Turning the bacon over with a fork in one hand, Ford cracked eggs into a bowl with the other. He'd heard Callie stirring in the bedroom, and he'd wanted to have her some breakfast ready.
When he lifted his head to see her timid form swaying in his kitchen, he swore it took him a minute to locate words. A cascade of loose blonde tangles swished over her shoulders. Her eyes were red-rimmed and worried, but it was the nervous way she chewed on her lip that crushed him. Was she scared of him?
Clearing his throat, he set to do whatever needed to be done to get her to trust him, though he had no rational reason for requiring her trust. "I'm not quite sure what you remember from last night, but I'm Ford Holder. You're on Holder Ranch. And...I slept on the couch all night long."
Relief washed over her features which oddly unknotted his shoulders as well. She nodded at him and then cringed and rubbed her head. "I remember meeting you," she whispered. "Just not much after that. I'm really sorry. I don't normally drink much."
Grinning at that, he scooped the bacon out of the skillet and heaped it onto her plate. "Yeah, well, me either. I had a rough day yesterday, and I know the Holder men have a reputation of being way more sinner than saint, but I grew out of the sinner stage a while ago. None of us would ever have done what you're worrying about. You're safe here. Anytime." He half hoped his slight confession might elicit one from her as well, but she just studied him as he scrambled the eggs.
"That smells really good," she admitted almost begrudgingly. "But I really need to get back to the farm. My grandmother has probably already called the sheriff."
"Sally was going to call Delphia last night and tell her you were staying with a friend. At least have something to eat before you go. It'll help with the headache." He refused to admit to himself that he didn't want her to leave yet. He wanted to know more about her. He didn't want to be alone.
If she gnawed those bee-stung lips of hers anymore she was going to draw blood. Stop looking at her mouth, asshole. His own mental scolding did nothing to distract his attention from her beautiful face.
"So, uh," she shrugged, "if you were going to sleep on the couch, why did you bring me here? I don't know you."
It was a decent question, and not one he had any kind of logical answer to. "You seemed like you needed a...friend." He finished up the eggs and added them to the plate and then poured her a large mug of coffee.
"And you want to be my friend?"
He hated the skepticism in her tone, and his own issues slithered too close to the surface for him to keep them locked up. "If I've learned anything from all of the shit with my divorce, it's that I don't get to decide whether or not someone else stays in a relationship. But, yeah, I guess. If you need a friend, I'm game. But that's up to you."
When he nodded to one of the barstools he'd shoved up to the counter, since Meritt had taken their kitchen table, Callie reluctantly settled on it. It took Ford a minute to admit to himself that he was jealous of a barstool because it had her ass against it. He blamed his own insanity on the fact that he hadn't had sex in years. Jesus, he was hard up.
He needed to take Callie back to her grandparents’ farm. He hadn't been in prison. She wasn't the first attractive woman he'd seen. He had to get his shit together.
But she was so much more than attractive. She was gentle, and her kind eyes seemed to see things others missed. She ignored the food to continue her visual inventory of his face. "I'm sorry about your divorce."
He shook his head. "Don't be."
"Why?" She studied him like she could actually see the man he'd intended to be instead of the one he'd become. "If we're really friends, then I would be sorry that you went through something that made you unhappy."
For some reason, Ford spoke the truth for the first time since he'd filed the papers. "I'm not so sure I'm unhappy. No. Scratch that. I am sure I'm not unhappy. The only part that sucks is the whole damn county talking about me constantly. The fact that she's gone is a relief. I know that sounds fucked-up though."
"I've pretty much figured out that the truth almost always sounds fucked-up. It's easier to lie to yourself. Then we get so used to our own lies that when we're really real we don't recognize it."
Damn. "You a psychologist or something?"
She wrinkled her nose and shook her head. "No, I'm just an expert at lying to myself, so I get it."
This was the most intriguing conversation Ford had taken part of in ages. "What have you been lying to yourself about?"
"Pretty much everything." She broke off a piece of bacon and brought it to her lips and then moved on to the eggs. He shoveled eggs into his mouth to keep from watching the tines of her fork slip between her teeth. He and his hand definitely needed a shower session because this was ridiculous. "This is so good," she moaned and picked up another piece.
That little moan did things to him. Things he was certain were not okay since he barely knew this woman. He called himself an asshole again for good measure. "I'm...glad you like it."
"It's better than Nana's, but never tell her I said that."
That brought a grin to his face. The motion was so foreign he wondered when the last time he'd smiled had been. "I meant to get back here a little earlier and get you some food. I've got six hundred steers on full-feed so I had to get them fed, and then we had a few calves born this morning that I needed to check."
"You've already been to work this morning?" Astonishment lit in her eyes.
He swore every word she spoke strung him tighter. Mildly concerned he was going to snap and do something incredibly inappropriate like pull her in his arms and taste that bacon from her full pink lips, he forced a nod. "Yeah. This time of year we try to get up pretty early. Gets hot on horseback later in the day. Cattle ranchers don't miss a lot of sunrises."
She gave him a timid grin, and a little of the exhausted pain seemed to drain from her features. "You like that."
His brow knitted. "I like what?"
"Sunrises. I could tell when you said that."
"Oh," Ford nodded. People made observances about his life all the time. Oldest Holder grandchild to the oldest brother. Successful cattle rancher. Reliable man. Failure at being married. Expectations seemed to always come with the observations. He'd spent most of his life understanding who he was supposed to be, but he wasn't ever certain he knew who he really was. He couldn't recall anyone ever stating something that was so true it was almost intimate. "Yeah. I guess I do. I know this ranch is in the middle of nowhere but..."
"It's the middle of your whole world?" She took another guess. "That's what I always think about my grandparents’ farm. Well...all of Holder County really."
