When Summer Comes (28 page)

“Cheyenne’s not picking up. She must’ve fallen asleep,” Eve announced as soon as everyone else was on the call.

“We could do this tomorrow,” Baxter said. Hopefully at a time when
he
wasn’t available....

“No, everyone’s got to work,” Eve responded. “I’ll fill her in later. I don’t think we should put this off any longer.”

“Put
what
off?” Noah asked.

“Something’s going on with Callie,” she replied. “Haven’t you noticed?”

“She hasn’t been showing up for coffee much,” he mused. “Is everything okay with her business?”

“She doesn’t seem to care about her business anymore,” Eve said. “From what I can tell, she’s turned it over to Tina.”

“Because she’s getting the farm ready to put on the market,” Kyle explained.

“You think that’s it?” Eve again. “You saw the way she acted on Friday.”

“Have you tried asking her?” Noah wanted to know.

“We’ve all tried,” Eve said. “She avoids us when she can, gets off the phone if we start to push, rarely returns a call. I’m just...so worried. Has she said anything to any of you that might offer some clue as to what’s going on?”

Baxter cringed but remained silent.

“She’s said nothing to me,” Kyle told them.

“Are you sure?” Eve pressed. “I feel that if anyone can unravel the mystery, it’d be you.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” Kyle insisted.

Baxter wondered if Kyle was squirming with guilt. He had to be asking himself if he’d had a hand in how she was behaving.

“I couldn’t be there Friday—” Riley entered the conversation “—so I don’t know how she acted, but I agree she’s been more aloof than usual.”

“
More
aloof?” Eve said. “She’s
never
aloof. She’s not that kind of person.”

“We know she has some guy staying at the farm with her.” Noah didn’t sound particularly worried, but he wasn’t the worrying kind. “And there’s been trouble with the renters nearby and their dogs. I think how she’s acting could be related to her guest and what’s happened because of him. Don’t you agree, Kyle?”

“This started before that,” Kyle said.

“So what’s going on with our friend?” Eve asked. “And what can we do about it?”

Baxter cleared his throat. “I think...I think she might be going through a difficult time, but we need to give her the space to deal with it.”

“Space,”
Eve repeated.

“Yeah,” he said, but Eve was having none of it.

“We’ve given her space, Bax. She’s not snapping out of it. Like Kyle said, this has been going on for some time. She’s lost weight. She’s withdrawn.”

Riley made a suggestion. “Her mother’s health has been getting worse. Maybe that’s it.”

“Instead of guessing behind her back, let’s go out there and have a talk with her,” Noah said.

“Tonight?”
Riley asked.

Baxter did what he could to kill that idea. “No, it’s too late.”

Noah pushed harder. “Tomorrow, then. Or the next day.”

“I don’t know if she’ll like that.” Eve sounded hesitant.

“We’re her friends,” Noah said. “We don’t always need an invitation.”

Baxter was about to say they shouldn’t surprise her, but Kyle jumped in before he could form the words.

“It’s because of me.”

“Kyle—” Baxter wanted to warn him that what he was about to say might not help, but didn’t get the chance.

“Callie and I have been sleeping together,” he announced. “And I feel terrible about it because I know she regrets it.”

Stunned silence met this announcement. Maybe they’d had their suspicions, but no one had expected him to confess.

Baxter admired Kyle for being willing to own up to what he’d done. It proved that he was worried, too, and that he cared more about Callie than about covering his tracks. “I doubt that’s it,” he said, hoping to ease some of the surprise and awkwardness that had sprung up.

“You’ve been with
Callie?
” Noah said.

“Just a few times,” Kyle replied, “but she hasn’t been the same since. I feel like shit that I let it happen. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Ever since Olivia and I broke up...I’m just not the man I used to be. I keep messing up everyone’s lives.”

“I
really
don’t think that’s it,” Baxter repeated.

“I wondered,” Eve admitted.

Noah muttered a curse. “So what do we do now?”

“We forget about it,” Baxter replied. “I’m sure she’d be embarrassed that we know. It’s really none of our business.”

