Ross

by Jennifer Ashley

  Ross liked that she sounded reluctant. Could be that she’d had a great time today and didn’t want it to end, but he hoped she felt unwillingness to leave Circle C, the Campbell family, Ross.

  “Guess you should.” Ross glanced down the porch. A clump of guests congregated on the far end, laughing and talking, leaving Ross and Callie relatively alone. “Except …”

  “Except?” Callie moved half an inch toward him. “Except what?”

  This was embarrassing. Ross leaned closer and made himself ask. “Would you give me a ride home? I’m kind of stranded.”

  Chapter Seven

  Of all the things Callie expected Ross to say—of all the things she wanted him to say—asking for a ride home wasn’t it.

  But he only gave her the hopeful look of a person who knew she’d be driving his way.

  “Don’t you have a car?” was her inane response. Smooth, Callie.

  Ross shrugged. “I came with Grant, but he and Christina are going to spend the night. I keep my sheriff’s vehicle at the station. Don’t usually need a car other than that.”

  Callie gave him a stiff smile. “Sure.”

  She should add that with all he’d done for her, it would be a pleasure, but her mouth wouldn’t move.

  All she could do was march off the porch and make for the now mostly empty lot in the dusty field where she’d left her car.

  Ross walked beside her, not hurrying. He glanced around, peering at shadows, craning his head to look toward the stables and riding rings. Callie thought she knew what he searched for—or rather, who.

  “I saw Manny leave,” Callie told him. “He hitched a ride in the back of a pickup.”

  “Good. I hope he went home and stayed there.”

  Callie had watched the youth fetch a cooler from under a clump of trees, stash something inside, and then rush out and leap into the bed of Ray Malory’s pickup. She didn’t like to say anything about the cooler—Manny had obviously been taking extra food home so he’d have something to eat for the next day or so.

  “He’s a nice kid,” Callie said.

  Ross shot her a look. “Deep down, he is. He grew up too much on his own. No one to guide him.”

  “You could always adopt him,” Callie said with a smile.

  Ross blinked. “He’s seventeen and eleven months.”

  “You could be his adoptive uncle. Or big brother.”

  “And let him live with me? You think that because you haven’t seen my apartment. It’s a postage stamp.”

  “A postage stamp. Do people still say that?”

  “I do.” They reached her car. Callie clicked her key fob to unlock it, and the next instant, Ross opened the door for her, like the gentleman he was. He shut the door after she seated herself and moved to the passenger side to slide in.

  “Drive fast,” he said, scanning the horizon. “I don’t like the look of those clouds.”

  “The sheriff’s deputy is telling me to speed?” Callie pulled out of the lot and drove sedately down the winding lane that led to the highway. Thick dark clouds had gathered in the north, bearing down on the rolling grasslands. “Anyway, clouds always look like that in Texas.”

  “Like any minute we could have a hailstorm?” Ross said. “Or a light sprinkling? Or a tornado? Whatever nature decides.”

  “You worry a lot, you know that?” Callie spoke lightly, but she also eyed the thunderheads in trepidation. Storms blew up fast, and while the Hill Country didn’t always receive the crazy weather West Texas or North Texas could, it might be bad enough.

  She turned onto the highway that led into Riverbend. Most of the other guests had gone, and the road was empty.

  “Nice car,” Ross said, leaning back in the seat. “K.D. did a good job.”

  “He did.” Callie stroked the blue-gray steering wheel. “This is my first car, did you know? I bought it with the first money I ever made. It’s a good car, so I keep it up.”

  “An S-class. Good choice.” He chuckled. “Good salary.”

  “I was working for a stockbrokers’ in Dallas.” Where I met Devon. Callie had no inclination to speak his name, so she left him out of it. “Not the job I envisioned for the rest of my life, but the money was decent.”

  Devon hadn’t wanted her to continue working after they got engaged. Bad idea for two people in love to work in the same office, he’d claimed. But now she understood he’d wanted her to become the trophy wife, waiting at home, ready to impress his clients.

