My Dearest Cal (20 page)

Cal had barely restrained a groan, when Garrett said, “No, you may not. It’s almost your bedtime and you have studying to do.”

“School’s almost out. What’s the point?” she grumbled, casting an appealing glance around the table. Help was not forthcoming.

“The point is that I expect you to do as you’re told, young lady.”

Casey grinned at Mrs. McDonald. “What’s that word you told me the other day?”

“Martinet,” she said, her lips twitching. Cal chuckled at the obvious conspiracy between the two of them.

“Yeah, mom. That’s what you are, an old martinet.”

“I may be a rigid disciplinarian, but I am hardly old,” Garrett responded, her eyes flashing. “If you doubt that, I’ll race you to our cottage. The loser will do dishes for the entire summer.”

“You’re on,” Casey said, scrambling up with a whoop. Her mother rolled her eyes at Cal’s grandmother. “Sorry, Mrs. Mac. She was locked up in the car too long today.”

“Seems to me that might be true for both of you,” Mrs. McDonald said. “Run along, dear. We’ll talk more in the morning.”

She peered at Cal when they’d gone. “I thought you were going for a walk.”

“In a minute,” he said, settling back into his place at the table. He still had a firm grip on Marilou’s hand, which she kept trying without success to move to less volatile territory. “Why on earth did you tell me that your manager was lazy and inept? It’s obvious to me that Garrett is neither and that you wouldn’t tolerate it if she were.”

“Yes, well…” Her voice trailed off guiltily.

“Come on, grandmother,” he prodded. “What’s the real story?”

“You can’t blame an old woman for trying.”

“Trying what?” he asked, completely bemused. Then in a flash it came to him. “Of course. You figured if I felt the whole business was about to come apart, I’d stick around to help save it.”

“Okay, yes,” she confessed without flinching. “It occurred to me, if it was something you could get your teeth into, you’d see the need for staying.”

“And the books? Did you prepare that awful set just for me?”

His grandmother smiled faintly. “No. I guarantee that they are every bit the shambles you found them to be. Garrett has no more interest in bookkeeping than I do.”

“Does that mean you won’t object to my bringing Joshua out here?”

“Seems to me, from what Marilou has said, that Joshua’s the one most likely to object.”

“Don’t worry about that. I pay him well enough to justify some occasional discomfort on his part.”

“Then bring him on. I’m fresh out of ammunition to keep you around.”

He was just about to leave the table and take that much-delayed walk, when he heard the note of resignation in her voice. It wavered pitifully. She could have been faking it, but he couldn’t bring himself to risk it. “Grandmother, this doesn’t mean I’ll never come back.”

She sighed heavily. “We’ll see.”

“I promise.”

Despite his promise, though, he couldn’t shake the image of the way she looked as they left the dining
room, her shoulders slumped and her face etched with sadness.

* * *

“So, what did you think of Garrett?” Marilou asked, when she and Cal were outside. Stars were scattered across the sky by the zillions, tiny sparks of fairy dust that enchanted her. She shivered in the cool night air, and Cal draped his jacket around her.

“I think hiring her was probably the smartest thing my grandmother ever did. They seem to get along well, don’t you think?”

“I suppose.”

Cal paused, and she sensed his sudden confusion over her disinterested tone. He touched two fingers to her chin and tilted it up until their eyes met. “Why the lack of enthusiasm? I thought you liked her.”

“I do. I really do. It’s just that she’s not…”

“She’s not family,” Cal completed wearily. “Marilou, I can’t stay here. I don’t want to stay here. Getting to know my grandmother has changed my life in a lot of ways. There’s a lot to be said for knowing that you have solid roots somewhere, but she and I are too much alike to ever live peacefully in the same county, much less the same house. If that’s what you were hoping for, I’m sorry.”

She sighed. “Deep down I know you’re right. But the past couple of days here, I’ve felt something I’d really missed.”

“That sense of belonging,” he said, surprising her with his understanding. “I know. I’ve seen it on your face. You do fit in, every bit as much as I do.”

She shook her head. “No. When you get right down to it, even though your grandmother and Elena have been wonderful, I’m still an outsider. I always will be.”

