Liam's Invented I-Do

by Liz Isaacson

  He woke sometime later, purely relieved that he’d been able to get some shut-eye. The scent of maple syrup hung in the air, and he padded down the hall to find Liam and Wyatt in the kitchen, a stack of pancakes on the counter between them.

  “There he is,” Wyatt said. “I just told Liam we better go make sure you were still alive, that you never sleep this late.”

  Jeremiah glanced at the clock, startled to see it was almost eight o’clock. “Yeah,” he said. “Been stressed lately.”

  Liam kicked Wyatt’s barstool, causing Wyatt to glare at him. Jeremiah didn’t like the exchange, but he said nothing.

  “Want to get barbecue tonight?” Wyatt asked. “I recently found this place that has the best brisket in the state of Texas. Maybe in the country.”

  “Oh, wow,” Jeremiah said with a laugh. “And if you think so, it must be good, what with you being a world-traveler and all of that.”

  “Yep.” Wyatt just grinned like he could rope the sun. And he probably could. Jeremiah wondered what it would be like to have that much confidence, but he didn’t have the world champion title nor the belt buckles to back it up.

  No, all he had was the very clear mental image of himself standing at the altar while Laura Ann’s father walked toward him, no daughter on his arm. Of Liam and Tripp’s backs as they blocked him from the gossipy eyes of everyone he’d known in Austin. Of his unanswered texts to Whitney Wilde.

  “I can barbecue tonight,” Jeremiah said, turning away from his brothers and wishing he could turn away from his thoughts just as easily.

  “Great,” Wyatt said.

  “Where’ve you been at night?” Jeremiah asked, though Liam had last night. But he’d take the fact that he’d eavesdropped on his brothers to the grave with him.

  “Just…out,” Wyatt said.

  “Right.” Jeremiah turned around, his coffee poured and his stomach growling for pancakes. “What’s her name?”

  “He’s not telling,” Liam said.

  “She doesn’t seem that interested,” Wyatt said.

  “Oh, just put on your bull riding belt buckle,” Liam said. “She’ll come around.”

  “Nah.” Wyatt shook his head as he chuckled. “She doesn’t seem impressed by that.”

  “She sounds smart,” Jeremiah said.

  Wyatt rolled his eyes as he stood up, a flicker of pain stealing across his face. Jeremiah saw it, but he pretended not to. He knew the rodeo could beat up a man, but Wyatt hadn’t said two words about being hurt or experiencing any pain. “I do have to get to work this morning,” he said. “Ethan’s down a cutting trainer, and he’s convinced I can do it.”

  “Can you?” Jeremiah asked. “Because cutting. Wow. That’s a lot of time on horseback.”

  “I’m going to try it,” Wyatt said, still not saying a thing about himself. He never really did, and Jeremiah was starting to think he’d imagined that look of pain. He’d seen it before though….

  “All right. Well, good luck,” Jeremiah said, and Wyatt raised his hand as he left.

  Jeremiah took another pancake and looked at Liam. “And you? What are you doin’ today?”

  “I have another deadline on Friday,” he said. “So I’m going to work.”

  “Do you buy for a second that whoever Wyatt’s been spending the last couple of weeks with isn’t interested?”

  Liam chuckled. “No, sir, I do not.”

  “Me either.” Jeremiah poured more syrup over his pancake. “You gonna talk to Callie?”

  “If she’s home, which I highly doubt.”

  Jeremiah nodded. “Then I’ll say good luck to you too.”

  “And to you,” he said. “You gonna try Whitney again?”

  “No,” Jeremiah said, deciding on the spot. “She knows how to find me if she wants to. She clearly doesn’t want to.” The words hurt, slicing open old wounds. But if there was one thing Jeremiah knew, it was that the heart as an actual organ didn’t stop beating just because it broke.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Callie woke the next morning, the homestead utterly silent. Still. Unscented.

  She hated it.

