07 It Had to Be You

by Jill Shalvis

  “Why?”

  “Why?” She let out a disbelieving laugh. “Come on, Jake. You’re not that thick.”

  Uninsulted, his lips curved. “Do you greet all the guests so friendly-like?”

  Only the ones who made her world feel like a roller coaster. Damn, she wished she could look at him without remembering what had happened between them on one dark, drunken, foolish night. “I’m sorry.” She sounded stiff to her own ear, and lifted her hands to indicate the mud she wore. “Let me take you inside. I’ll change, see what accommodations we can find for you, even though I can tell you we really are booked.”

  “Great.”

  Great. She told herself she wasn’t going to worry. She wasn’t going to waste energy thinking about him or what he could do to her life—such as ruin it.

  They stepped onto the grass, and with a loud, aggressive honk, Goose waddled toward them, head down, picking up speed as she went.

  Jake stopped short.

  Goose charged him anyway.

  “Goose!”

  At Callie’s sharp voice, the goose let out one more honk, but slowed. Glared at Jake.

  He shook his head. “You haven’t eaten that thing yet?”

  “She’d be too tough to eat.”

  His laugh said that he agreed, but he eyed the goose with a healthy mistrust as they walked by her.

  Callie tried not to think about why his laugh had somehow softened her, or why his being afraid of a silly goose made her want to hold his hand. Clearly, she had hormonal issues today. Nothing a good hard day of work couldn’t cure.

  They headed toward the big house, Jake moving with a natural grace that reminded her that she dripped mud with every stiff step she took. She’d never felt more unfeminine or unattractive in her life.

  There. Hormonal issue resolved.

  “Where is everyone?” he asked.

  A safe enough question, and one that didn’t surprise her. “Eddie and Stone are most likely in town enjoying their day off.” Stone was probably drinking too much, too, she thought with a flicker of worry that she kept to herself.

  “Tucson?”

  “Tucson’s too far for a day run. Three Rocks.”

  “Three Rocks isn’t a town. I blinked on the way in here and nearly missed it.”

  “Not every place is as big as San Diego.”

  He lifted a brow in agreement. “Okay, so the Motley Crew is out on the ‘town.’ ”

  Callie smiled at the nickname for Stone and Eddie McDermitt. The brothers might have been hell on the myriad of other ranches they’d been fired from because monotony bored them, but the Blue Flame catered to their guests’ whims, which always varied, so there was no monotony. She’d known when she’d hired the brothers that she wouldn’t be sorry. They had a good work ethic, were fast on their feet, and delighted their guests with their “real cowboy” charm.

  In fact, she couldn’t have managed without them. That they had some personal problems was another story. “You know Kathy left us last week. I just hired a new cook. Amy Wheeler. I faxed you her employment form? She’s probably in town today, too. Marge left yesterday to take a break from cleaning and preparing bedrooms, but if I know her, she’s at her mother’s house doing more of the same, and Lou’s looking for work as he just got laid off from his full-time job in town.”

  “Lou?”

  “You remember Marge’s husband? He works for us on an as-needed basis doing all our mechanical stuff?”

  “Right. But I guess when I said others, I meant Tucker.”

  Now that did surprise her. “His day is his own today as well.”

  Jake nodded, and she couldn’t tell if he was relieved or disappointed.

  “So why are you here today?” he asked. “Don’t you ever take time off from this place?” He looked around as if he couldn’t understand why one would choose to spend their free time out here. That insulted her, and since she couldn’t come up with something nice to say, she took a lesson from Thumper’s mother and said nothing at all.

  They stepped onto the porch that might have needed some refinishing, but did he have to look at it like it wouldn’t hold their weight? She kicked off her muddy boots, not wanting to ruin the clean floors inside. Opening the door, she gestured him in ahead, but he stopped in the doorway with her and put his hand on her arm.

  She looked down at his fingers on her skin, then up into his face. He was crowding her, darn it. Please, God, don’t let him say he was selling. Not yet. She wasn’t ready yet—

  “I saddled you with him,” he said quietly. “Is it working out?”

