Hawk's Way: Callen & Zach Read online

  She discovered gallons of a pale yellow paint in the barn, which Sam confessed he had bought more than a year ago for the house. She took it to the hardware store and had it shaken up, and began painting the outside of the house. To her surprise, when Sam realized what she was doing, he stopped his repairs long enough to share the job with her. When they were done, she had stood arm-in-arm with Sam and admired the house.

  “It looks so different!” she exclaimed. “It has a sort of rustic charm—”

  “You mean, it doesn’t look like a dump anymore,” Sam interrupted sarcastically.

  “You’re putting words in my mouth,” Callen protested. “I only meant that now I can see the care that went into building this place. Someone meant this house to survive for generations.”

  “It has. And it will,” Sam said in a determined voice. He was silent for a moment before he said, “Thanks, Callen. I needed to see it like this. Like it can be.”

  He had gone back to his work mending the barbed-wire fence. She had refocused her attentions on the interior of the house. She replaced the heavy curtains in the master bedroom with vertical blinds from a discount store so she could still block out the sun during the hottest part of the day but enjoy the sunlight in the early morning and late evening. And she had pulled up the worn linoleum in the kitchen and found a beautiful hardwood floor, which she had refinished.

  She spoke often to her mother on the phone, but it had become almost a reflex to refuse her invitations. There never seemed to be time. Callen wasn’t sure how much of her reluctance to accept her mother’s invitations lately was a result of being busy and how much was the result of her growing awareness that Sam didn’t want to have dinner with her parents.

  She wasn’t sure exactly when she had realized there was a problem, but the signs were blatantly evident when she finally did. Sam reacted oddly to the mere mention of her father’s name. Quite simply, his lips went flat and his eyes narrowed and a muscled jerked in his jaw. She could have gone alone to have dinner with her parents, but she didn’t want them to think she and Sam weren’t getting along. Because they were.

  In fact, Callen had never been so happy. Sam was a dedicated and inventive lover, and he seemed to appreciate her efforts in the house. He was easy to talk to, and even though he seemed exhausted at the end of each day, he was never too tired to spend time with her. It was an ideal marriage. Except that Sam didn’t seem to want anything to do with her family.

  And there was something else. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was, except she had noticed a certain reticence in Sam whenever she tried to make plans for the future, plans that included children. He said he had enough to worry about just solving day-to-day problems. He couldn’t think about a family right now. And he was right. Still, it would have been nice to dream with him.

  As much as it pained her to admit it, maybe Zach had been right about Sam lacking dreams and goals. For some reason Sam didn’t want to think about the future. She didn’t doubt that he loved her, even though he had never said the words. But she had become more and more certain over the past three months that he was hiding something from her. She was afraid to ask him about it, afraid to burst the bubble of happiness that surrounded her marriage.

  Finally, she couldn’t help herself. One night after supper, she blurted, “What’s wrong, Sam? Why don’t you want to have dinner with my family?”

  He hesitated so long that she thought he wasn’t going to answer her. When he did respond, he said merely, “You know how busy the past few months have been for both of us.”

  But she wasn’t satisfied with that answer. “Did my father say something to you…I mean, before the wedding?” Callen held her breath. She couldn’t believe her father would have had the nerve to approach Sam and offer him money to call off the wedding, as he had done with her two previous fiancés. But she could think of no other reason for Sam to dislike her father so vehemently. If anything, Callen would have expected Sam to despise Zach. After all, Zach was the one who had confronted Sam at their wedding. But Sam’s anger didn’t seem to be aimed in that direction.

  The longer Sam hesitated, the more frightened she became that her father had offered him money. Suddenly she didn’t want to know. “Forget I asked,” she said, rising abruptly and heading for the kitchen sink with a stack of dishes.

  Sam followed her and wrapped his arms around her from behind. He nuzzled her nape as he said, “What brought all this on?”

  She sighed. “You keep avoiding any contact with my parents. I wondered why.”

  “It’s very simple, Callen,” he said in a quiet voice. “I want you all to myself.”

  She was afraid to believe him because it sounded so romantic and made her fears seem ridiculous. “That’s all?” she asked. “Nothing else? What about my father? Do you—”

  “Let’s not talk about your father. Right now, I just want to make love to my wife.”

  He swept her into his arms, making her laugh at his impulsiveness. A moment later his mouth caught hers in a searing kiss, and then it was too late for thinking. She decided to let the future take care of itself. She was too busy loving Sam to worry about it.

  Later, lying in bed beside his sleeping wife, Sam wondered how much longer he could manage to keep Callen separated from her father. It had been an exhausting exercise to keep an eye on Garth’s movements and make sure Callen was away from the house whenever he visited. He had come twice to the Double L. Both times Sam had taken pleasure in sending him away without seeing his daughter.

  “Where’s Callen?” Garth had demanded the second time.

  “In town shopping.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Sam had made an open gesture with his hand, inviting Garth inside. To his surprise, the older man hadn’t taken him at his word, shoved open the kitchen door and stalked inside.

  “Callen? Are you here?” His call remained unanswered.

