One More Time (5 page)

“I guess I should just be glad you stayed in the US,” she grumbled. “I wish you were closer, though. I miss you, and I think the boys would like to see you more.”

“You can fly out whenever you want. I’ll cover the airfare, and you can all stay here. I’ve got plenty of room.” I wanted her to take me up on my offer but figured she probably wouldn’t for a while yet—though I did plan to see her at some point, even if I had to go to Kentucky to get that. She was my sister, and I hadn’t seen her in years. It wasn’t right, and I wanted to see her more. I didn’t know for sure, but I had a pretty good idea Dan was the reason I hadn’t seen her recently, and that upset me. We’d always been close so that was the only thing I could point to as being different.

“I’ll talk to Dan, and we’ll figure something out,” Marie told me. It was better than nothing I guessed, so I didn’t push her anymore on it. “Ben wants to talk to you if you have a minute.”

I shrugged, not knowing what my youngest nephew would want but figuring I had some time to talk to him anyway. “Sure. Put him on.”

“Great. He’s right here.” There was some shuffling of the phone, and I waited for him to come on.

“Uncle Caleb?”

“Hey, kiddo,” I said. Ben was ten, and likely my favorite of my nephews, though that was probably because he was the only one who seemed fairly normal to me. The middle kid, Robbie, was sometimes a bit loud for my tastes. The oldest, Daniel, was all about showing horses, mostly in western pleasure, and competing with his horse and being the best at everything he did. It was great for him to be so driven, but it was a bit much for me at times. I only talked to them every few months or so, but I did get e-mails. When we were little, my sister never talked about wanting kids or being a mom, but she seemed to like it a lot now.

“Mom said you got a bunch of land and horse stalls,” Ben said.

I wasn’t sure why everyone seemed so fixated on my land. Maybe I should have been renting it out to these people so they could get over their curiosity. “Yep. I got some pastures with the house,” I told him vaguely.

“Um. Could I maybe have a horse there? Dad won’t get me one yet. And you don’t have any horses, do you? I’d just want one.”

“Ben!” I heard Marie hiss at him just before there was more fumbling with the phone and my sister came back on the phone. “Caleb, I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was going to ask for a horse. That’s completely unreasonable of him. I’ll have a talk with him about that.”

I didn’t really think it’d been a big deal but whatever. “It didn’t bother me any. If he was closer and I didn’t have to take care of the horse, I would have given him one. I’ve got the land and the pastures and stalls. I’m just not much of a horse person. I know what I’m doing, but I’m not all wrapped up in them like your kids are.”

She seemed a little calmer as she chuckled and said, “I guess one of us had to grow out of it. Shame, though. You were always a natural at riding.”

“That’s what our neighbor said when we were growing up. I just liked showing off.” I remembered feeling invincible when I’d be kneeling on the back of a horse while it was galloping. Playing around like that had been a highlight of my childhood. Somehow I doubted Dan let the kids goof off like that. He seemed far more serious about riding than the neighbor who had taught Marie and me to ride had been. Maybe that was a good thing, though. I remembered all the broken bones and sprains I’d had growing up whenever I’d fallen off.

“You were good at it.” I didn’t argue with her. “Well, I guess I’ll let you get back to your day.”

I didn’t want to let her go so soon, but I couldn’t think of anything to say that would keep my sister on the phone with me. “Hey, Marie, is everything okay there?” I finally asked.

“Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”

I didn’t really have an answer for her. Something just felt off, but I was states away from her and hadn’t seen her in years, with no explanation really of why I couldn’t go to the house or they couldn’t come visit me. “Nothing. No worries. It’s not a big deal. Send me some pics of the kids please? I’ve got some room on the bookshelf, and I could use some more family photos.”

“Sure. I’ll e-mail you some tonight. Have fun out there.”

“You too. Bye.”

She hung up, and I sighed as I turned onto my side to look out at the pine trees. There was something going on; I was sure of it. But I couldn’t say exactly what it was, and in the end I figured I just had to trust my sister to take care of herself and the kids. I had no basis for not liking Dan. I didn’t even really know him all that well. But something about him made me wonder what his deal was. I don’t know. Maybe I was going crazy.

