Chapter Three

“And then that good-for-nothing had the guts to pick me up and toss me out of his house. Like I was trash! No, like I was worse than trash, because he clearly has no problem leaving trash all over his house.” The sun had not yet risen outside of The Calista Tea Shop as Bridgette pounded out scone dough as if her life depended on it, feeling grateful for the broken mixer as it gave her a chance to beat something up. “He’d rather keep dirty plastic forks inside instead of me! Isn’t that just the most rude, unfeeling, ungrateful thing you ever heard?”

“Mm-hm.” Her older brother was not a man of many words, which was perhaps the reason she and Cliff both clung to him. Neither of them knew how to shut up.

Since being unceremoniously booted from the cowboy’s house, she had not been able to cool the hot, maligned rage coursing through her blood.

The nerve of him.

But whatever. She didn’t care. Besides, she had better things to do than help him with his little, semi-romantic quest. Even if she did have time, she’d only agreed to the entire, ridiculous deal in the first place out of the kindness of her heart.

Her rolling pin hovered over the dough, stopped in its tracks by her own thoughts.

And the money.

Somewhere between getting kicked out of his house and inviting her brother over for a heated, venting breakfast, she had forgotten all about the promised pizza and five hundred and fifty dollars.

Retiring her rolling pin, she reached for a floured dough cutter. With every press into the thick concoction, she imagined she was pushing the man who’d tossed her out, shoving him away. It didn’t make for very pretty or precise scones, but it did make her feel a little better.

“What’d you do then?” Danny asked, shoving a mini quiche into his mouth before washing it down with black coffee.

“What else could I do? I left.”

She didn’t need to look up at his scruffy, square jaw to see his disapproval. Once his little sister became…womanly…he did everything in his power to keep his friends away from her. They were all four years older than her, and she was sure the last thing Danny wanted was to walk into his sister’s bedroom and find her fooling around with one of his pals. For a while, when she reached high school, she’d resented the brush-off. At that age, she loved being one of the boys and missed it when it was taken away from her. Now, almost ten years later, she looked back on her time alone with something almost like gratitude. Once she stopped being one of the boys, she’d learned to be a lady. If she’d never done that, she never would have gotten this shop. At least, that’s what she told herself every time the sting of rejection from her brother’s friends got too much to take.

“Why’re you helping him?”

She shrugged, pressing out another poorly cut-out scone. “He offered me some money, and I’m not really in a position to turn down free cash at the moment.”

Danny didn’t need to know about the broken appliances and thin bank account. He would overreact. He would probably tell her to sell the place and take a job baking with Mrs. Masters at Ridgewood. Working at the ranch wouldn’t be a terrible job—Mrs. Masters could afford a thousand industrial mixers and blast freezers—but it wasn’t the life she wanted for herself. She liked being her own boss, handling her own world, being on her own. She was the queen of her own universe, her own protector and provider. Selling the tea shop and running to Ridgewood with her tail between her legs because of a few material inconveniences would be the ultimate sign of defeat.

Her brother picked an egg salad sandwich off of a tray and added the triangular bread slices to the miniature breakfast buffet he created on his plate. Then, as casual as could be, he flicked a piece of dill from the white bread and asked, “You still in love with him?”

“Danny!” Shock dropped the scone cutter from her hands. It clattered to the floor, coating the tile below her with flour and dough bits.

“Well? Are you?”

“This…” She tried to collect herself, but her hands were shaking too violently to even pretend she wasn’t rattled. She could hardly manage to clean up the mess she’d made, much less string a coherent thought together. “Th-this has nothing to do with my schoolgirl crush—”

“Schoolgirl? You asked him to kiss you on your twenty-first birthday.”

Still crouched on the floor, she winced against the nauseating tide of the memory. She’d begged Danny to bring Cliff along to her party, mentioning one of her “friends” who had a crush on the young cowboy and wanted to meet him. After a few sips of alcohol, she thought it would be a great idea to play drunk and throw herself at him.

It did not work. Beyond humiliating, she was thankful they never spoke of it again.

“I was drunk,” she deflected.

“You had one glass of white wine and practically jumped him.” Danny called her bluff with a chuckle. “Besides, you’re too big to be a lightweight.”

She didn’t want her brother to see how deep his blow struck. If he did, he would splutter out some excuse like by “big” he really meant “tall.”

It wasn’t exactly a secret she was big. After all, she owned a mirror and baked sweets every day of her life. While she resigned herself to the fact she would never compete with the supermodels in magazines, she was proud of her curvy image. She was diligent with her winged eyeliner and vintage dresses, perfectly tended hair and collection of sunglasses. She loved her style, yet there were those bitter moments, like now, when life reminded her some people would never see her as anything more than “the fat girl.” There was a time when she thought Cliff could see past all of it, that maybe he didn’t give a damn about society’s pressures and judgments and could love her in spite of the way she looked. After years of waiting, she knew it was a foolish dream, and she had to move on. Cliff wanted a Prom Queen, not a Pie Queen.

