by Claire Cain
But maybe it could cure something in me. The restlessness, perhaps? The well that’d held only the dry bones and parched dirt of my creativity?
Anyway, I’d pulled on jeans, a sweater, and slippers. I’d showered and braided my hair again last night. I didn’t make any effort to hide my face because the guy last night, I’d ended up realizing, had no clue who I was. I’d caught his eye, but not because I was Miss Mayhem.
Satisfaction simmered in me over that one for a good ten minutes after he’d left. Maybe my mind had latched onto that rather than relive the horrifying moment when I asked him if he was wearing chaps, thereby clearly revealing my noticing the chaps and everything they did and did not cover.
Vivid details from that moment flashed back to me, like the stitch coming loose on one of the back pockets of his jeans where it hugged a tight behind. The way the leather looked weathered and almost smooth. The rasp of his fingers against his beard when he scratched at his cheek while checking the list of things to tell me.
Those mountain sky eyes.
I shook that awkward memory away and swung open the door.
An absolute hulk of a man darkened the doorway, a pleasant smile on a strikingly handsome face. His brown eyes double-blinked, and ah. Yep.
“Holy shi—I mean, um, sorry. I—you’re Miss Mayhem.”
I nodded, stomach dropping. So much for anonymity.
“You’re not a dude.”
A laugh bubbled up. “Also true.”
“I was definitely expecting Callaway Rice to be a dude. Is that a code name or something?”
“No.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Is that your actual name?”
I hesitated before realizing he’d have to sign an NDA anyway, so I might as well tell him. It’s not like some rando from Utah would sell my real name to the press—not when he had a business and enough collateral that if I wanted to destroy him, I probably could.
“It is. My mom loved the name Callaway and thought it was fun because it had so many nicknames. And Rice was her last name. But obviously, people call me May, short for Mayhem, or May O’Brien from the modeling years.” The Modeling Years, like it was a spin-off TV series I’d starred in as a kid. If only.
I’d used O’Brien as a pseudonym of sorts, keeping Callaway Rice as something only for myself, or something I’d left behind. Even Candy had adopted O’Brien—I’d always felt that was unnecessary, but it certainly kept my real name private and kept her overtly connected to me. Maybe more accurately, something I’d buried. May had been my nickname and Miss Mayhem was the full package—popstar, envelope-pusher, and now, evidently, total basket case.
“Hmm. Interesting.” He nodded repeatedly, like he was working it all out in his mind. “Well, good for you, I guess. Can I come in?”
I clutched the door handle tighter for a moment, shocked at his lack of interest. Normally, if someone realized I was me and got me answering questions, they’d follow up until I cut them off. This guy seemed… unimpressed. Strange.
He was also massive. Bigger than his brother by a few inches high and definitely as many wide. This one officially towered. He wasn’t heavy, though, or at least not overweight. His jacket hung open, and I could see a knit shirt fitting close to a flat stomach.
Well, Hulk, good for you.
“Come in?”
He smiled, bright and friendly. “Yeah. So, I can show you around the place? Wy mentioned the heat wasn’t on when he came, and I’m sure I turned it on, so I wanted to check that out for you, too.”
“Oh. Yes, of course. Come on in.” Duh, you idiot. What did you think he wanted?
Hey, ease up on the idiot talk, all right? We both know people get weird, and it wouldn’t be unimaginable for this guy to want to finagle his way into our house.
I blinked at myself. Who is we?
I’d officially lost it. That mental argument with myself proved it. The stress of the last few weeks—scratch that, months. Years. Decades?—had gotten to me. Which was exactly why I’d come here, and why I wasn’t leaving until they forced me out.
Warrick Saint moved around the space quickly, popping into a locked closet to check the furnace before pointing out a few things his brother had mentioned the night before. Within five minutes, he’d done everything and let himself back out onto the porch.
“You’re our first tenant, so I want you happy and safe. If anything goes wrong, call this number and one of us will be over to address the issue immediately. And if you need anything or have questions about stuff to do around here—whatever, feel free to text me. The cleaning service will be here every Wednesday, and I can help with anything that comes up in between.”
“Thanks.” I hadn’t originally planned on a cleaning service—though I’d been thinking about it—but since he’d lumped it in with the rent, I might as well have one less thing to deal with. Kristoffer would be pleased.
“All right. Have a good one!”
With that, he tromped down the stairs and disappeared from view.
Huh. He hadn’t seemed nervous, and he certainly hadn’t been making excuses to hang around me. Between him and his brother, I felt entirely… ordinary.
And holy crap, what a glorious feeling that was.
FOUR
Wyatt
I pulled my truck into the garage attached to the house, annoyance nipping between my shoulder blades.
I’d hired help for my business in the last few months, and it was great. Really.
Except when it was terrible, like now.
About two years before the oldest of the four Morrison kids—and my friend—Liam Morrison teamed up with Jonas Bauer and shook things up for Silverton, my cows got attention. Soon, they were fetching premiums akin to imported Kobe. I’d been building my stock steadily over the years, far more than anyone locally knew. I hadn’t kept it a secret, but sometimes, being removed from the small town helped. I had land all over thanks to methodical acquisitions and a generous inheritance from my late grandmother, and the small herd I moved down through Silverton each October was a fraction of it.
