She opened her mouth to speak, but he turned away from her. The emptiness he felt in the pit of his stomach was hard to bear.
Sweet Home Montana: Chapter Seven
He needed his head examined. Not only did he leave the chapel after talking with Katie in a huff, but he also allowed his emotion to overrule logic. He drove over to Hunter Williams place and had confronted him. That confrontation had commenced with Caleb slugging the guy before uttering a single word.
Aside from the fact that Caleb had arrested other men for brawling the way he’d done with Hunter, police hadn’t gotten involved. If they had, he probably would have been suspended. But even if they had gotten involved, Hunter told him he refused to press charges seeing as he probably deserved a good punch in the jaw from Julie’s brother.
Hunter confirmed that he and Julie had been dating. No, he hadn’t seen or heard from her since she’d left town. And no, he hadn’t known she was pregnant. But if she had been, he was sure it was his baby.
And Caleb believed him. By the dejected look on his face when he’d learned Julie was pregnant, it was clear he hadn’t known. He also had the look of a man who’d been in love and had lost. It only made it harder to understand why Julie would have left Montana.
It only made Caleb feel like more of a heel when he’d driven back to his house alone and collapsed on the sofa in the dark and cried. Alone. He missed his sister. He was afraid for her. But he longed for Katie and the joy she’d brought to his life with her silly antics and stubborn determination. He knew just being with her would ease the sense of loneliness consuming him.
That was days ago and the loneliness was still there. Caleb had treated Katie so badly that he found it hard to find words that would make an apology even remotely believable. It had been a week since he’d seen her, and still the look on her face when he’d left the chapel haunted him.
He’d been approved to go back to work on desk duty, which he hated. But it was a far cry better than being alone in his house thinking. Before his shift, he drove out to her house, knowing she might still be upset with him for driving, especially after it had snowed the night before and the roads were slushy and slippery. When he got to her house, she was outside shoveling the walkway of her family home. She barely looked at him when he got out of the truck and walked over to her.
“Let me do that for you,” Caleb said, reaching for the shovel in Katie’s hand.
Katie pulled back. “I’m not an invalid,” she said, using the same words he’d used on her. She was angry with him. That much was certain. She couldn’t possibly be angrier with him than he was with himself.
“I know you’re not an invalid. I know that you’re a very capable woman. But the way you’re shoveling this snow path, it’s like you’re out for revenge.”
Katie huffed and stopped what she was doing. She poked the shovel into the snow bank and glared at him. “What are you doing here, Caleb? Did you come to accuse me of something else?”
He knew better than to be hurt. He deserved her anger right now. But he was hurt. He was glad to see her, and would deal with the cold shoulder until that sweet heart of hers melted again. Clearly she wasn’t as happy.
“I came here to say…” Anything he said would be lame. He didn’t exactly know why he needed to come here except to apologize. But was that enough? It wasn’t everything.
How could he tell her that he’d been thinking about her nonstop? That it wasn’t just Julie that fueled his anger. His frustration for the way he felt about her also drove him mad.
The first thing he’d done when he’d gone into the police station on his first day back to work, he’d been wishing he was back at the chapel helping her even though, technically, it was illegal to do so. She wasn’t supposed to be there either. But he knew from his own “sources” that things had been cleared and small bits of progress were being made.
He wanted to be there. And not because he wanted to bang a hammer or pull boards that were rotted, or try to save those beautiful hardwood floors that looked like they were a mess but he knew could be sanded down and made magnificent again. Somewhere along the line, Katie’s dream of renovating that chapel had turned into Caleb’s dream. But it was only because of Katie.
He peered over at her. She was standing there with a red nose from being out in the cold, tight lips and jaw because she was still angry with him.
“If you keep clenching your teeth, you’re going to break a tooth.”
“That’s my problem.” Her hip was swayed to one side as she lifted her chin. His mind immediate roamed to that night when they’d been on the dance floor and he’d held her in his arms. His fingers itched to be holding her hips and feeling them sway to the music.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You should be.” She looked at him for a few seconds and then huffed, shaking her head. “You can be an infuriating man, Caleb. You know that?”
“So I’ve been told.”
“I don’t think you’ve been told enough. I’m exhausted trying to figure you out!”
“Are you going to be mad at me forever?”
She stared at him, making him a bit nervous.
“Well?”
“I’m thinking.”
He grabbed the shovel and started shoveling the path.
“I’m kidding. Give me back the shovel.”
“How do I know you aren’t going to hit me over the head with it?”
“I don’t want to get arrested.”
He chuckled. “That would be a first.