And she loved being the Pie Queen too much to ever change. For anyone.

“I was never in love with him. I’ve outgrown the crush.” The lie was as fragile as one of her lace cookies, but she rose to her full height, hoping her bright red lipstick somehow turned her grimace into a passable smile. “And anyway, if he had wanted to notice me, he would have done it by now.”

It was an invitation for her brother to say, “No, don’t worry. Maybe he could still see you. He’s just intimidated by you. No, really, he’s been in love with you all his life and has been struggling to keep it inside all of these years. Go to him now and fall madly in love!”

Her full-mouthed brother gave her no satisfaction.

“Guess you’re right.” He took a long draw from his coffee mug. “You gonna go back to Ridgewood and see him again?”

Bridgette glanced at her broken mixer, sitting lifelessly in the corner of her kitchen, a ghost of its former self. The mere sight of it made her hands ache. She needed to get it fixed. And for that, she would need cash.

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“He told me he’d pay me. And call me old-fashioned, but I think people should keep their promises.”

It wasn’t a lie. She did believe people should keep their promises, just as much as she knew she needed the money to fix her mixer. But she would have been lying if she said the prospect of seeing Cliff again wasn’t at least part of the appeal.

He was a mess of a man, sure. But in the entire boring landscape of this town, no one made her feel things as vibrantly as Cliff Masters.

****

There wasn’t anywhere Bridgette ever arrived unannounced. It was unlike her. Before she went anywhere she wasn’t invited, she made it a general rule to call at least three hours prior, just to make sure she wouldn’t be unwanted. It was polite, at least in her book, to alert someone when she wanted to see him or her. Tonight, she’d made no such call. Instead, she got in her beat-up pickup truck—the same one that had been old when she’d gotten it for her sixteenth birthday and was ancient now—drove the thirteen miles from her shop to the Masters’ farm, and parked at the Home House. As the workday wasn’t over for the ranch hands, and she didn’t know where Cliff might be, she would need guidance from someone in charge.

In her usual place on the front porch swing, Mrs. Masters peered down through her glasses at the pages of a novel propped between her drawn-up knees. Bridgette often encountered the matriarch in the same shelves of the library; if she were a betting woman, she would put everything on the book being something steamy and romantic, just the kind of books they whispered about and shared recommendations for in the back corner of the library, away from the prying and judgmental ears of the stiff-mustached, male librarian.

Bridgette approached the front steps of the veritable mansion of a main house just as the lounging woman put her book aside and nudged the glasses off of her nose; they dangled from a long chain around her neck.

“Well, if it isn’t Bridgette Shaw! Come out here to get your brother? Want me to call him? I’ll let him off work early. Be our little secret. Won’t tell Mr. Masters.”

“No, ma’am. Here to see Cliff.”

“Cliff?” Her sunny disposition darkened slightly. His mother was one of the warmest, gentlest souls she’d ever met. If she, of all people, was expressing distaste for her own son, then he must have crossed her.

“What d’you wanna see that boy for? Been ornery as hell since he came down to the house for breakfast this morning. Something’s bothering him, and we all have to suffer.” Her entire face brightened again. “Want a glass of tea? I’ve got plenty in the house.”

“Oh, no, ma’am. Thank you.”

She leaned against one of the great posts bracing the overhanging roof onto the white slats of the porch. Annabelle Masters was what the clucking men about town called an “odd bird.” Bridgette preferred to describe her as eccentric. It was clear Cliff inherited his gift of gab from the charismatic socialite, and though she’d never been more than a hundred miles outside of Calista, she spoke with a high, pronounced Southern accent.

Her moods also shifted like the winds, and they did so now as she sank into revelation. “Maybe it’s that girlfriend of his. You heard they broke up, didn’t you? Just the worst thing. But you know what I always say…” She clapped her hands together. “Good riddance to bad rubbish!”

Against her better judgment, Bridgette’s ears perked up at the weathered voice’s thinly-veiled excitement.

“You didn’t like Lauren?” She tried to keep her tone casual, but her voice went high and wiry, making it painfully obvious she was fishing for something.

Thankfully, Mrs. Masters was too good a sport or too wrapped up in her own thoughts and world to mention it.

“Don’t get me wrong. Everyone liked Lauren. They just looked too perfect, you know? Like matching socks. So…boring…” She trailed off, finding a spot somewhere in the sunset to stare at.

For a long while, she just gazed toward the setting sun, her distant gaze seeking something Bridgette couldn’t totally pinpoint.