“It helps us understand what she’s going through, at least,” Eve said.

“Maybe she’s...having a crisis of sorts, feeling guilty.” Riley lowered his voice to just this side of exasperated. “Women can be like that.”

“
Women,
Riley?” Eve snapped. “Really? All of us?”

Riley grew defensive. “Relax. It was a generalization.”

“I bet it only happened because she was afraid she’d never meet the right guy,” Eve said.

“Meaning what?” Noah asked.

“Meaning she took what was available.”

“Wow, that really makes it sound as if she cares about me,” Kyle complained.

“Oh, stop,” Eve said. “That’s your ego talking because we all know you’re still in love with Olivia.”

He didn’t refute it.

Baxter switched the phone to his other ear. They were going down the wrong road, but he couldn’t stop them. Not without revealing that he knew more than they did.

“She keeps talking about Cheyenne and how happy she is,” Eve told them. “I get the feeling she really wants to find someone and settle down.”

“If that’s the case maybe we should be more worried about the drifter she’s got living out there,” Noah said.

Kyle jumped in again. “I
have
been worried!”

“No, that’s called jealousy,” Riley joked.

“It’s not jealousy! I practically chased her into this guy’s arms, but he doesn’t have a thing to offer her. How can he possibly make her happy? He’ll probably stay just long enough to break her heart.”

“Maybe he’s exactly what she needs right now.” Baxter could see it, in the context of what she was going through. She felt that Levi was temporary, so she could enjoy him and he’d go before she had to face her future, whatever that might be.

There was a moment of silence. Obviously, this wasn’t a popular opinion.

“What makes you say that?” Noah finally asked.

“She’s a smart girl,” Baxter said. “We need to trust her judgment.”

“That’s what we’ve been doing so far, and it’s not fixing anything,” Eve complained.

Baxter left his recliner to pace in front of his hundred-year-old windows. “Let’s give her some more time.”

“I agree,” Noah said. “I wouldn’t want you guys having this conversation about me.”

“We just want to be sure we’re doing all we can for her.” Eve sounded stung.

“Noah, we talk about you all the time,” Riley teased.

Noah ignored him. “I know you mean well, Eve, but—”

Riley broke in, now serious. “Why don’t we go over there sometime this week, let her know Kyle told us about...what happened between them and that we understand.”

Baxter thought that might help. At least it would ease
some
of Callie’s worries. “I could support a visit if that’s the purpose. If we were careful about the timing.”

“So...is everyone in?” Riley asked, and they all agreed.

* * *

Levi groaned as the shower went on. Apparently, Callie wasn’t going straight to bed. Maybe she needed to cool off.

He
could certainly use a cold shower. But he wasn’t sure it would do any good. He wanted Callie too badly to stop the thoughts flowing through his head.

He imagined her lips parting beneath his as they had yesterday morning and felt his body tighten in response. Two years was a long time for a man to ignore his sexual appetites. He was learning just how relentless those appetites could be.

But he’d already screwed up with her once. He’d had her put on that lingerie, then pulled back almost the second he touched her. He’d rejected her when she was most vulnerable—when any woman would be most vulnerable—and he doubted she’d be willing to trust him again. She wouldn’t want to run into the same problem.

For that matter, neither did he.

If he went to her tonight, would he be able to follow through?

He’d make himself, he decided. But how would he feel after?

He had so many hormones coursing through him he could hardly think. His brain kept showing him tantalizing snippets of what it would be like to have Callie beneath him, to feel her hips rise to meet his. Part of him, the part that kept driving him to take her regardless of all else, didn’t seem to care that he was still in love with Behrukh, that he’d promised to
always
love her.

Where had his conviction gone? His remorse for what he’d caused by coaxing her to become his friend, his lover, his fiancée?

Ashamed that he could be so easily tempted away from what he knew to be a just and deserving punishment, he dropped his head in his hands. He’d meant everything he’d told Behrukh, hadn’t he?

Of course he had. Then why did those promises seem so impossible to keep?

Rifle, who’d stayed with him instead of Callie for a change, lifted his head and perked up his ears as if asking why he was so agitated.