  “What does a stockbroker do, exactly?” Ross asked as the first fat drops of rain fell. “I know about the scammy ones, the boiler rooms.”

  “Legit stockbrokers do a lot of market research,” Callie said, babbling to keep her mind off Devon. “They figure out what’s hot and what’s dying off, what’s a fairly safe bet versus something that will flare up and tank. A good broker can really help people. Money is a responsibility—you have to take care of it, or it will vanish. I don’t mean because you blow it too fast, but if you have it in the wrong kind of account, say, fees will eat it up, or it can get taxed to nothing.”

  “What’s wrong with buying land?” Ross gazed at the hills around them, green with summer. “Safest investment, right?”

  “Not necessarily. If you buy the wrong property at the wrong time, and the market crashes, you’re paying tons of money for land that’s worth little. It can ruin you.”

  The rain came down harder, and Callie slowed and turned on her wipers to the highest setting. She shivered as she remembered the storm on her wedding day, and how Ross’s SUV had cut through it, coming to her rescue.

  “Sounds like you gave out good advice,” Ross said.

  “The job can be soul-sucking, though,” Callie said. “Clients trust you with everything they have. You have to explain the realistic returns, which are not the huge amounts boiler room scammers promise. And when the market changes unexpectedly, or people don’t take your advice to pull out in time, they can lose everything. It’s not so bad with the billionaires who are playing with a hundred thousand here, a hundred thousand there, but some people are trying to build college funds or buy a house for the family. It can break your heart.”

  “Which is why you want to switch to ranching. Because, you know, no one ever broke their heart over that.”

  “Oh, I realize it’s risky. But it seems more—I don’t know—personal. Maybe because I grew up around ranches and horses. It’s natural to me.”

  Ross grinned. “Yeah, the pretty cotillion dress and calling cards were so natural.”

  “Are you making fun of me?” Callie lowered her brows, but in reality she liked his teasing. Devon never teased. Never joked, except when he disparaged others in a slow drawl. To think, Callie used to believe Devon witty, when it turned out he was just mean. “It taught me how to be polite. Is that so bad? Maybe you should take lessons.”

  “Learn to drink tea and quirk my pinky?” Ross demonstrated. “If I do that in Sam’s bar, I’ll get pulverized.”

  Callie laughed. It felt good to laugh at nothing. She hadn’t done that in far too long.

  The rain was streaming down by the time Callie, following Ross’s directions, drove to the narrow alley behind buildings around the town square. The tiny artery between the businesses on the square and the next street contained small garages with just enough space to pull into and out of them.

  Callie stopped in front of one of the garages, and Ross opened his door. “Come upstairs.”

  She wanted to—she felt the pull to dash inside with him out of the rain. She also knew it was too soon, too fast. Her heart sped as she drew a breath.

  Ross slid out to yank the garage door up and then ducked back inside the car. “It’s coming down too hard for you to drive safely. I do not want to get a call that you’ve gone off the road again, or hear that some other driver has hit you and you’re in an ambulance.”

  His expression was grim. This was Ross the deputy talking, the one who’d helped pull the injured, the dying, out o
f cars on Texas’s dangerous highways.

  It was true that the drivers of River County, used to mostly fair weather, went a little loopy as soon as the rain pelted down. Heaven help them the rare year they had a dusting of snow.

  Caution, coupled with Callie’s desire to see where Ross lived, clinched it. She pulled slowly forward into the empty garage.

  A large chunk of the garage was taken up by a tool bench with various metal parts lying on it, plus a grinder and a drill press. Callie’s car barely fit, but there was enough room for each of them to open a door and slide out.

  She locked her car out of habit with the key fob, though Ross pulled the garage door closed and secured it before he led her to a plain door that opened to a cement-floored hall. A door at the far end presumably led to the offices in front of the building, and a staircase with a wrought iron railing rose straight upward.

