by Jill Shalvis
“You thought wrong. Jake, you’re not at work. You’re not the hero out here.”
Right. He wasn’t the hero anywhere.
She bent over the horse’s neck, embracing the huge animal. Then, with one last pat, she hopped down. “And even if I had been in trouble, I can handle myself.” She grabbed the reins and led the horse toward the barn, sending him one last long, hard look over her shoulder.
Great, she could handle herself. “Good to know,” he muttered and rubbed his shoulder. He was an idiot. He wished he was in San Diego; at the station playing cards waiting for the fire bell; at his small house with a good hot pizza and cable TV; at a bar sharing drinks with a woman…anywhere but here.
For the second time that night, he headed toward the cabins. He pulled a key out of his pocket, the one Callie had given him with an unusual look on her face; as if she’d wanted to both laugh and wince in sympathy.
In this case, he’d take the sympathy. He came to a stop in front of the second cabin. His brother’s.
Half brother, he reminded himself, because blood didn’t seem to mean much to Tucker these days.
It hadn’t always been that way. Once upon a time, Tucker had thought the sun rose and set on Jake’s shoulders. That had been nice, real nice, but Jake shook off the memories and reached for the handle just as the door opened. Light spilled out into the night.
Tucker stood in the doorway with a scowl on his face. “You going to stand there muttering to yourself all night, or are you coming in?”
“This was a bad idea.”
“No shit.” Tucker stood back and gestured him in. “But there’s no other choice until morning, unless you want to sleep in your rent-a-cowboy truck.”
Jake glanced at the Toyota in the driveway, the one he’d rented at the airport. He had no idea why Tucker might object to it. “What other choice will present itself in the morning?”
“You can leave.”
Jake smiled grimly and stepped inside. “You used to come running when I came home. You’d throw your chubby little arms around my legs and laugh while I tried to walk with you on me.” Nothing had ever made him feel more important, not before, or since.
“Yeah, well, I was just a stupid kid then.”
Jake refrained from asking him what had changed, and looked around. To say the place was small would be an understatement. There was a kitchen nook and living space, which held a fireplace with a couch in front of it. Behind the couch was a cot. He looked at it and groaned.
“There’s always the truck,” Tucker reminded him.
“You know, you might show a little more gratitude to the guy who got you out of your one-way ticket to juvy-hall, moved you out of the town where at least half the population wanted to kill you, and handed you a job.”
Tucker just stared at him from sullen eyes.
“Or not,” Jake muttered, and weary beyond exhaustion, sat on the couch.
“Try again, Sherlock.”
Jake got up, walked around the couch, and kicked the cot. “Do I at least get a pillow—” It hit him in the face. “Gee, thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. You paid for it.”
“Is that what’s up your ass? You’re mad at me because you owe me money?”
“I don’t owe you anything.”
“You know what, Tucker?” Exhausted, he sank to the cot. He toed off his shoes and lay back carefully. “Remind me to pound the shit out of you tomorrow.” He just prayed he had the energy. He closed his eyes and, fully dressed, fell into a deep slumber.
Later that night, Callie lay in her bed watching the moon’s shadow play across her ceiling. She could still picture Jake balancing himself on that fence, trying to save her from a runaway horse.
The idea was laughable, and yet…
What kind of guy did such a thing for a woman he hardly knew? A firefighter, she had to admit. A man well used to putting others’ safety ahead of his own.
She might almost like him for that, if their earlier conversation wasn’t haunting her.
“It’s time to work on this place, give it some value.”
“It has value.”
“Not resale, it doesn’t.”
The words had stuck with her ever since he’d fallen asleep after uttering them by the hot tub. The first time she’d stepped foot here, she’d been seventeen years old, with twenty bucks in her pocket and no more possessions than could fit into her ratty old backpack…
The memory never failed to make her smile, though she hadn’t been smiling then. She’d been secretly shaking in her boots. Richard Rawlins had stood in front of her, looking so big and formidable, hands on his hips as he stared down at the bedraggled young homeless girl asking for a job.
