Chapter Four
That scream sounded like it had come from Callie, Cody thought, alarmed. As he heard her scream again, he abandoned his search for further signs of disturbance around the cabin, did an about-face and raced toward the sound.
As he reached the cabin doorway, Callie let out another bloodcurdling scream from within. There were several crashing sounds... like furniture falling. “Stay away from me!” Callie shrieked hysterically. “Cody—for heaven’s sake, where are you? Cody, please! Help me!” she shrieked again.
Through the open portal, Cody caught a glimpse of Callie leaping onto the rumpled covers of his bed. This was followed by an enraged, animalistic snort as the missing Brahman bull lurched drunkenly toward her, a tranquilizer dart still sticking out of his rump. Cody had no time to ruminate on how or why his prize bull had ended up in his cabin. It was plain to see the one-third-grown, four-hundred-pound bull had a heck of a drug-induced hangover and had not appreciated coming to in Cody’s bedroom. Nor, given the size of the headache the bull had to have, was he appreciating Callie’s startled screams.
“Callie. Be quiet. Now,” Cody said.
Callie shot him a baleful look. “About time you got here,” she muttered cantankerously beneath her breath, although she was trembling so hard the ancient box springs of his bed were creaking. “What took you so long?”
The bull snorted and pawed the ground.
Cody grabbed a silk shirt from the pile of Callie’s clothes on the sofa. He whistled shrilly. “Hey, Zeus! Over here!”
Zeus craned his large black head around. Snorted again.
“Just get him out of here,” Callie said, trembling all the harder.
“I’m trying,” Cody said, waving her shirt as if he were a bullfighter in the ring. He whistled again, even more shrilly.
Snorting and pawing, the bull staggered toward Cody.
Cody figured all he had to do was get the bull outside, then race back in. When it was safely grazing in the pastureland surrounding the cabin, he could get to the shortwave radio in his truck or the cellular phone in his saddlebag and call for more help.
Cody backed out the door, still waving the shirt. Zeus followed, crashing into the table as he went. Unfortunately, Zeus got only as far as the doorway, when he changed his mind, swung around again, crashing into the sofa as he did so, and headed back for Callie, who was still standing on the bed.
She screamed. Zeus picked up speed. Misjudging the width of the portal, he rammed his shoulder drunkenly into the bedroom door frame, which enraged him all the more.
Zeus backed up and, still glaring at Callie, prepared to charge the bedroom again. Cody swore, wishing he had a rope and lasso handy, but he didn’t, so he was just going to have to make do.
Grabbing a handful of Callie’s clothes, Cody hurled them at Zeus, one right after another. A shirt landed on Zeus’s head, another covered his neck, a pair of jeans fell down to tangle in the struggling, frightened bull’s front legs. Snorting, shaking, the bull backed up and tried to get the clothing off his face. When it all tumbled to the floor, Cody hurled more.
Seeing her opportunity, Callie raced past the bull to Cody’s side. Figuring it was easier to get themselves out of the cabin than the bull at this point, Cody grabbed her hand, tugged her through the doorway and slammed the oak door behind them. “Now what?” Callie gasped.
“There’s a rope in the barn. I’ll get it while you get on the cell phone in my saddlebag. Dial one-zero—that’ll connect you to Shorty. Explain what’s happened, and tell him we need help. Pronto. Probably another tranquilizer dart, too.”
Callie ran off. Cody disappeared into the barn. He raced out again, a lasso in his hand. “Shorty’s on his way,” she told him.
“Great.”
“Where are you going?”
“Back in to get Zeus!”
It infuriated her to see him willfully risking life and limb. “Cody, you can’t go in there. Zeus is furious. He could trample you or gore you.”
His expression pure steel, Cody shrugged off her warning. “He’ll calm down once he has a lasso around his neck.”
Desperate to protect him, Callie threw herself across the front door. “I’m not going to let you go in there alone!”
The look in his eyes no less determined, Cody merely slung the lasso over his shoulder, picked her up by the waist and shifted her to the side. In a tone that was not to be denied, he barked out his orders. “Go back to the pickup, climb inside and wait for me, Callie. You’ll be safe enough there.” Without sparing her another glance, he yanked open the door and stepped inside.
