Liam's Invented I-Do

by Liz Isaacson

  “Hey, it’s worked for two of us,” Tripp said with a grin. “And I totally think it’ll work for you too.” He bent and picked up his water bottle. “Now you better get some sweat going, bro. Otherwise you drove all the way in here for nothing.”

  Liam chuckled, but Tripp was right. “I think it’s leg day,” he said, moving over to the bench that would work out that part of his body.

  By ten-thirty, he’d showered, worked for a few hours on his CGI project, and spent twenty minutes on the phone with Garth Ahlstrom. He hadn’t told Callie yet, but they’d be stopping at Three Rivers Ranch after they got their marriage license. Garth had told him a few things about hiring cowboys, and Tripp wanted to get some more information about the cowboy cabins, the daily chores on a functioning ranch, and how much to pay good cowboys.

  Before he could get out of his truck to go get Callie, she came out the front door. The sight of her made his throat dry, and he got out of his truck to greet her. “Morning,” he said, grinning like a fool and not even caring. His conversation with his brother from that morning rang through his head like a gong.

  I totally think it’ll work for you too.

  Liam maybe was a little too optimistic, but Callie stepped into his arms and kissed him, so maybe not. “You ready for this?” he asked, walking her over to the passenger-side door.

  “Yes.” She wore a cute pair of jeans with a festive red sweater, and a light brown leather jacket over all of that. She’d done her hair and put on makeup, and Liam was sure an angel had just climbed into his truck.

  “Are you going to stand there and stare at me all morning?” Callie laughed, and Liam backed out of the doorway where he had been standing and staring.

  He got behind the wheel, and Callie asked, “Are you ready for this, Liam?”

  He knew she was asking about more than just a drive and a marriage license. “Yes,” he said with as much confidence as he could muster. He liked her. She liked him. They had great chemistry together, and while maybe most people waited until the I love you’s were said to tie the knot, Liam thought they had a chance. A real chance.

  “Okay,” he said as he backed out. “Today, I want a childhood story.”

  “Oh,” she said with a laugh. “You do, huh?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And I have six brothers, so I have a lot of them.” He glanced at her. “But you start first. Tell me something about the ranch that made you want to keep it for the rest of your life.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Callie looked out her window. “I think the stories binding me to this ranch aren’t very happy.”

  “No?”

  “I mean, not really.” She exhaled, and it sounded heavy to Liam.

  “Okay, well, I’ll tell one first.” He looked at her, and she nodded. “So my dad started building apps when I was a teenager. For a while there, we didn’t have anything. Like, I wore Jeremiah’s shoes and my mom actually sewed patches on Rhett’s jeans.” He shook his head, the childhood memories right there in his mind. “We had this family down the street that had fruit trees in their front yard. Apricots and peaches, and the lady that lived there was like, totally in love with her trees.”

  “And you stole her fruit,” Callie said, her face lit up with happiness. “And you know there are peach trees and apricot trees on my ranch, right?”

  “I didn’t know that,” he said, because there was so much about the ranch he didn’t know. He had to compartmentalize it, or he felt like shutting down. Putting his headphones on and disappearing into the CGI. He’d done that a lot when he’d first moved to Three Rivers, and he didn’t want to do it again.

  “And we didn’t steal her fruit,” he said. “Tripp and I wanted money for the movies, so we went to her house and asked her if we could pick her fruit for a few bucks.”

  “Oh, wow, I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “Yeah, well, we got in plenty of trouble too. This just wasn’t one of those times, and if you want some real stories, you should ask Jeremiah.”

  “He’s told me some,” Callie said. “There was this one about him and Skyler and something about pumpkins?” She laughed, and Liam did like the sound of that. He didn’t like that she’d shared this same experience with his brother.

  Jeremiah had assured him several times that he wasn’t interested in Callie, and Callie didn’t have feelings for him. Liam knew that intellectually, but his heart throbbed all the same. “Yeah,” he said, wishing he hadn’t brought anything up.

