by Barbara Gee
He rubbed his thumb along hers. “Maybe we haven’t been talking about it, but I think about it all the time.”
She looked at him curiously. Hopefully. “So….do you have it figured out?”
“I have some ideas, or at least I did.” He let out a breath and shook his head. “The problem is, things have gotten more complicated, not less.”
Callie was glad she hadn’t eaten anything yet, because her stomach squeezed at his words. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what he was referring to, but she asked anyway.
“What do you mean?”
He unwound their fingers and leaned back on his hands again, tilting his head back and staring at the sky. “There are some things you don’t know, Callie. Things Jeremiah told me about, and had me check on for him.”
Oh, that. Her stomach calmed down a bit. “I know, you’ve already told me. It’s something about Grandma.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “I let you think that because I couldn’t give you any specifics. I still can’t, not without going against Jeremiah’s wishes. He gave me firm instructions, and they include not telling you about this stuff until the reading of the will.”
“Which is on Friday,” she said slowly, upset that there was something her grandfather hadn’t felt comfortable telling her.
“Yeah. Friday.”
Callie was worried and confused and she didn’t hide it. “I don’t understand, Vince. How does Grandpa’s will make things more complicated? It’s not like it’s going to be a surprise. He told me what it says, and he wouldn’t lie about that.”
“It’s not the will, it’s some other information he came across.” Vince sat up and grabbed her hand again, lifting it briefly to his lips. “I know it’s cruel of me to tell you that much and then leave you hanging. I didn’t plan to say anything, but I hate hiding things from you. If I know something you don’t, I at least want you to know I know it, and why I can’t tell you.” He grimaced. “Did that make any sense?”
She squinted at him. “Um, I think so. I mean, I like the part about you not wanting to hide things from me.” The part about him still not telling her everything? Not so much.
His warm hand slid slowly around her neck and he laid his forehead against hers. “I’m sorry I can’t say more.”
“You know my imagination is working overtime, right?”
“I figured.” He sighed and raised his head, his eyes steady on hers. “Jeremiah wanted you to be told, but it’s up to you to decide whether to do anything with the knowledge, okay? You’ll be the one in control. No one else.”
He was trying to be reassuring, but it wasn’t working too well. Whatever he knew wasn’t trivial. It was worrying him, which meant it worried her.
“So, I can choose to forget I ever heard it?”
He smiled crookedly. “I doubt you’ll be able to do that, but you can choose to keep it quiet and not act on it.”
She considered that, biting the side of her lip. “Um, okay. I suppose having a choice is good.” She drew up her legs and wrapped her free arm around them. “If you can’t give me any specifics, I’d rather not talk about it anymore. I’ll just wait until Friday, and trust Grandpa’s decision is for the best.”
He squeezed her hand, his expression apologetic. “I’m sorry, Callie. You planned this nice picnic, and I got all heavy on you.”
“It’s okay. If you have something on your mind, I want you to be able to talk to me about it.” She gave him a reluctant smile. “Even if you can’t really talk about it at all.”
“I’m sorry about that, too. I’d tell you if it wouldn’t mean going back on my word to Jeremiah.”
“Let me guess, he played the ‘how can you say no to a dying man’ card?”
“In a roundabout way, yeah.”
“Then I can’t really blame you, can I?”
He grinned. “No. Please don’t blame me. And on that note, can we refocus the evening and move on to enjoying the food you worked so hard on?”
Callie decided she was okay with that. This beautiful evening shouldn’t be ruined with worry, and she’d find out her grandpa’s secret soon enough.
She pushed her hair back and nodded. “We can definitely refocus,” she told him solemnly, “but…I’m afraid we still have a problem.” She maintained her serious expression as his brows pulled together.
“We do?”
“Mm hmm. I’m sorry to say, in spite of my best efforts, the chicken’s gonna be cold.”
He wasn’t expecting her to tease, and it took a moment for him to switch gears. Then he relaxed and ruffled her hair, his low chuckle making her insides tremble a little.
“That’s the great thing about your choice of meats, babe. Chicken tastes just fine cold. Better even. Now, show me what else we have.”
She opened the other containers. “Seven-layer salad, deviled eggs, and homemade biscuits. And blond brownies and oatmeal raisin cookies for dessert.”
He closed his eyes and groaned. “Great Granny would be proud, and I’m pretty sure I’m the luckiest man on the face of the earth right now. Or on the top of a butte. Same thing.”
“Close enough,” she said with a giggle.
“Of course, the luckiest part is being with you,” he added quickly. “The food is obviously secondary.”
“Obviously,” she said, grinning. “Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to prove that by making you choose. Hand me the plates.”
They ate leisurely, putting the “heavy” stuff aside and talking about non-serious things like music and movies and hockey. It was fun and easy, the kind of time with him Callie had been craving.
After they’d eaten their fill, Vince helped her repack the basket, but when she moved to roll up the blanket, he stopped her.
“Wait. Let’s just enjoy it up here a little longer.”
He sat back down, then eased all the way down on his back, one long leg bent up at the knee and one arm crooked under his head. He patted the blanket beside him.
