Gladys, taking a break from her own chores, sat on the side patio sharing a cup of coffee with Callum. Designer jeans and a denim jacket highlighted his lithe body and, in the bright sunlight, he seemed to glow from within.
Usually, the forewoman treated male visitors the way she treated stray dogs, with casual tolerance punctuated by the occasional sharp command. It surprised Jody to hear her laughing freely.
Tall, with her light-brown hair pulled into a ponytail, Gladys looked like what she was: a woman who’d grown up on a ranch. The daughter of a foreman, she’d married a man who owned a small spread and treated her little better than a hired hand. When they split up, she’d taken their daughter and set out on her own.
Eight years ago, she’d persuaded Jody’s father to hire her as forewoman, despite the scoffing of some neighbors. She’d more than proven them wrong.
Without her, the Wandering I would never have survived the past year. And without her daughter, Louise, who’d graduated from high school early and was taking a correspondence course in medical transcribing, Jody didn’t know where she’d have found a baby-sitter for the twins.
She’d phoned Gladys this morning and explained about the boys’ father. In her usual low-key manner, the forewoman had accepted the situation with only a few questions. She’d no doubt intended to decide for herself whether she approved of the man. Apparently, she did.
Callum waved when Jody came through the door. “I can heat up some pancakes if you’re hungry.”
“No, thanks.” She poured herself coffee from an insulated pot and leaned against the railing. Even on a Saturday, there was too much work left for her to get comfortable.
“Gladys was telling me about the Curly Q,” Callum said. The spread, dubbed a “non-dude ranch,” took paying guests who pitched in with the chores. “I think I’ll drive over there later and conduct an interview for the magazine, if the owners are willing. I’ll take my digital camera.”
“I want to get one of those.” Turning to Jody, the forewoman explained, “Callum took some shots of the boys earlier and you could see the pictures right inside the camera. You can get rid of the bad ones, and e-mail the good ones to your friends.”
“I thought you hated computers,” Jody said. Although her friend used one occasionally for ranch business, she avoided them otherwise.
“That doesn’t mean I have to act like a mule about every kind of new technology that comes along,” Gladys answered.
That was Callum’s good influence, Jody thought. Still, she hoped Gladys wasn’t going to get too cozy with him, because he’d be gone soon. “We need to move those steers today. Freddy’s going to be tied up seeding a field.”
“Darn right.” Gladys uncoiled from her chair. “Callum, I’d love to stay and chat, but duty calls.”
“For me, too,” he said. “Jody, if it’s all right with you, I’ll take the boys with me over to the Curly Q. Gladys gave me directions.”
Although she didn’t want the boys getting too used to being around him, Louise needed to put in more hours on her studies. The young woman would always rather tend the livestock or play with the kids than do her assignments, to Gladys’s dismay. “Okay. You can get their booster seats out of the pickup.”
“Thanks for trusting me with them. I know it isn’t easy under the circumstances.” He gazed at her in a way that made Jody want to forget about moving the steers and corral him instead.
“No sweat,” she managed to say, and turned to follow Gladys.
Callum should find it easy to persuade the Wiltons to grant an interview, since their enterprise would benefit from publicity. Too bad their six-year-old son had school today. He and the twins enjoyed playing together.
All morning as Jody worked, Callum made guest appearances in her thoughts. Whipping up dinner for the boys. Dancing with his arms looped around her. Burying his face in her hair.
She could so easily fall in love with the man again. Heck, she was halfway there already, but she refused to make a fool of herself by running after him to California and getting her heart squashed like a bug on a highway. Life in the fast lane was out of Jody’s league and she knew it.
What she needed was that trip to Paris-a few weeks of enchantment, a chance to reawaken the devil-may-care attitude of her younger days. Then she could return to her familiar world and live contentedly without the things she’d loved and lost, like teaching and, above all, Callum.
At noon, when she rode back to the big house, Jody got an unpleasant surprise. She mopped her forehead with a sleeve as she stared at the battered sedan and Everett Landing Weekly News van parked in front. There was the tractor Freddy had been using this morning, too. What on earth were all these people doing here?
Not just people. Male friends.
Since she had no intention of greeting visitors in her mussed condition, Jody slipped around to the rear of the house, where she entered her office through its exterior door. The office connected to her bedroom, into which masculine voices drifted from the front. She recognized Bo’s, then Freddy’s and finally his brother, Frank’s. They sounded polite and uncertain.
Callum had gathered her suitors together, omitting only Andy, who didn’t count anyway. What colossal nerve! Jody was so steamed at his interference that she nearly stomped into the living room, smelly clothes and all. What steadied her was common sense plus the memory of her mother’s admonitions to act like a lady.
Twenty minutes later, damp from the shower, she marched out wearing a long denim skirt and a ruffled blouse. The three men scrambled to their feet. Callum, who was fixing sandwiches in the kitchen, was already standing.
He’d swapped his jeans and jacket for a silky dark-blue suit that looked casual yet sleek. “Perfect timing,” he said serenely. “Lunch is about to be served.”
“What’s going on?”
“I called a summit meeting.” Callum set a pitcher of lemonade on the table. “We’ll have to eat buffet style. It would be too cramped at the table with five of us. Louise is making macaroni and cheese for the boys at her place, by the way.”
His gift for taking charge had impressed the heck out of Jody in their early days. Now, she wanted to kick him for his arrogance.
“You had no right to invite my friends without asking me,” she said in a low voice. The three guests shifted uncomfortably in their seats. She guessed that they all wished they could disappear, which was probably Callum’s goal.
Bo, who had the advantage of already knowing their shameless host, wore an eager-to-please expression. It wasn’t his fault that his brown slacks and tweed jacket appeared baggy compared to Callum’s stylish outfit.
As for Freddy, his incomplete effort to clean the morning’s mud from his boots and overalls had left him with a kind of sepia tone that did nothing to enhance his short, stocky build. His older brother, Frank, wore a nearly identical outfit, sans dirt and, while several inches taller, he was even stockier.
“I didn’t mean to go behind your back, but you were busy and the idea just struck me,” Callum said with feigned blandness. “I got their phone numbers out of your directory.” He indicated a spiral address book on the counter.
“What do you mean by a summit meeting?” Jody demanded.
“We’ll get to that in a minute.” Callum set out plates of sandwiches on the counter. He’d also fixed celery stuffed with reddish cream cheese. Following her gaze, he explained, “Pimientos. Guys, come and get it!”
Bo rubbed his hands together as he surveyed the spread. “This looks tasty.”
“I did work up an appetite this morning,” Freddy agreed, and took one of the paper plates.
“By the way,” Bo said, “is there any chance I could interview you for my paper? You’re the closest thing to a celebrity we’ve got around here.”