“I told you they’d cleared it already.”
“You did. But you didn’t hire me on here, they did. I’d like to get their go-ahead in person. Since I expect they’ll give it, just as you said, I don’t need any time. I’ll take you up on it. Though it causes me some hardship for a few months.”
“Hardship? How?”
Taking a pull of his beer, he gave her a long study over the bottle, gray eyes assessing. “Well, it’s a tricky business to make a move on you when you’re my boss. Sister and daughter of my bosses, tricky enough, but doable. Straight-up boss, that’s something that’ll take some figuring out.”
She eyed him over her own beer. “We’ve both got too much to do for you to be putting any moves on me—or for me to have to dance around them.”
“Never too much to do for that.” He gave her an amused and considering study. “How good a dancer are you?”
“I’m very light and quick on my feet, Skinner. And I really need this to work, so don’t complicate it.”
“It’s not my fault you grew up so damn pretty. How about this: You and me make a date. First of May, that’s a good day. Spring’s come around, and you won’t be my boss anymore. I’ll take you dancing, Bodine.”
The fire crackled in the old potbelly, a reminder of heat and flame.
“You know, Callen, if you’d given me that flirtatious look and that smooth talk when I was twelve going on thirteen, my heart would’ve just stumbled right out of my chest. I had such a crush on you.”
Now his grin didn’t flash. The smile came slow and silky. “Is that so?”
“Oh my, yes. You with your skinny build, half-wild ways, and broody eyes were the object of my desperate affection and awakening hormones for weeks. Maybe even a few months, though at the time it seemed like years.”
She gestured with her beer. “The fact that you and Chase considered me a nuisance at best only added to the secret longing.”
“I expect we were mean to you half the time.”
“No, I can’t say you were. You crushed my adolescent heart with mild disdain, which is just how boys of fourteen and fifteen look on girls of twelve. And like a girl of twelve with a first crush, I got over it.”
“I had more than a couple moments of interest in your direction when you hit about fifteen.”
Surprised, she took a slow sip of beer and decided to use his own words. “Is that so?”
“You took your time blooming, but you got it right. I noticed that.” He rose, got himself another beer, held up a second in offer. She shook her head. “Hard not to notice, or squash the interest. But that would’ve put me at, what, about eighteen. And at eighteen I was already thinking about when I’d light out and make my fortune. Added to it, you were my best friend’s little sister.”
“That’s never going to change.”
“But you’re not so little anymore. And that three years or so difference between us, that doesn’t matter once you grow up. Plus, I’m back.”
“Did you make your fortune, Callen?”
“I did well enough. More, I did what I needed to do. I learned what I needed to learn. Now I’m back, and for good.”
When her eyebrow winged up, he shook his head.
“I’m done lighting out, done needing to. This is my land. It’s not about the owning of it, but waking up in the morning knowing you’re where you want to be, having good work to do and good people around you.”
His words struck a chord with her. “You lost most of the broody.”
“A good part of the pissed off, too, seeing as they went pretty much hand in hand. Now, about that date.”
With a half laugh, she set down the beer and rose. “I’ll send you the week’s schedule. It’ll change because some guests wait until they’re here to book a riding lesson or a trail ride—and the sleigh rides we’ll have going starting next week.”
She walked over, shrugged into her coat. “If you have any questions about how to work it, shoot me an e-mail back. Or come into my office.”
“That’s not a yes or no on the first of May.”
She smiled. “It isn’t, is it? Thanks for the beer,” she added, and strolled out.
On a low chuckle, Callen patted a hand over his heart. One of the biggest appeals, to his way of thinking, of a sassy, contrary woman—especially one with a good, sharp brain—was the challenge presented.
He’d never been able to resist a challenge.
*
By the time Billy Jean rang up the last tab and finished the routine closing of the Saloon, her feet were barking like her mother’s irascible Jack Russell terrier.
She looked forward to getting off them, sliding into bed even if it was alone, since she’d shown her boyfriend (cheating, lying, no-good bastard) the door a few days before.
More, she looked forward to adding the night’s tips to her Red Dress Fund.
She’d found it while doing some online shopping and had fallen in lust. She visited it in her shopping cart every day; and by her calculations, tonight’s tips would allow her to click Buy.
One hundred and forty nine dollars and ninety-nine cents.
A lot of money for a dress, she thought as she shut off the lights. But not for this dress. Plus, it was a reward for hard work, and a symbol of her new status as a single woman.
She’d wear that red dress her next night off, maybe head on down to the Roundup for some drinking and dancing. Then they’d see what’s what, she decided, with lingering bitter thoughts of her ex.
She wandered out into the cold. Heard the crunch of her boots on the gravel stir up the quiet. She’d let the last group of customers linger a little longer than she should have. But those tips, those tips added up.
And she could sleep half the morning if she wanted.
She just loved working the last shift.
She got into her car—a secondhand compact SUV she’d be paying off for what right then seemed forever. But it got her where she wanted to go and back again.
She headed away from what they called Bodine Town, with its restaurants and shops and offices, wound her way on the unpaved roads, snaking by woods and dark cabins, onto the bumpy corrugation that jostled her kidneys and made her wish she’d stopped in the ladies’ before she’d locked up.
But once she got to the paved road, she could hit the gas. Her little car could move like a jackrabbit, and at this time of night, the road would be clear as a summer morning.
About fifteen minutes, she told herself, and she’d be home.
Then her car bucked, made a couple of coughing noises, and died.
“Well, goddamn it! Goddamn it, what is this!”
Snarling, she turned the key, pumped the gas. And when nothing happened, smacked the wheel.
What the hell was she supposed to do now?