“Whatcha got in the way of skills, girl?” he’d demanded in a craggy voice that suggested he’d been yelling at bedraggled young homeless girls just like her for years.
But she was good at not letting anyone see her squirm. Real good. Some might say that she was too proud as well, but she didn’t think so. She was just independent, fiercely so, but having never been able to depend on anyone but herself, she had good reason. “I can clean up after the animals,” she’d told him. Her mother had been a small-time singer, chasing fame in bars across the south for most of Callie’s youth. This had meant nocturnal sporadic mothering, and she used the word mothering quite loosely, because really, if there’d been any mothering done at all, it had been done by Callie herself.
In any case, she’d been left mostly alone during her days. During the summer months, she’d spend her time wandering around whatever town they were staying at, often finding herself near whatever horse stables she could locate.
By age six, she wanted to be a horse when she grew up. A wild stallion, with no fencing and no drunk mother. No adults, period.
Unfortunately, by the time she’d turned eight, she’d realized that dream was impossible. So she’d forged another—she wanted freedom. She’d discovered people were willing to pay her to clean up after their horses, and if she did a good job, they’d pay even more. Freedom granted.
By the time she met Richard Rawlins, she was a loner, a somewhat cynical teen who knew only that she instantly liked the feel of the Blue Flame. The yards had been clean, the barns and house the same if slightly shabby, the animals happy enough in their corrals.
Plus, unlike most of the ranches she’d spent time on, this one was for people to come and play at living in the Wild Wild West. New people in and out all the time, exciting people from all over the country, and new adventures every day. The thought appealed to her more than anything else she’d seen.
“So…” Richard had watched her with an inscrutable gaze. “You clean up after animals…” He hadn’t been known for being patient or even particularly kind, but then again, having not experienced much of either in her life, Callie hadn’t expected anything. She just wanted a place to sleep at night and a job she could live with.
“We’ll start with you clearing the stalls then,” Richard said, nodding. “But I’m thinking you’ll want to aim higher next time I ask you what you can do, so keep your ears open, girl.”
She had, and still did. That had been twelve years ago, and she’d been here ever since, working her way up through the ranks, watching other employees butt heads with Richard and his stubborn, unbending ways, marveling that they didn’t understand that all he wanted was to be left alone and for them to do their job. Employees had come and gone, and she’d laid low, wondering why anyone would ever leave.
She hadn’t, except for the occasional vacation.
Oh, and then there’d been the one time she’d quit to do something really stupid—like get married.
But that had lasted only long enough for her to realize her foolishness, and Richard Rawlins had been more than willing to hire her back. Once again, she’d settled in at the Blue Flame, wiser, smarting from her mistakes, but time—and the place—had eventually soothed the pain away.
Then two years ago Richard had gone off for
a long ride. No one had thought anything of it, not then, and not when he didn’t show up for four days. He’d often taken his own adventure for that long a period, or longer.
But this time he’d suffered a fatal heart attack, twenty miles away from his ranch, in the wilderness of the Chiricahua National Forest, all alone.
Callie had been devastated, but as she quickly learned, she’d been the only one to feel that way. Some of the employees had moved on, some—like Lou and Marge—had stayed. Stone and Eddie had come to work for her, and then Tucker, and Jake had been content to let her run the ranch. She’d made the most of that time, slowly changing things, improving where she could.
She’d also been saving, getting financial advice from Michael Dawson, a man she had several ties to. One, he was her best friend. Two, he was her ex-husband’s partner in a mortgage company, where she was hopefully close—maybe two years close—to getting her finances in good enough shape for a loan.
But as she’d felt all her life, not quite close enough.
Dawn was still a good hour off when Shep let out a bark and Callie jerked awake. Had that been a car driving down the gravel road out of here, or had she been dreaming? In any case, she got out of bed and went to the window. Squinting through the gray light, she could only see as far as the first barn.
