“Problematic,” Rose muttered.
“He’s taking care of you,” Iris said. “Maybe it’s time for you to take care of him.”
“That’s the thing,” Callie said. “I want to. I want to take care of him. I just don’t know what he needs.”
“I do remember,” Pansy said, “that his mom used to make sugar cookies.”
“Oh, right,” she said. “He mentioned that.”
Rose looked edgy. “A word to the wise about attempting to reproduce cookie recipes without warning. Sometimes it doesn’t go over well.”
“Oh, right,” Pansy said, looking at her sister. “Logan got a little bit weird about that.”
Rose shrugged her shoulders. “It did work out in the end. So, I’m pro-cookie. I’m just saying... It’s gonna get a reaction.”
“That’s what I need,” Callie said. “I need a reaction. I feel like things happen with him, and then... He pulls away, and there’s nothing I can do to reach him. I considered throwing myself off a horse.”
“Baking cookies seems less extreme.”
“I’m actually more comfortable getting thrown off a horse than I am baking a cookie.”
“It’s simple,” Iris said, waving a hand. “I run a bakery. And actually, I know how to make those cookies. I make them in the shop.”
“You do?”
“I absolutely do,” Iris said. “I have the recipe. If you follow that, it’s not dramatic. I promise you.”
“Well, I haven’t got any other ideas,” she said. “So maybe I’ll bake some cookies.”
“You were warned,” Rose said.
She nodded. But she was ready. For whatever. Because she couldn’t keep going back and forth with him. She couldn’t continue on in this pattern. And their marriage was ending at the end of next month. Another few weeks, and the marriage would be over. All of the trust fund money would be transferred to her... And they wouldn’t need to be together anymore. So yeah, she would see what happened with this. She would just see.
Because she needed time. More than a few weeks.
And she didn’t know how else to get it.
“I’ve never really had a whole lot of girlfriends,” she said. “So this was really nice.”
“Well, if everything works out...” Sammy grinned. “We’ll be seeing a lot more of you.”
Callie held that close, but tried not to think it through too deeply.
If she let herself think about this too much, she would pull away. She would get afraid, and she would stop.
And she wasn’t going to let herself do that.
CHAPTER TWENTY
HE HADN’T RUN into Callie at all when he was out working that morning. It was strange, but not entirely unusual. They hadn’t seen each other at all that first day, either. But this time, he had looked for her a few times, and hadn’t found her in any of the places where there were tasks to do, so he wasn’t really sure what she had found to busy herself with.
He had gone and checked the corral, and she wasn’t there. But it was late, and he was hungry, and he was about to go inside and open up a beer and get a TV dinner out of the freezer.
She could join him if she wanted to. Maybe she was off at a bar finding a man to pick up.
He gritted his teeth against the anger that thought produced inside of him.
She’d better not be doing that.
And then what? If she were? What would he do?
Yeah, he didn’t really know. Because he had waived his right to be in her face about that, he expected. When he had acted like nothing had happened between them while they were at her parents’ ranch.
But it was for the best.
Yeah, maybe they had talked about it, but things had gotten too heated, too real, back there and they needed time to cool down.
Soon enough, this whole marriage thing would be over. And he wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. He walked up the steps into the house, and was immediately surprised by the smell coming from the kitchen.
It was food.
He frowned, making his way toward the smell, and the sounds that went along with it. Clattering and banging. When he walked in, there was a pot sitting on the stove with steam billowing out of the top of it, and Callie was standing in front of a skillet, red-faced.
“Cal?”
“Oh,” she said. “You’re back.”
She looked at something on the counter, and then grabbed the pot, taking it over to the sink and dumping the water out, and some pasta along with it. He presumed there was a colander down there to catch it, otherwise she was throwing out a whole lot of food.
“I cooked,” she said.
She picked up the colander in the sink—as expected—and dumped the noodles back into the pot. Then she picked the skillet up off the stove and dumped something looking like red sauce into the pan after the noodles.
“I had to do a little bit of research.” She wrinkled her nose. “But I figured out how to make spaghetti.”
He held back a smile. Even he could make spaghetti.
“Well, that’s an achievement.”
“Thanks,” she said. She looked genuinely proud, and it warmed him.
Why exactly are you letting it warm you, asshole?
The moment splintered. He didn’t know what he was doing, standing there, with this woman cooking him dinner. He didn’t know what she was doing.
“Well, we both have to eat.”
And that simple declaration saw him pushing aside his concerns. She was right. They both had to eat. And this was infinitely better than a freezer dinner.
“True,” he said.
“Grab some plates,” she said. “I’ll bring the pot into the dining room.”
He did as instructed, getting a beer, some plates and forks, and following her into the dining area. There was a bowl of salad sitting on the table, with two forks shoved into it. And there was a bottle of ranch dressing sitting beside it.
“Thanks,” he said. “This is way better than what I had planned.”
She twisted her hands together. “You’re welcome.”
And then he sat. And it was just nice. To have this done for him after such a long day. She sat across from him, holding her own beer. And she watched as he served himself, taking a heaping helping of spaghetti and putting it on the plate. He’d eaten meals with Callie countless times, but there was something different about this. Something different about her having prepared the food for him. Warmth spread in his chest, but at the same time, so did the discomfort.