  She’d stayed at Simone’s last night until well after dark, sure Liam would beat her home. But all the windows had sat in darkness, and she’d opened the back door to an empty house. She known it was empty, because it had no spirit.

  It still didn’t.

  Liam hadn’t come home. He hadn’t called or texted her either, and Callie felt the ground disappear beneath her feet the same way it had when he’d said he trusted his brother. It was as if he’d heated a blade and then stabbed it right between her ribs. She reached out and steadied herself against the new nightstand he’d bought.

  “Is that it?” she asked. “How could he really think I’m in love with Miah?” It made no sense, and Callie’s desperation and despair felt endless. She showered though, and she went into the kitchen to make coffee. She’d operated under duress plenty of times over the course of the last couple of years, and life would go on. That much she knew.

  But she now also knew the joy and peace of waking up without a heavy burden hanging over her. She now knew how amazing it was to have a man at her side—and not just any man. Liam Walker. Strong, sexy, and soft all at the same time. He could make her feel cherished just by looking at her, and he made her feel sexy and strong while they made love, though she knew she wasn’t sexy or strong.

  She gathered her hair on top of her head and took her coffee out onto the back deck. The ranch had a new spirit about it, despite Liam’s absence. Of course, it was because of Liam that she saw a couple of cowboys walking along a well-kept path and entering a barn that used to sit idle.

  After her morning coffee, she’d go to town and get everything she needed to keep bees—minus the bees. She’d figure out how to do that once she had the proper facilities for her new winged friends.

  She liked that she didn’t have cowboys asking her what to do. She got a couple of texts from Cayden about the office he’d established in the biggest barn, along with the whiteboard of chores. She thought about that huge administration building out at Three Rivers, and she wondered if she needed something like that.

  “Three Rivers has thirty thousand head of cattle,” she muttered to herself. “You have five hundred.” But both Cayden and Miah thought she could grow that to three thousand this year, and six thousand next year. She had the land to do it, and now she had the money and the manpower.

  Extreme gratitude overcame her, and tears sprang to her eyes. “I can’t believe this is my life now.”

  And yet, money hadn’t fixed everything. But if there was someone she wanted to work through things with, it was Liam. So she pulled out her phone and texted him. I’m running to town for beekeeping supplies. Do you need anything?

  No, he answered.

  You’re not going to stay away all day, are you?

  No.

  Hope filled Callie’s heart, and she thought about her grandmother’s homemade barbecue sauce and the chicken and onion pizza she could make with it.

  Dinner tonight then? she typed. Just the two of us, here at our house.

  She stared at the words, wondering why it was so hard to send them. She knew she was the one who initiated the silence between her and Liam, and things had always turned out well when she broke it. But he still felt cold, unreachable.

  Deciding not to wait for him to answer with a text, she called him.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice definitely guarded.

  “Dinner tonight?” she asked. “Here at the house.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll be at the house, working all day too.”

  “I’ll stay out of your hair.”

  “Callie,” he said, a heavy dose of annoyance in his voice. “You’re not in my hair.”

  “I know,” she said lightly. “Dinner tonight. We’ll talk it all out. Make new rules. Whatever you want.” She pulled back any other words she might have said, because she didn’t want him
to think her weak after sleeping in the house alone for one night. She used to like sleeping alone, but now it felt like a chore she didn’t want to do.

  “I don’t need new rules,” Liam said.

  “All right.” Callie didn’t know what else to say. Something buzzed in her chest, but she didn’t know what to do about it. “Liam, I—I love you.”

  “I love you too, sweetheart.” And he sounded like he did.

  Callie pressed her eyes closed and nodded. “See you tonight.” With a solid plan that hopefully wouldn’t have her sleeping alone again tonight, she headed into town. She pulled into the farm supply store, feeling a bit out of place. Of course, she’d bought plenty of things from this store in the past, but she’d never felt like she belonged.

  The first person she saw when she stepped inside was Morris Fennigan, and she grinned at him. “Morris, it’s good to see you.”