Mostly, what this meant was I’d been working a hundred or more hours a week spring, summer, and fall, and stressing my guts out winters making sure everything was taken care of.
Samantha, my girlfriend of eight months, hadn’t complained, but I never saw her. And since I’d always wanted a family and knew we needed time together to get there, I’d planned to pull back on work.
Way, way back. Hired a manager, overseer, hand foreman, marketing staff… I hired out a full company’s worth of employees and should’ve felt damn good about it. They’d started in a matter of weeks, then I’d trained them, and then I’d stepped back. I’d certainly merited the help, but I’d ended up replacing myself and leaving only the barest duties that didn’t really matter for when I wanted to do them.
This was not a smooth transition for a man who’d worked nearly every day of every year since he’d turned fifteen.
I woke up on my thirty-seventh birthday—another birthday my father had never reached—and I didn’t know myself anymore. Samantha had been concerned over my big change.
That’s right. No celebration or excitement, but concern.
As Warrick had put it, me and Samantha had been as exciting as a cardboard box. And I’d realized we weren’t going anywhere. I’d barely been able to make time for her, and once I did, after numerous failed promises, she hadn’t felt like doing the same for me. Ultimately, it was too little, far too late, and her patience had already run too thin. I couldn’t really blame her, either.
Not exactly marriage material.
We’d called it off, all amicable hugs goodbye and promises to get lunch. Even that struck me as terrible. Shouldn’t one of us have cried or gotten a little emotional? Something?
I remembered hearing about Jamie Morrison breaking his now-wife’s heart in high school and the decade of fall-out before they reconnected. A few months ago, Cody Keller and Charlotte Lane had finally got
ten their heads out of their behinds and acknowledged what everyone around them had seen and it’d been like a fire started on the street corner. I’d been downtown at the time and had had to look away, both because they’d needed a minute and because it hurt to see so starkly what I was missing.
So that morning, I saw some man I didn’t know in the mirror and it was like seeing myself for the first time in years rather than hours. I’d grown a successful business—almost too successful since demand far outstripped supply, but that was the nature of being “boutique” anything. But what hadn’t I done?
Found a wife. Had children. Grown a family.
The things I’d always said I wanted to do.
The realization shouldn’t have hit me the way it did—like someone took a thick-handled steak knife and stabbed it into my heart. Alas, I felt it between the ribs, right at the core of me.
There had been relief in that, though. Because part of what I’d been looking for with Samantha had been something. Just… something. Some fire like Cody and Charlotte. Passion like Jamie and Bel or even Leo and Jonas. Excitement. Reason to hope.
Maybe essentially hanging up my business hadn’t been the best way to elicit a change, but it’d certainly clarified things between us. No more wasting time with her and I was sure she ultimately felt the same about me. Sadly then, I entered the bleak landscape of online dating and damn, it could feel like wandering in a desert.
From eight on, I’d grown up without a father. He died, and my world tilted on its axis, perpetually rotating a little farther from the sun.
As I grew, I became the caretaker for my brothers, and even my mother. Grandma Tilda moved in, and we became this cozy intergenerational household that’d patched up its holes as best we could.
I knew from as young as I could remember that I wanted that closeness for myself when I got old enough. Even entering college, I told myself I’d get my degree, get the training I needed, and come back to Silverton full time so I could build a life. That life had always included the vision of me with a wife and kids on this very land where I grew up.
I hadn’t been a monk. I’d dated some nice girls, and I’d dated Leo Morrison—a misguided pairing, which I knew deep down before we ever started, but I couldn’t blame myself for trying. The woman was ridiculously beautiful and all fire, plus she’d grown up here and had this land in her blood, like me. Now she and her husband Jonas were my good friends, and her brothers hadn’t given me too much grief for giving it a shot with her.
But there it was. Like every other local woman I’d dated, she’d married, and I still sat here, single. Most of my peers from Silverton High, who’d either stayed in town or left and come back, were married. People tended to marry younger in Utah, but even if they didn’t, I was fast nearing an age where starting a family could be difficult. Or I’d be so much older than my children, I’d be in danger of not seeing them graduate high school.
Fine. Dramatic and untrue, but still. Somehow, I’d held the vision of me and my wife, a brood of kids cantering around our heels, while also working myself into the ground and leaving very little room to actually find that person.
That said, I had tried. I’d been dating on and off for years, especially after Leo and I were such a dud. She’d stood out. Almost everyone else was just… nice. And they all had more to them, yet no spark, nothing with me. Samantha didn’t have the spark, but she’d been perfect on paper. Local, hardworking, interested in a family, and more than mildly interested in me, or so I’d thought.
In the months since we’d called it off, I felt only regret over the time wasted with her, which confirmed the suspicion that we weren’t meant to be. So I’d get back on the horse yet again.
In fact, I had a date lined up for this weekend, another first full of awkward introductions and attempting to replicate some semblance of the cheery banter we’d found on the dating app, which would inevitably not translate to real life.
