She shifted in the bed but didn’t wake. Gage threw his free arm over his eyes to block the annoying sunlight. At what point in his life had he become this worrywart? Who cared if his body needed Callie? Let them use one another up until they didn’t need as badly. Maybe if he could stop himself worrying about what Callie meant to this whole equation he could figure out the solution to the Walt versus Oasis debacle waiting at the office.
Or maybe he should stop blaming her completely, because she seemed to be thriving since they started sleeping together.
Gage walked his fingers over her ribs. Screw it. He was through obsessing about the deal. Through trying to figure out why he couldn’t get Callie off his mind. The few times he’d been able to concentrate on just one thing since she’d walked into his office were during sex. Everything else seemed to fade away when he was lost in her body.
His penis hardened, pressing into the soft flesh of her butt cheek. Getting lost in Callie on a Tuesday morning suddenly seemed like the perfect solution to his problems. He abandoned her ribs for her breast, kneading the globe and flicking his thumb against its peak. The little nub hardened, and she turned so her breasts were flat against his chest.
“Good morning,” she said, sleep still in her voice.
“Hi.” He wasn’t going to lie. This wasn’t a good morning. At least not so far. But he planned on changing that in the next few minutes. “You hungry?”
She kissed his chin and then rubbed her soft cheek against the stubble. “Not particularly. You?”
Gage reached around her, squeezing her ass in his hands and urging her closer. “Not for anything but you,” he said, taking her mouth with his.
“So the right answer,” she said when he drew back to look at her. Callie’s eyes turned nearly navy with need, her pupils dilated, her little nostrils flaring slightly as she worked to catch her breath.
His Callie.
His.
He’d deal with the ramifications of that later. Right now he needed her and needing her was enough.
• • •
Callie watched Gage over her coffee cup. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something was different. Not wrong, not exactly. Off was the best way she could describe it. Dressed in the clothes he’d worn to her house the night before, he looked sexily rumpled. He’d used an extra razor from under her sink and the moisturizer from it gave his skin a nice glow.
The glow wasn’t it.
He blew over the lip of his mug and sipped.
“What’s your day like today?”
“Couple of meetings, nothing out of the ordinary,” he said, but he didn’t look at her. He looked at the coffee in the mug, outside her kitchen window, or at the low-hanging pin light over the bar. But not once did he look at her. “You?” he finally asked.
“One appointment from yesterday’s grand opening, and I’ll cold-call a couple of the casinos without on-property spa services.” This was getting more and more uncomfortable. They’d made love not thirty minutes before, and now he could barely look at her. “Is everything all right?” She couldn’t not ask the question, not when he was acting so withdrawn.
“Just a normal Tuesday,” he said and poured the rest of his coffee down the drain.
She had to do something, had to break through whatever wall Gage had just thrown up, because she wouldn’t let him shut her out. Not now. Not when everything was going so well. Callie came around the counter and put her hands on his shoulders, urging him back to the seat. She took position behind him and began kneading his shoulders. They were rigid as the two-by-fours her father used on the ranch when she was growing up. She dug her thumbs into the bunched muscle beside his shoulder blade.
“Wow,” she said, trying to lighten the dark mood she didn’t understand. “We should have foregone the sex in favor of a full-on rubdown. How do you stand up straight with all this tension in your muscles?”
For a split second, Gage relaxed. She felt it in the slight sag of his shoulder, saw it in the way his neck bowed forward. Then he was stepping away from her and rolling his neck from side to side.
“I’ll take you up on the full rubdown later,” he said and waggled his eyebrows. But the sexy flirtation she wanted to see wasn’t there. “I need to stop by my condo before I head to the office. Call you later?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, just waved his hand and grabbed his keys from the dish on the table.
“Sure,” she said to the empty room. “I’ll be waiting.”
On her way to work, Callie went over every word Gage had said to her over the past twenty-four hours. Nothing seemed out of sorts. Nothing seemed off. She went back farther, to the weekend, but aside from having a couple of mind-blowing-sex sessions, everything that happened at the ranch seemed normal, too. And she wouldn’t mind if the mind-blowing-sex part became part of normal life. There was a lot to be said for massage therapy; there was more to be said for sex that made the body go boneless afterward.
She stepped inside the store and inhaled. She could still smell the incense mixture Mandy had prepared before the grand opening the day before. Vanilla for comfort and sweetgrass for positive energy. She could definitely use some positivity right now, because the only thing that made sense was that Gage was done.
She should have expected it. He wasn’t the commitment type, not really. Not with that Bachelor of the Month title bestowed on him just a few weeks ago. He’d been straightforward about his past, honest about what he wanted. Mistaking his interest in their old friendship, and new business alliance aside, was her fault. All on Callie.
The red light on the answering machine blinked, so she put her bag in the closet and hit play. A new customer, making an appointment. The next message was a reporter from one of the local papers wanting to talk to her, probably about Gage. Two more calls from customers wanting appointments. Not bad for her second day in business.
So why didn’t she feel better? Work was solid, work was dependable. Work mattered.
