“Plans? I have no plans. The mall later. Say, do you have anything for breakfast around here? I got us pizza for dinner because there wasn’t much in the fridge.”
“Yeah, sorry. I’ve been working a lot, eating out. I didn’t expect houseguests.”
“Right.”
He finally rose, rummaged around in a cupboard and pulled out a box of toaster pastries.
“Ugh.” Callie made a face.
“This seems to be it.”
“Okay, they’ll do. I’m starved.”
“I’ll go grocery shopping later,” Mase promised. “I’ll even cook dinner, my special spaghetti and clam sauce.”
“Sure, fine. I thought we’d go out, though.”
“Afraid to try my cooking?”
She cocked her head and looked at him. “No. Let’s just say I’ll reserve judgment.”
Mase went back to the paper while Callie toasted her pastries—three of them. While she waited, she leaned on the counter, drumming her fingers and gazing idly out the window. He couldn’t help glancing from time to time at her jeans-clad derriere, the slim, firm roundness. He felt annoyed, curiously and irrationally bothered by her presence. He’d been doing just fine without a female in the house. It had been hard—harder than he could have imagined—adjusting to the loss of Amy, but he had survived. He hadn’t thought much about his own needs in the past year. But now… Well, damn, it was impossible not to acknowledge one particular need. His brain shied away from it, but his body was betraying him.
Go home, Callie Thorne.
* * *
IT WAS ALMOST LUNCHTIME when they were finally organized and on their way to the Cherry Creek Mall.
It was crowded with weekend shoppers, and Joey headed straight for the newly installed play area, where he crawled and slid and jumped with the other kids.
Callie sat with Mase for a while, watching Joey, along with the other mothers and fathers and grandparents, but Mase could tell she was antsy.
“Why don’t you go shopping?” he asked. “We’ll wait here.”
“Don’t you want to go, too?”
“Shopping? But I don’t need anything.”
She cocked her head. “What does that have to do with it?”
He looked at her. “That’s a joke, right?”
She smiled. “Sort of. Maybe. Not really.”
“Go on,” he said. “There’s Saks and Neiman Marcus and Anne Klein over there.”
“Anne Klein,” Callie said, laughing. “On the ranch?”
“We’ll be okay here,” Mase insisted. He needed a breather from Callie, neutral ground where he could get back some kind of control.
She finally went off on her own, and Mase took a deep breath. He sat there and watched his son play and pretended that this Saturday was just an ordinary day.
Mase had never been a good shopper. Malls and department stores made him nervous. Some guys, he realized, were great at it. Tolerant, patient, they happily hung out in bookstores or sport shops while their mates perused every item, every sale rack. But not him. And today was worse. He knew he was being paranoid, but he couldn’t help studying faces, looking for one in particular—Hank Berry’s. The idea that the Hitman would actually shadow them in a mall was nuts. Still, Mase scanned the weekend crowds, his heart beating just a little bit erratically.
Callie returned after an hour or so, and Joey teased her about all the bags she was carrying.
“What did you get?” he asked. “What did you get, Callie?”
“Oh, some stuff,” she said. “Nothing you’d be interested in.”
“Did you get Rebecca anything?” Joey asked suddenly.
“Well, I…”
“Let’s get her something, okay?”
“Sure,” Callie said, “but you have to pick it out.”
It took Joey a long time to decide what to buy for his new friend. He started in the toy store with stuffed animals, but quickly discarded each one.
“Nah. She won’t like this,” he said about a stuffed green dinosaur. “Girls don’t like dinosaurs much.”
He checked out the entire store, from toy soldiers to trains to models to building blocks to talking dolls to Beanie Babies. And, thank heavens, he stopped with the bean-bag animals.
“What do you think, Callie?” he asked, holding out a yellow duck with a bright orange beak. “I think Rebecca would like this one.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Callie concurred.
“That’s definitely the one,” Mase said, breathing a visible sigh of relief.
Mase paid at the counter while Joey did another turn in the aisles and Callie waited by the door.
“I’m hungry,” Joey said, when he and Mase rejoined her.
“Lunch, then,” Callie began, then she looked at Mase. “That okay with you?”
“Sure, lunch,” he said, and he followed behind while Joey hung on Callie’s hand and skipped along beside her.
They got a table in a Mexican restaurant, a popular spot in the mall. Callie said, “I’m starved,” in that lilting voice of hers, as if she were surprised by the fact that she was hungry, as if it were a wondrous new sensation. She ordered a taco plate, her appetite healthy as usual. She was smiling, carefree, chatting with Joey, oblivious to any possible danger. As she should be. She looked awfully pretty, in a blue denim skirt and a round-necked pink T-shirt that showed her delicate collarbone. And pink lipstick. Her hair was pulled up on top of her head and fastened there in some mysterious way that eluded Mase, and wisps curled down around her neck. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her ears and her neck and the hollow at the base of her throat that Ralph Fiennes had made such a goddamn fuss over in that movie they’d seen.