“You’ll always be welcome here. You know that.”

“I suppose,” she agreed.

She heard the catch in Cal’s breath, felt the uneasy silence that fell between them and cursed herself for spoiling such a lovely, romantic spring evening. Still, if a clock had ticked loudly and symbolically in the background, she would have been no more aware that their time together was slipping away.

It hurt. And if Cal didn’t kiss her very soon and very hard, she was going to start bawling like a baby, and that would really mess things up. She wanted to leave with a brave front so that he would always remember her as a tough lady. If there was one thing she knew that Cal Rivers respected, it was a woman with grit.

Since she needed his arms around her more than she feared rejection, she turned and slid hers around his waist. “Hold me,” she said softly. “Please.”

When she was crushed against him, when she could hear the steady rhythm of his heart, when she could feel the tensing of his muscles and his heat under her fingertips, she finally felt safe. He stood there rocking with her for the longest time, before both hands slid up to frame her face.

“What’s this?” he murmured, brushing away tears with the pad of his thumbs. “Why so sad?”

“I don’t know,” she denied.

“Liar. Come on. Don’t you know you can tell me anything?”

She nodded. “I’m just being silly.”

“About what?”

“I just realized that I’ll never get to see Dawn’s Magic on the track or get to muck out the stalls or see how my tomatoes turned out.” She forced a wobbly grin. “That is if I even left any tomato plants in the ground when I weeded.”

Cal seemed taken aback by what she said, or maybe by the desolation in her tone. Then he got this faraway look in his eyes. “I never really thought that far ahead,” he said finally, his voice flat.

“It’s okay,” she said at once, drawing on sheer bravado. “I mean this is the way things were supposed to turn out. I did my job. You’re back with your grandmother. I should be happy.”

“Then why does it feel like we’re getting ready to go to a funeral around here,” he said, humor teasing at his lips but not quite tilting the corners into a smile.

“Beats me,” she said jauntily. “I can’t explain it.”

His arms tightened around her. He drew in a deep breath, then said firmly, “Well, I can. We’re both behaving like a couple of idiots when there’s an obvious solution here.”

“I sure don’t see one.”

“Of course there is. You’ll just come back to Florida with me.”

Marilou’s pulse kicked in like a filly’s at the sight of a racetrack.

“I mean, it makes perfect sense,” he went on, his
enthusiasm clearly mounting. “You want to be there. Chaney’s missing your blueberry muffins. I…I care for you. Why not, Marilou? You’re not all that anxious to go back to your old job. Pack up your things and move down to live with us. I promise you that you’d never regret it.”

After her first initial, dazed reaction, Marilou actually listened to Cal’s words. Maybe if he hadn’t stumbled over that one hurried phrase summing up his feelings, she could have bought the act. Instead his pretty speech simply didn’t add up to a proposal, no matter how desperately she tried to shape it into one.

“What exactly are you offering?” she said finally, taking a step away so she could see his face more clearly.

“A place to live, a job.” He appeared to hesitate for an instant before adding cautiously, “Me, if you’ll have me.”

“You?”

He frowned. “Look, I know it’s not exactly conventional, but we’d be good together. You know that. These past few weeks are the happiest I’ve ever had. We don’t fight. Well, not much anyway.”

“What about love?” she said grimly. “What about those great-grandbabies you were talking to your grandmother about?”

He looked as if she’d leveled a two-by-four straight at his stomach. This time he was the one stepping back, so quickly that it made her heart ache.

“You know that’s not possible,” he said, his voice low and tight, maybe with anger, maybe with pain.

“Why isn’t it possible?” she said, deliberately provoking him into an argument. She was spoiling for a fight now, a really good one. Maybe it would help her to forget about how much it hurt. “Are you telling me I’m good enough to live with, attractive enough to sleep with, but not special enough to marry?”

“This has nothing to do with you.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because
I’m
the problem. I’ll never marry. You’ve known that from the first.”

“But I have never understood why. I’m not even sure you do. Your words are an automatic response. It’s as if you’ve told that to yourself for so many years now that you’ve convinced yourself it’s the way your life has to be.”

