Page 20 of Serious Cowboy
“Are those… What are those?”
“Ostriches,” he explained, unable to hide his grin. “Big, aren’t they?”
“They look enormous.”
“The males can reach nine feet tall or so.”
“Nine feet?” She sounded astounded. “How do those tending them not wind up trampled?”
He chuckled. “Mainly by staying out of their way.”
She thwacked him on the arm, and he chuckled harder.
Now that the blooms had fallen from the trees, they found a lovely spot and sat beneath the shade of a giant maple, its branches stretching out in every direction. Their picnic came out as such a success that Zeke had no qualms whatsoever about bringing her into his house afterward. It wasn’t anything fancy, but the one-story ranch style was all his.
“It’s so clean in here,” Callie said with a tone of surprise.
“What’d you think? That I lived in a pigsty?”
“No, but most men who live alone are known for not exactly keeping the tidiest of homes.”
“I’m not like most men.”
She peered over at him, her gaze intense. “No. No, you’re not.”
The image of her standing there in his living room next to his leather couch and oval coffee table did something weird to his insides, and he made an excuse to go to his kitchen.
“Can I get you anything? Want some tea or hot cocoa?” The temps had dipped considerably degrees within the last hour.
“Ooh, cocoa sounds nice.”
“Take a load off,” he called as he worked, heating the milk in a saucepan on the stove. He’d learned it from a YouTube video rather than from someone showing him.
He supposed his parents were decent enough people on their own, but together they’d been a nightmare. Their divorce had been nasty, and the fact that they’d used him as leverage had placed a wedge between each of them and him.
He still maintained contact with each, but he’d go months without reaching out to either of them. And even two decades after separating they couldn’t speak to one another without the situation devolving into a shouting match.
Not even now.
That’s why he concentrated on making the cocoa. This was one of the very few items he made from scratch based off a recipe, adding the dark powdered chocolate, dash of salt, and cup of sugar and other ingredients one by one.
He heated the milk to not quite a boil, then with a dollop of marshmallow cream, reentered his living room with two mugs in hand. Yet he found Callie missing. Had she gone to the bathroom? He set the drinks down on his coffee table, sinking into the cushions of his couch and using his remote to flip on the TV.
When Callie didn’t reappear, however, he stood back up, looking for her. “Callie?”
“In here,” she called out, but she wasn’t in his bathroom, the only one he had. Evidently, she wandered off in the opposition direction without him realizing.
Into his bedroom.
His heart racing, he basically sprinted inside to find her where no one was allowed to go. He’d meant to close this door but had maybe forgotten. But still, her being in here was unexpected and more than he was willing to deal with.
“Who is this?” Callie had retrieved a picture frame from the top of his dresser drawer. One that he kept out and visible even if he seldom focused on the images anymore. Those were his parents with him at about the age of three. Even then, they’d looked unhappy and had stared at the camera unsmiling. “You and your parents?”
He couldn’t speak, so he offered her a curt nod.
“You’re so cute,” she gushed, maybe caught up in the novelty of spying something she hadn’t before. But Zeke was almightily uncomfortable. Especially when Callie reached for the other photo in its frame, this one twisted to face the wall.
He didn’t know why she grasped it, flipped it around. Maybe she assumed that it’d simply been knocked around, that maybe he’d bumped it when dusting, but as she scrutinized it, something went wrong inside of Zeke. It was like the milk he’d heated a few minutes ago had curdled inside of him.