With a sigh, she moved to her front door and opened it. Now she could see the hay barn and the hen house as well, but nothing out of the ordinary.
The big house was dark, as were all the other cabins, but she trusted Shep implicitly. Mourning the thirty minutes before her alarm would have gone off—she dressed and stepped outside. Still nothing.
Except the soft whinny of her horse Sierra, and it held the sound of…pain? At that her heart dropped to her stomach and she started running. Sierra was her horse, her baby, the love of her life, and she couldn’t get there fast enough. When she reached the barn, breathless from nerves and worry, she hauled the door open and hit the lights. Normally she’d have been met with quizzical glances from the horses they kept there in the two rows of stalls.
Instead they peered at her anxiously, and Sierra whinnied again.
“Sierra?” Callie rushed over to her. “Why is your saddle on?” Callie had definitely taken it off after her ride last night, it would have been cruel to keep it on overnight—
And crueler still to leave the stirrups tucked beneath the saddle, digging into Sierra’s flanks. The horse was rubbing up against the wall of her stall in a desperate attempt to get comfortable, something that only succeeded in making the stirrups dig into her all the harder. A line of blood ran down both her sides, dripping into the straw beneath her, and Callie’s heart nearly stopped at the sight. “Oh no. Oh, baby, hold on.” She slipped into the stall, but Sierra was long beyond spooked. Eyes rolling back in her head, ears flat, she reared up, catching Callie between twelve hundred pounds of frightened animal and the unforgiving door of the stall.
Stars burst in Callie’s vision as her head hit the wall hard. A knifelike pain exploded in her ribs. Dizzy, she pushed on Sierra with all her might. “It’s okay, Sierra, it’s okay. You just have to scoot over—” The horse shifted just enough that Callie could draw in a lungful of air, and she shoved the saddle off.
It hit the ground with a thump. Staggering a little from the blow to her head, Callie stared at the sight of the horse’s flanks, rubbed raw and bleeding. “Oh, Sierra.” Throat thick, she stroked the horse’s face. “Oh, baby. It’s okay now, I’m here. It’s okay.”
Sierra tossed her head, the whites of her eyes still rolling as she blew out breath after loud, fearful breath.
“I know. I know.” For a long, long moment Callie just stood there, her arms wrapped around Sierra’s neck. “Who did this to you?” Only when both of their heartbeats had settled a little did she leave the stall to get some medical supplies, coming back to Sierra just as the barn door opened.
Once again Sierra reared in alarm, knocking Callie back against the stall door. She raised her arms to protect her face and head from the animal’s flailing hooves and braced herself for serious injury, but a pair of hands grabbed her, yanking her out of the stall.
Jake sank to the ground with her in his lap. “Jesus, Callie. Are you all right?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What hurts?”
He ran a hand over her, gently probing until she put her hands over his. “No, it’s okay. I’m okay.” She was still gasping for breath, each inhale burning her already bruised ribs. “What are you doing here?”
“I was out pretending I still run in the mornings, and I heard another scream. And this time it sure as hell wasn’t a happy little woo-hoo warrior call, so don’t even try to tell me I’m being stupid again.”
She was becoming increasingly aware that she sat cradled in his lap with his hands on her. “I never said you were stupid.”
“No, it was just implied. So why is that horse trying to kill you?” Jake shot a grim look into the stall, where Sierra had gone still, head down, puffing out panicked little breaths that made Callie want to break down and cry.
“She’s not trying to kill me.” She held her spinning head, then tried to get up but Jake kept her against him. “Some idiot put her saddle on—wrongly I might add. I need to calm her down. Let me up.”
He helped her and stayed close, even as he eyed Sierra and the other horses with a healthy distrust. Stone’s, Eddie’s, and Tucker’s horses had stalls in here, as well as Moe, Richard’s old horse. With Richard gone, Moe had gotten a little ornery, so they kept him out of the corral unless he was being exercised or ridden on a trek by an expert guest.