  It took a moment for her brain to shift gears. “You mean Tucker?”

  He nodded, and she let out a low laugh. “You ‘saddled’ me with him nearly two years ago. You’re just now asking?” She shook her head. “Tucker is amazing with the horses. This place is better for having him here. You should know that. You would know that if you’d looked around at all on your last two visits.”

  Jake’s steely gaze searched hers. “I’m just making sure. He’s stubborn as hell, and hard-headed to boot.”

  “And brooding and moody, too. All traits that run in the family, I’m taking it.”

  “He’s only my half brother.”

  She knew this, of course. She knew far too much about this man that stood too close. “Look, make yourself at home, okay?” He would anyway. He had every right to do so more often than he did. She needed to remember that, and be grateful this was probably no longer a visit than his others had been. “I’ll be back in a few.” She turned to go back out, but they were still in the doorway together, too close in her opinion, and she accidentally bumped into him, making him hiss out a breath. “Sorry,” she said, a little surprised at his reaction.

  His expression shuttered. “No problem.”

  She looked him over, trying to figure out what she was missing, but he gave off no clue. “When I get back, I’ll try to figure out where to put you for a few nights—”

  “More than a few.”

  “So…three or four?”

  “Yeah, three or four. Months.”

  And he turned and walked into the living room.

  2

  Callie ran to her cabin, mind whirling. Three or four months. Was he crazy? Jake Rawlins was a city man, through and through, and a firefighter who loved his work. She knew those two things about him at least.

  Clearly, he’d been messing with her, just to drive her crazy. She stepped inside her cabin, and let herself be soothed by the interior. She’d painted the walls in the color of sand, with adobe-colored trim, and had hung a few tapestries she’d picked up from the occasional art shows on the Indian reservations around the area. Everything was clean and in its place. “Anal,” Richard had called her fondly, and she had to agree. She washed up and changed quickly, and then stepped back outside into what had begun as such a glorious day. She inhaled the fresh, crisp air that held a hint of the warmth to come, and looked at the row of cabins. Tucker had the one next to hers. Then followed Stone’s, Eddie’s, Marge and her husband Lou’s, and lastly, the newly hired Amy’s. There wasn’t an extra cabin for Jake.

  Instead of crossing the poor grass, which had taken a beating that day, she took the path up to the big house, wondering what to do. There were twelve guest rooms on the second floor, all booked by the Japanese businessmen coming tomorrow, each excited about their first time out in the wilderness.

  Which left Jake out in the cold.

  Or sharing with Tucker—

  That would have to do. Callie could handle him there for several nights, but several months…the thought boggled her mind. She wondered how Tucker would feel about it.

  She stopped to check on the horses. They had twenty in all, though four belonged to her and the crew, and one was Richard’s old horse, leaving fifteen for their guests. Most of those fifteen would be riding out with their guests tomorrow on a mock roundup that wasn’t really a mock roundup at all. They really did need to gather up their small but
valuable herd of cattle and get them back to the main arena area for their inoculations before shipping a portion of them off to market. What the businessmen couldn’t handle, Eddie, Stone, and Tucker sure as hell could, with Lou’s help if they needed it, so Callie wasn’t worried.

  Not about that anyway.

  She checked on the poor hens next, fully aware she was stalling. But the pigs had riled the hens up, and many were still clucking and fussing and pulling at their own feathers. “Poor babies.” She scattered out some feed as a treat. “That was worse than letting in a handful of roosters, wasn’t it?”

  She glanced at the big house, painfully aware of the rooster in her hen house. With a grim sigh, she passed by the pigs, all now perfectly content to be in their place, and looking quite innocent. “Don’t think you’re off the hook,” she whispered to the littlest one, then headed up the porch steps, wondering what Jake was up to, what he’d really come for. Her heart pounded uncomfortably in her chest as she let herself in. She looked around at the wide comfortable arc of couches in her living room, empty of one big, bad, sexy-but-irritating San Diego firefighter. He wasn’t in the small weight room, either, or in the game room playing pool.