“Lie down, Callie. Relax with me. We’ve got no place we need to be, no schedule we need to follow. It’s just you and me and this really cool butte, and I’m in no hurry to leave.”
Callie wasn’t either. It was a beautiful night to be outside, and after the week she’d had, nothing sounded better than staying in her favorite spot with her favorite man for a little while longer. She dropped to her knees beside him and he reached out and pulled her down the rest of the way, cradling her against his side. She settled her head into the curve of his shoulder and splayed her hand on his flat stomach, unable to resist moving it over the muscular ridges she could feel through the fabric of his tee shirt.
“Hockey players are very…..in shape,” she murmured.
“Hockey players work hard to stay that way,” he said, a smile in his voice.
She rubbed her hand up and down again. “Have I told you how glad I am you decided to volunteer at the Full Heart this summer?”
“About a dozen times, more or less.”
“Is that all? I’m slacking.”
His laugh rumbled through his chest and into the ear she had pressed against him. “I knew I’d enjoy spending the summer at the retreat center. Meeting my dream girl was an added bonus.”
They were silent for a while, then Callie propped herself up on an elbow, looking down at his face. “Can we go back to what we were talking about earlier?” she asked softly.
He turned his head to look at her, his blue eyes shadowed. “Babe, I can’t tell you anymore than I already have,” he said regretfully.
She shook her head quickly. “No, not about that. I meant I want to talk about how we might be able to make things work between us once you leave.”
He looked relieved. “In that case, I’m all ears.”
She ran her fingertips slowly along his jaw. He’d shaved before the funeral, and his two-day stubble was short and rough. “The last few days since Grandpa died, I’ve been thinking a lot. About the ranch and my role here. Ab
out what I want and where I want to be.”
His eyes were concerned. “I’m not going to try to rush you into anything, Callie. Or push you to make any quick decisions.”
“I know, I’m not feeling pressured,” she assured him. “The thing is, it’s already different. I mean, not the way I feel about the Double Nickel as a whole. I love this place and I always will. But without Grandpa here, it’s already different. It’s like the biggest reason for my being here is gone.”
She turned her head and looked out over the ranch she wouldn’t have considered leaving one short month ago. It hurt to know Jeremiah wasn’t waiting for her back at the house. It hurt almost as much to know Vince would be leaving soon himself, and then she’d be truly alone.
“This place is part of who I am,” she went on, wanting him to understand that while the bond she felt to the land would never go away, other things had changed. Because of Jeremiah’s death, and because of Vince. “This is still where I want to be long-term. I want to raise a family here someday, if that’s what God has in store for me, and grow old here. But right now it’s just me, and it’s strange.”
“It’s going to take some getting used to,” he said gently. “Jeremiah was a big presence, even when he was sick. You can’t expect to adjust overnight.”
“I know that.” Callie swallowed, needing to be completely honest with him. “I know I could eventually get used to it. Get to the point where I’m not expecting to see him out in the barn, or in his recliner. But I’m realizing no matter how much I love this place, no matter how much I want to keep it going and in the family, being here alone might not be my first choice.” She took a breath, looked him in the eye, and forced herself to finish—to put it out there and see if it was what he wanted to hear. “I guess what I’m saying is that I might not want to be here alone all the time if I could be spending time where you are instead.”
As her words registered, the corners of his mouth curled slowly up and he raised one dark brow. “Are you saying you’d consider moving back to Minneapolis?”
She could tell he liked the idea by his smile, and the way his eyes gleamed in the fading daylight. “I’d think about it,” she said with a one-shouldered shrug that was more casual than she felt. “If you’d want me to.”
He rolled over onto his side to face her, propping his head on his hand, mimicking her position. “Sweetheart, if there’s any question about that, I’m doing something wrong. Really wrong.” He put his hand on her waist. “Of course I want you to come.”
She couldn’t hold back a relieved grin. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
“What else am I gonna say?” he asked, his voice low and his eyes warm. “I definitely like where you’re heading with this. Are you sure, though? I don’t want you to make a spur of the moment decision and then regret it.”
“I was thinking about it even before Grandpa died. It just seems a lot clearer now. A lot less heart-wrenching.” She chuckled. “Even Grandpa told me I’d be crazy to choose the ranch over someone who could make me happy.”
His gaze was steady as his fingers moved lightly back and forth along the curve of her waist. “That’s what I want to do, baby. I want to make you happy.”
She sighed happily. “You do. You know you do.”
“I feel bad about you having to make the sacrifice, though. Especially knowing I’ll be gone a lot.” He grimaced. “I have to say, a hockey player is probably not your best choice, Callie.”
“Tell me about it,” she teased. “I tried to fight it. Turns out you’re a little too irresistible.”
“Thank God. But seriously, it’s not a long flight between here and there. I’d want you to feel free to go back and forth as much as you want to.”
She nodded. “I’ll talk to Sam and Lance soon. See what they think about an absentee owner. It might take a while to get things worked out here.”
“I’ll be waiting whenever you do.”
Callie reached out and ran the backs of her fingers slowly along the length of his arm, gathering the courage to voice her biggest fear. She raised her eyes bravely to his. “Promise to tell me if you change your mind once you get back to your regular life? I don’t want you to feel trapped if you start feeling differently about things once we’re not in our little cocoon here on the ranch.”
