by Joanna Sims
“I hope you brought your appetite,” the pretty rancher said. “I think my daughter cooked for ten.”
“Trust me.” He took his place at the kitchen island. “I brought my appetite.”
For the second night in a row, Liam sat in the King home and felt right at home. He liked watching the mother and daughter, so close in their relationship, work together to get ready for dinner. Now that it was his second time sitting at their dinner table, Kate handed him a stack of plates with the silverware so he could help set the table. That gesture alone made him feel even more “a part of it.”
They sat down together, held hands for a prayer, and then Liam dug into the incredible fare Callie had prepared. He didn’t stop eating even when he began to feel stuffed. The only time he got this kind of cooking was any Sunday he made it out to the family ranch for breakfast. Home-cooked dinners were far and few between for him. So was the conversation they had during dinner. It had been a long time since he had someone to share his day with, talk about his passion of caring for animals. Kate got it. They weren’t exactly in the same business, but the animals on her ranch were more than just part of her business—they were part of her family.
“I’ll have Callie fix you some leftovers,” Kate said with a laugh. She must have noticed him still eyeing the food on the table after had already filled his plate twice.
“Are you sure?”
The horse trainer smiled at him again, and this time the smile reached her eyes. “I’m sure. It’ll give the chef an excuse to cook something new tomorrow. Isn’t that right, Callie?”
The young woman nodded, but her attention was distracted by the sound of a video call coming in on a tablet on the counter. Kate’s daughter jumped up, ran to the counter looked at the screen and then squealed with excitement.
“I-it’s Tony!” Callie snatched the tablet off the counter, accepted the call and hurried down the narrow hallway leading to the three small bedrooms at the back of the house.
Kate sighed, staring after her daughter.
“Tony?”
She stared down the hallway a moment longer before she responded. Kate’s shoulders lifted ever so slightly. Was it a sign of frustration or resignation? He couldn’t be sure.
“Callie’s boyfriend. They met in an online support group for young adults with Down syndrome. If I had known this was going to happen, I’m not sure I would have been so excited to sign her up.”
That shocked him. Just like Callie’s amazing talent in the kitchen, it hadn’t crossed his mind that she would have a boyfriend.
They began to clear the table with the sound of Callie’s laughter and excited talking drifting down the hall.
“Serious?” He put the last dish on the counter.
Kate breathed in deeply and sighed again. She tucked a couple of wayward hairs behind her ear, a gesture he’d seen her do many times that night. “I think she’s taking it way too seriously. She thinks she’s in love.”
Liam stood at the sink, turned on the water and waited for it to get hot.
“You don’t have to do that.” She frowned at the running water.
“I’ve got this.” He wasn’t ready to get kicked out just yet.
While he rinsed the dishes and loaded the dishwasher, Kate fixed him containers of leftovers, giving him the lion’s share of the rest of the food.
“So, you think being in love is a bad thing?” He asked his hostess.
“No.” Kate frowned at the question. “I don’t. But Callie doesn’t always see the big picture. She thinks that what she sees in the movies is what love is all about. That’s not real life.”
“No. It’s not. Marriage is hard work.”
And he was living proof that hard work wasn’t enough to sustain a marriage.
Kate sent him what he assumed was a sympathetic look, dispelling any notion that news of his divorce hadn’t spread all over the small town.
“Relationships, in general, are hard,” she said.
“Well, Calico is mighty lucky to have you to help her navigate through life.”
Kate laughed as she snapped the Tupperware lid into place. “Trust me. My daughter has grown weary of my advice.”
“That’s about as typical as it gets, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” That made Kate smile. “I suppose it is.”
They didn’t talk much after that, and that was okay with him. Kate wasn’t chatty—she was quiet, inward in her thoughts, and even though he’d like for her to open up to him, he wasn’t in any hurry. He had a feeling that if he wanted to get to know Kate better, he was going to have to work the long game.
“Coffee?” she asked him. “For the road?”
He knew that was her not-so-subtle way of letting him know that it was time for him to begin to be on his way.
“I could sure use a cup. I’m fighting the desire to take a nap on your couch.”
He’d gotten her to smile more than once tonight—he was making some progress. Kate had always been focused, determined and serious, even when they were in high school, but she seemed to have lost some of her joy. Had he even heard her laugh?
“Mommy!” Callie came bounding into the kitchen clutching the tablet to her chest. The young lady, her brown eyes shining, her round cheeks flushed, spun around in a circle, giggling happily.
“Do I even need to ask how the phone call went?” Kate brushed back her daughter’s hair and then put her hands on her Callie’s shoulders.
“He asked me to be his date for the dance!” Callie told her mom excitedly, giving a little jump. “I can’t wait!”
“Callie,” Kate said gently, but seriously, “you know we can’t go this year. We talked about this.”
The young woman’s face fell. “You can’t go. Why can’t I—I go? I—I’m old enough. I—I can go b-by myself.”
Callie started to cry; Kate brushed her daughter’s tears away with her thumbs, her eyes soft with understanding and something else—sadness.