  Callie knew from many years driving around the square that the office in front belonged to the lawyers Long and Emmons, who had been drawing up wills, doing land and tenant agreements, representing lawsuits, and processing divorces in Riverbend for generations.

  As this was Saturday, they’d shut for the weekend. The businesses to either side of it, one a bicycle shop, the other an artist supply store begun by a recent arrival to Riverbend, were also closed for the day.

  The staircase led to a landing that held another door, which Ross opened with a key.

  “I rent the upper two floors,” he said as he led her into a small space with large windows that faced the square. “Living area here, bedroom upstairs.”

  This row of buildings was at least a hundred and so years old, erected when the square had been first established around the courthouse. The shops had been renovated and remodeled several times, the upper floors turned into offices or apartments.

  The space Callie found herself in was small, as Ross had said, but airy, with a kitchen tucked against the back wall and partitioned from the living room by a small breakfast bar. Mismatched furniture clustered around a television, and the area under the front windows contained a single bench with a spindled back, an antique by the look of it.

  Near the kitchen, on the wall shared with the next apartment over, an open staircase rose to the upper level.

  “Bathroom’s up there if you need it,” Ross said, heading for the kitchen.

  Rain beat on the windows, hard enough that Callie could hear it on the roof upstairs. In the kitchen Ross ran water, and then came the gurgle of a coffeemaker and the first aroma of hot liquid on ground beans.

  The rain had turned the air cool—cool for a Hill Country July, anyway—and coffee would be refreshing.

  “Nice place,” Callie said. “Cozy.”

  “Could use some fixing up.” Ross leaned on the breakfast bar from the kitchen side, his rolled-up sleeves revealing brown arms tight with muscle. “But I’m not here much. I work a lot.”

  “You sure do. I see you driving around, on the lookout for bad guys.”

  Callie moved to the windows, making certain she stayed far enough back so a passing motorist wouldn’t notice her, though with the rain, probably no one could see up here anyway. Still, gossip that she’d been in Ross’s apartment would rocket around town in minutes.

  When Ross didn’t answer, Callie turned back. “Sorry, did I say something wrong? I was joking.”

  “There are more bad guys than you’d think.” Ross’s tone was serious. “They come to places like Riverbend because they believe they can hide. Some guys I’m after right now are in White Fork, living in a middle-class residential area. Lying low. We’re pretty sure who they are, but they’re too canny to do anything overt—they’re not cooking meth in the back shed—but they are dealers, and they are dangerous. Getting to them isn’t easy.”

  “Oh.” Callie blinked. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Not many do. It’s another reason I don’t want you driving around on empty roads. These guys—and women—are dickheads, and they don’t like me. They expect me to look the other way while they carry on.” Ross snapped his mouth shut, as though stopping himself from saying more.

  Callie had the sudden desire to make him feel better. She moved to the kitchen island, keeping it between them, and laid her hand on his fist. “Guess they’re not used to honest cops.”

  “No.” The one word was short, but Ross didn’t look at her. His gaze was on their hands, her slim fingers resting on his blunt ones.

  “Well, I like honest cops,” she said softly. “Especially ones who stop and help a woman in the rain.”

  When Ross finally looked at her, the heat in his eyes made her breath catch. “Just doing my job, ma’am.”

  Without lifting her hand, Callie slid around the counter to him. At the same time, he started out from behind. They met in the middle, the counter’s edge pressing into Callie’s hip.

  “Here I thought you were being nice,” she said to fill the silence. Even the rain had quieted, but Callie didn’t want to point that out.

  “Couldn’t bypass a damsel in distress,” Ross said softly. “I’d never forgive myself.”

  “Then you ran away with the bride.”

  “Not far. But I couldn’t resist.” Ross touched her cheek, his strong finger surprisingly gentle.

  “Should have. The whole town’s talking about us.”

  His fingertip moved across her cheekbone and down the side of her nose to her lips. “Does that bother you?”

  “Right now? Not at all.”

  “Good.”

  Ross drew her forward with his fingers under her chin and kissed her firmly on the lips.