He grabbed her hand and held it, his lips curving into a slow smile. “Not gonna happen. This isn’t just a summer romance for me. The only change you’ll see as time goes by, including when I get back home, is that I’ll feel even stronger about you—about us—than I do now.”
It was exactly what she needed to hear. He hadn’t said those three little words, but he totally believed what they had was going to last, and that was almost as good.
“I’ll have to get my own place,” she said a little shyly. “I don’t think it would be a good idea to stay at your house.”
He smiled knowingly and without warning flipped her onto her back and slanted his chest above her, his elbows planted on either side of her head. “You don’t trust me to protect your virtue?” he asked, his perfect lips tilting up.
Callie felt her heart begin to thud heavily as she looked up at his face so close to hers. “It’s myself I don’t trust,” she said, her voice a little unsteady. He raised a brow and she felt her cheeks get warm, but she pushed on. “You know how it is with us. It would be asking for trouble to live in the same house.” She swallowed, her eyes roaming over his face. “I don’t know if I could hold out against that kind of temptation.”
“I get that, and I agree with it.” He rubbed his nose along the length of hers. “We’ll find you your own place, no argument from me.”
She smiled happily. “It can be really close to your house, though.”
“Definitely.” He gave her a teasing smile. “Is it okay to kiss you, or will that test your limited self-control too severely?”
She burst out laughing and reached up to put her hands on the sides of his face. “Kissing is definitely allowed. I’ll try awfully hard to control myself.”
His eyes dropped to her mouth as his tongue flicked out to wet his lips, then he slowly lowered his head. Callie uttered a soft moan as he made contact, closing her eyes as she was bombarded with the sensations she’d grown to crave but still wasn’t used to. How could he bring every nerve ending alive with just a kiss?
One kiss. Two. A change of angle for three and four. Then his lips moved down to the pulse point below her jaw, and on to the hollow above her collar bone. Callie caught herself before she moaned again, but she couldn’t do anything about the shiver that started at the top of her spine and moved down to her toes.
“You cold?” he asked, his lips moving against her skin.
Callie couldn’t help but giggle. “No, Vince. I’m not cold.”
He lifted his head and grinned. “You sure?”
“Yeah. I’m actually feeling rather warm.”
“Mmm. Me too.” He rolled over onto his back with a satisfied smile and they both stared up at the sky for a minute.
Vince finally broke the silence. “It’s going to start getting dark soon. Do we need to get back?”
“We probably should.” Callie sat up, but he put his hands behind his head and stayed put.
“Can we come back soon?”
She smiled. “Sure. We can even be corny about it. This can be our place. Instead of a song, we’ll have a place.”
“We can have both. We’ll know the song when we hear it.”
“Woah,” she said, drawing out the word as she reached over to pat his chest. “Is there a hopeless romantic hiding inside this finely tuned athlete?”
“Maybe.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her down, resulting in their positions being exactly reversed from before. Callie braced her arms on either side of his head and grinned down into his sparkling eyes. He chuckled then cupped the back of her head in a big hand and brought her mouth to his for a final kiss before sitting up.
“This is definitely my n
ew favorite place,” he stated, getting to his feet with unconscious grace and pulling her up with him. “Thank you for the picnic. You went to a lot of work, and I appreciate it.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And Callie?” He put his hands on her shoulders and dipped his head to meet her eyes. “Thank you for wanting to get a place in Minneapolis.”
“You’re welcome for that, too.”
His blue eyes held hers. “This is gonna work,” he said quietly. Confidently.
“Yeah.” She nodded slowly, her heart full. “Yeah, I think it will.”
***
In New Orleans:
Elliot held the phone tightly to his ear, pacing back and forth between the two large windows of his office.
“Come on, Craig, pick up!” he roared. He wanted to hurl the phone against the wall and watch the pieces fly, but he couldn’t. It was his only way of contacting the man.
His stomach burned like it always did when he was particularly stressed out. Yet another reason he needed to get to the point where he could step away from the day to day operations and take some extended vacations. He needed to relax, give his mind and body a break. He deserved that. After all these years, he certainly did.
Only now the whole plan was being threatened. He desperately needed to talk to Craig and pull him off the hit in North Dakota. If he couldn’t reach his friend before he carried out their plan to kill Lila, they were going to be in a hole so deep, even their crooked lawyers wouldn’t be able to extricate them.
“Pick up!” he screamed again, uselessly. It rang and rang, because the burner phone Craig was using didn’t have voicemail set up.
A dozen more rings and Elliot hung up, once more resisting the urge to hurl the phone at the wall. Barely. He opened a bottle of ibuprofen and washed four tablets down with cold, disgusting coffee from a mug on the corner of his desk.
Elliot knew full well he had a disaster on his hands, and it was going to get far worse if he couldn’t reach Craig. If there really was a private investigator in town asking about Lila after all these years, and Elliot’s inside man at the police station had told him that was the case, it meant someone might already know about Callie Green. And if Callie Green came up dead, whoever was suspicious was going to know it wasn’t an accident, no matter how well Craig staged it.
