BULL: MC ROMANCE (Forsaken Riders MC Romance Book 6) (128 page)

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Planning a Long Overdue Break

Chapter Two: Meanwhile, in Scotland

Chapter Three: What are the Chances?

Chapter Four: Old Flames Reunited

Chapter Five: Life Gets in the Way

Chapter Six: Letting Love In

Chapter Seven: Home Is Where the Heart Is

Epilogue

Chapter One: Planning a Long Overdue Break

“I can’t think about doing this job for another forty years or I’ll throw myself through my office window.” Calleigh sat across the greasy, laminate fast-food table from Beverly.

“Your office is on the first floor.” Beverly normally sat one office over from Calleigh, and was the closest thing to a best friend Calleigh had managed since her move to Houston two years ago.

“Yeah, but it would still hurt.” Calleigh gathered the last of her lunch debris onto the plastic tray. After she slid the trash into the garbage and abandoned the tray on top of the can, she and Beverly started the short walk back to the US headquarters of Commonwealth Energy (UK) (USA) Company, Inc. Calculating royalty interests for Commonwealth’s many revenue partners was in many ways the perfect job. Unchallenging work with amazing pay, great vacation, and really great benefits. It would have been nice if there was a little more interaction among employees, but you can’t have everything, she had figured.

Still, the lack of communication was making her a little insane.

“What are you? Thirty-one, thirty-two? There’s plenty of time to figure out what you want to be when you grow up. Until then, why not let Commonwealth pay you for your boredom?”

“This is not what I wanted to do with my life.” Calleigh took a deep breath of fresh air knowing it would be her last for another five hours.

“Do you think it’s what any of us intended? There are a few engineers and technicians who did, but no one else grew up dreaming of being a lease or division order analyst.” Beverly dug her magnetic badge out of her purse and held it against the security scanner. “This is a career full of people who ‘ended up’ here, but come on, it’s a hell of a place to end up.”

It was a difficult point for Calleigh to argue. For a job that was boring, invisible, and impossible to explain at parties, Commonwealth
paid
. Job satisfaction was easy to supplant with the material satisfaction when the parking lot was full of Mercedes, almost all of which were driven across Houston each night to 3600 square foot homes. Pick an office. No one in their division had a field related degree, which included her. She was certified to teach K-8
th
Mathematics. None of them were going to easily replace their incomes in another field.

“This is because of Brad, isn’t it?” Beverly whispered as they tiptoed down the carpeted hallway to Calleigh’s office.

Calleigh shook her head, “no,” and slid her glass office door shut as Beverly followed her inside. She whispered back, “No, it’s not because of Brad. It’s because…” her voice trailed off. There was not a set reason to hit this late-quarter-life malaise. “It just is. I want more from my life.”

Beverly rolled her eyes, “You have a new Mercedes, new house, and a killer wardrobe.” She took a seat at the worktable in front of a laptop and dropped her purse on the floor at her feet. “What more could you want? Do you remember where we were on this spreadsheet?”

***

Nine hours a day, five days a week, she sat at her desk, the rapid fire click of 100 words per minute the only sound on the division’s floor. Calleigh was an organizer. The workload many of her co-workers struggled with, she managed with plenty of time left in the day to plan vacations she never took.

A fourth peek at the company website confirmed the number was not a dream: “297.5 hours of vacation accumulated.” A quick tab over to the company policy screen to see the words again in black and white: “All employees are entitled to take any number of hours, up to, but not to surpass, three consecutive weeks without the written consent of your supervisor. All absences longer than three consecutive weeks require written consent using Vacation Form B.”

TravelersWorld.com opened with a sunset view of the pedestrian suspension bridge over the River Ness, Inverness, Scotland. Her junior year of University had been spent studying in Inverness. She had been more at home there than in her tiny Indiana hometown, or in any of the oil boom towns from Denver to Amarillo to Houston she had lived in since. A click on the photograph brought a slide show of Highland delights, from the walk through the windswept rain across the deadly field of Culloden to the craggy ruin of Urquhart Castle.

Dixon Mackenzie played a part in every memory she had of that year. They were inseparable from the day they met at student orientation, until the day she boarded the plane back to the States. They had tried to continue their relationship, but clashing schedules and the increased physical and emotional distance doomed the relationship. The final phone call had come within weeks of a planned visit back to see him. At the time, that phone call was the most painful event of her life, but in the end they each had agreed that they would each be happier with a partner who lived in the same country. That had not stopped her from thinking about him often.

