Fated for Love (21 page)

“It’s staggering to think that we live so close to all of this beauty and that I almost missed it by going home.” Callie sighed. “Thank you. You guys really changed my life. I never would have come here.” She lowered her voice. “And I probably would have ogled Wes forever and never gotten any further.”

“You are kidding, right?” Kathie looked her in the eye. “That man could no easier stay away from you than I could stop writing. That’s love in his eyes, Cal. True, honest, no-two-ways-about-it
love
. If we hadn’t come here, it might have taken him some time, but he couldn’t have ignored it for long.”

“I know,” Callie whispered. “I feel so lucky I can barely stand it.”

“Yeah, well, stand it, because he’s just as lucky to have you, and you deserve to be happy and loved by a man who treasures you as much as we do.”

Callie pulled Kathie down so she could whisper to her. “I can’t believe I’m in love. Love, Kathie. Me! And it’s kind of scary, but not scary like that.” She pointed toward the edge of the mountain. “More like…God, I don’t know…my heart feels like it might burst scary. I know I don’t know him very well, but…” She rolled her eyes up toward the sky and tightened her grip on Kathie’s arm. “I trust him, and it feels right. And, Kathie, oh my God, making love to Wes is like…heaven.”

“Smile,” Bonnie said.

They lifted their heads and Bonnie clicked a picture. She turned the camera on Wes, and he grabbed Christine, who happened to be closest to him, and held up bunny ears behind her head for the next shot. Kathie jumped in front of them with her arms outstretched and a loud, “Tada!” Christine pulled off her visor and put it on Sweets’s head, and Wes pulled Callie into his arms and kissed her—all of which Callie was sure Bonnie caught on film. She reached for the camera and shoved Bonnie into the group, taking several shots of Bonnie and the others. Then she drew the camera lens in tight on Wes’s profile. She caught him midlaugh, head back, eyes to the sky. She lowered the camera, mesmerized by everything unfolding before her. Her friends and the man she loved coming together.

Kathie climbed to the top of a boulder at the edge of the trail and stood on top of it with her arms spread wide. “Take a picture, Cal.” She thrust one leg straight out behind her.

“Oh my God. Kathie, don’t fall. Please don’t fall.” Callie shoved the camera into Bonnie’s hands and backed up against the forest. Sweets looked from her to Kathie and barked. “Wes, don’t let her fall.”

“I’m not going to fall, Cal. There’s, like, two feet of rock on that side of me. Take a pic, Bon.”

THE LOOK ON Callie’s face brought Wes to her side. He slid his arm around her waist. “Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah. She just freaked me out a little. It’s the whole heights thing. If I pretend there’s no edge to the trail, I’m fine, but I can’t really look over it.” She turned and faced the forest, drawing in several deep breaths. “That’s better.”

“Do you want to sit down, babe?” He placed his hands on her shoulders and felt her trembling.

“No. I’m fine. Is she still up there?”

“Yeah, but Christine’s with her. Guests do that all the time. I wouldn’t let her up there if I thought she might fall. You need to trust me, Cal.”

“I do. I trust you, and I trust her. It’s my own issue, not hers. I’m sorry.” She took another deep breath.

“It’s okay. I just want to make sure you’re all right. There’s a grassy area just around the bend. Why don’t we go chill for a while before hiking the rest of the way up?” He reached for her hand.

Around the bend there was no brush at the end of the trail and no large outcroppings of rocks. They sat far from where the land fell away. Wes knew that without the sharp divide of the trees and rocks, from Callie’s vantage point on the thick grass, she would feel as though she were sitting by a hillside rather than the edge of a mountain.

“Better?” He covered her hand with his.

“Much. This isn’t nearly as scary.”

“It’s an optical illusion. The slope is very close to the same, but the rocks and brush make it appear more drastic.” He pulled her closer, and Sweets put her head on Callie’s lap. “Looks like Sweets found a new pillow. I’m a little jealous.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry I freaked out. I don’t want to ruin the hike for you. My friends are probably used to me, but this is what you do, Wes.” She shook her head. “I wish I wasn’t such a chicken.”

“Hey, look where you are.” He lifted her chin with his finger. “Babe, you were feet from that river down there.”

“The river’s down there?”

