Rugged Cowboys (Western Romance Collection)

by Amy Faye

  Proactive enough to react to problems before they can even become problems, and at the same time, keep it in her pocket as long as she can.

  Not prepared enough and you're weak and waifish. Too prepared, and you're a cast-iron bitch.

  Which is she going to be? She doesn't know. All she knows is, she wants what she wants, and she doesn't want to get herself—or Philip—hurt if she can avoid it.

  Everything else is secondary.

  Chapter Forty-One

  If he wants to sit and talk, if he wants to spend some time chatting with them, then Phil Callahan isn't going to argue. It's worth twenty grand. It's worth five. It's even worth it, he thinks in spite of himself, if he's going to get boxed out of the conversation a little.

  After all, some people are more talkative than he is. He's never been much of a talker. He's always been the sort of guy who is either doing something or waiting to do something. Not the type to do a whole hell of a lot of talking about it.

  But if he's going to sit here and watch Glen damn Brand flirt with Morgan Lowe—a frog catches in his throat, a feeling he doesn't want to begin to unpack. All he knows for sure is, he's not interested in seeing it continue.

  Sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, it's easy to feel as if Glen is a big guy. He is. His shoulders are as broad as a barn, even as his hips are fairly narrow and tight. He looks like the kind of guy who pulls up his shirt sometimes when he's working out just so you catch an accidental peek at his abs.

  There's the difference between the two of them, though, too. Glen looks like he's got a body that he put together in the gym. Philip's got a body that grew out of the work he did. It takes a real force of will to recall that he's not a small man himself.

  "What you doin' here, anyways, Glen?"

  "I was just on my way to sittin' down, and I saw my good friend Mr. Callahan."

  "Good friend?" his molars push against each other. "You're my good friend, now?"

  "Well, sure."

  "Then go on, get out of here. I'm here with the lady."

  He hadn't really expected to feel quite this jealous, when Glen walked up. He hadn't known how the conversation would go, for one thing. But for another, there was certainly something more to it than that. A feeling like he was more possessive towards Morgan than he'd realized.

  What had this thing between them become, in the time since he'd last seriously considered it?

  Lovers? Sure. But the way that the radio makes it sound, the way the news on the internet talks about it, that's how kids are these days. Twenty-year-olds who think that a hug and a kiss is more intimate than slipping it to a girl.

  Maybe these days lovers didn't mean a thing to other people. Maybe he should see it that way, too. Maybe it was just something they did because it was fun and because they could. Because nobody was going to stop them.

  But that wasn't how he felt. That wasn't how he thought about it, regardless of what he should be thinking and should be feeling.

  They were lovers, sure. But did that mean that he was in love with her? And if he was…

  "Get on out of here." Callahan's voice sounds dangerous and carries an edge, even to his own ears.

  "I'm not going to do that," Glen says.

  "I don't want to take this outside," Philip says. He doesn't add that he will if he has to.

  "Then don't."

  Philip steals a glance over at Morgan. What does she think of all this? Is she going to be furious with him for pushing this?

  "You ought to go, Mr. Brand." Her voice should be the one driving reason. The one that makes everything sound copacetic. Instead, she sounds firm. Which, as it happens, he realizes is so very much like her.

  She's never been the voice of reason. She's always been right there, fighting, too.

  "You owe me, Callahan. Don't you play this shit—"

  "Then the deal's off, you pompous ass. Now get on outta here."

  He sputters a minute and stands up. He doesn't walk away, though, which is the real mistake. He should have walked away. Then it would have been a nice, comfortable evening.

  They'd have both worked the frustration off somehow. It wasn't as if an attractive guy like Glen was lacking for female attention.

  "You son of a bitch, you don't—"

  "Shut up." Glen fumes a second, and in that second Philip drops the napkin off his lap and draws up to his feet. An inch or two shorter, Philip might have seemed a little less intimidating if he didn't have twenty solid pounds of muscle on the man in front of him. "I'd like you to leave."

  "Philip, don't." It's almost a surprise. She seems like the kind who likes a good fight. Feisty as all hell, and with a little wicked streak running through her. Fight might be just what she wants.

  For a minute he debates backing down. And then, without a word, Callahan slips back into the booth. It's not going to be a fight on his account.

  He sees the blow coming by an instant, but it's still a surprise when the hit comes and lands right on his chin. Glen's hit throws Callahan back a little. He catches himself, sprawled over in the booth, with his elbow before he lifts himself back up straight.

  His jaw hurts a little where the punch caught him, left of his chin.

  "You finished?"

  Glen's fuming above him. The man doesn't like being shown up like that, and he sure as hell didn't like getting the no-sell treatment. But Callahan wasn't going to play around. He'd been told to back off, and until he got different instructions, he'd back off.

  Glen turns and stalks off. Callahan's jaw hurts, but in the end, he won the fight.

  "Y'alright?"

  "I'm fine," she says. "Are you alright?"

  The thought in his head isn't about his jaw hurting. It'll ache a little, for a time. It's not even really about how much better he'll feel when he gets his 'reward' later, the one that women tend to pay out to guys they like who get hit for 'em.