  “Callie Foster,” the man said, his face splitting into a smile too. “Although, I hear congratulations are in order. You got married.”

  “That I did.” She liked Morris, who co-owned the store with his brother. “I’m looking to introduce bees at the Shining Star.” She pulled out her phone and navigated to the supply list she’d made the previous evening with Miah. “And I was told you would have everything I needed.”

  “Of course we do,” he said. “Let me get you Harrison. He’s the apiary specialist.” He picked up the phone on the counter and paged the man, who turned out to be more of a boy. Callie went with him to get the supplies, taking more notes as he told her about different kinds of trays and different kinds of bees.

  “What kind of flowers are you going to plant?” Harrison asked.

  “Uh.” Callie had no idea. “Is there a certain kind?”

  “Nope,” he said, picking up a strainer and putting it on the flatbed cart he’d brought with him. “But the flowers can flavor the honey. If you’ve got normal flowers, they’ll be happy with those. I think grape vines and raspberry canes are awesome for bees. Loads of flowers, all the time.”

  “Okay,” she said, typing the fruits into her phone.

  “I love lavender honey,” he said. “And it’s easy to grow here. I like having spring flowers like crocus and bluebonnets. Hyacinths are good. Then others that flower all summer, like hosta, foxglove, snapdragon.”

  Callie’s mind buzzed like she hoped her bees would as she took notes. “So I need to make like a bee garden.”

  “Bees will go anywhere,” he said. “But yeah, if you have things for them close by, they’ll be happy. If you have a big space, they love sunflowers.”

  “I have a big space,” she said.

  “Let’s start you off with this,” he said. “Do you need me to come out and help you assemble it? We’ve got a ninety-nine-dollar assembly fee.”

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation. Anything with any kind of fee would’ve put her off before. But not now, and another rush of gratitude and appreciation for Liam filled her.

  “And you can either come back once we’re set up, or even later today if you want to go through our nursery. It’s not a great time to plant, but we can do some drawings, help you map out where things will be, all of that.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “If you take pictures of your space, it’s even better.” He smiled at her, and Callie wished she had even a portion of his passion for beekeeping and could apply it to anything.

  “Thank you, Harrison.”

  “Anytime, ma’am. And we can get the bees for you too. They’re organically sourced honeybees from right here in Texas, and we deliver and help you introduce them to your hives starting in April.”

  “Perfect,” she said. “I definitely need help with all of that.” Excitement built inside her, and she realized it was the first time she’d been excited about anything in a long, long time. Between now and when she got her bees, she’d read everything she could about beekeeping, learn how to feed her ranch hands, and work on her marriage with Liam.

  A few hours later, she’d stopped for breakfast at the pancake house and watched Harrison unload all of the equipment she’d bought for her beehives. She’d watched him assemble it all, taking notes on her phone as he said things she thought she’d want to know later.

  She tried to burst into Simone’s she-shed to tell her about her exciting morning, but the door was locked. “Simone?” She knocked and tried the door again. Her sister often kept the shed locked while she wasn’t working inside, but she’d told Callie last night that she’d gotten a lot of “amazing items” at a huge estate sale over the weekend and she’d probably be living in the shed for the next couple of weeks.

  Callie looked over her shoulder, but the row of cabins couldn’t be seen from here. Maybe her sister had gone home for lunch, or—

  The door whipped open, and Simone stood there, her face slightly redder than usual. She leaned into the opening between the doorjamb and the door and said, “Hey, Cal.”

  “Hey.” She tried to see past her sister, but she couldn’t. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. What’s going on with you?”

  “The door was locked.”

  “Yeah, I was working on something secret.”

  Callie’s eyebrows went up. “Secret? Can I come in?”

  “I’m about to go to lunch.” Simone wasn’t moving from her spot, and she was completely blocking Callie from entering the shed.

  “I got the beehives,” Callie said, a smile filling her soul and her face. “And Liam is coming for dinner.”