  Chapter Eight

  Callie stilled as Ross’s kiss wrapped around her.

  When she’d kissed him in the parking lot, she’d leapt at him in desperation, her anger spurring her on. He hadn’t been repulsed—he’d held her until she’d calmed down.

  This kiss was seeking, learning, coaxing. Ross’s mouth was strong but his touch was light, as though he feared pushing her too hard too fast. His lips were smooth, like the softest bed sheets, and tasted of salt, spice, him.

  Callie stepped closer in his embrace, his belt buckle pressing into her abdomen. All the Campbells wore a huge buckle with Circle C on it, a badge that had earned them both envy and derision back in school. Girls would debate on which Campbell brother had the largest and the hardest, and dared each other to find out.

  Callie had to say she thought Ross would win.

  He turned them so Callie’s back was to the counter, and then her feet left the floor. Ross lifted her to sit on the granite top, and a moment later they were at eye level, her legs loosely around his.

  Ross eased back from the kiss, though it hadn’t gone beyond the brushing of lips. He said nothing and didn’t move, which allowed her time to study him.

  A scar pulled the edge of his left eyebrow, white in the deep tan of his face, which came from a lifetime under Texas sunshine. His straight nose and square chin made his features regular and handsome, and he wore his dark hair cut into a tight buzz so it wouldn’t be in his way. Most of all, his Campbell blue eyes, like twilit skies, gazed straight at her.

  Callie read the desire in him, which pulsed heat through her body. Her own rising desire met and matched it.

  She’d touched no one since Devon—and not even Devon for a while, because they’d gone their separate ways during the crazy wedding preparations. But it wasn’t only physical need that made Callie lean into Ross and seek his kiss again.

  She’d been bitterly lonely, nursing anger, hurt, betrayal, mortification. She’d made a bad choice, and she’d hidden out in embarrassment, licking her wounds, avoiding people. Callie regretted the years she’d wasted trying to be the perfect couple with Devon, realizing now that any time she’d stepped out of line, he’d been there to admonish her, tell her she was in the wrong, warn her to do better.

  Abusive husbands did that, she knew, but at the time, she hadn’t seen the signs. She’d thought it her fault when
shit happened, that he’d awakened her to her shortcomings. She’d figured no one had pointed them out before because none had been brave enough to tell Callie and her sisters that they weren’t exemplary.

  Ross didn’t give a shit whether or not she was perfect. What she saw in his eyes was naked need, for her. Not to see whether she was the ideal woman, but because he was interested in Callie.

  She’d seen the same flash in his eyes that long-ago day when he’d walked up to her, hands sliding into his pockets while he asked her casually for her Spanish homework.

  She’d seen, and hadn’t believed. So many years had passed—if they’d understood what they were feeling back then, had known what to do with it, her life might have been very different.

  “Ross,” she whispered.

  “Shh.” He touched his forehead to hers. “Don’t say anything. Let’s enjoy this moment.”

  He thought she wanted to stop him, to tell him this was a mistake. The truth was, she’d said his name to hear the sound of it, and to let him know she was just as hungry.

  She rested one hand on his chest, pushing at him until he lifted his head. She caught his mouth in a kiss, her eyes open to share her heart.

  Ross jumped, and everything changed.

  Something electric shot between them as Ross closed hard hands around her arms. Callie swore sparks leapt from his body to hers, arcs joining them in crackling need.

  Thunder boomed outside and kept on rolling. Maybe they’d just been struck by lightning.

  Not likely, and Callie didn’t care. She moved her hand to his shirt buttons and started to pop them open.

  Ross deepened the kiss. His lips parted hers, his tongue sweeping inside her mouth, stirring more sparks.

  The counter dug into her hips. Callie pulled Ross closer with her legs, unable to stop her noise of satisfaction when he stepped rigidly against her.

  Heat pounded through her. The rising scent of brewing coffee seeped around them, making her imagine mornings waking to breakfast and Ross. He’d look good wrapped in nothing but early sunshine.