I got up from the couch and went back over to my computer. There was plenty of work to do, and the first e-mail I opened made me groan. It was from a repeat client, one who hadn’t finished paying his last bill, and he expected me to start work immediately on a new project for him.

Mr. Sumson,

As much as I would enjoy helping you with your new website and business endeavor, I cannot begin work on it until you have finished paying my last invoice. Additionally, because of the overdue status of your last project, if I was to do this website for you I would need half of my fee up front instead of my usual 25 percent.

Caleb Robinson

There. That should get his attention. It wasn’t as if I was singling him out to be mean to, though he would likely feel that I was. He could be a bit temperamental and was one of the clients I hadn’t enjoyed spending time with in person while in LA. I preferred e-mail and texts for all things, but some clients had insisted on doing face-to-face meetings. Lucky for me, though, now that I was in the middle of nowhere in Colorado, I didn’t have to have meetings with people anymore. Besides, where was I going to have them? On my kitchen island while I drank beer with my clients? That wouldn’t be very professional of me. But then again, I’d been a fuck toy for my boss, and had often given him pleasure in his office during working hours, so what did I honestly know about being professional?

Thinking about Paul, and how upset his wife had been when she’d found out, made me restless. I got up and walked around with a cookie in one hand and my beer in the other. While we’d been having sex I hadn’t really ever thought about her or how much Paul’s cheating would have hurt her. Now I knew he’d been cheating on a lot of people, and part of me felt sick since I’d thought I loved him. I just felt bad for his wife, and I wondered if she knew what kind of a man she’d married. He’d always promised me she did, that it was just part of their relationship, and things were fine. That had been his tune, up until I’d threatened to tell her after one of our fights. I hadn’t been strong enough to walk away, though, and in the end she figured things out for herself. She was still with him for some reason. Probably because he’d spun it so that it was my fault: I’d seduced him. I was the evil one.

I rolled my eyes and took another cookie. If she decided to stick it out with him, that was her problem, not mine. I was completely done with that situation. I wanted to do something, to get out of the house for a while and away from my work. I had to send out one quick e-mail, letting a new client know I needed some more information about what they were looking for before I could officially start on their brand relaunch, but after that I grabbed up my jacket, and walked down the trail that led from my house toward the barn.

The previous owners—the Smiths I guessed their name was, though I really hadn’t paid much attention to anything about the house after I’d fallen in love with the view—had raised horses on the property. The barn was recently updated from what I could tell. I didn’t know much about barns at all, but maybe I should have considered leasing out the horse farm part of the property. I shook my head, instantly disliking that idea. I didn’t want strangers around my house. I’d had enough of people I didn’t know near me in LA. I didn’t need that here too. Plus, the owners of the farm down the road said they boarded horses. I didn’t want to make enemies of them by competing with their business without meaning to.

The Smiths had left some tools and I took a rake and cleaned out some of the bedding left in a stall of the barn. It wasn’t soiled, more like forgotten in a corner, and within minutes I had the barn cleaned out. Maybe it was a shame not to have horses in there. It was a good property and already set up to handle probably twenty horses at full capacity. Before the car accident, or nonaccident, I might have considered getting a horse to put in this barn. But with my back hurting and sometimes going out, I couldn’t guarantee that I’d always be able to care for a horse of my own.

I shrugged it off and went out, stopping at the barn’s entrance when I saw a cop car in my driveway. I walked up the trail to meet Trent, who was getting out of his car. “Hey,” I said once I reached him.

“Hi.” He took off his hat and brushed his hand through his hair—still the color of my dark chocolate collection, which I had managed to unpack finally—and it was maybe an inch shorter than mine. I wanted to touch it like he was, but I stopped myself from reaching out and doing just that. “What are you doing here?” That sounded a bit rude, so I added, “Not that I mind the company. I’m just not used to seeing a cop so often without there being an issue. I’m not in trouble, am I?”