IF CODY THOUGHT THE IDEA of running was an option for her, he didn’t know her at all, Callie thought, setting her chin. If Cody was going headlong into a battle with a demented, drugged-out bull, he wasn’t going in alone.
She owed it to Uncle Max to see that his nephew didn’t get hurt or killed in such an ignominious way.
She rushed in after him. Cody did not look happy to see her. “This is not the way you follow orders, Callie,” he murmured, his mouth thinning to a disapproving line as he gathered the lasso in hand and moved slightly to the left.
“So it isn’t,” Callie murmured right back.
Watching as Zeus backed into a table and sent it crashing, Callie leaned down, ever so slowly, and reached for her now empty duffel bag. “On the count of three, I’ll distract him, you lasso. One... two... three.” Callie hurled the suitcase so it hit just in front of Zeus. Startled, Zeus backed up just as the lasso swung easily around his neck. Cody tightened the loop. Zeus snorted and tried to go in the opposite direction, then, as his wind was systematically cut off, went promptly down on his side. Callie looked at Zeus nervously. He looked ready to get up and charge again at any minute. “Isn’t this the place where you normally tie his legs together with the rest of the rope?” she asked in a trembling undertone.
Cody kept his eyes locked with Zeus’s and shrugged. “If he were a calf and we were getting ready to brand him, yeah. We don’t do that with an animal this size, less of course we got a death wish, and I don’t.”
Zeus started to move. Cody tightened his grip on the rope and stayed where he was. Zeus, having evidently figured out he was not going to win this battle with Cody, stayed where he was, too, panting loudly.
“Now what?” Callie whispered, trying not to let herself get spooked by the wildness in Zeus’s eyes.
“We wait for reinforcements.”
As if on cue, a pickup roared into the yard. It was followed by another pickup, dragging a small horse trailer. Shorty hopped out of the first truck and came running, a tranquilizer dart in hand. Cody gave the nod. Shorty aimed. The dart hit Zeus in the rump, just below the first. They waited. Within a minute, Zeus’s eyes were drooping. The dangerous light in them faded. To Callie’s amazement, Zeus looked gentle as a lamb. While the bowlegged Shorty turned around and barked out orders to the ranch hands that had accompanied him, Cody turned to Callie.
“Nice work,” Callie told Cody. Though her arm and shoulder were aching from her initial tangle with the bull, and his cabin was trashed.
Cody did not look pleased, with either the respect she accorded him or the situation. “I thought I told you to go to the truck,” he reminded her harshly, as if a few cruel words could erase whatever camaraderie they had just felt.
So, now that things were back on an even keel and they were safe, they were no longer partners, Callie thought. “I thought I told you not to go in there alone,” Callie shot back, mocking his irascible tone. She knew what he was thinking; he didn’t want any of the men to think he had been rescued by anyone, never mind the new bride-to-be and coinheritor he considered nothing but a noose around his neck. He didn’t want her thinking she could be of any benefit to him whatsoever. Well, that was just too bad, she thought furiously. She had helped Cody, just as he had helped her, and she didn’t care who knew about their unwitting and unwilling partnership in temporarily subduing the abducted bull.
The shadows around his eyes deepening, Cody dropped the rope and strode out of the cabin. “You don’t give the orders around here.”
“Neither do you,” Callie asserted, fast on his heels.
“That’s news to us,” Shorty put in.
Cody wheeled on him, for a second looking every bit as dangerous as Zeus. Shorty, however, did not look intimidated. Which in turn made Callie wonder at the relationship between them. “Shorty, stay out of this,” Cody growled.
“Sure thing, Cody,” Shorty said with a shrug. “C’mon, fellas, help me get this bull loaded into the truck.” With four of them against the newly tranquilized bull, they managed it in short order.
Soon enough, Cody and Callie were alone again. The yard around the cabin seemed awfully still, considering the commotion that had been. They squared off awkwardly. The silence stretched out between them. “Since you were here, and you did lend a hand, I suppose I ought to thank you,” Cody said grudgingly at last.
Callie nodded. “Your thanks is accepted.” Unable to bear the warring emotions in his eyes any longer, Callie turned. Suddenly, she was feeling a little shaky. Her knees buckled. She felt herself pitching forward.
