this.”
“I think I’ve wanted this from the first moment I saw you, Callie. I don’t understand it. And maybe I shouldn’t try.”
She pulled her head back far enough to look at him. “No. Let’s not try to analyze whatever this is. Let’s just enjoy.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “That I can do.” With both hands cradling her face, he drew her lips to his.
Callie’s senses took off in a dizzying whirl as he kissed her, slowly at first, and then more deeply, until her entire body was sizzling, aching to get closer to his.
Her mind was little more than a muddle of hot desire as she curled her arms around his neck and opened her mouth to accept the gentle probe of his tongue. When it slipped past her teeth, she gloried in the taste of him and the slow, seductive inspection he made of the ribbed roof of her mouth and the sharp edges of her teeth.
When the necessity for oxygen eventually forced their mouths to part, he buried his face against the curve of her neck.
“Callie, I wasn’t expecting this to happen,” he said hoarsely. “For us to get—”
She finished for him. “Get a little crazy with each other?”
“Get out of hand. That’s what I was going to say. Because none of what just happened with us was crazy. It was incredible.” He lifted his head and looked at her. “But I think we...uh, should pull on the reins a bit. Give ourselves time to process what’s happening between us.”
A part of her was disappointed. Yet in the rational part of her mind that was still able to think, she understood that to rush him would certainly cause her to lose him. “You’re right, Tyler. We should slow down.”
He stroked his fingers through her hair and Callie realized Tyler didn’t have to be kissing her to light a flame inside her. All he had to do was touch her in the simplest of ways.
“Then you understand?”
“Completely.”
Frowning, he pulled back as his eyes inspected her flushed face. “You look regretful now, Callie. Are you wishing none of this had happened?”
“I’m not wishing anything of the sort. It’s just that you seem to click a switch in me.”
A faint smile quirked his lips and Callie very much wanted to kiss the gentle expression. She wanted to wrap her arms around him, pull him down with her onto the couch and persuade him to make love to her. But she didn’t. She had to wait for him. She had to respect the fact that he needed time.
“You click two switches in me and neither one of them is the off switch.”
Callie smiled back at him. “Would you like to finish your coffee? I’ll pour you a fresh cup.”
A soft glow appeared in his blue eyes as he touched a forefinger to the middle of her lips. “I’d rather do something else. But for now, I’ll settle for the coffee.”
Chapter Six
The afternoon was hot with hardly a breeze to offer any sort of relief as Tyler and his father rode their horses over rocky foothills and draws to push a small herd of Angus to a pasture on the far north side of the ranch. The little two-man cattle drive had taken nearly three hours to complete, but the open gate ahead of them was the end of the journey.
To keep the cattle moving toward their final destination, Tyler popped the bridle reins against the leg of his scarred chaps, while a few yards to his right, Hutch called out to the stragglers.
“Yip! Yip! Ho, cattle! Get along through there!”
When the last calf raced through the opening to join his mama, Tyler called over to Hutch. “You keep them back, Dad. I’ll get down and shut the gate.”
Hutch held up a gloved hand to acknowledge he’d heard his son’s suggestion and Tyler quickly dismounted to fasten the slatted metal gate.
“It’s good we managed to get this last herd moved today,” Hutch said as Tyler swung himself back into the saddle. “Rain is supposed to hit by the end of the week and I don’t have to tell you how many times we’ve had to pull stuck calves from those bogs at the foot of the draw.”
“Too many times,” Tyler agreed as he reined his bay horse alongside his father’s gray mare and pulled the gelding to a stop. “They’ll be high and dry now.”
Hutch reached for a canteen hanging from the saddle horn and unscrewed the lid. After swigging several swallows of tepid water, he said, “Yeah. We just need to keep an eye on the windmill. It’s the only water supply for this pasture.”
Tyler mopped the sweat from his face with a bandana, then jammed the yellow cloth into the back pocket of his jeans. “I’ll do it. I like to ride out to this part of the ranch anyway.”
Hutch gazed around at the foothills dotted with juniper and the grass valley sweeping to the south. “It’s lonesome out here, but it’s damned pretty,” he mused aloud. “Your mother often used to say she wanted a house out here so that she could look out at the valley from the kitchen window. I finally convinced her that it’s too far off the grid to build here. Cost a fortune to run power lines this far.”
Tyler glanced over at his father’s tall, imposing image. Hutch Abernathy was the epitome of a Montana rancher. Even at sixty-four, he was still a strong, vibrant man who sat the saddle better than most men half his age. Years of working outside in the elements had turned his face a leather-worn tan and etched deep lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth. Gray spattered the dark hair at his temples and the day-old whiskers on his jaws.