Mandy buzzed through the front door, carrying two coffees and a bag from the pastry shop around the corner. She put the food on little plates left over from the party and handed one to Callie.
“Breakfast of champions—a cronut with Bavarian cream filling. The girl behind the counter was practically orgasmic just pulling it out of the case. Eat, eat,” she said and bit into her own pastry. “Oh my god,” she mumbled around the mouthful of cronut. “Best breakfast ever.”
Callie pushed her plate across the counter but held the coffee cup in her hands. The warmth was soothing.
“Hey, why the glum face? After yesterday, I thought you’d be dancing on the ceiling.”
The only answer to that was Gage, which was silly. He wouldn’t have made love with her last night—and again this morning—if he wanted to end things. Distracted? Busy day? There had to be a simple explanation.
“Just distracted, I guess. We have calls to make, and you have a ten thirty with the wife of one of the casino bosses, remember?”
“You still need to eat.” Mandy watched her for a moment, and Callie pasted a smile on her face.
“I had a big breakfast. Yesterday did go well, didn’t it?”
“Well? I’d say we deserve Roman candles and sparklers, especially the way you handled that blonde at the end of the day. What was her deal, anyway?”
Callie shrugged. “Nothing to worry about. She just had the wrong idea about the kind of place this is going to be.”
Life wasn’t going to blow up in her face, not this time. She was overreacting. Had to be. The alternative was too horrible to contemplate.
Because the alternative was loving Gage, having to work with him for the next year, and having him treat her like a stranger.
• • •
Gage wanted to throw something. Like a really hard punch at a brick wall.
He walked out of the Clark County recorder’s office with a deed to Walt’s ranch in his hand, the note for the five million McKinney was paying for the Oasis
in his briefcase, and a sick feeling in his stomach.
Which was stupid. The person losing the most in this deal was him. The Oasis was the first project he’d completed on his own. No big-money investors, no committee deciding how to set up the units. His plans. His ideas.
Now the Oasis belonged to Alan McKinney and PRO-TEM Development.
On the plus side, he owned the Heck ranch free and clear. He could remake it however he pleased.
So why wasn’t he pleased?
It made no sense. Walt’s ranch was more important, in the grand scheme of things, than the Oasis. The Oasis was completed. No more challenges. The ranch was a blank canvas, or it would be once Gage began renovating the main house and guest cabins.
He shoved the deed into his briefcase, but instead of walking the three blocks back to his office he detoured to the bus stop for the double-decker the tourists took up and down the Strip. He loosened his tie while he waited, and when the bus pulled to a stop, he climbed to the top level and chose a window seat.
A few minutes later, the bus stopped before the Oasis. He saw Callie’s Bug in front of Holliday Spas. Tourists were already wandering along the sidewalks in front of the boutiques. They all came to this part of Vegas because of him. Because of his plans.
That meant something, didn’t it? Not owning it now meant something, too. It meant he could save a piece of Nevada wilderness. Walt wouldn’t have his dream of a working cattle ranch, but the eco-resort was the next best thing. If Gage hadn’t bought it, that piece of property would have become a system of hotels and casinos. People would have trampled over Walt’s rose garden, if PRO-TEM didn’t pull them from the ground first.
He needed to see Callie.
Damn, how could he want someone so badly when he barely knew her?
Scratch that, he knew Callie. He’d known her since childhood. She was the girl who handed him the tie he dropped in the dust. The one who cared where he was the night of his father’s funeral. The woman who struck out on her own and, when things didn’t go her way, struck out again, to a town that was still very much an old boys’ network. And she did it without a safety net. The woman who’d had seventy dollars in her bank account and the nerve to keep a meeting with an investment firm.
God, he loved her.
Gage swallowed and gripped his briefcase tighter. Love. When had that come into the equation?
Somewhere between all those years ago and now? Or had he loved her back then and not known how to put those feelings into words? He’d liked it when she came around. Looked for her in the hallways. Waited for her at the lake more times than he cared to remember. And every time he saw her coming over the ridge on her horse his heart had jolted a little.
Just like it jolted when he realized the Calista Davenport in his office was the Callie Holliday he remembered from his childhood.
Like it jolted when she took his hand on Insanity, laughing like a maniac.
There was also the way it settled in his chest when he sat in the chair last night, watching her sleep, realizing she’d waited up for him.
No one ever waited up for Gage.
She looked up from the desk, saw him, and motioned him to come inside.
Gage didn’t want to step inside. Once he went in, things would change. He couldn’t explain how he knew, he just did. And he didn’t think life would ever be the same.
Chapter Sixteen
Whatever was bothering Gage at breakfast had intensified. That was Callie’s first thought when she saw him standing on the sidewalk outside the spa. He looked a little lost, and maybe a touch angry, standing there with his briefcase in one hand and a shocked expression on his face. She motioned him in again, and this time he put one foot in front of the other to come inside.
“I didn’t expect to see you this morning.”
“Meetings went more quickly than I imagined.”
“So you thought you’d come for that tour of the couples room?” She had to keep him talking, had to keep him moving around, because whatever he was about to say she wouldn’t like.
Gage shook his head. “You have any customers back there?”
Definitely, definitely would not like.