“Callie, we have company,” she said. “We’ll talk about this later. Okay?”
“Okay.” Callie frowned. “B-but I-I’m old enough to go b-by myself!”
The young woman stomped out of the living room, down the narrow hallway, and slammed the door to her bedroom.
Liam and Kate took a cup of coffee out to the porch and sat on the porch swing, with the warm summer air filled with the sound of crickets and a night owl howling in the distance.
“I appreciate you indulging me.” He held up the coffee cup. He was actually too tired to think about driving the nearly hour home.
Kate nodded as she took a sip of her own coffee.
After a moment of staring after her daughter, Kate said with a sigh, “Sorry about earlier. It’s the annual Down syndrome conference. I try to take her every year. Now that Tony is going, missing it is going to be tough for her.”
“No need to apologize.” Liam tried to reassure his hostess. “Love is serious business.”
“That’s true. But Callie’s disability makes all of this so much harder to navigate.” Kate tucked her hair behind her ear. “I never even thought about a boyfriend when she was growing up. Now she wants to get married. Have babies.”
“I suppose that’s natural,” Liam said after a second of thinking it over. The fact that Kate was talking to him so openly about her daughter was a welcome surprise. He didn’t want to screw it up by saying something stupid or unintentionally insensitive. He wanted to find a way to be a part of Kate’s and Callie’s lives.
“Yes,” she agreed, holding her warm cup with both hands. “But Callie is never going to be able to live on her own.”
“She seems really independent.”
Kate sent him the smallest of smiles. “She is. Everyone with Down syndrome is different, just like the rest of us. We were lucky—Callie’s intelligence is higher on the
range. But...” Kate frowned into her coffee cup. “She’ll never be able to live without support, and no matter how many times we talk about it, I just can’t get her to understand. She wants to move to New York City and go to culinary school and open a restaurant. She also wants to move to California, marry Tony and start having babies. In her mind, it’s possible to do both, at the same time.”
“I wish my daughter were that ambitious,” he interjected, and he meant it.
“Callie is ambitious.” Kate nodded. “She has so many dreams and goals—none of them here in Montana.
They finished their coffee, and when they went back into the house, Callie, seemingly recovered from her outburst, gave him a big hug when he came into the kitchen to put his coffee cup in the sink and pick up his leftovers. This time when Callie asked him to dinner for the next night, he declined. He couldn’t keep on accepting the daughter’s invitation to be able to spend time with the mother.
“I appreciate you letting me come on out tonight.” Liam put the containers in the front seat of his truck.
“Callie invited you.”
He shut the door to his truck and then stood in front of the trainer; her arms were crossed in front of her body.
Liam chuckled. “I was waiting all day for you to uninvite me.”
The half-moon was putting off enough light for him to see a fleeting expression of guilt flash across her face.
“I wouldn’t do that.”
Liam ducked his head, putting it just a little closer to hers. “Admit it, though. You thought about it.”
Kate turned her face away from him, her lips pressed together as if she wanted to stop herself from admitting it. Then, unexpectedly, she laughed.
“I’m sorry.” She looked into his face then. “I’m not much on company.”
He didn’t say anything, because he sensed she had more to say.
“Callie wants me to start dating again...”
Their eyes met and Liam felt a spark. He felt it, and he was pretty sure that Kate felt it too.
“Are you saying I’m part of some evil plan to get you back into the dating game?”
A nod.
“Calico doesn’t know, then, that you’ve already turned me down once before?” he asked in a lowered, private voice.
Kate took a small step back, but he wasn’t going to let her get off the hook that easily. He took a small step forward.
“It’s not that I don’t like you, Liam.” Kate, usually so sure of herself, sounded off balance with a shake in her voice.
“That’s good to know.”
In that moment, in the soft moonlight, Liam acted on instinct instead of listening to his head. He reached out, took Kate’s face in his hands and kissed her on the lips.
It was a short kiss—sweet, gentle, instead of romantic or sensual. But that kiss was a kiss full of promise. It was a kiss that could be his future.
Surprised, Kate stepped backward again. His hands fell away from her face and they stood there, quietly, staring at each other.
“That’s good to know,” he said again, “because I like you, Kate. A whole heck of a lot.”
Chapter Three
“He actually kissed me,” Kate whispered into the phone. She was in bed, but she wasn’t ready for sleep. She had brushed her teeth and then stood in the bathroom staring at the lips that Liam Brand had just kissed without any warning or invitation.
“Good for him,” her friend Lorrie told her.
Lorrie also had a child with Down syndrome, a little girl much younger than Callie. Lorrie had started an organization to connect parents in Gallatin County and ever since they had worked together to establish an annual, one-mile Buddy Walk in Bozeman to raise awareness and inclusion for people with DS.
“Good?”
“Yes,” Lorrie reiterated. “Good. He listened to my advice.”
Now Kate sat upright in bed. “What advice was that?”
Lorrie stopped to say something to one of her kids before answering. “He was here to give Dude and Max their shots. He might have mentioned that he was interested in you.”