  It's the realization that Callahan doesn't mind the idea of her and him being an item one bit.

  A year ago, if he'd told himself it would happen—hell, six months ago, he'd have thought he was crazy. He'd had his chance once.

  That was over now. You don't get to go around the wheel twice.

  But even still, here he was. And now that he had realized it, now that he'd tasted that freedom, he wasn't going to let himself fuck it up now.

  He smiles at her. "You're pretty when you're flustered, you know that?"

  She about punches him right there, to even out his jaw. Which might have been a good idea, in the long run.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Whatever is going on, Morgan only knows that she isn't a fan. That, and that whatever was happening seems to have terminated in Philip getting his eggs scrambled.

  "Is something wrong?" It seems as if he's noticed that she's a little weirded out. He sets his fork down.

  "What was that all about?"

  "I don't know. Not all of it."

  "But you know some of it."

  "Sure I do."

  "And?"

  "That black horse. The one you saw the boys riding. Need to get it sold. Simple as that."

  "That seems like an awful lot of complication for a sale."

  "Horse is a little older than anyone would like. I made a deal, and he says he'll meet my price, but I owe him a favor. He wants to have dinner with me, fine. I don't like it, but fine."

  "Ah." So that was it. For a moment, she'd almost grown concerned that he had made a very different deal altogether. One that was somewhat more disturbing. The thought won't leave her head, though. What if he had? What if she was some sort of sacrificial… something or other? And he'd just gotten cold feet?

  "Sorry you had to get involved in it."

  No kidding.

  What was she even doing here? What was she thinking, trying to… what, get some kind of relationship going?

  The thought that she ought to have known better had run through her head more times than she could count, the past couple of days. The thought that
maybe she should have realized what this always was, from the very beginning.

  It was a business deal. That business arrangement went too far the minute that her clothes had come off. If he was just some guy, someone she'd met and never wanted to do any business with, and never planned on doing any again, then that would be something different.

  But that wasn't the case. She was here to work, and she knew him because she wanted to work through a deal with him. She wanted something of his, and so she'd decided, what…

  She'd decided to pay for it with her body? To grease the wheels a little? And now she was getting funny ideas about it.

  Well, that was how it always was with women in business, wasn't it? They let their feelings get in the way of making smart decisions. Men don't have that problem, and when they do have that problem, they can excuse it.

  They can just wave their hands and the problem goes away. Not for her, though. Not for her and not for other women like her. She should have been more careful, should have known what she was getting herself into and she should have known to avoid it.

  But she hadn't. Instead, she'd just gotten herself involved further, just made decisions that would ultimately hurt her more in the long run.

  And now, just like she should have known it would, it was biting her in the ass. He was using their relationship as some sort of strange bargaining chip.

  Or maybe he wasn't. Maybe he was being completely honest. After all, he seemed to believe that his answers were all completely believable. He'd picked his fork back up and went back about eating, as if there was nothing more to discuss.

  But if he hadn't told her the truth, if there was still plenty left to discuss, what would the difference be?

  None at all. She'd be getting the same answer, he'd be trying to play it off as if it meant nothing. But she knew the truth. It didn't mean nothing. It meant something, and what it meant, in the long run, was that she was the idiot who believed that it was going to turn into something real.

  She was the one who shouldn't have been such a God damned fool. She'd sign away the check on his property, she'd transfer deeds, and then she'd figure out a way to forget any of this had ever happened.

  She was an idiot and a fool. If she should have learned anything from the call Andrea made to her, at five in the fucking morning, she should have learned that you don't get to be a big success, not on the level of Andrea Neill, not as a woman, and get to have feelings.

  You have to put those away, because if you let yourself have some kind of weakness, any kind of weakness, then other people will just exploit it.

  She wasn't going to give up Lowe. There was no way that would happen, not in a thousand years. Not after all the work she'd done, not after all the time she'd spent. She wasn't going to let herself be put into that position, forced into that box.

  Whatever she was supposed to do about her feelings, how she was supposed to turn them off like that… that would come later. She'd have to learn it, over the years.

  But she would have good practice coming up soon. Because there was one thing that was repeating through her head, over and over, and that was that she couldn't afford to have any weaknesses. She couldn't afford to have people with something to hold over her head.

  Nobody could pose any threat to her, because with the way that women were treated in her business, they'd take even the slightest sign of weakness as proof that you were a pushover.

  And if there was one person who posed a threat, one person who presented a chink in her armor, one person who got too close and she had to close off, that person was Philip Callahan.

  It was going to hurt, but she'd tear it off like ripping a band-aid.

  Because Philip Callahan had to go.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The fact that something was wrong wasn't hard to figure out. She was showing it right there on her face, for anyone who cared to look. Philip Callahan was trying to restore the mood, and he wasn't going to do something as stupid as ask what was wrong.

  But he wasn't going to do something as stupid as ignore it, either, or pretend that it wasn't a bad mood, because clearly the lady was upset. Why? Well, that would come later.