“Mandy’s ten thirty just left, and she went to grab us some lunch.” Great going, Cal. Tell him you’re basically alone so he can dump whatever this is all over your bright, shiny day.
It had taken the better part of an hour, but she’d finally shaken off the doldrums she caught from Gage over coffee that morning. She’d been too busy to obsess over why he was so distant and what that might mean for them. Now, with Gage in her office, she had to admit she was trying to keep busy so she wouldn’t be able to wonder what was going on with him.
“I asked you this morning if everything was all right, and you didn’t really answer.”
“Yeah.” He looked uncomfortable and shifted his briefcase from his left to his right hand.
“Did you walk over here?”
“Took the double decker bus.”
“Why?”
“Fresh air.”
“In a bus?”
He shrugged. “Great way to see the city.”
“You have millions of dollars in the bank, a ranch filled with horses and a brand new Escalade, but you rode a bus here?” Callie’s jaw dropped. What was Gage doing taking public transportation around Las Vegas? That was her thing, something she did when she needed to relax. Gage didn’t strike her as the type to think of neon as a relaxant, especially mid-morning, when the neon was turned off.
“I needed to think.”
Here it comes.
Gage sat his briefcase on the chair near the front door. “PRO-TEM, the rival developer I told you about? They bought Walt’s ranch yesterday.”
“Gage, I’m so sorry.” And so relieved. This made sense. Gage wanted that property badly, and Callie could understand why. He wanted to preserve it, at least some of it. The way she wished the developers had preserved part of her father’s land.
He learned his forearms across the counter, crossing his arms at the wrist the way he’d done that first day when he convinced her to let him help unpack. Then, he’d worn old jeans and a T-shirt and looked perfectly at ease. Today, he wore a black suit with a silver tie, and he looked decidedly ill at ease.
“Alan McKinney, the head of the company, stopped by my office last night to give me the details. They scammed him, Cal. Convinced Walt they would make a go of the ranch, and he fell for it. Their plans were to build a new resort and casino.”
Callie reached out, putting her hands over Gage’s. He caressed her hands with his thumbs.
“You did everything you could. It was a good proposal, but you can’t force someone to sign on the dotted line, you know.”
“Yeah.” His mouth twisted to the side. “Yeah, you can.”
Callie’s stomach went cold. She wanted to pull away from Gage, but she needed the little bit of warmth seeping from his hands to hers. “What happened?”
“McKinney offered me a hell of a deal: the ranch and five million dollars.”
“And what did he want in return?”
“Just the Oasis.” Gage looked at her, really looked at her, for the first time all day. “Five million plus the ranch, and all he wanted was the Oasis. It’s a good deal.”
“Good deal?” Callie felt like a fool, echoing Gage as she did. “But you love the Oasis. You wanted to build something here. Something real.”
“And I built it. Now I’ll build something real at the Heck ranch.”
There had to be more to it than this, because the words coming from Gage’s mouth didn’t jibe with the sick feeling in her belly.
“You sold the Oasis and your tenants out so you could build something better?”
“I didn’t sell you out, Cal. Properties change ownership all the time,” he said, brows beetled, as if he couldn’t understand why she was upset. He probably couldn’t. Gage had the touch when it came to property development. He’d never been on the bad end of a
good deal, and this deal was the prime example. Who else would learn they’d lost a property and in the next instant be offered the same property plus a five-million-dollar bonus?
Okay, she needed to not overreact. The Oasis was Gage’s property. Just as Holliday Spas was her business.
“This is the deal you made late last night?” He nodded. “You could have told me.”
“Why worry you without cause? McKinney and PRO-TEM could have withdrawn their offer this morning.”
She took her hands from his. “I don’t know, Gage, maybe because this is my business? My livelihood? My hard work?”
“Come on, Cal. I made the best deal I could. You, of all people, should know the importance of preserving as much of the desert as we can.”
“Me? Of all people. Because my dad’s property wasn’t preserved, I should care about Walt’s old dude ranch over my own business? Really, Gage?”
Callie knew she was being unreasonable. If Alan McKinney had walked in here and offered her Walt’s ranch in place of Holliday Spas she would have been hard-pressed to turn him down. And she didn’t know the first thing about land development.
She blew out a breath. “Why didn’t you tell me all this last night?”
“Because the deal wasn’t done yet.” He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “Because I wasn’t sure what I would do until after—”
“We slept together again? Sleeping with me made it easy for you to decide to sell the Oasis, the development that houses my business?”
“No. That isn’t what I meant. Look, it doesn’t matter anyway, because you have the lease and McKinney can’t do anything to the Oasis because there are size limitations.”
“You figured all this out, and I’m just supposed to get on board? You’re my business partner, Gage. You left me out of a crucial decision.”
“Wrong. I’m your investor. The Oasis has nothing to do with Holliday Spas other than a physical address.”
Callie felt as if he had slapped her. How could he say the Oasis had nothing to do with Holliday? The two were linked. This building was built for her spa, and her spa was what completed the Oasis as a go-to destination for both locals and tourists. How did he not see that?
What the Bachelor Gets Page 21