But just as fast as she departed, she came back to the conversation, reaching out to pat her hand with genuine interest and encouragement. “Sorry. I’ve been yakking. How’s your shop doing?”

“It’s okay. Been a bit of a slow month. Not many tourists coming through.”

“I have a girls’ luncheon next Wednesday. Can you handle a table for eight? Say…”

The woman’s watch glinted in the low, evening sun as she turned her wrist. Bridgette wasn’t entirely sure why she checked it; the watch couldn’t tell her the future or her schedule, surely.

“…one o’clock?”

A wave of relief surely colored her skin pink. She should have expected the kind gesture; the woman was unendingly generous. The Ladies’ Group was notorious in town for running up large tabs and leaving obscene tips. Between their visit and the money Cliff owed her, maybe she could escape the carpal tunnel mixing huge batches of dough by hand all but doomed her to.

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be sure to whip up something special for you.” A smile stretched her face just as a rush of embarrassment hit. She bowed her head. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. They always want to go to some wine bar in Elsner, but I hate it. Makes me feel like an old ninny.”

With the sun casting a glow behind her thinning hair, she certainly was no old ninny by any stretch of the imagination. And when she took a brief pause in her speeding racetrack of dialogue to sip her sweet tea, Bridgette took the chance to escape. Not that she didn’t like or even love talking to Cliff’s mom. On the contrary, in her estimation, the de facto queen of Ridgewood Ranch was the most fascinating person ever to walk up the red clay pathway.

It was just… The longer she stood there…

“Uh… Have you seen your son by any chance?”

“Right! The thing you came for. He’s just in the paddock. Working with one of the horses. Are you going to stay for dinner?”

For a brief, fleeting moment, Bridgette fully considered the question. She imagined herself taking the seat beside Cliff at an overflowing dinner table, rubbing elbows and touching knees as his father doled out his blue-ribbon cornbread and his mother poured the wine. How delicious it would be to sit at a table running over with warmth, where farmhands and relatives sat together like one large family?

Despite the warmth blossoming in her heart and the rumbling in her stomach, she shook her head to clear the image. When she and Cliff finished their business, she would return home, back to the lonely card table where she ate her dinners and her boxed rice mix. No use in dwelling on what she couldn’t have.

“I don’t think so.” She ducked her chin once again so Mrs. Masters wouldn’t see any hints of disappointment on her face.

“Okay. But be sure to come and get some food to take home, you hear?” The woman dismissed her with a snap of her romance novel’s spine, then opened it and perched her glasses atop her nose once again, sinking into the same statuesque pose she was in upon Bridgette’s arrival. “We’ve got plenty.”

Offering a wave of acceptance to her offer, Bridgette began her long, steady march to the paddock.

Ridgewood Ranch really was a thing of beauty. There was no denying it. What had started out as a one-room farmhouse in the early twentieth century now contained hundreds of acres, thousands of cattle, hundreds of horses, scores of men, and one private vineyard perched up in the distant hills. Besides her unfortunate visit to Cliff’s place the night before, she could only count a handful of times in her adult life she had made it out here. In her childhood, she would always tag along on picnics and adventures with her brother and his gaggle of friends, but as she got older and the boys left her behind, the ranch turned from a second home into the place her brother worked, the place she visited for barn raisings and Fourth of July fireworks.

Thankfully, the place hadn’t changed much. The roads and paths branching out from around the Home House led to their same places, and she followed the well-trod dirt to her destination. Beyond the distant, tree-lined hills, the sun was setting in earnest now, pulling the blanket of darkness over them all. Above her head, the lamps flickered on, casting a golden haze upon the world before her.

She walked up to the paddock, suddenly feeling like a kid again. Stepping onto the first rung of the fence, she leaned her body against it.

And then, there he was.

Out from the distant shadows, Cliff Masters rode atop a massive, black stallion. Their bodies moved in time, their power equally matched. The horse kicked and bucked, but his rider was there with him, rolling with the tides of the horse’s movements and shouting commands and taunts with his every breath.

As they approached to the paddock’s edge, where she was stationed and entranced, the horse danced in intricate, unpredictable patterns, pulling him back and forth even as he tugged the reins for control.

It was only then, when light danced on droplets of beaded sweat, Bridgette realized…

Cliff was shirtless.

Shirtless and sweaty.

Shirtless, sweaty, breathing heavily, and…

Boy, is he hot.

Bridgette had always been attracted to the cowboy. What was not to like? He was big, broad, and handsome. The perfect man to hold her at night or protect her from danger. But this…this was something else. His entire body dripped with sweat as his face betrayed single-minded will. His power was unquestionable; it radiated out of his every pore. Just watching him, her stomach tightened in time with the sound of his heavy breath mingling with the soft breeze.