“And?”
“And I told him that he’d have to be unconventional. That’s all.”
Kate couldn’t think of a response right away. Her mouth popped open, and she shook her head before she said, “So, you encouraged him to assault me?”
“Okay—now that’s way dramatic. All he did was give you a kiss. Tell me you didn’t enjoy it. Liam is handsome, smart, nice and he’s one of the most eligible bachelors in Montana.”
“That’s not the point.” Kate flopped back into the pillows. “I have Callie and the ranch.”
“I do know.” Lorrie said kindly. “I do. But, just because we have children with special needs doesn’t mean we can just put our lives on a shelf. Callie is an adult now, Kate. She needs your help—she’ll always need your help—but you’re going to have to find something else to do with your life other than focusing all of your attention on Callie. Why not shift some of that focus onto someone like Dr. Brand?”
Quiet for a moment of thought, Kate couldn’t deny her friend’s logic. Had she been holding Callie back, in part, because her daughter had always been the center of her world? Was she holding Callie back for her own sake? Part of her, deep down, knew that it was, at least, possible.
They talked for another twenty minutes before they hung up. Lorrie was one of the few people who genuinely understood her struggles with Callie, from fighting for services in the school system, accessing appropriate health care, and the feeling of isolation that could creep in with so many miles between families in a similar situation. She trusted Lorrie; they told each other the unvarnished truth. Her friend had a point. It was time for her to begin to find a new center of her life. Callie was growing up.
* * *
“Good morning, Kate.” Dawn from Dr. McGee’s office had called her out of the blue. “How are you today?”
“I’m good. Just doing barn work, as usual.”
“Well, I won’t be keepin’ you too long.” There was something in Dawn’s voice that signaled that this wasn’t going to be a positive call. “But I do have to share with you that Dr. McGee is going to be retiring.”
Up until that point, Kate had been holding the phone between her shoulder and cheek while she continued to muck the stall she was working on. The news made Kate put her pitchfork down; she stood upright and held the phone to her ear with her hand as the receptionist continued.
“He’s given me permission to tell all of his longtime clients that he’s having some serious health problems and he has to retire.”
Kate felt her chest tighten—she loved Dr. McGee. She’d known him since she was a kid and had always assumed that he would keep on working until he took his last breath.
“I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“So are we.” The receptionist sounded as if she was choking back tears. “It’s a...shock.”
After she hung up the phone, the weight of the phone call began to hit Kate. Beyond the sadness she was feeling in her heart, and the fact that she was going to have to break the news to Callie, who was crazy about Dr. McGee, what was she going to do about her horses? She had a huge barn to run and having a vet was essential to the health of the horses in her care.
Kate finished mucking out the stall, pushed the cart away from the stall, dropped the pitchfork into the cart and then walked outside to think. It was a blue sky day, not one cloud, and it was warm, just how she liked it. Hands on her hips, Kate ran several ideas through her head before she finally landed on her first move.
“I’ll be upstairs in the office if you need me,” Kate told two of her regular stable hands. Whenever she conducted business, she liked to sit at her desk in the office above the barn. Sitting at her desk now, with the view of the flat expanse of the pastures abutting
the mountains in the background, Kate was always reminded that she was blessed to be living in paradise. But even paradise came with a price.
“He-llo.”
The way Liam answered his phone always made her smile.
“Hi, Dr. Brand. It’s Kate.”
“Hi, Kate King,” Liam greeted her enthusiastically. “So, we’re back to Dr. Brand, are we?”
Kate touched her fingers to her lips, the lips this man had kissed several nights before. It was a kiss, so fleeting, that hadn’t been far from her mind.
“This is a business call.”
“And here I thought you had finally come to your senses and were calling to ask me out on a date.”
He was teasing her—at least in part, he was—and it took her a moment to catch up with him. He had a way of catching her off guard with his humor and his kisses. He spoke before she had a chance to regroup.
“I’m thinkin’ that this call is about Dr. McGee retiring?”
“Yes.” The words came out of the blue, but the minute Liam echoed the news, Kate felt tears, unbidden, fill her eyes and fall onto her cheeks.
Not wanting Liam to hear her crying, Kate quickly wiped off her cheeks, steeled herself against the sadness she was feeling and focused on the business at hand.
“I’ve obviously been beaten to the punch,” she added.
“Look, Kate.” Liam said, his voice reassuringly strong and steady. “If you need me, I’m gonna be there for you. So you can take that worry right off your shoulders.”
Relieved, she dropped her head into her hand. “Thank you. You know how important it is to have a support system in place.”
“I do,” Liam said. “That’s what I’m here for.”
Their phone call was cut short, making Kate wish that they had more time—he had arrived at his next client and she was hosting a clinic for a group of owners and horses. But just from that brief phone call, Liam had made her feel better. She felt that it was going to be easier to face her day without the worry about who she was going to call if one of the horses in her charge took ill or got injured. Now she knew that she could call Dr. Brand. Liam.