Callie and Brett spent the next two hours going through box after box, working from right to left in the large, oversized attic. They unpacked each box, examining the contents before packing everything back up and marking the outside with a check. The boxes soon gave way to antique dressers, the drawers full, and several old trunks.
Callie reached for the first trunk, but Brett’s voice stalled her. “I don’t know about you, but I need something to drink. Can I get you anything?”
“Whatever’s cold.”
He nodded and started down the stairs leading to the second floor. Callie blew out a deep breath and walked toward the open window. Staring out, she drank in the endless stretch of pasture, the rich, lush trees in the distance, the bare glimmer of the creek in the moonlight. She found herself wishing she’d brought her camera, but then the shots were too distant to entice a buyer. This sight was just for the naked eye.
She sank down on the window seat and stared out until she heard footsteps behind her. She turned to see Brett, two beers in his hands. He passed her a bottle dripping with condensation.
“I hope you don’t mind Bud Light. It’s the only thing that’s really cold. Karen drank the last soda and Dolly doesn’t go to the grocery store until tomorrow.”
“It’s fine.” She twisted off the top and took a long pull of the ice-cold beer. She’d never had much of a taste for the stuff, but she had to admit that it certainly hit the spot. Especially when a speck of ice dripped from the glass and fell between her cleavage. The iciness swept a cool path south, over her bare skin, all the way to her waistband, sending a small, welcome shiver through her.
Brett sank down onto the floor, his back to the wall, his elbows propped on his bent knees as he stared at the mound of boxes stacked here and there. He took a long drink of his beer before leaning his head back and closing his eyes.
Silence settled between them for several moments and she took the opportunity to really look at him.
Time had turned the gangly teenage boy into a hard and muscular man. His white T-shirt—soaking wet now thanks to the stuffy attic—clung to his sinewy torso like a second skin, revealing a solid chest, a ridged abdomen. Her gaze lingered at the shadow of a nipple beneath the damp material and a dozen forbidden images rushed through her.
She took a deep breath and moved her attention to the jeans molded to his thighs, his calves. Scuffed black cowboy boots completed the outfit. His entire persona screamed danger. Brett was a womanizer, a use-’em-and-lose-’em type with a taste for sin and a body to back him up. He was the sort of man every mama warned her daughter about.
Trouble.
That’s what Callie’s own mama had called him, and she’d been right. But for all her objections, she hadn’t interfered when Callie had accepted his prom invitation. After an entire year spent sitting across from him in the library, she’d been ready to step out of the role as his tutor and have him see her the way he did every other female at Rebel High.
Her gaze went to Brett’s face. He had the trademark Sawyer cheekbones, so strong and defined, as well as a straight, sculpted nose, a firm jaw, and the most kissable lips she’d ever seen on a man. A few days’ growth of beard covered his jaw, crept down his neck. His brown hair, as damp as his shirt, curled down around his neck, the edges highlighted the same brownish gold as the aged whiskey that her grandpa had been so fond of.
Her palms burned as she remembered the softness of those dark strands filtering through her fingers, brushing her neck, her collarbone, the sensitive tip of her nipple …
She drew a deep breath and noted the tiny lines that fanned out from the corners of his eyes. A scar zigzagged from his right temple and bisected his cheek and she couldn’t deny the sudden urge to reach out and trace the puckered skin with her fingertip. To ask him what had happened. A bar fight? An angry bull?
The subtle changes made him seem older than the boy of eighteen who haunted her memories.
This was no boy. He was all man, and he had the hard look of someone who’d seen too much and done even more.
A tiredness pulled at his expression and she stiffened against a rush of sympathy. While they might be facing similar situations now, they were still worlds apart.
If only she didn’t keep forgetting that all-important fact.
“I’d hoped we would have found it by now,” the deep rumble of his voice drew her from her thoughts.
“The night is still young. We’ll find it.”
He stared at the bottle of beer and picked at the edge of the label before chancing a glance at her. “And if we don’t?” His gaze caught hers. “Do you have a backup plan?”
She shrugged. “I figured I would pay a visit to the bank and ask for an extension. I doubt I’ll get it, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. Then I’ll hit up Les and see if he can give me a loan.”
“That means you’ll have to stick around to pay it back.”
She nodded. “That’s usually the way a loan works.”
“Why not just let the bank have it? Or do a short sale and split whatever’s left with your sisters?”
“We grew up in that house.” It was the one place that felt like home. The only place. “My dad and mom worked hard to keep up the bills when James couldn’t make it. I can’t just let it go. It’s all we have. It’s all I have left that still reminds me of them.”
Silence stretched between them for several long moments before his words echoed in her ears. “I’m really sorry about that night, Callie. I’m sorry it went to hell so fast, and I’m really sorry about your parents.”
His sorry didn’t matter. She’d told herself that time and time again over the years. It didn’t matter what he said. What he thought. None of it mattered.
She’d been right. The words didn’t make a bit of difference. They were meaningless, an empty gesture that did little to console or ease the fist tightening inside of her.
Rather it was the gleam of sincerity in his gaze, the glimmer of regret that soothed the fierce ache and helped her next breath come a little easier.
“That broken-down house is my home. It always will be, even when I’m far away from here. I have to hold onto it. My sisters are just starting out. They need a place to stay while they build something solid for the future.”
“And what about you? What about your future?”
“It’s still there. It’s just on pause right now.” And for the past ten years. “My time will come once everything else is settled.”
He arched an eyebrow. “What if it never settles? What if there’s another problem on the heels of this one?”
He voiced the one fear that had niggled at her night after night over the past ten years. The worry that she might never be free of Rebel. That she might find herself stuck, her dreams just that—dreams. Possibilities that existed only in her imagination.