People that knew the family often remarked that Tyler was a younger version of his father. And he supposed they did resemble each other. But their likeness stopped with their outer appearance. If Tyler lived to be a hundred, he’d never fill Hutch Abernathy’s boots.
His father had always been a devoted husband. After all these years, he was still madly in love with his wife and he’d raised five sons the right way with plenty of firmness and even more love. And through it all,
he’d managed to keep the Flying A productive and profitable. Not an easy feat considering they’d gone through droughts and blizzards, market crashes and a wild fire that had destroyed a third of the ranch’s grazing land.
“You look troubled, son. Is everything okay with Maeve?”
Damn. How was it that his father could read his face and pick up on his thoughts with a single glance? Compared to Hutch, Winona Cobbs was an amateur mind reader.
“She’s fine. When I left her with Mom this morning, she was crawling all over the kitchen floor like a happy little bug.”
Tyler couldn’t tell his father the real reason for the preoccupied frown on his face. Just thinking of how much he’d wanted to make love to Callie two nights ago was enough to fill him with a confusing mixture of guilt and need.
Hutch grinned as he lowered the brim of his Stetson and squinted into the sun. “She’ll be walking before long. Then you’ll really have your hands full.”
That particular milestone in his daughter’s development was something Tyler had been thinking about a lot lately. Since Luanne’s death, he’d vowed to make Maeve his first priority, and he’d kept that promise by giving the baby around-the-clock attention and care. But there were times, like today, when certain jobs on the ranch made it impossible to take the baby along.
“When Maeve starts walking, she’ll run Mom ragged. I can’t let that happen. I’m going to have to come up with a different solution for babysitting.”
“Watching Maeve is a highlight for your mother. I figure she’d have to get mighty rowdy before she could run Hannah ragged.”
Tyler shook his head. “Maeve is my responsibility. Not Mom’s. Dean keeps suggesting that I hire a nanny. But hell, Dad, who could I trust? The woman would definitely need to be good with childcare, but she’d also have to be dependable enough to show up whenever she was needed. No. I don’t like the idea of a stranger coming in as Maeve’s nanny. And all my cousins have jobs of their own.”
“Are you telling me that the worry over Maeve’s childcare is what’s been putting that far-off look on your face?” Hutch asked.
Tyler pushed his gray Stetson back on his head and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. “Not exactly, Dad. I just have a bunch of things on my mind, that’s all.”
Beneath him, the gelding moved restlessly. As far as the horse was concerned, he’d already figured out that the job at this spot on the ranch was over and it was time to head back to the barn. But Tyler knew his father wouldn’t be ready to leave until he’d had his say.
“I hear you’ve been seeing a young lady in town,” Hutch said. “Is she causing you problems?”
Tyler stared at the middle of his saddle horn rather than meet his father’s inquisitive look.
“I guess Mom told you about Callie.”
“She said you took her to dinner at DJ’s Deluxe the other night,” Hutch told him. “And a friend of mine mentioned that he’d seen the three of you at Bronco Burgers.”
“Word gets around this town awfully damned fast.”
“Is it supposed to be a secret?”
“No.” Tyler forced himself to look at his father. “But I hate to think how people talk. They’ll be saying ‘Tyler’s wife is hardly cold in her grave and he’s already found another woman.’”
“Are you honestly worried about what other people think? Or more concerned about what you’re thinking?”
Tyler frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Just that I figure you’re agonizing over the fact that you’ve decided to live again. To let yourself look at another woman. You feel like you’re cheating on Luanne. Even though she’s dead and gone.”
Scowling, Tyler muttered, “That’s a damned brutal way of putting it.”
“You’re a grown man now, son. I don’t intend to play softball with you.”
He absently flipped the ends of the reins back and forth across the cantle of the saddle. “Well, just think about it, Dad. If you lost Mom, how would you feel about dating again? Even marrying again?”
“I can’t really say, Ty. A man can’t be sure about such things until he’s actually faced with the situation,” Hutch said. “Your mother and I have talked about it before. She’s told me that if anything should happen to her, she wants me to marry again. And she truly means it, because you see, she loves me and wants me to be happy. And I’ve told her the same thing. Because I’d never want her to feel chained to my ghost. I’d want her to keep living. To love again. That’s what we’re put on this earth to do, son. Don’t you agree?”
“Sure, I agree,” Tyler conceded. “But it’s different for me.”
Hutch gave him a lopsided smile. “One of these days, you’ll figure out it isn’t different for you.” He reined the gray mare to the south and the Flying A Ranch yard. “Come on. We still need to repair that stretch of fence down by the creek. Unless Dean or Garrett remembered to take care of it.”
