“It’s burnt,” she said.
“That’s the best part.” He pinched off the burnt part on his and stuck it in his mouth.
It didn’t look very appetizing but she’d try just about anything once. The burnt part slid right off. She blew on it before sticking the gooey mess into her mouth.
“So?”
“Okay, it’s good, but now my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth.” She laughed.
“The hazards of eating roasted marshmallows.” He grinned, then brought another one out of the fire. “Have you ever been serious about anyone?”
“Why?” Where was he going with this conversation?
“You want to know more about my past affairs, it’s only fair you tell me about yours.”
“But you haven’t told me anything about yours except your fiancee broke up with you.”
“You tell me and then I’ll tell you.”
She was finally getting somewhere. Nikki thought back to the last guy she’d fallen for. Her forehead wrinkled.
“Have you ever been serious about anyone?” he asked.
“Of course I have.” Had it been that long ago? There hadn’t been anyone she would say that she’d been serious about in college. There had been a guy in high school, though. “His name was Phillip. We were seniors in high school. I went to the prom with him.”
“High school?”
“I’m picky about who I get serious with.”
“What happened?”
She shrugged. “We went to different colleges.”
“So distance didn’t make the heart grow fonder.” Cal blew on his flaming marshmallow, then popped it into his mouth.
“He wasn’t that good in the backseat of a car. We couldn’t afford a motel room.” She remembered back. “I think we had more of a connection talking about what we wanted to do with our lives. He wanted to be a rocket scientist.”
“Pretty lofty aspirations. What did he become?”
She stabbed two marshmallows onto the end of her stick. “A rocket scientist.” She stuck her stick into the fire, then looked at Cal. “He works for NASA.”
“You’re serious?”
She nodded. “We’ve kept in touch over the years. He married and had a couple of kids.”
“And you haven’t been serious about anyone since high school?”
The way Cal put it, it did seem like an awfully long time. She’d been busy with her career and hadn’t had time to date anyone seriously.
“No one has made your heart beat faster?”
Only Cal. As soon as the thought hit her, her heart began to thump so loudly she thought he would probably hear it. She swallowed past the sudden lump in her throat.
“Pathetic, aren’t I?” Nikki tried for a smile but didn’t think she pulled it off, so she concentrated instead on burning the marshmallows on her stick.
She wasn’t falling in love with Cal. She barely knew the man. There was a lot she liked about him, sure, but there was a wide gap between like and love. Besides, he’d kill her if he knew the real reason she was at the ranch.
The thought that he would find out made her stomach churn. He would eventually when he saw the story she’d write, and she would write it. She’d never given up on a story yet. That’s why they called her The Barracuda. Her job defined who she was. She had to do the article. Her shoulders slumped. But it didn’t mean she had to like it.
“I wouldn’t say pathetic.” He laid his stick to the side. His gaze drifted over her. “Maybe you haven’t been looking in the right places for love.”
“What if I don’t want to find it,” she said. “I have too much happening right now with my career. I don’t want to settle down.”
“Your librarian career?”
She drew in a deep breath. “And my writing.” It wasn’t really a lie, she told herself. Yeah, right, then why did she feel bad?
“You don’t have a ring on your finger, either,” she said, changing the topic back to him. She would get the blasted story and be done with it.
He leaned back on his elbow. The fire cast him in shadows and light and it was all she could do not to stare. He was magnificent in all his naked glory. His tanned muscles were as firm as they looked.
“I plan on getting married someday, having a few kids, but I’m not in any hurry,” he said.
“But you never did say why your fiancee broke off the engagement,” she prodded. “Why was there no happily ever after?”
He raised his gaze to hers. “I wasn’t always the good guy, Nikki.”
She felt the color drain from her face. What? Did he beat women? Take steroids? Illegal sports betting?
Did she want to know? And if she did, would she be able to write about it?
She had a feeling her life was about to get a lot more complicated, and not in a good way.
Chapter 23
Brian watched Celeste as she stood in front of the stall. Her back had stiffened. He almost wished he hadn’t asked about her parents.
“I had foster parents,” she finally said.
She glanced over her shoulder, then looked away, but there was something in her eyes-so much pain.
He had a bad feeling in his gut. “Did they abuse you?” He couldn’t imagine anyone hurting Celeste. Just the thought made him furious.
“No, they were very good to me.”
He relaxed a little. At least they hadn’t hurt her.
“I never really felt as if I belonged, you know,” she went on. “I always felt as though I was on the outside looking in. They were nice, but it wasn’t the same as being part of a family. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew if I did something wrong or if circumstances changed, I could be shipped off to another family.”
“What about your parents?” he asked softly.
She was silent.
“Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it. My parents were killed when I was a baby. I know what it feels like to grow up without a mom and dad, although my grandparents were great, and I had Cal, too.”
She took a deep breath. “My father is in prison. He has been since I was eight.” She faced him and there was such sadness on her face that it tugged at his heart.
“What happened?”
“He murdered my mother.”
Ah, damn. He took a deep breath. “Where were you when it happened?” He clenched his hands. He’d never expected her to tell him that her father had murdered her mom. He couldn’t even imagine how hard that must’ve been.
“At school. When I came home, Daddy was sitting at the kitchen table, the gun beside him, just staring at it. My mother was lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. I rushed over to her. Her eyes were open but I think I already knew she was dead. I ran out of the house crying. The police came and that was the last time I saw my father.”
“You don’t know why he did it?”
She seemed to snap out of the past. “When I was older, I looked up the newspaper articles. We were well off- some said rich-but my father apparently made bad investments, and then he lost his job.” She hugged her middle.