But I’d keep trying. She was out there—somewhere. If it felt a little pathetic to be so far from something meaningful, I couldn’t complain. I’d made my choices, but I’d made changes in the last year. I’d made space.
Now it was time to find her.
I blew out a long breath, then pushed open the door. The sun had just started to lighten the sky in the east. Soon, it’d look like the whole earth was lit up in a glow. The clear sky would turn bright blue, and thanks to being high enough, we were above the inversion that would settle over almost everything lower than Silverton. It was the only real drawback to Utah winters, and fortunately, I didn’t have to face it.
I shut the door, then made the low whistle to call—
I swallowed the ache in my throat. To call Charlie. My dog had died six months ago, and I still expected to see him. I hadn’t been able to face getting a new one, though I missed the companionship. I missed everything about having a dog, really, except maybe hauling giant bags of dog food out of the truck. He’d been a faithful fellow for fifteen years. A graduation gift from Grandma Tilda. Some of the grief I felt when thinking of Charlie intermixed with that for Grandma, and then I felt generally pathetic.
I pushed into the house, annoyed at the reminiscing and feelings I’d been stuck in this morning. I’d woken irritated and hadn’t been able to shake the frustration, which then had turned into some kind of sad, weird memory-lane stroll.
Boots shucked in the mudroom. Jacket hung on the hook, then hat. Gloves in the basket. Wallet and keys too. House shoes on because the wood floors were freezing this time of year. Into the kitchen, where I washed my hands, grabbed a mug, and filled it with steaming coffee. God bless the programming function because I needed this simple pleasure immediately.
Grabbing a fluffy blanket and wrapping it around me, I shuffled to the sliding glass door that led to the deck. I slipped the door shut behind me, not sure why I always tried to be quiet when no one was here to be wakened. War had spent the night here, but lately, he’d lived like a nomad between here and the downtown part of Silverton, and he slept like a rock, so even if I banged around, he wouldn’t be disturbed.
Inhaling slowly, I cleared my mind of all the nonsense crowding in. I’d been working on this—taking control of my thoughts and refocusing on the positives. Grandma Tilda had been into meditation and gratitude, and ever since she passed, I’d tried to take a little of that with me. In the beginning, I mostly hated the meditation part. But today, miraculously, it worked. The dry bones of my wasteland chest didn’t seem so raw and bare after a moment of just breathing and calming my mind.
It didn’t always happen like that.
A sip of coffee warmed a trail from my mouth into my stomach. The frigid January morning lightened by degrees, beams of sunlight peeking above the crest of the horizon. In front of me stretched fields upon fields, all mine and hauntingly empty this time of year since we moved the cattle to land at a lower elevation during the coldest winter months.
A small sound drew my attention to the right. The tenant, Callaway, stood in an almost identical pose on the small deck War had built for the guesthouse this past fall. She held a steaming mug in front of her face, and a cream-colored blanket wrapped around her. That was a soft blanket—Warrick had made me feel it when he’d brought it home to wash before setting up over there.
Damn, but she was pretty. I couldn’t see her features perfectly from here, but that long, dark braid drew my eyes. I loved long hair on a woman.
I didn’t realize how hard I must’ve been staring until she turned, and I startled, sloshing coffee over the rim of my mug and down onto the deck. Smooth. Our eyes locked, and I swallowed hard as something inside me leapt, then shifted. Recognition of a quiet moment, a peace, shared?
Raising my coffee in silent toast, I dipped my chin just a touch. She did the same. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought maybe she smiled, too. Then she turned and left.
I slumped into one of two plastic deck chairs I kept out all year. They held up better than wood or metal in the snow, str
angely enough. Now that I wasn’t working so much, I started every day I could with a moment of calm out here.
What would it be like to share it with someone? Not just a nod and a mutual acknowledgement but share it. Breathe it in together. Wrap my arms around a woman and inhale the scent of her at her neck. Hold on to her instead of a steaming mug. Kiss her to start the day. Watch the sun climb into the sky and bathe the valley in buttery warmth while our kids slept in the house behind us.
The thought skipped through my head, but I caught it before it ran off.
What if it’s her?
I straightened in the chair, wishing it was a more comfortable seat, then abandoning it to think on my feet. What if it’s her? Was I truly wondering if this random woman in the guesthouse was meant for me? Only a pathetic, desperate man would assume something like that.
Wouldn’t he?
Or… was it possible she’d come here for a reason? More than whatever brought her on the surface, what if we were meant to have something between us? I’d felt a spark when I first saw her, hadn’t I?
My heart beat a little faster. I huffed out a breath, watching the cloud of warm air billow out in front of me.
Ridiculous. Pathetic. Reaching for a new level of sad sack, Wy.
After another minute, I abandoned my post in favor of the warmth inside. Chasing windmills out here wouldn’t do anything about my loneliness. I’d heard the tell-tale banging that signaled Warrick was up. When I stepped inside, he stood at the stove nudging eggs around in a sauté pan.
“Made you some.”
He was always incredibly verbose in the mornings.
“Thanks.”
“You good?”
I eyed him. “Fine.”
Except for all that special thinking about how the tenant’s meant for you. What about that, little dreamer boy? Was it bad that even my snarky internal voice sounded more like my youngest brother?