Before she could do more than draw a breath, Cody was there to catch her. “Sit down,” he ordered gruffly as he pushed her onto the sofa, but his hands were gentle on her shoulders. “Put your head between your knees.”
“I don’t—”
His breath was warm against her cheek as he pushed her down and held her there. “Just do it, Callie, before you flat-out faint on me.”
As the room spun around her, Callie gave a low, tortured groan. Maybe this would be best.
She closed her eyes, letting the blood rush to her head. She heard Cody moving around behind her. Somewhere in the bedroom. The sound of a dresser drawer being yanked open, shut. His footsteps neared again. He sat down beside her, the sofa cushions shifting with his weight. “Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?” He sounded annoyed again.
“Because I’m not.” Deciding she’d been weak and silly long enough, Callie straightened. Then found she was dizzy all over again, this time for an entirely different reason. As Cody looked her over carefully, then fingered the rip in her shoulder seam, she felt herself quickly becoming both desirous and ambivalent once more.
“Then what do you call this?” he demanded softly.
Callie looked where he was touching. Fighting her reaction to his nearness, she drew in a sharp breath.
His mouth softened as he flipped open the lid of the first-aid kit. “That’s a mean-looking cut you’ve got there.”
Callie swallowed. “It’s nothing.”
“It still needs to be cleaned.” As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he took hold of the ripped fabric and with a sharp tug and a brutal tearing sound widened the rip another several inches in all directions.
The thought of being in any state of undress with him, for whatever reason, made her nervous. Panic warred with desire as the blood rushed through her veins; she wasn’t ready for this and neither was he. “Cody, for heaven’s sake! Did you have to be so barbaric?”
“You’re telling me you want to take your shirt off and do it that way?” Half his mouth curved up in a quarter grin as he caught her shocked look, then drawled, “I didn’t think so.”
Back on task, he was already ripping open a packet of antiseptic.
“I can carry on myself now,” Callie insisted, putting up both hands to stop him.
He shook his head in a way that said the argument was closed. “There’s no way you can reach your shoulder blade, never mind see what you’re doing.” He brushed her hands away, pushed them away from the scrape, then moved the cool cloth over the three-inch-long injury. Finished, he brought out a tube of antibiotic cream and, apparently unable to resist, gave her the kind of roguish look she’d been expecting from a hellion like him all along. “Besides, technically anyway, I’m your husband, remember?”
Callie inched forward as he smoothed on the cream. To no avail. The feel of his hands on her skin, caressing so gently, was devastating.
“Forget the technicalities, Cody. As I told you last night, we don’t owe each other anything.” At least not anything like this.
“Oh... considering there was a bull just in here—a stolen bull—I think I do owe you, Callie. A lot.”
She didn’t like the sound of that drawl. She pushed him away. “You’re not insinuating I had anything to do with Zeus being dumped in your bedroom!” Was he?
Cody’s mouth curled sardonically. “Let’s put it this way. He’s never visited here before.”
“So?”
Cody stood and shrugged his broad shoulders uncaringly. “So you’re here less than a day and suddenly he’s stolen and then makes an appearance here. In my cabin.” Throwing all his weight onto one hip, he towered over her menacingly. “Mighty coincidental, wouldn’t you say?”
The depth of her anger invigorating her with new strength, Callie leapt to her feet. “As a matter of fact, I would.” She moved forward until they were standing toe-to-toe and slapped her hands on her hips. Tossing her hair back, she smiled up at him with saccharine intent. “Not that this plan of yours is going to work, Cody.”
His eyes were smoldering. He let his glance slide down over the rip in her blouse and the curves of her breasts before dragging his gaze ever so slowly and condescendingly back to her face. “And what plan might that be?” he asked in a soft, dangerous voice.
Callie should have been angry at the way he was treating her. She was hurt instead and she faced him boldly. “To scare me off the ranch.”
His head shot up. “By putting a bull in my own cabin?” he asked incredulously.
Callie straightened the hem of her shirt with shaking fingers and covered her shoulder as best she could. “You certainly took your time about coming back in here when I first came face-to-face with Zeus. You had no qualms about sending me in first.” Even as she said it, it sounded ludicrous. Cody was not a back stabber. If he had wanted to harm her, he would have done so head-on.