  “And that’s it?” Callie asked. “You went down the street and picked the lady’s fruit? She paid you and you went to the movies?”

  “No, she paid us, and we paid for Skyler, Micah, and Wyatt to go to the movies,” he said. “See, they were kids, and their tickets were cheaper. We, uh, we snuck in the back.”

  “You scoundrel,” she said, laughing again.

  “I still feel bad about it,” he said, smiling with her.

  “Well, you have a ton of money now. Why don’t you just send them the five bucks and an anonymous note?”

  He looked at her and found those eyes he loved so much sparkling with amusement. “I could totally do that. Maybe my conscience would be eased.”

  “Is that all you have on your conscience?”

  Liam looked out of the corner of his eye. “Uh, not even close.”

  “Keep going,” she said, and she sounded playful, but there was a more serious glint there too.

  “I didn’t realize this was a confessional drive,” he said, uneasy now, because so many of his regrets centered around her. “But I think another thing I’d like off my mind is the last woman I dated.”

  “Oh.” Callie blinked, and Liam hurried to add, “I mean, it’s not like I think about her all the time or anything. Jeremiah’s told you why we moved here, right?”

  “I know he had a fiancée that broke his heart. He hasn’t said much about it. But Evelyn told me you Walkers don’t date.”

  “Well, that’s obviously not true,” he said. “I mean, two of us are married now, and me and you are engaged.”

  “After three years,” she said. “So why did you come to Three Rivers? You came last, I think.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yep. I was trying to decide if I really wanted to leave this woman I’d been seeing. I mean, kind of seeing.”

  “Kind of seeing? How do you do that?”

  “We were on-again, off-again for about two years,” he said. “When I wasn’t with her, I was miserable. When I was, I was angry. Tripp kept telling me our relationship wasn’t healthy, but I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I couldn’t see it. I was in love with her.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Okay, don’t laugh,” he said, looking at her as they made it out of town and started on the highway north of Three Rivers. “Portia Petlova.”

  “Oh, a Russian girl.” Callie’s voice was way too high.

  “She wasn’t Russian,” Liam said.

  “Petlova?”

  “She was born in Texas,” he said, laughing.

  “All the good ones are,” Callie said, joining him. The rest of the drive became easy, and Liam was glad for that. They went into the courthouse, and the same woman sat at the County Clerk’s desk.

  “Oh, you’re back,” she said, smiling up at Liam.

  “Sure am.”

  “You know, sometimes people come in like they need a marriage license when they don’t,” she said. “I’m glad to know you weren’t one of those.”

  Liam had no idea what to say, so he just kept smiling. Callie was the one who stepped forward and said, “Here’s our application. My driver’s license.”

  Liam dug in his back pocket for his wallet, producing his ID as well. Everything checked out, and before he knew it, Liam was signing the application.

  “Did you two take the marriage education class?” the woman asked.

  “The what?” Liam asked.

  “It’s a class that helps premarital couples, and you get a sixty-dollar discount
on the marriage license fee if you take it. You also don’t have to wait seventy-two hours to get married if you take the class.”

  Liam looked at Callie, who stepped a little closer to him. “We’re not going to get married today or tomorrow,” she said. “We can wait the seventy-two hours.”

  “And I have the money.” He looked back at the clerk. “We didn’t take the class.”

  “You still can,” she said, stamping something on their application. She started giving instructions on how long it would last, and when it needed to be back to the office after the wedding, and when they’d get it back. It all seemed to happen in a blink of an eye, and then Liam was walking out the door, Callie’s arm in his, and the paperwork they needed to say I-do—even if it was an invented one.

  Chapter Eleven

  Callie couldn’t explain the giddiness inside her as she and Liam left the courthouse. “I guess we’re really doing this.”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Liam said. “And I hope you have your thumbs ready and your best listening ears on, because we’ve got a stop to make before we get lunch.”

  “A stop?”

  “Yeah, I forgot to tell you I talked to Garth Ahlstrom this morning, and he’s expecting us at Three Rivers Ranch.”