A photograph of Dunrobin Castle drifted by on her computer screen and brought up another memory along with it. She closed the slideshow. Another mouse click brought up photographs and a price list for all-inclusive, resort vacations to Cabo San Lucas. That was more like it, she thought.

***

Calleigh sat on the right hand side of her bed, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. After she had read the same sentence four times, she dropped the novel on the nightstand.

Why not take a vacation? It’s not as though there is anyone here to miss me
, she thought.

She hopped out of bed and headed toward the living room. When she returned, she had her laptop in her right hand and her cell phone in her left.            

Let’s see what I can make happen.

***

“You can’t be gone for three weeks. The deadline on the interest recovery project is next week.” Beverly hissed in a stage whisper as her right foot soundlessly tapped on the industrial grey carpet squares.

“I’ve finished my part. Add your data to the spreadsheet and send it on. Done.”  Calleigh replied, as she broke with one of Commonwealth’s unwritten social contracts:
You shall not speak above a whisper, when you speak at all.

“People are going to hear you.” Beverly hissed.

“Let them,” Calleigh said with a shrug.

Commonwealth’s primary social contract with its employees was simple:
You are provided with a huge number of vacation days with the express understanding your co-workers will exert enough social pressure to prevent any of them from actually being used.
Calleigh’s complete break with the contract was the fuel for her own little social revolution. Later in the day, she would continue her rebellion by making a personal phone call without either hiding in the stairwell or walking a half mile down the street. Then, there would be a scouting mission to the supply closet to see if there were any name brand Post-Its or decent pens.

She had not stopped beaming since she had entered her credit card number and clicked the pay button on TravelersWorld.com the night before. “It’s going to be beautiful, Bev. Three weeks in Scotland.”

“Not London?”

“No.”

“Or Paris?”

“Nope.”

“Scotland?”

“Scotland,” said Calleigh. She was booked all the way through, from Houston InterContinental to Heathrow, and then from Euston Station aboard the Caledonian Express for the overnight to Inverness.

“Can you postpone until after the…”

“No, I’m booked and paid. By this time Friday, I’ll be stepping off the train in Inverness.” Beverly’s flared nostrils and pursed lips let Calleigh know her non-stop delight pissed Beverly off to no end.
What the hell
, she thought.
You only live once.

Chapter Two: Meanwhile, in Scotland

Dixon’s flat was littered with the emotional and physical detritus of the last romantic attack launched against him. Lauren, the ex- of the moment, lived with him in the flat for a whole ninety days before she had stormed out. In her wake he felt a bit out of sorts. He was not the cleanest of people, but he had a way of organizing things that worked for him. Her attempts to reorganize and impose her way had only led to a more apparent chaos.

The instigator of Lauren’s midnight departure for Edinburgh,
High Fidelity
, sat on the top of the stack of books he now had to walk around. He had been sitting on the sofa playing a video game when she had stomped across the flat to wave the book in his face.

“I love this book,” he had said as he took the book from her outstretched hands.

“I know. That’s why I read it.” She looked around the flat with her nose wrinkled. “You seem to have gotten stuck in the middle of the plot. Are you ever going to, you know, get a real job or move out of this flat?”

Lauren was referring to the offer he had turned down from Waterstone’s. “Owning my own shop
is
a real job and I’ve no reason to move out of a perfectly good flat. I’m not goin’ to ever be Donald Trump, but I do well enough, I’ll thank you to know.” The housing market in Inverness might not be London, but he was not going to move just to impress…well, he did not know who, but he was not doing it.

“It smells of soup.”

“Does it?” He took a deep breath, but could not smell anything but yesterday’s fry-up. Not the type of information which would swing the conversation in his favor, so he’d kept his mouth shut.

“Don’t you want more?”

“What more could I want?” was the wrong answer. She had picked up her bag and stomped out through the door.

Dixon tugged on the damp swollen door to the flat until it popped open. Of late, his few relationships had all ended to the same tune. They all wanted him to have more money, a bigger flat, and a more impressive job. He was a work to live rather than live to work man.  He would rather spend time with his mates, or hiking, or reading, or anything, rather than working to pay for a lifestyle. If there was something he really wanted or needed, he could save for it.