“Yeah, of course. You can’t see it because you haven’t come close enough to the edge, but it’s there.”

She gripped his thigh.

“Callie, think about everything you’ve done. You shot a gun, and you were the only one to hit a target. You fished, you hiked, and you slept in a tent.”

The way her eyes darkened, he knew just what she was thinking.

“Okay, well, maybe we didn’t sleep much, but you know what I mean. Those are all things you weren’t prepared for when your friends picked you up on Thursday. The truth is that if you never went hiking or fishing, I’d still love you. I know that here.” He patted his heart. “Where it counts. I love who you are, fears and all.”

“I do want to hike and I didn’t mind fishing. The water scared me, but I enjoyed the fishing part. I want to do these things with you, but…” She dropped her eyes, and he could tell she was holding something back. He could feel it as she swallowed hard and refused to look at him.

“Hey.” He rested his forehead against hers. “But what?”

“Does…seeing me get scared make you second-guess our relationship? Even a little?”

She closed her eyes as he turned his body fully toward her. He cupped her cheeks in his hands.

“Please open your eyes.”

She did, and they were so full of worry it nearly killed him.

“If I suddenly couldn’t read, would your feelings for me change?”

“Of course not,” she said quietly.

He pulled Sweets into his lap and kissed her on her snout. “Sweets is a bloodhound who can’t smell. Not much of a hunting dog, can’t help track a damn thing. She’d rather kiss than bark, and some days she’s about as energetic as a sloth. And I love her so much, that if she hurts, I hurt.” He drew his eyes back to Callie. “And you? After a few weeks of counting the hours until it was Thursday again, so I could see you without feeling like a stalker, a few days of the most intense feelings I’ve ever felt, and coming together on every level, Cal, I know without a doubt that whether you can climb a mountain or go white-water rafting doesn’t have any bearing on my feelings for you.” He ran the back of his hand down her cheek. “Okay? Have a little faith in me as a person. Trust that I wouldn’t let you or your friends get hurt.”

She nodded. “You’re so confident and so honest with your feelings.”

The side of his mouth curved up. “Yeah, that’s all new. It’s all you. I don’t know where all this is coming from. It’s crazy. I get that, and I’ve never been a…this type of guy. But I feel it.” He shrugged. “I know it’s usually the woman who says that stuff, right?” He ran his hand through his hair. “I’m probably really freaking you out, aren’t I?”

She shook her head without saying a word.

He fell back on the grass and closed his eyes. “Shit.” He glanced at the girls lying in the sun with their eyes closed, blissfully unaware that he was spewing his feelings like a waterfall and probably making Callie’s world spin on its axis.

Callie draped her arm across his stomach, laid her cheek on his chest, and closed her eyes.

“I love you, Cal.” He couldn’t stop the sappy truth from leaving his lips again.

Using his shoulders for leverage, he felt her pull herself up and kiss his lips.

“You don’t freak me out. I believe what you say to me, and I’ve fallen head over heels in love with you, too. But I’m a little worried about when we go back home. I mean, I see you in the library each week, and those really pretty women practically invite you into their bedrooms with the way they look at you. I can see it, and you’re…flirty, which is totally normal, but I don’t know if you hook up with them, or—”

Wes bolted upright. “Callie, you think I’ve slept with the women who talk to me at the library?”

She shrugged. “Some of them are gorgeous.”

He racked his mind, trying to figure out who she was talking about.

“I might be a little naive, Wes, but I’m not blind. Tiffany Dempsey comes in every week on Thursdays just to fawn over you, and I don’t blame her. And I wouldn’t blame you. She’s impossibly gorgeous.”

Wes rubbed his temples. He’d thought this relationship had come together too easily. She lived in Trusty. There was no way he could shield her from his past or the way it infiltrated his present, but he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to be honest and do everything within his power to ensure the women who vied for his attention knew he was unequivocally off the market. “Cal.”

“It’s okay. I mean, if all those things you said were just, you know, because we’re here and the moment felt right.” She looked away but not before he saw the hurt in her eyes.

“Callie, everything I say to you is real. I’ll never lie to you.”

She clenched her eyes shut, sending his gut into a tizzy. How the hell was he supposed to navigate this? He stole another glance at her friends. They hadn’t moved. This wasn’t the time or place to say what he needed to say, but he knew waiting until after the hike would be torturous for both of them. He moved closer to her, shoulder to shoulder.