After lunch they strolled together through the mall. He bought Joey a handheld computer game in one store, and Joey played it the rest of the time, bumping into people, so rapt was he.
Victoria’s Secret did Mase in.
“Do you mind if I run in here for a sec?” Callie asked.
He waited for her in the front of the shop, Joey beside him, still immersed in his game. Mase felt entirely out of place, embarrassed to death as his eyes roamed over the racks of silky negligees, bras and panties and the shelves of colorful, exotic fragrances.
There were two men in the shop helping their ladyfriends select underwear—helping. Mase was utterly bewildered. He could never, ever pick out a woman’s underthingies. He’d rather die first. He guessed that made him some sort of a Neanderthal, certainly no Renaissance man. Well, so be it. He’d rather crouch over a fire in a cave making grunting noises than pick up the white lacy thing on that shelf and say, “Here, honey, these are you.” No bloody way.
He was immensely relieved when he saw Callie paying for something at the cash register. Something filmy and black that the girl behind the counter was folding carefully.
“Thanks,” Callie said as she came up to him. “I saw that in their catalog and I just had to get it.”
Mase said nothing.
They took Joey into a nature store, but he was really more interested in his game. Callie bought some novelty items for her mother and her sister-in-law. “Oh, they’ll love these,” she declared triumphantly.
“Very nice,” Mase said.
“Hey, would it be too much to ask to go to the Tattered Cover? It’s right across the street, and I’m hoping they’ll have a book I’ve been trying to find. About equine therapy.”
“Sure, why not? I’ll get something
for Joey. They have a wonderful children’s section.” The bookstore was much more to his liking than women’s lingerie. Nice and neutral.
The famous Denver gathering place was jammed. They split up, and Callie promised to find them in the children’s section.
Joey picked out a beautifully illustrated book about, of all things, horses.
“This is the one you want, you’re sure?” Mase asked.
“Yes, I do. I really do. I’ll ask Callie to read it to me.”
Callie. Callie and her horses.
She arrived in a few minutes, pushing her way through the crowd, breathless.
“I got it,” she declared. “Can you believe they actually had it?”
“Look at my new book,” Joey said, pulling it out of the bag.
“Oh, how wonderful,” she said. “I’ll read it to you tonight, okay?”
“Okay.”
Mase scowled. She could read his own kid’s mind. What was she, some kind of witch?
But, Mase had to admit, Joey was a different child now. She’d done that—or her ranch had. No longer was his son afraid and clinging. He was a normal little boy again. Giggling, playing his video game, enthusiastic. And he was obviously very close to Callie. Very, very close.
What in hell would happen when the trial was over and Joey came home again? He’d lost his mother a year ago. Was he to lose another woman he loved? Abruptly Mase felt a cold hand on the back of his neck. Had he made a terrible mistake leaving Joey at the Someday Ranch? It had been convenient. Had he taken the path of least resistance without regard to the future?
After the Tattered Cover, the three of them strolled through the outside shopping area behind the Cherry Creek Mall.
“I’m starving,” Callie said, stopping in front of the frozen yogurt shop.
Mase stared at her and shook his head. “Starved. Of course you are,” he said just loud enough for her to hear.
But she didn’t seem to mind. She only shrugged, and he detected a little twinkle in her eyes.
They sat on the benches in front of the shop, frozen yogurt melting in the hot sun. Joey soon had chocolate all over his face, between his fingers, down the front of his shirt. Callie got a cup of water from the shop and cleaned him off with wet napkins.
“There,” she said. “Presentable.”
On the way home Mase pulled into the parking lot of a supermarket.
“You want to wait here?” he asked.
“Heck, no. It’s air-conditioned inside. Come on, pardner,” she said to Joey.
The cart filled up quickly. Callie roved up and down the aisles, reappearing with various items she said Mase absolutely needed: ice cream, chocolate sauce, pretzels, cookies, bags of ready-made salad, Caesar dressing, a string of garlic.
“We can’t eat all of that. When you’re gone it’ll spoil.”
“The only thing that’ll spoil is the salad. And you should eat a lot of that, because it’s healthy.”
“And the rest of this stuff is healthy?”
“I believe in a balanced diet,” Callie said loftily.
Mase made dinner that night. He didn’t tell Callie that spaghetti was the only thing he knew how to cook. She leaned on a counter, legs crossed at the ankles in front of her, and watched.
“Men look so funny in the kitchen,” she said.
“Oh, you mean all those great international chefs look funny?” he asked, chopping scallions.
“No, I mean regular men. Like you and my dad.”
He heated up a skillet and poured in some olive oil.
“Mmm, smells good.”
“Nothing’s cooking yet.”
“I like the smell of hot olive oil.”
He sautéed the scallions, lots of them.
“Now it really smells good,” she said.
“What time are you going to leave tomorrow?” Mase asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. Whenever. Why, you dying to get rid of us?”