  Sam could see Garth was surprised by the look of the place. Garth had visited E.J. often enough to know how they had lived. So he had to be aware of all the changes Callen had made. Even though Sam wasn’t personally responsible, he felt proud of what Callen had accomplished. He had been amazed himself at the changes his wife had wrought. Quite simply, she had made his house a home.

  It wasn’t just the southwestern landscapes on the wall, or the lack of dust and cobwebs, or the shine on the furniture. It was the way she had rearranged the furniture so they could sit in front of the fire together. The way she made him comfortable in a chair before dropping to the floor in front of him and crossing her arms on his knees and resting her chin there while she talked animatedly about her day. The way fresh flowers found their way inside, along with sunlight and the evening zephyrs.

  He wondered what Garth thought of all the changes. But he didn’t ask. Instead, he said, “I told you she wasn’t here.”

  “You can’t keep her away from me indefinitely,” Garth replied. “If this continues much longer, I’ll just tell her what you’re doing.”

  “Then I’d have to tell her why I don’t want to see you. How you tried to bribe me out of marrying her.” Sam relished the pinched look on Garth’s face. He had the man where he wanted him. “Go away, old man. Your daughter is lost to you. Just like my father is lost to me. I hope you suffer, the way I’ve suffered.”

  Garth’s face had whitened, the grooves around his mouth had deepened. But he hadn’t argued, hadn’t tried to defend himself again. He had simply left.

  When Sam had found himself confronted by Callen this evening, he had considered telling her about the offer of money her father had made to him. That surely would have worked to alienate the two of them. But he had decided it wasn’t necessary to hurt her that way. She would be hurt enough when she learned the real reason why he had married her.

  Sam slipped an arm around Callen’s waist and spooned her into his groin. He felt contented. Almost happy. Except that he knew all this was temporary. So there was a bitters
weet quality to his life that made his chest ache and his throat swell. He wondered how long all the changes Callen had wrought in his life would last.

  His personal life had undergone as many changes as his house over the three months of his marriage. Faced by Callen’s boundless energy, Sam had found himself roused from a lethargy he hadn’t realized had hold of him. At least he was sleeping at night, which made it easier to face a dawn that came too early, in his opinion. Sam hadn’t even realized how lonely his life had been, until Callen filled his evenings with talk of her plans for the future.

  He has no dreams, no goals.

  Zach’s words had come back to haunt Sam often in the first months of his marriage, and he had been forced to acknowledge the truth of them. There had been a time, long ago, when he had dreamed big dreams. He had imagined himself escaping the loneliness of his life at the Double L by playing football for a pro team, traveling and meeting fancy women and living the high life. He had been fast on his feet and determined to succeed.

  But that dream had been blown away with the cartilage in his right knee. He hadn’t been a good student and going to college for the sake of an education—rather than to play football—hadn’t appealed to him. After high school he had returned to what he knew—ranching.

  He was a good rancher; he understood his business. But with a whirlwind like Callen around, Sam realized just how slow-paced his life with E.J. had become. It wasn’t a matter of being lazy, exactly. He’d simply had no reason to work harder. He and E.J. had always had enough for their needs, and their needs had been simple.

  All that had suddenly changed with E.J’s death. Callen was a big part of Sam’s reawakening. He couldn’t imagine himself lingering in bed after she was up and working. But even if he hadn’t married Callen, his life had been changed forever by E.J.’s suicide. He had been jolted out of his lethargy by the knowledge of how near he had come to losing the Double L. The last-minute rescue provided by Callen’s fortune had made him realize he didn’t want to live so close to the edge. If that meant working harder, then he would work harder.

  Sam smiled wryly. The fact of the matter was, it had been necessary to work harder simply to get back to where he and E.J. had been before E.J. lost his shirt to the various swindles he had invested in. Thanks to Garth Whitelaw. Although Sam still had possession of the Double L, it was a long way from being a successful enterprise. He had begun to think and plan what he could do to make the ranch more economically sound.

  He had shared his ideas with Callen at first simply because she seemed to expect him to converse with her in the evenings when they sat in front of the fireplace. He wasn’t really good at making small talk, so he had hesitantly revealed his idea to start training cutting horses. He was damn near as good with horses as Callen, and it gave the ranch another source of income besides beef cattle.

  “That’s a wonderful idea!” Callen had enthused. Her eyes had twinkled with mischief when she said, “I’ll just recommend you to my friends who want their horses trained, instead of Daddy.”

  “I don’t want—”

  Callen had bounced up from the floor and settled herself in his lap with her arms around his neck. “I can help, can’t I, Sam? I won the junior cutting horse championship when I was sixteen, just like my mom. And I’ve been helping Daddy work with cutting horses since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.”

  “I’d planned to do the work myself.”

  “Of course you did,” she said in a soothing voice. “Only now that you’ve got me, why should you have to do it all alone?”