“Hell if I know,” he told the dog. “I can’t have her. But I can’t stop wanting her, either.”

The dog yawned, clearly not impressed by the gravity of this human problem, and rested his snout on his paws.

“Thanks for your support, buddy.” Levi wished he still had a room out in the barn. Maybe, if he could put enough space between them, his heart would quit pumping like a piston and his erection would go away. But staying inside like this, cooped up with her—he was too close to the object of his desire.

He was fighting the inevitable.

Convinced he’d succumb eventually, he went into her bedroom and shut the door to keep Rifle out.

It was just a physical release, he told himself. It wasn’t as if he was really cheating on Behrukh because it wouldn’t mean anything.

20

S
ophia heard the doorbell. She was reading in the library, but she could’ve been in the shower, or even blow-drying her hair, and she still wouldn’t have missed those deep gongs. The doorbell Skip had chosen was the best money could buy. Everything in her house fell into that category. Her husband insisted they had a reputation to uphold, a responsibility to provide Whiskey Creek with a couple anyone could look up to. Exhibiting their wealth convinced others of his success, which helped build his credibility and bring him new investors, which in turn brought him more success.

But she couldn’t imagine why he’d need any other investors. He was flying all over the world as it was, could hardly keep up with the number of projects he had. Not only that, but just about everyone who had any money in Whiskey Creek was already participating in one of his many joint venture partnerships. How much more could one man need—or manage?

Sophia was tired of the facade, tired of the pretense. Their relationship had deteriorated so quickly, she longed to walk out on it all. To admit she’d made a mistake when she married the high school senior voted Most Likely to Succeed in the class six years ahead of hers. He’d grown verbally abusive as soon as she’d conceived Alexa, and physically abusive after that, too full of his own power, but she’d never really loved him in the first place.

There were moments, moments like now, when she wanted to tell him so, wanted to watch the truth register on his pale, bespectacled face.

Except she could do nothing of the sort. If she did, she’d never see her daughter again. Skip would take Alexa away, even if it meant he had to steal her and go into hiding in some foreign country.

Skip was nothing if not vengeful.

Knocking followed the sound of the doorbell and still she didn’t move. She couldn’t. Skip had blackened her eye this morning before he left for Houston. With her eleven-year-old daughter at cheer camp he hadn’t needed to worry that she might overhear, hadn’t needed to worry that this time Alexa might not believe she’d run into
another
door. So he’d let himself get more carried away than usual. She’d have to stay inside the house for several days this time, probably for as long as Alexa would be gone.

Maybe that was the real reason he’d done what he’d done and not the fact that she’d argued with him, again, over having another child, something she definitely didn’t want to do. He liked knowing she’d be a prisoner inside their house while he had all the freedom he could desire.

Whoever was at her door wasn’t giving up. The gongs of the doorbell repeated themselves, sounding deep and hollow in the expansive house.

Resting her head against the supple leather of her chair, Sophia let the book she’d selected from her own shelves fall into her lap. “Go away,” she murmured. “I don’t know who you are or what you want, but it doesn’t matter.”

It was most likely a friend of Alexa’s. Few people came to the door for Sophia. Skip insisted that she appear at every community event and make a big deal of the contributions they made, but the person she had to be when she was with him didn’t attract friends. She’d thought the
real
her—the woman she was when he was out of town—had been making some inroads with Gail DeMarco’s circle. Sophia had wanted to belong to that group for years, had always felt that they had something special, and she envied their closeness.

But last Friday at the coffee shop showed her just how ineffective she’d been. They didn’t give a damn about her, either.

When the doorbell rang for the third time, she shoved the ice pack she’d set on the side table to the ground with an irritated curse. Why wouldn’t whoever it was just leave her in peace? It was getting too late for company, anyway.

She wished she had a housekeeper who could tell the person to go. Skip had once suggested hiring someone—no one in town had that kind of help, so it would make quite a statement—but she’d rejected the idea. If he took the housework away from her she’d have
nothing
to do, since he wouldn’t let her get a job.