  She tried the kitchen next. Large and roomy, it smelled like…she took a big breath…blueberry muffins? Having skipped breakfast, her mouth watered. Amy had been a desperate hire—on both their parts, she suspected—but the incredible scent gave Callie hope. She searched until she found the big, fat muffins in a basket on the counter, and then nabbed one. It melted in her mouth, and she stopped to let out a moan. Oh yeah, Amy was going to work out just fine.

  She left the kitchen and put her hand on the wood banister. Upstairs were the bedrooms and bathrooms, all clustered around a central hall, but at the sound of bubbles behind her, she turned. Reversing her steps, she went back into the dining room, and headed directly to the sliding glass door there, which was ajar.

  Just outside it, on the back wooden deck, she found her rooster.

  Jake sat in the large hot tub, head back, body sprawled out, covered by the frothing, bubbling water. Was he lying there trying to figure out how to tell her he’d already sold the place? Just the thought made her want to throw up. She couldn’t handle the suspense. Stepping outside, boots clunking on the wood, she hunkered down at his side.

  He cracked a slate gray eye.

  “Did you sell?” she asked. “Just tell me.”

  “What?”

  Reaching out, she hit the large red button that turned off the bubbles. Silence descended. She kept her eyes on his and off his body. “Come on, Jake. You’re not here to relax. You hate this place. You always have. Are you here to sell or what?”

  “No one’s going to buy it until I fix it up.”

  Right. Good. Okay. Part of her wanted to ask him to wait on her, until she’d saved just a little bit more, until she could get a loan to buy it herself, but she took a deep breath and fought with her own ego because she couldn’t bring herself to ask him for anything, especially help in buying the ranch. She’d do it on her own, without anyone’s help, especially his. “Are you here to do that then? Get the place fixed up?”

  “If I can do it for cheap.”

  “You’re having money trouble?”

  He sighed. “I have a heavy mortgage on my house and…some other unexpected expenses. This place drains me dry lately—”

  “It’s going to do better now.”

  “You mean for this month, but after that, you don’t know for sure.”

  No, she didn’t. She stared at him, gauging him for honesty, and he stared right back. Guileless but not innocent. She doubted he’d ever been innocent, but she decided he was telling the truth. He hadn’t done anything toward actually selling. Yet. He needed to, though. More than she’d thought, which made her relief short-lived. “So you’re hanging here in the hot tub figuring out how to get this place renovated for cheap?”

  “You did say I should make myself at home,” he reminded her, and ran his wet fingers through his hair. Now it stood straight up, which should have made him look ridiculous but didn’t. “Don’t tell me that was one of those female things, where you say what you don’t mean, because at the moment I’m too exhausted to play that game.”

  “I’m taking it by that sexist statement you’ve dated some real winners.”

  He laughed.

  She didn’t. Up close, she believed his exhaustion claim. He had fine laugh lines fanning out from his eyes, the kind that gave a man character but only aged a woman. There were dark smudges beneath his eyes. His mouth, now that it wasn’t smiling, seemed grim, tired. And he hadn’t moved an inch of his body, not so much as twinged a muscle, as if he just didn’t have the energy.

  And still, he took her breath.

  She’d changed into fresh jeans and another tank top, and had hastily splashed her face clean in her bathroom, but she hadn’t taken the time for a shower. Just looking at him in that clean frothy water, when she’d been bathing in pigs and mud, made her feel…grimy.

  It didn’t help that he was truly one of the most attractive men she’d ever met, with all the dark, unruly hair clinging to the back of his neck, those see-all eyes, that smile that could kill a woman at ten paces. She’d once kissed that smile, and had never quite managed to forget it. Actually, she’d kissed a lot of that long, hard body, now quite visible through the hot, steaming, still water. Damn it.

  He smiled again. “You’re looking at me.”

  “I’m thinking you don’t seem all that exhausted.”

  A speculative look came into his eyes. “Depends on what you have in mind.”