“Cal.” He held her hand, rubbing the back of it with his thumb. “Babe, I grew up in Trusty. I’ve lived there forever, except during college. I went to school with everyone my age, so yeah, I’ve dated a lot of women who live there. If you can call it dating.”

She tried to pull her hand from his, and he held tight. “Please try to hear what I have to say. I know it’s not easy. It’s not easy for me either. I’m thirty-two, and I’m not a saint. I’ve never claimed to be. I went out with Tiffany once, when I was home from college on a break. Jesus, I haven’t thought about it in years. We didn’t even go out. We were at a party, and we were both drunk. We made out. We were kids, Cal. You know, drunken kissing, groping, not sex.”

The tension in her hand eased a little.

He debated taking the explanation further, and one look at her brought his heart to the forefront. “Callie, I might as well get it all out on the table. I’ve slept with…plenty of women. I don’t know how many, and to be honest, I don’t care. It’s who I was, not who I am, and I always used a condom, so it’s not like I was totally irresponsible. I wasn’t lying when I said I’ve never loved a woman before, and I’ve never, not once, felt anything close to what I feel for you.” His chest constricted at the thought that he could lose her over what he’d done in his past. It was the one thing he couldn’t change. He let go of her hand and rubbed the tight muscles at the back of his neck.

She opened her eyes and slid her hand onto his thigh. “I don’t need to hear more. I just wanted to know if you thought that when we went home you’d feel the same way as you do here. You know, when we’re out of the moment and back to real life. When I’m just the girl at the library.”

Her words pierced his heart. “Callie, you were
never
just the girl at the library. You want honesty? Here you go. The first week you worked there, I came into the library on a fluke looking for some book. I can’t even remember which one.”

“The
Colorado Guide to Birds of Prey
. You said you and your partner were battling over the flight patterns of birds.”

“Holy Christ. You remember that?”

She nodded. “And I remember that you were wearing those faded jeans with the hole just above your left knee and you had a bandage on your hand that you said you got roping steer. You were wearing a green button-down shirt, and…” She lowered her eyes. “Now I sound like I’m a stalker.”

“No, babe. Not unless I sound like one because I remember you were wearing the sweetest navy blue dress that zipped all the way up your back like a second spine.” He’d thought about her in that dress night and day until he went back to retrieve the books she said she’d pull for him the following Thursday. He ran his fingers through her hair, remembering how he had wondered what her hair would feel like tangled around his fingers. “And it was the only Thursday when you didn’t have your hair up in a bun. You had it pinned back with a…a….”

“Barrette.”

“Yes, that’s it. You asked me if I needed anything else, and you asked all sorts of questions about my reading interests. I remember thinking that you didn’t look at me like everyone else did. You were interested in, I don’t know, what I was interested in rather than my looks or who I was.” He looked away again. “Loser, right? What kind of man says these things?”

She slid her hand onto his forearm and held on tight.

“The good kind.” She smiled, and the tenderness he’d seen in her eyes so often lately returned.

“So I asked you to pick out books for me, and I was blown away when you agreed. Cal, I haven’t been with another woman since the day I set eyes on you. I’ve been like a damn kid, getting turned on just thinking about seeing you, and then you showed up here, and…” He shrugged, but what he felt was so much bigger than a shrug. “When we get back to Trusty, I’m not going to feel any differently than I do now.”

She nodded.

“Hey, I mean it.”

“I believe you.”

Her words should have reassured him, but he felt her holding back, and he heard the others moving around behind them.

“Ready to roll, Cal?” Bonnie crouched beside her.

“How far is it to the top?” Callie asked Wes.

“Another half hour, maybe a little less.” Wes stood and patted his thigh. He had a nervous feeling in his stomach. Sweets stretched her front paws out in front of her and stuck her rear up in the air.

“Do you guys mind if I sit and read while you hike the rest of the way?” Callie shielded her eyes from the sun and squinted up at Bonnie.

“We can turn back if you’re tired,” Bonnie said.

“No. Don’t be silly. You guys go. You’ll get great pictures. I’m comfortable here, and I would really like to sit in the sun and read.”