  Dread filled Callie’s stomach. “Oh.”

  “What?” he asked. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that Three Rivers is the premier ranch in the entire Texas Panhandle,” she said. “You’ll see it, and I’ll be even more embarrassed.”

  “The premier ranch in the entire Texas Panhandle?” Liam scoffed, and that made Callie smile.

  “Besides Seven Sons, of course,” she said.

  “Of course.” He made the turn onto the dirt road that led out to the ranch. “And, Cal, I’ve been out here before. I’ve already seen it.”

  Her nerves wouldn’t be quieted, and she swallowed as Liam rounded the bend and the ranch spread before them. Every building looked brand-new and well taken care of. The grass was green, and this ranch possessed an energy the Shining Star hadn’t had for a very long time.

  “Look, don’t be worried,” he said. “We’re here to get the help we need. You have nothing to be embarrassed about.” He pulled past the big glass building that had a huge sign above it. Courage Reins.

  He turned onto another lane that led in front of more buildings and parked next to a couple of other trucks.

  “Well, your truck is the nicest one,” she said just as a cowboy came in between two buildings.

  “There he is,” Liam said, reaching into the center console for something. “Are you ready?”

  She watched the cowboy stop and wait, and then looked at Liam with that notebook. “Yes,” she said, gathering her courage as close as she could.

  Liam smiled at her, and they got out of the truck together. “Hey, Garth,” he said brightly, striding over to the other cowboy and shaking his hand. “We talked on the phone earlier.”

  “Hullo, Liam. I’m Garth.”

  Liam stepped back and tugged Callie to his side. “This is Callie Foster. She owns the Shining Star Ranch, south of town.”

  “Right next door to you,” Garth said with a smile. He shook Callie’s hand too, and he possessed a quiet spirit that calmed Callie. “I understand you two have some questions about hiring cowboys, their room and board, all of that.”

  “Right,” Liam said.

  “You wanna come take a look?” Garth hooked his thumb over his shoulder, already turning back the way he’d come.

  “Yeah, of course.” Liam secured Callie’s hand in his, and she had no choice but to go with him.

  “So we have two cowboys in a cabin,” Garth said. “That’s fairly normal, depending on the size. Their room and board is part of their pay.” He kept talking about the vehicles they drove, the allowances they got, their work schedules. Liam took notes on all of it, and then they followed Garth up the steps of one of the cabins.

  “So Bennett and Beau live here. They’re fairly clean.” He knocked, and then opened the door and went inside. “I told them you were coming, so don’t be alarmed. We don’t have cabin checks here, and we don’t invade their space without talking to them first.” He turned and looked at Callie. “How many cabins do you have?”

  “Um, five,” she said at the same time Liam said, “Six.”

  She jerked her attention to him. “Six?”

  “I’m pretty sure there’s six, sweetheart.” Liam gave an awkward chuckle and looked at Garth. He did not seem like the type who wouldn’t know exactly how many feathers each chicken had on his ranch, and Callie found him intimidating.

  At the same time, she wanted a foreman just like him. “How much do you pay your cowboys who live and work here full-time?” she asked.

  “Thirty thousand, plus the room and board,” Garth said.

  “And what about you?” she asked. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me.” She shot a glance at Liam. “But I need someone like you at the Shining Star. How much does someone like you cost?”

  Garth smiled at her and stepped back onto the porch. “I live three cabins down,” he said. “It’s bigger than the other cabins, and my family lives there with me. On top of that, I get fifty thousand.”

  Callie looked at Liam. “I don’t have a bigger cabin than the others.”

  “My brother is a carpenter,” he said, almost under his breath.

  Garth looked back and forth between them. “Are you two going into business together?”

  Business. The word reverberated through her head, and Liam said it out loud, his voice incredulous.