He smiled at me, and my heart did the little pitter-patter crap it sometimes did when a guy gave me the kind of sexy grin Trent was giving me. I really needed to get myself under control. He was hot. I could appreciate that, but I wasn’t in the market for a relationship. I’d have to content myself with just checking him out.

“Do you want to be in trouble?” he asked. I rolled my eyes in hopes of distracting him from my blush. At least it was pretty dark out. “I wanted to let you know you should keep the lights around your house, the garage, and the barn on at night, or at least get the kind that turn on when there’s movement,” he told me when I didn’t say anything for a moment.

The garage made sense to me, and even though I didn’t have horses in the barn, I guessed I could see the benefit of that too. I was planning on getting a security system installed at some point too, so I’d just do it all at the same time. “They aren’t working right now. I need to get an electrician out here. You could have called and told me that, though. You didn’t have to drive all the way out here.” I leaned against my SUV, and he propped himself up against his car.

“It’s not like it’s all that far of a drive. I was out on patrol anyway.”

I nodded, because that was pretty reasonable.

“And maybe I just wanted to see you again,” he tacked on, making me purse my lips.

I shook my head. “Let me stop you right there. Trent, you’re nice and all, but I can’t do that.”

He didn’t look like my words had really fazed him all that much. “Do what?”

I shrugged, not really sure how to explain everything I couldn’t do with him. “A relationship.” That was the start of it. I couldn’t give in, couldn’t see where it would go. I wasn’t up to dealing with another guy, and I’d only been away from Paul for two months. It sucked that I couldn’t just give in and enjoy Trent as I so clearly wanted to, but that’s just how it was.

Now he looked a bit disappointed. “Are you with someone right now?” he asked, as if that could be the only possible reason for me to say no to him.

I shook my head. “Definitely not. But I did just end things, and it was a bit messy.” That was an understatement, and I really wasn’t up to going into it with him while standing on my driveway. I took a deep breath. “But if you want to be friends, I would love to have a friend here.”

He nodded slowly. “Okay. I can do friends too.”

“Great.” It wasn’t great at all. Instead I felt like I’d just hurt him. Relationships were complicated, and I thought I tended to have ones that seemed more complicated than most people’s. “So I’ll see you later?”

“Yeah. See you.” He got back into his car, and I stood there wishing I could have just said yes to whatever he’d been offering. But two months was not long enough to get over someone and start something new, so I let him go and headed back inside to my TV, my attention-hungry clients, and the box of cookies I’d call dinner.

Trent

BEING TURNED
down wasn’t really something new to me, but it still stung to have Caleb tell me no. Problem was, I hadn’t actually been asking him for a relationship, or anything serious really. All I’d been interested in was getting him into bed, which normally wasn’t a problem for me. I pulled into Rosie’s parking lot, then noticed I’d missed a call. Who it was from, though, made my breath catch in my chest.

It took me a good five minutes to calm down enough to be able to call her back and sound normal while doing it. “Hi, Laura,” I said when she picked up the phone.

“Hi, Trent. How are you?”

There was really no good way of telling my partner’s mom how I was doing. “I’m okay. Are things good with you?”

“Yes. More or less. Simon’s birthday is coming up next month.”

I nodded. I didn’t need the reminder. His birthday passed every year, and each year the man I loved, the one I’d thought I’d spend my life with, got a little older even when he never moved a muscle. “He’ll be thirty-seven,” I said, letting her know I was well aware that his birthday was coming up, and also that I hadn’t forgotten anything else about him.

“Right. Thirty-seven. So young.” She sniffled, and I heard her mumble something.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her, my heartbeat picking up. Laura and I didn’t talk. It was too hard—for both of us. Her calling me meant something was very wrong, and I needed to know what it was right away.

She still sounded like she was trying not to cry when she came back to the phone. “We’ll be turning off the machines at six o’clock on his birthday. I’d like you to be there. If you want to be.” And then I understood why she was so upset, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe again. It was the accident, seeing Simon lying there broken at the bottom of a mountain, hearing that he’d never be able to wake up—all of it was there and it was all new again.