Holidays on the Ranch (Burnt Boot, Texas #1)(35)

“Oh, hush,” he muttered.

“You talkin’ to me?” Callie asked.

“No, ma’am, I’m arguing with myself,” he answered honestly.

“Do that often?”

“More than I like to admit.”

“Well, I do every day. Be careful about answering that voice in your head. Some folks don’t understand us, O’Donnell.”

“So I’m O’Donnell instead of Finn?” he asked.

“We’re complicated. We started out as partners, and we will never be able to get away from that. Then we were friends, and now I’m not sure what we are, but sometimes we’ll always be O’Donnell and Brewster, like when we’re doing our morning workout. Sometimes we’ll be Callie and Finn. And sometimes…” She paused.

“We’ll be darlin’ but never honey?” He grinned.

“You understand perfectly, just like I knew you would.” She nodded.

She’d been right. The feed store had a section of work clothing, and that’s where she headed while he told the clerk what to load up in the big black truck parked right out there in front.

It didn’t take her long to pick out a mustard-colored work coat and carry it back to where Finn had found the small boot section. “Looking at boots always reminds me of Christmas. That’s when I got a new pair and got to relegate my old ones to the utility room for work boots. Unless they were too little, and then Mama polished them up and passed them on down to brothers, sisters, or cousins, in my case, since I was the youngest in the family.”

He picked up a pair that looked about right for Martin and inspected them. “These look like some good sturdy boots that might last through two or three boys.”

“I said no,” she told him.

“A person gives what they want to give for Christmas, and I want Martin to have a pair of nice boots for Sunday. A rancher is known by his boots,” Finn said.

“So is a cowboy.” She made a beeline for the checkout counter.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He was only a step behind her. “I understand why you don’t want to have a relationship with a cowboy, since that’s what kind of men your sister was drawn to all the time, but what’s wrong with Martin having boots?”

“What if Martin acts just like his father, who didn’t stick around? I won’t encourage him to be a cowboy.”

Finn laid a hand on her shoulder. “It’s not all genetics, Callie. Environment does play a role. And besides, he’s just a little kid. A pair of new boots isn’t going to make him fall in love or get a girl pregnant.”

She laid the coat on the counter, and the cashier rang up the price. Callie handed her the hundred-dollar bill and she counted back less than three dollars in change.

“Don’t bother with a bag. If you’ll remove the price tags, I’ll just wear it out of here,” Callie said.

The lady snipped a couple of strings, tossed the tags in the trash, and handed Callie the sales receipt. “It really is cold out there. You looked about half-frozen when you came in here. Do they not have northers where you come from?”

“Not so much, and my last job just required that I get from car to office or from car to apartment. I didn’t have to be out in it when the north wind decided to get serious,” Callie answered.

“Well, that coat will keep you warm. You need gloves?”

“Not today,” Callie said. The cheapest pair of leather-palm work gloves cost a hell of a lot more than two dollars and fifty-seven cents.

“Yes, she does. Those right there.” Finn pointed at an expensive leather pair as he pulled out his wallet. “And give me a pair of the cheaper ones in a size small. Don’t look at me like that. I’m just protecting my interests. If your fingers get frostbit, I won’t even get any cookin’ out of you. And I’m not taking Martin out in the weather another day without decent gloves.”

“Take the cost of both pairs out of my Friday night paycheck,” she said.

***

“Want a burger or a taco or maybe we could stop by the pizza bar on the way home?” he asked when they were in the truck.

“A big old greasy hamburger sounds great,” she said.

“Remember the ones we used to grill on that little hibachi thing over in Afghanistan?”

“I’d shut my eyes and pretend we were eating them next to a lake in Texas rather than over there in that place,” she said.

“Was it hard for you to fall back into civilian life?” Finn asked.

“Martin was a newborn baby when I joined the army,” she answered.

“That’s not what I asked,” Finn said.

“I’m getting around to the answer,” she told him. “He’d just finished kindergarten when my enlistment was up and he came to live with me. I don’t think I ever had the time to adjust to civilian life. Everything was thrust upon me so fast that I just had to endure, not adjust. I missed the army. I might have considered reenlistment, but you were already gone, and I didn’t want another partner. Besides, Martin needed me.”

“You missed the friends you made. For the first time in your life you had good friends who had your back, Callie. That’s what you really missed.”

She couldn’t tell him that the real reason she wanted to go back into the army was because she missed him and that the reason she didn’t reenlist was because she knew he wouldn’t be there.