Page 26 of Serious Cowboy

“When you two getting married?”

“Six months. Been a long time coming, though. We were high school sweethearts that didn’t work out.”

Zeke raised his eyebrows. He wouldn’t have predicted that. More curious than he thought he should be, Zeke pried further. “What changed?”

“Well, she married another man and moved to California. Had a little girl. Then, a decade later she moved back here and divorced him. We reconnected and that time around, everything finally fit.” Aaron looked dreamily off toward the acreage to the north. “Guess it wasn’t meant to be the first time, but it was the second. Glad I didn’t miss my shot after all.”

Aaron’s description of his relationship with his fiancée stuck with Zeke for days. He thought about the kid’s words nonstop no matter what he was doing. Still, Zeke didn’t return Callie’s calls, which had since turned into texts asking generic questions about his overall welfare.

He knew he wasn’t marriage material oranythingmaterial, really. He long been convinced of it. That was how it’d become easy to turn inward even more than he had before. He sunk backinto a place he’d been prior to Callie’s entrance into his life, only lower. A lot lower.

But his biggest problem was that he didn’t know how to climb out of that place. Or if he even had the right to.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

APRIL

Callie had what she’d always thought of as endless optimism, but she’d started to lose her faith in there ever being anything more between her and Zeke. He’d been avoiding her, and if he was so dead set on not being with her, who was she to object? Maybe she wasn’t always the greatest at taking hints, but even she couldn’t miss the messaging now.

Not when Zeke had made his aversion to her more than clear.

It saddened her on several different levels, but what else could she do? Short of going over to his house uninvited and pestering him until he called the cops on her, she didn’t see a solution. Breaking boundaries was the catalyst that had gotten her here, so she’d be smart to keep that fact in mind. Zeke needed his boundaries. And she really didn’t covet the idea of spending some time in a jail cell for a man who no longer wanted her near him.

If he ever had wanted her to begin with.

She’d pushed and prodded Zeke into spending time with her, into letting her into his life, and all she had to show for it was a sore heart. Maybe she should let well enough be.

She’d been thrilled that a little persistence on her part brought her and Zeke together. She believed he’d been worth the push on her part. Until she messed it all up by forgetting the patience she’d learned to exercise since they’d been together.

The one bright spot—or brighter spot, at least—that she had was that she and Tim had made up. Initially, he hadn’t spoken to her at all despite being a foot away from her in the office. But after a few days, a physician not communicating with his lone member of administrative staff became impractical. At first, his communiques were nothing more than necessities, but bit by bit, he started making small talk and eating lunch with her again. She was thankful the family ties had been restored.

She knew things had returned to normal when he came up to her, mussed her curls like he had when she was five, and said, “Quit daydreaming, Cauliflower. There’s work to do.”

Callie had been swift about playing along. “Stop it, Timothy, or I’ll schedule you’re next appointment at nine o’clockin the evening.”

He’d merely rolled his eyes at her and gone about his day. Frankly, being off her brother’s enemy list was a huge relief.

It also meant she’d been welcomed to his home for Easter. She did her best to enjoy watching Tim play the Easter Bunny while Amanda prepared a lovely homemade lunch. She’d tried to get into the spirit and encourage the kids as they’d hunted and searched for both dyed hard boiled eggs and the plastic filled with candy kind, but it was hard for her to fully commit.Callie must’ve given herself away more than she realized because Amanda noticed.

“You feeling under the weather, Callie?”

She faked a smile. “No. I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

Callie sighed. The truth was that she missed Zeke. But she had no one to blame for his absence in her life but herself. It had really been long enough that some of the sting should have worn off, but that wasn’t the case. She’d come to realize Zeke was in deed as special as she’d believed him to be and that she’d missed out on a man who could be her perfect match. They were different as night and day, but the way she saw it they filled each other’s gaps. And she missed his laughter so much.

Then, she glanced up to find two familiar faces peering back at her. “Mom, Dad, you’re here!”

Her dad gave her a squeeze, his ankle totally healed, then her mom followed suit. Something about her mom’s vanilla and mint scent flew right to her olfactory senses, and her nose burned. So did her eyes. It was her mom who wiped at the tears now streaming down Callie’s cheeks.

“Oh, honey, we meant for this to be a surprise but not for you to cry,” her mom said, but that, of course, wasn’t the real reason for those rivers of saltwater to appear.

Callie embraced her mother and wouldn’t let go, and luckily, without her having to say a word, her mom knew. She drew her off to the side until they were inside Tim and Amanda’s kitchen.

“Oh, Mom, I’ve seriously messed things up.”

All of it came out. How she’d pursued Zeke and convinced him to be her tour guide, how all that was a set up to get to know him better, then to date him. How once their relationship had started to evolve into something more meaningful, she’d blown it completely out of the water because she’d been incapable of leaving well enough alone.