  “That’s great, Cal.” And Simone sounded genuine. But she still wasn’t moving.

  “Okay,” Callie said. “I was just going to sit with you while you worked, and maybe talk your ear off about the beehives. But I can see you’re busy.”

  “Oh, I’m just going to finish one thing and go to lunch.”

  Callie thought of Liam at the homestead, in his office. She didn’t have much to do now that she’d taken care of the beehive purchase, and she wondered if she could spend the afternoon with her sister.

  Not if you’re going to make homemade barbecue sauce.

  “Okay,” she said. “Well, we can talk about bees later. I have to get home and start dinner.”

  “What are you making?”

  “Barbecue chicken pizza.”

  “Oh, pulling out the family recipes.” Simone smiled, her grip on the door just a little too tight.

  “Yeah,” Callie said. “Can’t wait to see your secret project.” She gave Simone a knowing look, but her sister just gazed evenly back at her. Callie left and went back to the homestead, and she knew instantly that Liam was there.

  The whole house seemed to hold more life and laughter when he was around, and Callie basked in the warm feeling of it. Then she got to work on that barbecue sauce. After all, she really wanted to impress him and hopefully make everything right between them in just a few short hours.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Simone closed the door on her art studio and leaned into it, sighing. A general feeling of excitement moved through her, and a smile decorated her face.

  “She’s gone.”

  A cowboy stepped around a tall cabinet in the back of the shed Simone had never really gotten around to refurbishing. He likewise wore a grin, and with that sexy black hat, Simone definitely had no defenses against the rugged, handsome man—who now lived next-door to her.

  “So we’re not tellin’ anyone about us,” Jarrod Rust said.

  “Nothing to tell,” Simone said, looking away from the man she’d just met a few weeks ago. Same as Micah.

  But Micah wasn’t there, and she honestly had no idea when he’d be back. She wasn’t going to ask one of his brothers, and she hadn’t gotten his number.

  And Jarrod was cute, and available, and Simone was ready to stop being the recluse who worked out of a shed and only went to town a few times a year.

  “Nothing yet,” Jarrod said, catching her hand as she sat down at the table she’d
been varnishing. He touched his lips to the back of her hand. “Dinner at my place later? Seems like your sister won’t interrupt us tonight.”

  Callie had come over quite suddenly last night, but Simone had been able to explain away the pizza casserole as her just wanting to try out her new stove. She’d felt bad for distracting Callie so Jarrod could sneak out the back door, but he’d worn a look of delight and playfulness then, the same as now.

  “Yes,” she said, letting him tug on her arm until she stood up.

  “Great,” he said. “Shawn is at his folks’ until the weekend, at least in the evenings.”

  “Yeah.” Simone looked into Jarrod’s light blue eyes, something sizzling between them. “I hope his mom is feeling better.”

  “I’ll ask him this afternoon,” Jarrod said, his gaze dropping to Simone’s mouth. She wouldn’t push him away if he kissed her, but the moment lengthened, and he still didn’t move.

  Simone was tired of waiting, as it seemed like that was all she did. She waited for people to come to her booth and buy her antiques and treasures. She waited for Evelyn and Callie to figure things out.

  In fact, she had no idea where the past ten years of her life had gone, and she was ready to seize every day by the horns.

  So she tipped up onto her toes, her forehead bumping against Jarrod’s hat. She giggled and reached up to remove it. “Are you going to kiss me, cowboy?”

  “Do you want me to kiss you?”

  If he moved at all, Simone would fall flat on her face. “Yes,” she whispered, and Jarrod finally lowered his head and touched his lips to hers.

  Simone felt wild and completely unlike herself. She normally didn’t let anyone in her she-shed at all. Just her sisters, and Rhett, had come inside a few times.

  But this kiss felt stolen. Forbidden. And absolutely wonderful. He let her set the pace, and Simone felt drunk on the touch of this man. She hadn’t had a boyfriend for a long, long time, and she wondered why she’d isolated herself so completely out at the Shining Star.