She swallowed against the sudden lump in her throat and squared her shoulders. “Then I’ll keep dealing with whatever comes until Fate finally cuts me a break. It’ll happen.” Her gaze met his. “My time will come. I want to be a photojournalist. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“What about settling down someday? Do you want that, too?”
She shrugged. “I’ve dated a few guys. Kyle Parker and Miles Langtry. They were fun, but it never went anywhere. We’re just friends.” She watched the satisfied expression that slid over his face and heat whispered through her. “What about you? You think you might settle down someday?”
“I’m sure Tyler McCall would like that.”
“Tyler? Your cousin?”
“Fourth cousin, and my biggest competition. He’s hot after my spot and he’s not too shy about telling any and everyone who will listen. He’s gunning for me. One slipup and that’s it. He’ll sail right past me into first place.”
“But you won’t slip up,” she said, her voice steady with confidence because she knew him. “You passed calculus, remember? She’s a meaner bitch than any bull.” Her words drew a grin and her heart stalled.
“Yeah, well, I had a secret weapon for that.” His gaze held hers and her heart stuttered for the next several beats. “I’m on my own on the circuit.”
“Sounds lonely.”
He seemed to think. “It shouldn’t be. I’m surrounded by a shitload of people on a daily basis, but once the ride ends and the dust settles, it’s just me.”
“Sounds like you don’t like it half as much as you pretend to.”
“I don’t like it.” He shook his head. “I love it. When I hear that buzzer, there’s no other feeling. It’s just not half as glamorous as people think. It’s tough.”
“I saw you in the winner’s circle in Vegas getting sprayed with a bottle of champagne by two Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. Talk about torture.”
The grin turned to a full-blown smile. “Definitely one of my lowest moments.”
“So what about you? You ever thought of ditching the champagne and making it official with one of those cheerleaders?”
He shrugged. “I’m not really into cheerleaders.”
“Since when?”
“Since I gave up football practice to sit in the math lab every afternoon with my calculus tutor.” His gaze caught and held hers. “I wouldn’t have graduated if it hadn’t been for you. You were really something, Callie.”
Were. The word struck, niggling at her and stirring a rush of insecurity fed by ten years of sacrifice. She had been something. On top of her game. A force ready to take on the world.
Then.
She shook away the disturbing thought and shrugged. “I just helped you study. You were the one in class taking all of the tests. Graduating was all on you. So what about it?” she rushed on, eager to ignore the warmth whispering through her. “Do you see yourself settling down in the future?”
He took another swig of his beer and shook his head. “I’m not the marrying kind. I live out of an RV year-round, going from rodeo to rodeo. It’s no kind of life for a wife and kids.”
“But you can’t ride forever. What about when you retire?”
He shrugged. “I haven’t really thought that far ahead. I can’t see myself doing anything other than what I’m doing right now.”
“I always thought you might come home and take over for your pappy. And now that he’s sick—”
“He’s still in charge. I’m just helping out until he gets over this rough patch.” He wiped a hand over his sweaty forehead, his expression closing as if he didn’t want to say another word about the subject. His blue eyes fixated on her like twin laser beams. “You know, Callie, there’s never a right time to make something happen. If you really want to get out of here, you just have to go for it. Now. No matter what’s happening around you. You can’t wait for the planets to line up, otherwise you’ll die from old age never having done anything. You don’t wait for a chance to leave. You make your own chance.”
“Like you?”
“Exactly like me.” He nodded. “I wanted a career in bull riding and I knew it wasn’t going to happen waiting around here, so I left.”
“And you don’t have any regrets? You don’t wish you had stuck around just a little bit longer? Or come back sooner?”
Or told a stubborn old man that you loved him despite his flaws?
The notion wiggled its way into her head, but she shook it away. James hadn’t done one thing to earn her love. He’d never been there. Never cared for her the way a grandfather should have.
No, he didn’t deserve her love.
He never had.
“Surely there must be something that keeps you up at night,” she added when he shook his head in answer to her questions.
“No,” he murmured. “I don’t regret a thing.”
That’s what he said, but Callie didn’t miss the stiffening of his shoulders or the tightening of his lips. He hadn’t left the past behind, he’d run from it.
From the boy he’d been.
From her.
He was still running, refusing to see the truth, to accept it.
She thought of her grandfather’s room stacked with the endless copies of Reader’s Digest, the empty tubes of Bengay, the crosswords puzzles he’d loved so dearly. Everything was exactly the way he’d left it because she’d yet to go inside, to pack it away, to face her own truth.
Instead, she was making excuses. Stalling.
Hardly. It had been less than a week since his death. She simply hadn’t had the time to get the room packed away.
She would. Just as soon as she dealt with everything else.
She glanced around at the enormity of the attic, the boxes stacked here and there, the ancient furniture filled to the brim with mementos and trinkets and possibly—hopefully—the recipe that could save them both. “We really should get back to work.” Pushing from the window seat, she started for the first trunk. Sinking down to her knees, she reached for the latch only to feel him beside her.
“I lied.”
“About what?”
“I do have one thing that keeps me up at night.” He touched her then, pulling her to her feet until they stood toe-to-toe. He didn’t say anything for a long moment, just stared down at her, his gaze, dark, intense, stirring. “You,” he finally murmured. “We never finished what we started that night and that’s my own damned fault.” He touched a strand of hair that had come loose from her ponytail. His callused thumb brushed her cheek and a shiver ripped through her. His blue eyes darkened to a deep, mesmerizing cobalt, the depths shimmering with a need that mirrored her own. “But that’s one regret I don’t have to live with.”