“No, I was thinking of breakfast and lunch.”
“There’s plenty of food.”
He had his head down, concentrating hard on the sizzling scallions. “Look,” he finally said, “I just want you to know I appreciate what you’ve done for Joey. He’s changed a lot.”
“Oh,” Callie said, flushing, “it’s nothing. I didn’t do anything. Big deal, so I put him on a gentle old mare.”
“You did more than that,” Mase said. “You loved him. Everyone on your ranch loved him.”
“He’s not hard to love, Mase.”
“But he’s not your son. You didn’t have to—”
“Stop. You don’t have to thank me. It’s what I do. I see someone, anyone—big, small, old, young—who needs help, and I do what I can.”
“That magic again, huh?”
“Yes, that’s part of it. The rest is just old-fashioned caring.”
They pried Joey away from his game and ate dinner, then Callie fixed them banana splits. Joey tried his best to finish, but the ice cream melted, and he promptly fell asleep on the couch.
“Should we put him to bed?” Callie asked.
“Later,” Mase replied, so they did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen. Like some old married couple.
Well, it was nice to have a female in the house. If his mother could see him now, she’d be setting the wedding date. She badly wanted Mase to remarry. “Get a mother for that child,” she’d been saying lately. And his mother would like Callie a lot; they’d get on like a house afire.
Which was why, Mase thought, he hadn’t called his folks. They’d make such a damn fuss.
Mase woke Joey up and got him to bed.
“Where’s Callie?” the boy asked sleepily. “I want her to read the book to me.”
“It’s too late tonight. How about you take the book back to the ranch with you? She’ll have more time to read it there.”
“Okay. Can I say good-night to her, Daddy?”
“Sure.”
So Callie came into Joey’s blue bedroom and sat on the edge of his bed, smoothed the hair off his forehead and whispered good-night. Just like Amy used to, Mase thought, his throat tightening.
Callie wanted to watch her favorite program on television, Early Edition. Mase had never heard of it, but it was about a guy who routinely foresaw dire newspaper headlines before the events took place, then he had to go out and remedy the disaster that was going to happen. There was also a magic cat in the program. Of course.
“Whoever thought of that idea?” Callie asked when it was over. “How can people be so clever?”
“Because they’re paid. It’s their job,” Mase replied dryly.
“Oh, you’re such a cynic.”
He grunted something noncommittal.
For a time, Callie channel-surfed, delighting in all the shows Mase got on his cable TV system. “Gosh,” she said, “I wish Dad would get a satellite. We don’t have cable, you know, out in the sticks.”
“There are worse things,” Mase said, and he couldn’t help eyeing the way she unconsciously curled and uncurled her toes as she sat, bare feet up on the couch. Pretty toes. Pretty feet. Pretty ankles and calves and nicely shaped knees. Smooth, slightly tanned skin, silky looking. He couldn’t stop himself from wondering how that skin would feel against his.
Stop it, he told himself angrily, but again his body refused to cooperate. It was suddenly way too hot inside, and he rose and went to the back screen door, opening it and breathing in the cooler night
air.
Please, Callie, go home.
When he finally walked back into the living room, the nightly news was on.
Callie looked up and pointed to the screen, where an anchorwoman was giving a summary of the day’s news events in the Denver area. “I could do that,” Callie declared.
He sat, knees splayed, and said, “What?”
“I could be a newsperson. Well,” she clarified, “I mean, I once did this spot on the Casper news, for the therapy ranch, you know, and I did okay. Everyone who watched it said I looked relaxed and all. I was nervous when I was actually doing the taping, but when I saw it, I wasn’t bad at all. It was fun.” That telltale color rose in her cheeks then. “Oh, listen to me bragging. I’d probably be horrible at it. Really. And if I did that, who would do the therapy?”
The question came out before Mase even realized he’d thought it. “Don’t you ever want to marry and have a family?” he asked, and then he could have kicked himself. She’d take it all wrong.
“Oh,” she said, waving a hand, “of course I’d like all the normal things. You know. But nothing will stop me from helping people. And why should it, anyway?”
“No reason,” Mase said.
“Did Amy work?” she asked abruptly.
“Up until Joey was born she did. She planned to go back to work after he started first grade. But…” He shrugged.
“I guess I’m lucky,” Callie said. “I don’t have to stop work ever. Well, if I ever have a baby, maybe for a few months, I suppose. But I figure I’ll always be around the ranch, and with Mom and Dad right there… Yes, I am lucky.” She turned away then and went back to the news, looking ill at ease. He felt the same. He hadn’t meant to get into such a personal conversation. He didn’t have any interest in her future plans. She was a cowgirl, a rancher, an equine therapist, and he was a cop, a city boy. Two different worlds. And that was fine by him.
When the news was over, she got up and stretched. “I think I’m tired from shopping. Malls do me in. If you don’t mind, I’ll turn in.”
He nodded, studying her.
Courting Callie Page 11