  But she didn't tell him for a while. Not for a long while. Instead, she frowned at his jokes, seemed to altogether ignore anything else he said, and generally she seemed pretty down. Was it something he'd done?

  That wasn't altogether clear. He hadn't done anything intentionally. Callahan had honestly thought—anticipated without necessarily expecting—that she would be quite pleased with how the whole thing had played out.

  Women have a funny way with men expressing their manliness. They don't like it to be too overt, and they like the hell out of it when the guy has to eat humble pie—only in a manly way. Which, to the best of his ability to say, he had done.

  But for some reason, she didn't just have the opposite reaction. After all, that would have made sense, at least for some women and in some circumstances. She didn't like the violence, maybe. Sara hadn't liked roughness, and it wasn't inconceivable that someone else might feel the same way.

  But that had usually manifested in sympathy when he took the fall. She wouldn't get mad with him for it.

  Or maybe he was reading the situation wrong. Maybe she was upset because he hadn't been aggressive enough? Because he'd embarrassed her by losing?

  One look at her told Callahan how stupid that idea was. She didn't seem like the sort of girl who wanted a guy that would kick assess and take names, and what's more, she didn't seem like she was particularly upset that he had lost the fight.

  She was upset about something, but for all that he could tell, she wasn't particularly reacting to the fight having occurred in the first place. There was no reason to, from Philip's perspective. Unless you just wanted to try to lighten the mood—which he did.

  There was no world in which she was upset about the fight. She was upset about something else, which opened up a whole wide world of possibility. Whatever the hell it was that had gotten her upset, he couldn't begin to guess.

  But the fact that she was? That much was indisputable. Not debatable. She was avoiding anything to do with him, it seemed like. Acting weird. And whatever the reason, he wasn't God damn happy about it.

  This was supposed to be a day where the two of them went out, celebrated a little, and finished off with their business coming to a close.

  Once they were past the money stuff, maybe they could move forward with something else. Especially now that he'd finally figured to pull his head out of his ass and admit to himself that there might be something there.

  But no. Now they were having some kind of stupid fight, and for what? For nothing at all, near as Callahan could tell. Just because they could.

  He takes a deep breath and a step back and tries to slow down. No way. Whatever it was, if it was bothering her this much, so much she was acting like a totally different person, then it was a big deal.

  He just wasn't seeing the big picture from her perspective. Whatever it was that was getting to her, it was something that they'd have to figure out together. Because Callahan wasn't an idiot, but he wasn't a genius, either. He needed help figuring shit as much as the next guy, and two heads were always better than one.

  They finish the meal in silence. There's only so much a guy can take, in the end. Only so much one side can push and push and push without the other half budging, before you have to say, 'fine, alright.'

  If she wanted to talk about it, then she'd talk about it whenever she was ready. Until then, she didn't want to talk about a whole hell of a lot of anything, and that was her right. But it didn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense from where he was sitting.

  They slipped into the car and he turned the engine over and got the truck out of the parking lot before he spoke.

  "Morgan? Y'alright?"

  She doesn't answer. He looks over at her, and she's looking out the window. A hand on her knee doesn’t get a response. Whatever the hell it was tha
t he did, she must be pretty unhappy about it.

  The sun's just starting to set properly, streaks of purple and pink jumping off the clouds. Any other day, he might stop and just want to stare at it, but right now Philip's got other concerns. He barely notices the sky at all.

  "Morgan?" She looks over at him. "I don't know what's wrong, but if it's something I did, then I apologize."

  She looks back out the window. No response. He shrugs and then settles himself into the car. If she's going to act like that, then there's nothing to be done about it. She'll do what she wants to do and in the end he's just going to have to deal with that however the hell he wants to.

  They slip onto the interstate, the falling sun leading itself into twilight, which then falls into darkness. The city's a solid few miles out of the ranch, and not close to the factory build site either.

  It takes near forty minutes to get back, and under normal circumstances he'd probably be on auto-pilot by now and forget to go to the build site at all. She'd be annoyed about it, maybe, but it would be totally understandable. After all, how often does he go back home compared to going someplace else?

  But he doesn't slip into the comfort of easy driving. His mind is still razor-edged, his thoughts unable to escape the situation that he's stuck in.

  Why on earth she's mad at him, he couldn't begin to say. She's mad about something. Mad at him about something.

  But whatever in the hell it is, he can't begin to guess. The thing with Glen? That was nothing. If she's mad about it then he can't begin to guess how or why.

  He slides the car into one of the spots. The one closest to her office. The little red sports car is right beside him.

  "Come on inside, I'll get you your check," she says, finally. She doesn't sound angry, per se. Which is unexpected, to say the least, after how she's been acting all night.

  Callahan follows her in. Whatever's got up her ass, he'll figure it out. But right now, he's just going to have to play to her tune and see how things go.

  They climb the short ramp outside the little shack. It'll have to come down soon, with the way that the factory itself is coming together. She'll probably take the interior office until she moves on to… whatever the next thing is.