Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch (Gold Valley #13)(27)

He tightened his hold on the steering wheel. “Yeah, thanks for telling me, Cal, somehow I forgot.”

“You can’t sleep with other women. It’s not right.”

He gritted his teeth and felt that desire to push her again. And he didn’t hold back. She was telling him what to do, telling him who he couldn’t sleep with. Why shouldn’t he speak some of his mind if she was going to speak hers?

He looked at her sideways. “Is that in the handbook for fake-ass marriages for money?”

“You just can’t. It’ll piss me off.”

“Why?” He didn’t look at her, he looked at the road, keeping his hands on the steering wheel. He shouldn’t have asked the question. He shouldn’t be pushing this line of conversation at all.

“Because it’s not...right,” she said. “Anyway, if my dad found out...”

“Yeah, it would just add to the list of reasons that your dad might end up killing me someday.”

“He’s not going to kill you.”

“Well, you’re going to have to save that bit of certainty for after you call them and tell them that we got married.”

“I’ll do it when we get home.”

“Great,” he said. “See that you do.”





CHAPTER SEVEN


IT WASN’T UNTIL she had gone into the bedroom, closed the door behind her and sat down on the bed that Callie realized she was still holding on to that bouquet that Jake had given to her. She let go of it like it was a snake, pulling away from it. Like if she got some distance from those flowers it might clear her head up, and make her feel a little less muddled than she had been since he’d handed them to her that morning.

It was the flowers’ fault.

She had been completely clearheaded about the whole thing until he’d gone and pulled over and got her those flowers. And he’d... Picked her up like she weighed nothing and lifted her over that fence.

She just sat there, staring at the wall. Trying to go over that morning’s events clearly. Because she did need to call her parents. And what she really needed to do was figure out a way to relay what had happened this morning in an honest sense, at least honest enough that it made sense. And she was just hung up on these strange little pockets of time where she felt a foreign kind of heat right through her body. Where she’d been held captive by her best friend’s gaze in a way that didn’t make any sense at all.

She was just going to call her parents. Because she couldn’t keep going over and over this. She picked the flowers up off the bed and brushed the dirt that they left behind on the floor. And she felt a little bit guilty, because he’d said that he had somebody who came to clean, and now she’d made a mess.

She stuffed the flowers down into her duffel bag and zipped it up, then took her phone out and hit the button for a video call.

Her parents always liked to see her face. And there was no way she was going to get away with imparting this kind of news without doing it face-to-face. Which really was kind of awful, because it would be great if she could hide her expression.

But she’d known.

She’d known that this was what she was setting herself up for, so she just had to man-up about it now. She was being silly. Sentimental. It wasn’t the flowers. It wasn’t. It wasn’t that moment in the field, or even the way he had lifted her up off the ground. No. It wasn’t that at all. The real issue was that she was getting weird and sentimental.

She shouldn’t have told him about that memory. Those thoughts that she’d had as a little girl about weddings and all that. She hadn’t known what she wanted then. So now she’d had a real wedding day. A real wedding day that had contained weeds and a promise to be friends. It wasn’t romantic.

It was reality. She’d worn blue jeans, and he’d worn black. And he’d looked like the outlaw and the hero all at the same time.

It was funny, because in that whole wedding fantasy she’d had she’d never pictured her groom.

And now she’d never be able to picture a different one.

She blinked, her eyes suddenly slightly wet. She needed to get over it. She pushed the button. And she waited. The phone rang for a couple seconds, then her dad answered. He had his tan cowboy hat on, and he was laughing about something. The mustache that he’d had as long as she’d been alive had gone from brown to a wiry gray. His cheeks, which had always been red and round were redder and rounder, and he was beginning to look a little bit like a Western Santa Claus. Her mom, on the other hand, didn’t have a single gray hair—though Callie was certain that was with help from a beautician. Her dark hair was still teased out as big as it would go, her face perfectly made up in spite of the hour, in spite of the fact that her parents were at home.

“Callie,” her dad said. “Good to hear from you.”

“Hi.”

Her mom frowned. “What’s up, buttercup?”

Callie winced. “Nothing. It’s just... I have something to tell you.”

“What?” Her dad immediately looks suspicious.

“Nothing bad,” she said quickly. “I’m bringing someone with me for Christmas.”

Her mother looked like she’d been plugged in. Her whole face went bright. Alive. “Callie, are you bringing a man home for Christmas?”