Cody faced her grimly. “I did not set you up to get hurt in here.”
She studied him. “I believe that. I don’t know why, but I believe that.”
“Maybe because you know me.”
“No, Cody.” Callie shook her head. “I never knew you. Because if I had – ” Callie stopped herself abruptly. She was revealing too much, and, in the process, setting herself up for even more hurt.
“What?”
She inclined her head at her shoulder, swallowed hard as she reined her feelings in. “I just wouldn’t have expected you to take care of me after all that’s happened this morning.” For a second there, he had been behaving almost like a gentleman.
Cody snapped the lid shut on the first-aid kit. His entire body was rigid with tension. He looked at her as if she had stolen his control, sabotaged his strength. “It’s no more than I’d do for any of the hands,” he managed to say.
Keep telling yourself that, cowboy.
Just because he was short on manners didn’t mean she had to forfeit hers. “Thanks, anyway,” Callie said. She didn’t know if it was the spirited exchange with Cody giving her strength, but suddenly she was feeling much better. She looked around, unable to believe the damage the bull had done in a few short minutes. And this was a baby bull. She couldn’t imagine working with a full-grown bull of thirteen hundred to fourteen hundred pounds.
She shook her head at the mess.
“Now what?” Cody asked, his manner both abrupt and impatient.
Callie regarded him thoughtfully as something very important dawned on her. She stepped closer. “You don’t seem very upset for someone who’s just had his cabin trashed, all his furniture—what little of it there was—destroyed,” she said slowly. Even the sofa they had been sitting on had huge chunks of upholstery ripped out of the sides and back of it.
Yet Cody hadn’t once lamented any of it.
Cody gave her a grin. “That’s because I don’t live here.”
THE EXPRESSION OF SHOCK, disbelief and outrage on her face was almost worth it, Cody thought. Though he hadn’t meant to give himself away just yet.... Not that this surprised him, either. Callie had a way of evoking emotions in him he didn’t even know he had, never mind had any desire to express.
“What do you mean you don’t live here?” Callie demanded, her emerald eyes flashing with the fire of righteous indignation.
“Just that. This isn’t my home.” When she continued to stare at him in rigid disbelief, Cody continued with a casualness meant to provoke. “I live in the original ranch house, where Uncle Max settled when he founded the Silver Spur.”
“And that ranch house is where?” Callie knew there were numerous residences on the Silver Spur, some more modern than others. But she didn’t know the history of any of them.
“It’s in the middle of the cattle operation, about two miles or so from the bunkhouse and the barns, ensuring me, and in the past the family, privacy from the hands.”
Rich color flowing into her cheeks, Callie held her arms aloft, the motion lifting and molding the shirt against the soft curves of her breasts. “Then what is this?” she demanded with disdain.
Watching her, Cody was filled with the desire to take her in his arms again. No matter what the past, or her betrayal, he wanted to kiss her senseless. Until she gave him all that she had denied him before. And told him she loved him and only him. And that, he didn’t understand. He had told himself over and over he would never forgive her what she had done. Was it possible the shock of seeing her again...touching her...kissing her...had ripped away the protective layers he’d erected to make sure he would never be hurt again?
Callie lowered her arms again. Her breasts heaved with every angry breath as she waited for his reply. Cody had half a mind not to tell her the history of the place, but also knew that she could get the information from just about anyone on the ranch. So it might as well be him. He didn’t want her asking questions of the hands or creating more of a stir than she already had.
Having recovered his senses, Cody moved away from her and leaned against the far wall. “This, Callie, is an old cowboy outpost that predates the First World War.” He inclined his head at the sturdy walls. “It was originally designed for shelter in inclement weather when cattle were out on the range.”
Her green eyes lit up with a compassion he neither expected nor wanted. “But it’s so primitive, Cody,” Callie said softly.
Cody shrugged and shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He knew this was something she could find out, too, yet he wanted to tell her himself. “After you disappeared on me, I found myself wanting to be alone—a lot. That was damn near impossible at the ranch house at the time—there was always someone dropping by to check up on me. So I started coming out here for days at a time.” So I could make sense of what happened with you, figure out how—and more importantly, why — I’d been duped.