  Her tummy quivered. Bad body. Down body. “What I have in mind is putting you to work.”

  “Now that’s no fun.”

  “Everyone pulls their weight around here.”

  He sighed, gave her the puppy dog look, but she didn’t back down. She had a feeling he was used to getting his way from any female in his path, but not with her.

  “Fine,” he finally said, sounding resigned. “If you really need help, I suppose you could count me in. If it’d get us some more guests with money in their pockets.”

  “It’s all easy enough. You can feed the pigs, brush the horses, rake the hen pen…”

  “Yeah.” He looked decidedly unenthusiastic. “I guess.”

  “You look like you’d rather leap into a burning building.”

  “Yeah. Just not off of one.” With another sigh, he straightened, and then stood so that water sluiced off him.

  He had one of those chests that could make a woman drool. Solid. Ripped without being overly muscular, and just enough chest hair to be incredibly masculine. Then her gaze caught on his shoulders, specifically his right, and not just because water was running off it so nicely, but because of the scar running from the top of it, slashing downward, vanishing into his armpit. It was a quarter of an inch wide, and still pink and shiny. New.

  Before she could ask about it, the sliding door opened behind them, and out stepped Tucker Mooney.

  “I thought you were in town,” Callie said, surprised.

  “Just got back.” Tall and lean, bodywise he was a younger carbon copy of Jake. But Tucker was blond, not dark like Jake. Apparently Tucker had gotten their mother’s coloring, along with his father’s, whoever he’d been.

  At age twenty, he had an attitude to match his age—unless he was working with the horses, that is, in which case Callie had found him to be a beautiful, patient old soul. No horses here, however, and at the sight of his older half brother standing with one foot in and one foot out of the hot tub, his jaw tightened.

  Callie knew why she had a problem with Jake. He held the strings of her future in his big hand, and God knew how she hated that. Truth was, she’d have distrusted and disliked anyone who had that power over her. It was nothing personal—well, mostly not.

  But for Tucker, his dislike of Jake was definitely personal, and that had never made much sense to her. Twelve years Jake’s
junior, Tucker needed a place to go at age seventeen when their mother had been looking to take off for an extended Greek vacation with her latest husband. She’d been relieved when Jake had stepped in and coaxed Tucker into working at the ranch. It hadn’t been an easy coax, either. Tucker had been in trouble with the law at the time, and had a serious authority issue. Chances are Jake had saved Tucker’s life by dragging him here, and yet Tucker acted like Jake had never done a thing for him.

  “Vacation time?” Tucker asked Jake edgily.

  “Sort of.” Jake stepped all the way out of the tub and looked around him. “Forgot a towel.”

  He hadn’t forgotten a swimsuit, Callie noticed. The wet material of his dark blue trunks were slung low on his lean hips, hanging nearly to his knees, nicely showcasing a body she wanted covered. Immediately. She grabbed a towel out of the bin at the foot of the deck and tossed it to him.

  Offering her a smile of thanks, he tried to wrap it around his waist using only his left hand. Callie realized he hadn’t used his right arm for anything, not his phone, not to wave, nothing. She looked at his scar and found herself wanting to help him.

  Which was as smart as trying to hand-feed a leopard.

  “So how’s it going, Tuck?” Jake asked, still awkwardly fighting with his towel.

  Tucker let out a sound that was either a muttered “fine” or a different f-word entirely, and completely ignored Jake’s obvious injury.

  Jake’s towel slipped. He swore, then began all over again.

  What had he done to himself? Callie felt another tug in her chest, and realized it was sympathy.

  Tucker, however, didn’t look sympathetic at all. “You bring another chick with you?”

  “What is it with the two of you?” Jake divided a disgusted look between them. “A guy can’t just show up on his own?”

  “You never have before.”

  Jake paused at that. “No, I guess I haven’t,” he finally said.

  No excuses, no explanations, no apologies. That was such a guy thing, Callie barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes, but she let it go. She figured Tucker had his hackles up because he was young and full of stupid pride. He loved this job, and hated that his brother had given it to him.