“I doubt it,” Tyler said of his older brothers. “They decided to take off to the horse sale in Kalispell. Didn’t they tell you?”
Hutch cursed under his breath. “I haven’t heard anything about a horse sale! Do those boys seriously think we need more horses on the Flying A? Ten of our mares will foal this coming spring. Hell, even as the count stands right now, I cringe every time I look at the feed bill.”
Tyler smiled in spite of himself. “Aw, Dad, they love horses—and who’s to blame for that?”
Chuckling, Hutch nudged the mare into a long trot and Tyler followed at his side.
“Okay, Ty,” Hutch told him. “Let’s go fix the fence and pray your brothers come home with an empty horse trailer.”
The two men fell silent as they rode south from the foothills and across a prairie of green grass dotted here and there with purple sage. As they traveled, Tyler’s mind revisited his father’s words of advice. Hutch had meant for them to be positive, uplifting, and Tyler appreciated his effort. But even his own father hadn’t known the depth of agony he’d gone through in his marriage. There’d been a point when Tyler had come to realize that Luanne hadn’t loved him. And he was beginning to recognize that he might not have really loved her. At least, not in the same sense as his parents loved each other.
Now there was Callie to think about. Oh Lord, she was all he’d been thinking about. Being with her made him happy. That was simple enough to figure out. But did he have a right to be happy? And being this torn, how could he ask Callie to have any sort of relationship with him? It wouldn’t be fair to her.
And yet the more he pondered about Callie, the more he realized he couldn’t just stop seeing her. He couldn’t go back to the dark, lonely pit he’d been living in these past six months. He could only hope that the more they were together, the more he could put the past behind him.
He looked over at his father. “Dad?”
“Yeah. I’m listening.”
“When you met Mom for the first time, did you know she was the one? I’m talking about knowing deep down where it really counts.”
Hutch pulled the mare into a walk as a thoughtful smile crossed his face. “I think she hated the very sight of me. But yes, I knew. Something about her voice and the way she looked with her face all soft and pretty and her eyes like blue flames—I told myself that she was the woman I wanted to be with the rest of my life. Now, if you ask your mother, she’ll probably tell you a different story. That she had to chase me around for six whole weeks before I caved in and proposed to her. It was actually four weeks, but Hannah likes to exaggerate.”
Tyler only wished he’d taken four weeks before he’d persuaded Luanne to marry him. But his stay in Chicago had only been for two weeks and he had not wanted to leave the city without her. What a young, immature fool he’d been. And Luanne had paid the biggest price for his mistake.
“Ty, are you getting serious ideas about this woman?”
Glancing over at his father, Tyler did his best to give him a reassuring smile. “We’ve only known each other a short time. Right now, we just enjoy each other’s company. And I don’t want to jump into something that I might later regret.”
Hutch studied him for a short moment before turning his attention to the trail they were following through a stand of sage.
“Just don’t let yourself be too afraid to jump, Ty.”
* * *
“You’re leaving work early?” Saundra asked as she watched Callie clear the top of her desk.
“Only thirty minutes. I’m caught up on everything and, since today has been slow, Evan is okay with me taking off early.”
Saundra glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one could overhear her before she said in a lower voice, “Our boss is getting soft. When you first came to work here, I’ll bet you wouldn’t have had the nerve to ask Evan for time off. He was going through assistants like a coyote in a chicken yard.”
“That was nine months ago. And to be fair, Evan had all sorts of stressful things going on in his life. I think it would be safe to say he’s much happier now.”
Saundra’s little grin was clever as she continued to study Callie. “Hmm. You’ve been looking mighty happy yourself these past few days. Guess you have something special planned? Like a long bubble bath and a glass of wine.”
“Saundra, your nose is getting longer and longer. You might as well come straight out and ask me what I’m doing.”
The other woman feigned a wounded look. “I’m not a busybody. Oh, okay, I confess I’m nosy as heck.”
Callie pulled her handbag from a desk drawer and stood. “Since you’re just dying to know, I’ll tell you. I’m going with Tyler and his daughter to Happy Hearts Animal Sanctuary. And I asked for the thirty minutes so we’d have plenty of daylight to look over the animals.”
Saundra tapped a calculating finger against her chin. “Let’s see if I have this right. Three nights ago, Tyler took you to the pizza parlor. The next night you were back at Bronco Burgers, and last night you took sandwiches to the park. Now you’re going on a trip to the country. I think I’d be safe in predicting that you’re going to have a date with Tyler every night this week.”
For His Daughter's Sake Page 10