“Max didn’t worry about you?” Callie asked, the gentle understanding in her eyes enough to make him want to drag her back into his arms and hold her there for a very long time.
Cody inhaled a ragged breath. No one had offered him such simple comfort in a long time. He was finding it hard to resist. “He understood that if he and the others didn’t leave me alone I’d disappear altogether,” Cody revealed shortly, wishing Callie would stop trying to tear down the defenses he’d spent years building. “So he passed the word I wasn’t to be disturbed,” Cody finished.
Callie fastened the sweet, serious warmth of her gaze on his face. “Weren’t you lonely?” she asked quietly.
For you, Callie. For what we’d lost. Realizing what he’d just admitted to himself, Cody shook his head in silent regret. He’d thought he was over all that. Knowing it still cut at him deeply, astonished and disturbed him. She had no right coming back into his life, dredging all this up. Mouth tightening, Cody turned away from Callie and the understanding he saw in her eyes. He knew better than to let her get close to him again. Because if he trusted her again, and she let him down, as he half feared she would, it would destroy him. That being the case, he was going to have to find a way to make sure that she knew it would never work, too. Despite what Max may have wished.
“I found out the rustic atmosphere suited me just fine,” Cody continued with feigned nonchalance. Needing respite from her gaze, he found his hat and lowered the brim over his eyes. “When I ran out of supplies or wanted electricity and so on, I went back to the original ranch house, the one where my brother, Trace, and my sister, Patience, and I first lived with Uncle Max. And where Uncle Max had lived before building the new state-of-the-art ranch house where Trace and Susannah are going to live.”
Cody looked at Callie’s face and knew he’d put some distance between them.
Callie stared at him furiously. “You duped me into thinking this was it! That this was where you had been living... where I was going to have to live if I married you again!”
Cody grinned wordlessly, admitting the chicanery, and Callie flew at him, completely incensed.
Cody caught her arms before she could do any serious damage and held her against him. “I never said this was where I lived full-time,” he replied silkily, finding the look on her face almost worth it. “You jumped to that conclusion all by yourself.”
Callie yanked herself free, picked up a boot and sent it sailing at his head. Glorious color filled her pretty face. “You are no gentleman, Cody McKendrick!”
Cody ducked to avoid the flying object. It was all he could do not to chuckle at her spirit. “That’s not what you said a few minutes ago when I was taking care of the cut on your shoulder!” He lifted a disparaging brow meant to incense her, glad their relationship had landed back in an arena he could handle. “In fact, from the way you were looking at me, you seemed to think I was more than gentlemanly enough,” Cody continued, deliberately provoking her all the more. And that, too, had been a problem. Prior to Callie’s return to his life, he’d had no problem at all keeping women at arm’s length. In the act of protecting and caring for Callie he was becoming more chivalrous again.
He had deliberately been living the life of a hermit. He was not sure he wanted to come back to life again in the way Callie was urging him to. He was not sure he wanted to risk getting hurt again. And she could hurt him. Probably worse this time than she already had.
“A few minutes ago, I thought you had a heart in there somewhere. Now I know I was wrong,” Callie stormed.
“And you, Callie, are just as young and immature. But I can handle you this time,” Cody said confidently. “Because this time I know who and what you are!”
Callie grabbed up what was left of the clothes from her sparsely packed duffel bag. They were muddy, ripped and smelled like Zeus. “On top of everything else, the only clean clothes I had left are ruined! I’ve got nothing to wear!”
One glimpse of her soft white skin had told Cody that he did not want her to go around wearing that ripped shirt, either, even if she once again misinterpreted his reason for helping her. “You can borrow something of mine,” he said gruffly, telling himself it was no big deal. “I’ve got plenty of shirts back at the ranch house.” A ranch house she had never seen, because during the precious three months they’d dated, they’d spent all their time at Pearl’s and on the range.
“I don’t – Fine.” Callie stopped and, with what looked to him like a great deal of effort, brought herself up short. She raised both hands in a testy gesture of surrender. “I’ll take whatever I can get my hands on. Let’s just get going.”
Figuring they’d stayed more than long enough, Cody decided her idea made sense. He made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “After you.”