There was no way around it. In that moment, Cliff Masters was raw, primal sex, the likes of which she’d never seen before. Her mouth opened to call to him. That was the sensible thing to do. It was rude to stare. But every time she tried to speak, her mind whispered, Just look at him another second. This is the closest you’ll ever get to having him.

It could have been an hour she stood there, hugging the fence and committing every line of him to memory, but it felt like less than a minute when he finally started to calm the animal and gain control. Now, the horse bowed to his will, following the command of his rider’s reins.

Until those reins turned toward her.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

His harsh words rattled her off the fence. Bridgette jumped backward from the shockwaves as he dismounted the beast and fumbled with the bridle. He’d been riding without a saddle. Did this man have a death wish?

“Who, me?” She chuckled, breathily playing off her surprise.

“I didn’t invite you.”

“I didn’t need an invitation.” She shrugged with more bravado than she felt. There was something freeing about being more clothed than he was. It pumped her full of artificial strength. “I’m here to collect my debt.”

“Your debt?”

“I was promised five hundred fifty dollars and all the pizza I can eat. I didn’t get either before I was so rudely tossed out last night.”

When Mrs. Masters talked about Cliff’s attitude, she made no indication her son was at all affected by the interaction the two of them shared the night before, but it took no longer than a glance for Bridgette to make her deduction. With jagged and harsh movements, he took every precaution to avoid her even as he barked replies.

“You didn’t do your job.”

“You didn’t let me do my job.”

“No, I didn’t let you rearrange my house. That’s not the same thing.”

“It could use with a good rearranging. Like your face.”

She’d wanted to come out on top of this argument, a pursuit that wasn’t helped in the least by the blurting of her simply stellar last remark. Oh, to disappear from the face of the Earth at this very moment.

Apocalypse, you’re always around in the movies. Why can’t you show up and help me out right now?

Every fiber of her being yearned to be swallowed by the ground. She couldn’t help her stupid mouth; his handsomeness flustered her.

Especially when he flew over the fence in one graceful jump and approached her with a half-cocked, almost amused smile. “Come again?”

“Shut up.”

For a moment, nothing passed between them but warm spring air. Strong, masculine hands looped the bridle and reins around his hand while she leaned against the fencepost, relishing the sturdiness of it. The horse, free of Cliff’s control, took the opportunity to canter as far away from him as possible.

“Why are you here?”

“Like I said. I want my money, and I want it now.”

Maybe…just maybe the money wasn’t the only reason.

It was easy to tell herself she only came here to get her money and wash her hands of her childhood crush when she was alone in her car, but now that they were face to face, she knew there was another reason—she wanted to see him again. She didn’t like the idea of taking the money and running. If he was eventually going to settle down with Lauren or any of the other women who deserved him, she was selfish enough to want her own slice of his life. Even if it meant giving him up at the end.

“You didn’t finish the job. You haven’t earned the money.”

A final step from his dirty boots closed the gap between them. He loomed in her vision, momentarily overtaking her world. Breath caught in her throat; she fruitlessly chased after her racing heart. A million times she had imagined his closeness, only now it was real. He was real. Her brother’s stupid insight was right—the crush she had on him never faded away. She’d just gotten pretty good at concealing it.

“Then let me earn it,” she implored.

Cliff seemed to consider the request. With the backside of his gloved hands, he wiped the sweat from his forehead. In the glow of the industrial lamps above them, he almost seemed to glow. The droplets of moisture on his body flickered like gold dust in a shallow creek bed. A flow of want rose, steam-like, in her chest.

“I’ll pay you when I get another date with Lauren. Deal?”

“Deal.” Bridgette’s face split into a smile, an involuntary reaction she could only pray didn’t look as eager as she felt. “You’re going to listen to me and follow my instructions?”

“Yes, Mom.” He rolled his eyes.

They shook hands then. With his glove in the way, she couldn’t feel him, but they shared a cautious look. It seemed to communicate a truce. If she didn’t micromanage his living style, then he would play nice.

She could live with that.

“Good, then you’d better start counting your money, because I’m going to have you whipped into shape in no time.”

Skirt brushing at her knees as her hips swung, she made for her car, but a strong hand reached for her, fingertips brushing her shoulder.

“Hey! Where are you going?”

“Home. Why?”

Where else would I be going? Everyone in this town knows I don’t have plans on Saturday nights, much less on a random Wednesday.

“We’re not done here. I’m not paying you to go home. Besides…”

To her surprise, he slung his bare arm over her shoulder. It was a friendly gesture that filled her with pangs of forbidden longing.

“I think I owe you a pizza. You hungry?”

Her stomach rumbled, and she couldn’t help the smile tugging at her lips.

“Always.”