Callie had absolutely no idea why she'd just announced that, or why she kept talking between each bite of the first breakfast that didn't involve kale and a Vitamix courtesy of Derrick's mother, who thought Callie needed to lose a little weight. "Have you ever seen a sunset off the California coast? It's beautiful. When the light is just right, for just a few seconds, you can get great pictures. But it's nothing like Oklahoma sunrises. They're the best, I think."
He gave her another grin, and something stirred in her belly that had nothing to do with the food. "Yeah, well, Oklahoma definitely has its perks, I guess."
"The sky goes on and on..."
"Forever," he completed her sentence. "I've never been to California, but I can't imagine anything beats here. Do you like taking pictures?"
"I love it. I'm a photographer. Kind of." Callie wasn't entirely certain what she was. Animal photographer to the wealthy wannabes was not an appealing title. She'd intended to specialize in photography that incorporated everything from landscapes to the beauty of women in their natural form, the way the universe had intended them to be seen. She wanted to do boudoir photography that made women remember how to connect with their own beauty. No photoshop desired or required. That was just the kind of studio she planned to open in New York after her internship. There would be no appointments available for Fido in a toy golf cart with his own clubs.
"If you want some pictures of the sunrises out here, there's no better place to see them than this ranch. Just let me know. I don't mind picking you up early and showing you where you'll get the best shots."
She nodded a little too enthusiastically for the state of her headache. It did nothing to help her decipher why Ford looked like he wished he hadn't made that offer.
Returning to the breakfast, she scooped up another forkful of eggs. She didn't understand why the food made her feel so much better when she'd been worried she was going to vomit a half hour ago, but she decided to question that later.
"Do you live in California now?" he inquired.
Callie considered that. Ford had been honest with her about his divorce and being her friend and even about sunrises, which to her were far more important than either of the other things. "No. Not exactly. I mean...my boyfriend lives there." Disappointment expanded in Ford's icy-blue eyes. She corrected herself both quickly and probably stupidly. "But he's not my boyfriend anymore. It's just...I'm not sure he knows that yet. I've tried to tell him several times. I even finally just sent him an email, but he hasn't even opened it yet. He's not good at listening."
The disappointment that had resided in Ford’s gorgeous eyes, that seemed to be a code to his mind, morphed to understanding. "Trust me, if someone's damned and determined not to hear you, they're never going to. On top of that, expecting some kind of closure is like needing their permission to move on. It ain't worth the wait."
"That's what I think too. I'm not going back to LA, so he'll figure it out eventually. I need to be here for a little while but then I'm going to move...somewhere."
"When are you moving?"
"I don't know yet."
"Okay, where are you moving?"
"New York, I think. Maybe. I’m not entirely sure about that either. I sound stupid, right?" She wasn't certain why she cared what Ford Holder thought of her. She used to love living in the moment, but she was concerned that he'd rescued her from a bar the night before and then she was admitting how in flux her entire life was for their first real conversation. Echoes of her father's constant disapproval thundered in her mind.
He shook his head. "You're not stupid. Don't ever say that. There's nothing wrong with taking life as it comes. Seems to me that trying to plan everything out will fuck you over every time."
Callie took another sip of her coffee, but the warmth that was spreading through her veins wasn't coming from the food or from the coffee. "Hey Ford," she tried fruitlessly to keep the next words trapped in her throat, but she recognized that lost desperation she'd been feeling for so long in his eyes as well. She wanted him to know that she appreciated that he was a good guy in a world where she was fairly certain those were an endangered species.
"Yeah?"
"I'm pretty sure I like being friends with you."
And that earned her a full-fledged smile from him. Her heart applauded in her ribcage. "You don't really get to be a Holder without being born into a horde of friends, so I might not be all that good at it. Family doesn't get to not hang out with you. But I'm a decent listener if you ever want to talk."
She wondered if he'd intended to draw direct distinctions between himself and Derrick. Most of her prayed that he had, but she was sure feeling so close to him was only because of the current state of her life. That and the fact that he did seem like such a good listener even if what he'd said before that was wrong—family did get to decide not to be around. Her mother had decided that a decade ago. She hadn't seen her since. "You're lucky you have a big family." She didn't know much about the Holders, but her grandmother always said that they were the backbone of the entire county. Even just spending the summers there, Callie knew the Holder kids seemed to come by the dozens.
"Sometimes." He chuckled.
"I always wished I had a bunch of sisters and brothers. Most of the time it was just me and," her head fell, and she hated that it still affected her, "my mom. It was a little...lonely."
Suddenly, his substantial hand, roughened with rope-worn calluses, enclosed hers on the table. At his touch, the world that had been spinning so quickly lately seemed to settle. She swore a spark of electricity arced through her palm. "If you want to hang out on the ranch while you're here, I promise you won't be lonely." He gave her a gentle squeeze and then pulled his hand away. The absence stung, and the world picked up pace again. "Can I ask you something else?"
She lifted her head and nodded, still wondering what kind of magic he had in those hands.
"You told me last night you were Abe Monroe's daughter, but I've never seen you around here, and you said it was just you and your mom. I know it's none of my business..." he shrugged away the rest of whatever he was thinking.
Callie eyed the kitchen door and wondered where her car was. She really didn't want to get into her whole life story with Ford. Surely, some guy who had grown up a Holder would have no idea what it was like to grow up the way she did. Supposing she owed him some kind of explanation though, she bought herself another few seconds with another sip of coffee. Swallowing that down, she considered. "Yeah, Abe's my dad, but I grew up in Tulsa with my mom. I spent the summers out here with my grandparents. I love it out here despite Abe."
Ford gave her his last piece of bacon and a consolatory nod. "Forgive me for saying so, but I've never been much a fan of your daddy, but I'm glad he didn't spoil the whole place for you."