He climbed down the steep, narrow staircase from the flat, waved to The Ladies as he strolled by the café counter on the mezzanine, and said, “Hello, awrite,” to customers who had already lined up at the counter for their elevenses. He wove through the stacks of second hand books, History, Psychology, Mystery, Literature, Psychology, and History.

History. There was plenty of that. From his first Upper School girlfriend who ditched him for a bloke with a car, or Lauren and her desire for a more American version of success, eventually they all left.

Bloody, hell. It’s not as bad as all that,
Dixon thought.
Is it?

No, in his final year of University, there had been Calleigh McCabe. They met on the first day of class, and spent every moment they could together until she boarded the plane back to America. Calleigh had been perfect for him at that point in his life. In the wake of Lauren’s departure he looked-up Calleigh’s profile on Facebook. She looked the same with her bright smile and long brown hair, but the staggering 784 “friends” was intimidating. If she considered all of those people friends, would she even remember him? In the end he did not send a friend request. He just surfed on, across the web, content with his memories and the knowledge she was well. 

He would meet someone else. Granted, Inverness was not exactly a club hub. The church sponsored singles scene was right out. There was a woman out in the world for him…and he would meet her as soon as she stumbled into his bookstore and found him.

“Aye, there’s my one and only sunshine.” In his dual roles as employee and best mate, Caiden McKay saw it as his life’s work to provide Dixon with the best in companionship and the worst possible customer service a man could ask for.

Dixon walked around the end of the check-out counter to stand next to Caiden.

“What’ll it be today, then? Murder, mayhem, or will you continue to pine for your lost love?” Caiden asked as he handed Dixon a steaming cup of tea.

Dixon took a sip of tea as he watched the day’s first book specific customers mill around the shop, heads tipped back to read the hand lettered signs he and Caiden had hung when the shop had opened seven years ago. People collided with one another like bumper cars as they squinted at the sun faded signs, the wording barely discernible in dim light which filtered through the dusty windows. “I think I am going to have someone in to clean the flat.”

“Get out,” said Caiden.

“No, I may well do. I’ve had it on good authority it smells of soup.”

“Of course it smells of soup, you daft bugger. You live above a cafe which only serves soup.”

Dixon leaned forward, his elbows pressed hard against the counter. “I was thinking.”

“Oh, God. Hang on.” Caiden balanced his tea on top of a stack of local Blue Guides Dixon had purchased six months ago, but neither of them had bothered to put out on the shelves. He mimicked Dixon’s stance, bringing them shoulder-to-shoulder, side-by-side as they leaned across the counter top.

“Do you think we should be doing more? Keep longer hours, try to get more business?”

Both turned their heads toward the sound of one of The Ladies providing the day’s tourist information service in the café Mezzanine above, “No, you can bloody well not have fecking ice with your fecking soda. You’ll have it in the tin as God intended or not at all.”

Caiden turned back to Dixon and held up his right hand, counting with his fingers as he spoke. “First, neither of us has the marbles to ask The Ladies to stay longer each day. Second, we’re open the same as everyone else. If people wanted to do business after four, Starbucks and Costa would already have done it. Third, if you wanted to work for Waterstone’s, you’d have gone and done it already. You’ve been here every day since you swung the doors open. The last time either of us go out through that door will be in a box.”

“That’s a horrifying thought.” Then Dixon’s face was lit by a bright smile, “but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Exactly, mate.”  Caiden shook his head as he stood.

A young woman with a frown stood at the counter. Her nose ring and blue hair clashed with her wool pea coat and sensible shoes.

“In art school, are you?” asked Caiden with his hand stuck out. “Let’s see what you got.”

Her eyes narrowed as she lay a beaten copy of Elizabeth Gaskell’s
Gothic Tales
on the scarred wood of the counter.

“Ah, love, no,” he said has he handed the book back to her. “You can do better than that.”

Her frown deepened. With a huff she turned, shoulders slumped and walked back toward the stack she had emerged from. She stopped, then threw a sour look over her shoulder at Caiden and Dixon.

“Go on. I have faith in ya’. There. On the shelf above you head. That’s Barthelme. Start there.” Caiden turned back to Dixon. “We’re providing a community service, we are. Where else are you going to get mentoring like that for free?”