  Her words had tumbled into the deep well of loneliness he lived with and filled it up a little. He reminded himself not to get too dependent on Callen, since there was at least a chance that when the showdown came, when he forced her to choose between her husband and her father, she would choose Garth. But it had felt good to pull her close, to feel the pillow of her breasts against his chest, to feel her fingers twine around the hair at his nape, to feel her lips nuzzle his throat. His hands had tightened reflexively around her.

  His conscience often warned him that he was doing the devil’s work, that he would regret his efforts to take revenge against Garth Whitelaw in the way he had chosen. He fought his scruples by visiting his father’s grave almost daily. Each grim sojourn stoked his righteous anger and multiplied his enmity. Those malevolent feelings festered inside him, and he had to work hard to keep the darker side of himself hidden from his wife.

  He had seen in Callen’s eyes that she knew something was still bothering him, even though she had recently allowed herself to be assuaged with the excuse that he just wanted them to have some time alone. Sometimes he wondered what he would say to her if she probed the situation further. But she had seemed content to let the matter rest.

  Until today.

  IT HAD BEEN A BAD DAY ALL AROUND. Sam had discovered two of his steers dead from eating crazyweed. A flash flood had taken out a whole section of fence. The valves on his pickup had finally ground to a halt and needed to be replaced. Then, when he got home, he had found the kitchen torn apart and no supper ready because Callen was repapering the wall.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

  “It’s only remnants I found on sale at the hardware store,” she said, apparently assuming the source of his anger was concern about the cost of what she was doing. “Isn’t it pretty?”

  For the first time, he looked at the paper. It had small, multicolored flowers on a white background. No man would be caught dead putting something like that on his kitchen wall. For the space of a heartbeat he wondered how he would be able to bear looking at it if she left him. The thought made him angry. Why the hell should he care if she left him? He didn’t love her. Had never loved her. Would never love her.

  “It’s fine,” he said flatly. And then felt like a worm because her face fell.

  “You don’t like it.”

  “I didn’t say that. Hell, Callen, it’s great paper. I just had a horrible day. And I’m hungry.”

  “Of course you are,” she said, immediately stopping what she was doing to come and give him a hug.

  He couldn’t help himself. He hugged her back. Well, hell! What was he supposed to do? He had to make sure the woman kept on loving him, didn’t he?

  “I’ll cook,” he offered. “You’re busy.”

  She wrinkled her nose and laughed at him. “I’ve tasted your cooking. Give me a minute and I’ll have something ready for us. You’ve got time to finish writing out those bills that need attention.” She turned him toward the kitchen door and gave him a little shove toward his study.

  He stomped off to his office—which now contained an antique rolltop desk—to work on his books, something he hated because he could never get the numbers to come out right. It was a job E.J. had always done. Which only reminded him of how much he missed his father. Now he was forced to confront the computer in the study and all those numbers. He hated numbers.

  It wasn’t long before he could smell something good cooking in the kitchen. Shortly after that, Callen called him in to supper. He gratefully turned off the computer and headed for the kitchen. When he got there, he stood in the doorway and stared at the table.

  The wallpaper mess had miraculously disappeared. There were flowers on the table, and she had lit candles. He didn’t know where she had found the china, and he was afraid to ask. The table had a cloth and cloth napkins. He couldn’t remember the last time he and E.J. had put a cloth on the table, and they hadn’t used candles except when the electricity went out in a storm. He had complained once that all that special stuff wasn’t necessary, but Callen had told him it was no trouble at all.

  He sat down with a grunt of expectation, his nose lifting for the scent of whatever it was she had on the stove.

  “I just broiled some steak, threw a couple of sweet potatoes into the microwave and steamed a little broccoli on the stove.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “Sweet potatoes?”
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  “Don’t you like them?”

  “At Thanksgiving. With lots of brown sugar and marshmallows.”

  “Try one. If you don’t like it, I won’t make it again.”

  He realized suddenly she had taken the meat of the sweet potato out of the shell, mixed something into it and stuffed it back in again. “What’s in here?” he asked warily.

  “Cheese and bacon.”

  Sam grunted doubtfully, but he took a bite and found it delicious. He didn’t tell her he liked it; he simply ate it all without further complaint. He had to admit that Callen was a good cook. The steak was rare, the way he liked it, and the broccoli was crisp, but not raw.

  He looked up when he had finished to find her watching him expectantly. “Good” was all he said.

  From the smile on her face a person would have thought he had told her she was the greatest cook in Texas. He felt guilty for his faint praise and added, “Really good.”

  “Are you feeling better now that you’ve filled your stomach?”

  He thought about it a minute and chuckled. “I guess I am.”

  “Remind me to keep you well fed in the future,” she said with a grin.

  There it was again. The future. His irritation rose at the reminder of what he was doing with her…to her…and the words were out before he could stop them. “I’m not a child, Callen. Don’t treat me like one.”

  He saw from the stunned look on her face that she hadn’t expected him to lash out at her. The hurt look that followed a moment later made him feel guilty, because he knew she didn’t deserve his criticism.

  “What’s wrong, Sam?” she said in a voice that was threatening because it was so serious. “I want to know. I can’t live like this, knowing that something’s eating you inside. What is it? Please, tell me.”