Page 42 of Impossible Love

She makes me laugh.

She’s hoodwinked my family.

And despite everything, I want her.

I stare at her closed door and hear her on the phone with Nigel Backlund. Her voice is firm. Businesslike.

I remind myself that I can’t trust her.

Chapter 24

Victoria

I need new shoes. My canvas hiking shoes are fine for Southern California, but it’s a different world here on Yosemite Ranch. I need rancher shoes or steel-toed work boots or what Summer wears.

Cowboy boots, they’re called. Duh. But if a woman wears them, do they become cowgirl boots? This is all new territory for me.

I finish tying my shoes and grab my laptop. Out of the corner of my eye I catch sight of my beloved Pradas, the shoes I wore to travel here. They’ve been tossed in a heap in the closet, scratched up, twisted, and covered in rusty-red dirt. Since paving seems to be a luxury around here, the rubble and rocks have left them mangled.

I doubt there’s a shoe repair anywhere on Earth that could bring them back. Walking on gravel and dirt and cracked surfaces is not what those beauties are made for.

I look down at myself. I can’t remember the last time I wore jeans and walking shoes two days in a row. But here I am.

I meet Cal on the front porch. He greets me with a perfunctory grunt. In his arms is an iPad and a stack of files. I don’t let his surliness bother me, though. Over breakfast this morning, I got a front-row view of the battle raging between his ears.

He’s interested. He’s not. He’s about to touch me again. He pulls away.

He makes me scrambled eggs, toast, and a protein shake. And then barely says two words to me.

But what he didn’t do is tell me to move out, so I guess in some way, I’ve won. At least for now. I know it will change. The only question is when and what triggers it.

As we walk to where his Jeep is parked, near the scene of the accident, I feel the dry air slam against my face. I think that the climate here is like Cal. All over the place.

It rained early this morning, but now it’s a cloudless, blue-sky day, a perfect seventy-five degrees. But I know once the sun sets, the temperature will plummet again to the high forties. It reminds me that I only brought one thin sweater, and it's the one I’m wearing. Three items are now on my shopping list: cowboy boots, a heavy sweater, and a coat.

I didn’t pack to be a cowboy’s girlfriend.

Whoa. I stop in my tracks. Where did that thought come from?

“Is there a problem?” Cal asks.

I shake my head and start walking again. Of course, I’m not his girlfriend. I’m not his woman or his one-night stand or his anything. I’m not even Cal’s friend, which he made perfectly clear with all that snark last night on the drive home from the hospital.

I see that Summer’s at work in the ring. She turns slowly in a circle at the center, a young horse attached to a long rope she holds in her hand.

She sees us and raises her chin in greeting, careful not to get distracted.

“It’s called a lunge line,” Cal says to me, opening the passenger side door. “She’s teaching the colt to pay attention to her, slow down when she does, stop and start up again. It’s the very beginning of training.”

“Interesting.”

We drive the twenty minutes to the hospital in silence. I know Cal doesn’t want my help with their contract negotiation. He’s made that clear. Summer told me that Jamie and his brothers had to twist his arm to the breaking point before he relented.

So that’s where things stand this morning. Cal is driving me to meet with Evander to review the contract and offer my input. But his body language is a reminder of what this is and what it is not.

I’m an unwelcome outsider. He really hates that his family has asked for me to temporarily join the team. And he can’t wait to get this meeting over with.

Evander’s in a regular room where they can keep him under observation. Even though he may be discharged as early as this evening, he’s insisted that Cal and I get there as soon as possible. He said it was extremely urgent.

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