Sierra still shook and trembled, and Callie’s heart broke. Just like the people that worked the Blue Flame, many of the animals had come to them through circumstances that proved life could be unfair and cruel. Before being rescued by Richard, then purchased by Callie three years back, Sierra had been abused on another ranch.
She looked it now, and that pissed Callie off so that by the time they were done cleaning her up and calming her down, Callie was shaking, too. “I just can’t believe it,” she said, her throat thick with tears.
Jake touched her face. “Callie, I think you should just sit a minute.”
“I’m a little dizzy, that’s all.” Dizzy enough to let him take her hand in a big, warm one as they moved down the row of stalls toward the barn door. Moe stuck his head out of his stall and tried to take a bite out of Jake’s shoulder.
“What the—” Jake jumped sideways and stared at the horse. “Is he hurt, too?”
“No.” Callie patted Moe, but the big horse kept a baleful eye on Jake, enough to keep Jake a good few feet back. “He just doesn’t play well with other horses so we keep him inside.”
“He doesn’t play well with other people, either.”
“He usually does.” As she said this, Moe tried to take another bite of Jake.
“He’s crazy,” Jake said, jumping back again. “Why do you keep him?”
“He was your father’s horse.”
Jake went still, looking at the animal for a long moment.
Moe looked right back.
Then Jake turned and walked right out of the barn.
Callie followed. Only a half hour had passed, but dawn had just arrived, and she blinked into it. Her head pounded, and she felt just a little sick with it.
Jake stood right outside, his expression unreadable. “You okay?”
She nodded and took a step toward the big house, where her crew would probably be looking for handouts now that Amy was leaving out things like amazing blueberry muffins. “I’m going to find out what the hell happened.”
“Not yet.”
She didn’t have the time for this, plus she hurt so badly she nearly whimpered when she moved. “Jake—”
“Humor me.” He took her to her cabin. Once inside, he flipped on the lights, then turned to her. Sinking his hands in her hair, he gently probed her head and the bump on the back of it.
She hissed out a breath.
“Yeah, nasty lump. Trust me, I know how that feels. Follow my finger.”
He had her track it back and forth. Then, tilting her head up, he stared into her eyes for so long, she squirmed.
“Close your eyes,” he demanded, and when she did, he said, “Now open them.” He kept staring into her eyes, then finally nodded. “Not concussed. Your head is too hard, thankfully.” He put his hands on his hips. “Now strip.”
4
Callie managed a raw laugh. It’d been a hell of a long morning, and standing there feeling so vulnerable and shaky in front of the one man she didn’t want to see her weak in any way was difficult. Not to mention what her hormones had done when he’d quietly ordered her to “strip.” “I know I let you think I was easy the night of Richard’s service, but—”
“You’re favoring your ribs, I want to see them.”
She hugged herself and felt her eyes water from the pain of that little gesture. “I want to go find out what happened, then I want to check on Sierra again. I’m fine, and even if I’m not, I can get Marge.”
“Let me see, Callie.”
“You have a real save-the-girl thing going, and I’m sure most women find that sexy, but—”
He lifted his hands to her short-sleeved blouse, and started unbuttoning her. His head was bent to his task, their jaws only an inch apart. He hadn’t shaved but smelled like soap, and like the man she’d once held too close.
He spread her blouse wide, exposing her hot pink and black satin bra, at which he executed a comical double take.
“I…” She closed her eyes, felt her face heat. “I have a thing for lingerie.”
“I remember.”
His voice seemed a little hoarse, a little thick, and she searched his gaze but all she found was concern as he ran the tip of a work-roughened finger over the already black-and-blue ribs on her left side. “Not good.”
“Nothing’s broken.” She held her aching head. “But who would do such a thing to her?”
“Let’s find out.”