quarters, his nearness made her skin tingle.
“What lack of restraint?”
“The part where I grabbed you.”
“It was just a kiss.” She was getting good at lying, Jody reflected ruefully.
“Like this?” His touch on her arm was all the warning she had before his lips gently explored hers.
Jody’s tongue tasted fire. She drew it back, and then dared the flames once more. Only when she heard a groan and realized she didn’t know whether it was hers or Callum’s did she wrench herself away.
“You see the problem.” His eyes had a hooded appearance. “We can’t keep our hands off each other.”
“My hands were nowhere near you,” she protested weakly.
“How can we spend a lifetime as platonic mates if we can’t spend a single day simply being pals?” he asked.
“Who says we can’t?” She was ready to fight her own instincts, Mother Nature itself and him, too, if necessary.
Callum drew himself up. “I take that as a challenge. Since the kids are gone, how about if we use this afternoon as a test?”
Jody usually took Sundays off, so there was no work to interfere. “It’s a deal. Anything special you’d like to do?”
“It’s warm. We could go swimming.” The animals’ water tank doubled as an informal pool.
An image of Callum in minuscule trunks quickened Jody’s breathing. “I don’t think swimsuits are such a good idea.”
“Who said anything about swimsuits?” He grinned.
She forced herself to stay calm. “Let’s go riding. That ought to cool your ardor, City Boy. I plan to change into jeans, and I’d recommend you do likewise.”
“You’re the boss.” With a casual salute, he strolled toward his room. She allowed her gaze to linger on his taut rear end beneath the silky blue suit.
What was wrong with her? They hadn’t even started, and she was already giving in to temptation! Jody chastised herself, and hurried off.
Dressed for the outing, they met in the kitchen, packed sandwiches and headed for the barn. Callum saddled his horse adeptly. He hadn’t forgotten much from his high school days, when he’d worked on ranches during the summer to help earn money for college.
“I should have put you to work the minute you got here,” she teased.
He held up his unscarred hands. “I’m out of shape. The only kind of animal I can wrangle these days is a mouse. The computer variety.”
“Let’s see what sitting around in a desk chair has done to your riding seat.” Jody swung onto her favorite mare, Flicka. “I’ll race you to the windmill.”
“Wait!” He was still arcing onto his saddle as she pressed her knees into the horse’s flanks.
From the barn, Flicka sped past the big house on Jody’s left and the corral chutes to her right. As they shot up the hillside, she heard Callum’s gelding, King Arthur, thundering behind them.
“Go, girl!” she shouted close to the horse’s neck. Warm sun bathed her back as Flicka hit her stride and they chunked over the grassy slope, the reverberations of the hoofbeats welding them into a single determined entity.
“Beep beep!” Callum called as he pulled alongside.
Atop the tall horse, he resembled a cowboy from a John Wayne movie, slim and hard and born in the saddle. Callum had the gift of looking at home anywhere, Jody reflected.
Was there any chance he really could feel at home on a ranch? He already had many of the basic skills. Maybe he, like her, was ready to consider a change of careers.
If she didn’t snap out of her daydreams, she was going to lose the race. “Hit it!” she commanded Flicka, and flattened herself against the horse. Inspired, the mare flew past the gelding and reached the windmill first by half a stride.
“I win!” After the horses slowed, Jody raised one fist in a victory salute.
“You do indeed. I’ll even forgive you for the head start, since my horse is bigger.” Callum had always been a good sport. “That was exciting.”
“You’re a good rider,” she conceded.
“It comes back to me.” He tilted his face to enjoy the sunshine. “This is almost beach weather.”
“Don’t you miss the seasons, living where it’s summer all the time?” Jody asked as the horses walked side by side. “To me, springtime is extra glorious because it comes after a cold, dark winter.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” he said. “This is Texas, not Montana.”
“It snows here!”
“Just enough to keep things interesting.” At the top of the hill, he reined to a halt and surveyed the patchwork panorama below them. Green fields and rambling fences, meandering cattle, stands of trees and a distant ribbon of highway sprawled to the horizon.
“Welcome to my place of business,” Jody said.
“You’ve got an even better view than I do,” Callum said. “This beats skyscrapers, hands down.”
Her heart leaped. Maybe there was hope, after all.
A sense of peace stole over Jody as she gazed across the land where she’d grown up. Here, to the ranch, she’d retreated when the popular high school girls snubbed her or she failed to get a date for a dance.
It had been her refuge five years ago, too. Jody had given up her rented house in town and returned, pregnant and defiantly independent but scared, too. Her parents had offered support, and the ranch had reassured her with its permanence.
It was different living and working here twenty-four hours a day, though. This past year, sometimes she’d felt confined and out of touch with the world. Maybe that was why she yearned to fly away to Paris.
“I wish I could read your mind,” Callum said.
“I was just thinking.” Jody didn’t want to go into detail. She hated revealing her vulnerabilities, because doing so made her feel weak. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“No, seriously.” She relaxed in the saddle, letting Flicka graze. “You couldn’t wait to leave this area. To me, it’s the center of the universe.”
King Arthur, who could get edgy if he sensed any insecurity in his rider, calmed enough to join the mare in grazing. It was a tribute to Callum’s skill in the saddle.
“This area is beautiful but I never felt like I really fit in here in Everett Landing,” said the man beside her.
Jody let out a disbelieving hoot. “You were the most popular guy in school, except maybe for the football team!”
“That’s a big exception.” He chuckled. “Besides, you’re biased.”
“The kids wouldn’t have voted you Most Likely to Succeed if they hadn’t liked you,” she pointed out. “I didn’t get voted anything.”
“What would you have liked to be?” he asked.
“I was flattered, getting voted an honor like that,” Callum said, “but if you view it a different way, it meant I was being voted Most Likely to Leave Town.”
“That doesn’t mean they wanted you to leave!” she protested. “I can’t understand why you say you didn’t fit in.”
“Let’s ride,” he said. “I think better on the go.”
Jody clucked to Flicka and they moved forward. She was glad Callum had arrived in time to enjoy the spring wildflowers and the bright new grass.
Since he’d worked on ranches himself, he probably also noticed that some of the fence posts needed replacing, which was an endless job, and that one of the pastures might be a bit overgrazed. Gladys had suggested hiring another full-time hand and buying new equipment, but it would mean taking out a large loan. Jody wasn’t ready to face the risk.