“I told myself that, because it was the truth. I’m sorry I can’t give you what you’d hoped for, but you’d never regret being with me, Marilou. You’d have everything you ever dreamed of, including the freedom to leave anytime you wanted to. I’d never hold you.”

“Do you honestly expect that to please me?” She stared at him in amazement. “You do, don’t you? Cal, I’ll admit that love is giving someone the freedom to go or stay, but it’s also trust and commitment. It’s sharing the good times and the bad, not running off whenever it’s convenient or whenever things get a little sticky. You can’t build a relationship on any
less, whether there’s a marriage license attached to it or not.”

He heard her out, his hands stuffed in his pockets, his shoulders squared. “Since I can’t offer what you want, I guess you’ll be going then.”

She wondered if he even heard the raw anguish in his voice. “I don’t see that I have any choice. I can’t be happy with the terms you’re offering.” She dared one last touch, her fingers lingering on his cheek. “The hell of it is, I don’t think you can be, either.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she turned and walked away. She wanted to run, as far and as fast as she could, but she wouldn’t, not with him watching.

* * *

Marilou spent the endless night packing and pacing. Mrs. McDonald was right, the floorboards did squeak. She was probably keeping the entire household awake.

She knew that was exactly what she’d done, when she went for a cup of tea at dawn and found Mrs. McDonald already seated at the dining room table.

“You’re leaving,” she said, her expression surprisingly compassionate.

Marilou didn’t even bother to ask how she knew. “If someone could drive me into Cheyenne, yes.”

“If you’re sure it’s what you want, I’ll have one of the men take you.” She watched Marilou for several minutes before she finally set her cup on the table and leaned closer. “You’re doing exactly what he expected
you to do, you know. You’re walking out on him.”

Startled by the assessment, Marilou stared at her. “He all but told me to go.”

“I don’t think so. I think he let you see every one of his fears, showed you his vulnerabilities and then waited for you to hurt him, just the way the rest of us have. You’re going to do it, too.”

As the gently spoken accusation ripped into her, Marilou buried her face in her hands. Was that what she had done? Had she been so dead set on not compromising her own principles that she’d failed to see that Cal was simply testing her? Would her leaving mean she’d failed him?

“I have to risk it,” she said miserably. “Unless he honestly recognizes our love, unless he allows himself to trust in it, there will always be tests, and he’ll always set them up so that I’ll fail. He has to admit first that he really loves me. Then, maybe, we’ll have a chance.”

“You do really love him, then?”

“More than anything,” she said. “Enough to leave him.”

Mrs. McDonald shook her head. “How did you get to be so stubborn when you’re not even a Whitfield or a McDonald?” she asked with a rueful grin.

“Years of practice and spending a month around Cal. He seems to have that effect on me.”

“You’ll be good for him. I trust he’ll wake up before long and see that.”

“I’m trying very hard to count on that, too,” Marilou
said, blinking back a fresh batch of tears. “I’d better go now.”

“God bless you for bringing him to me, my child. I owe you everything for doing that.”

“Your thanks is more than enough.” She held tightly to the old woman’s gnarled hand. “Love him for me.”

“Always, my dear. Always.”

Chapter Fourteen

O
nce Marilou had gone, Cal felt as if the sky had turned a sullen gray. With her soft-spoken accusations and tearful, brave farewell kisses, she’d left him with a lot to think about, none of it pleasant.

Except for the kisses, of course. The memory of those last kisses made him ache with a sweet longing he’d never expected to feel for any woman. Her sensuality, with its delightful mix of shyness and daring, left him hot and needy. Her caring and warmth had stirred a tender side in him and made him hunger for the full-blown joy of her uncompromising love. He was gut-deep lonely for the first time in his life. He could have sworn he’d known loneliness before, but it had been nothing like this.

Maybe, he thought as he prowled the house restlessly,
maybe it was time to take the same risk on love that he had always gambled on business.

Maybe, if he hadn’t already sent for Joshua, he would have gone running after her, but he felt duty-bound now to wait for his friend’s arrival. Joshua’s mood was going to be foul enough when he discovered what Cal had in mind for him. He clung to the excuse with the desperation of a drowning man. It kept him from making an impulsive decision that was probably based more on hormones than some sudden shift in his psyche.