  “Yeah.” Garth looked back and forth between them. “I’ve been out to Seven Sons, Liam. Your brother Jeremiah is a good cowboy, and he runs a tight ship.” He glanced at Callie. “I haven’t seen your ranch ma’am, so I can’t speak to it. But it seems like you two need some help with it.”

  Understatement of the year.

  “We do,” Liam said. “Can I go back inside?” He stepped back into the cabin, leaving Callie on the porch with Garth. She didn’t like the way he studied her, but thankfully, his phone rang, and he pulled it out of his back pocket.

  “It’s my wife. Excuse me.” He stepped over to the corner of the porch, and said, “Hey, baby.” That softened him considerably, as did the two kids who came running down the gravel path in front of the cabins a moment later.

  They ran right up the steps, yelling about something, and Garth scooped them both up into his arms, laughing. Ah, there was the Texas cowboy that Callie knew, and she blinked, having a vision of Liam doing the same thing with their kids.

  Shocked, she turned away from Garth and his boys and went back inside the cabin too.

  “This is nice,” Liam said. “Two bedrooms. One bathroom. Living room big enough for two sofas. Kitchen. Table. Back door, with a little patch of lawn.”

  “Liam,” Callie said. “I want to adopt.”

  “What?” He looked at her, clearly confused about the two different conversations they were having.

  “Did you want to see the barns?” Garth asked from behind them. “My boys are dying to give you a tour.”

  “We want to see it all,” Liam said, and he was obviously more excited about being here than Callie was. She told herself this was a good opportunity for her, to tour this very functional ranch.

  So she put her heart into the tour, and she asked questions about the bull pens, the amount of acreage they had at Three Rivers, and how many men it took to keep the ranch running how it did.

  “We have seventeen full-time cowboys,” Garth said. “Seasonal workers during harvest and branding time.”

  “Do they rotate?” Liam asked. “And how big is this place?”

  “They don’t rotate,” Garth said. “I have people over animals and people over crops. Men over fences and groundskeeping. We’ve got three distinct entities out here, and sometimes we share cowboys.”

  “Yeah, my brother works for Bowman’s Breeds,” Liam said. “Wyatt Walker?
”

  “Yep, I know Wyatt,” Garth said. “Hard worker, that one. Knows his way with horses, too.”

  “That he does,” Liam said with a smile, clearly enjoying himself. Callie’s stomach growled, and she nodded toward the huge building at the end of the row. They’d been in the barns, seen the chickens, visited the stables. Garth had answered nearly every question under the sun, and she appreciated his time.

  “What’s that building?” she asked.

  “That’s where my daddy works,” one of the little boys said. He was probably seven or eight years old.

  “That’s the admin building,” Garth said. “We have our meetings in there. Squire Ackerman has an office. So does his wife, who runs all of our financial affairs here at the ranch. She’s an accountant. My office is in there, and we have a general controller who runs the front desk. That way, we all know who’s supposed to be doing what, we all get paid, and all of our sales are recorded properly.”

  Callie’s head swam. No wonder the Shining Star was in ruins. This place—though three times as big as her family ranch—had seventeen full-time cowboys, a general controller, a foreman, offices, schedules, accountants.

  “Thank you so much,” Liam said, shaking Garth’s hand.

  “You want to meet some of my best boys?” Garth asked, and Callie wanted to say no. But before either of them could say anything, he added, “Here’s Bennett and Beau now. How were things out in pasture seven?”

  “Just peachy,” one of the cowboys said. He extended his hand to Callie. “I’m Bennett Lancaster.” He indicated the cowboy in the white hat next to him. “Beau Rogers.”

  “Nice to meet you,” she said.

  “Yeah?” Bennett took a step closer. “I’m not sure I’ve seen you around.”

  “Bennett,” Garth barked, but the cowboy in the dark hat didn’t back down.

  “I own a crumbling ranch fifteen minutes south of town,” she said. “And me and my fiancé sure are hoping to get it all fixed up.” She smiled broadly at the cowboy, watching his eyes glaze over the moment she said fiancé.

  “Lucky guy,” Bennett said, stepping back.