Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch (Gold Valley #13)(10)

Jake snorted. “I’m not sneaking anywhere. It’s my house.”

“You said you needed help.”

Jake was ready for a day out on the ranch. He had on a tan cowboy hat, a denim jacket and blue jeans. He was wearing work boots, rather than the cowboy boots that she was used to seeing him in during rodeo events and nights out at the honky-tonk bars they frequented after the rodeo.

“Well, I didn’t figure it was polite to roust my guest from bed on the first day of her arrival. Anyway. You’re here for Thanksgiving.”

“A ruse,” she said.

He chuckled, shook his head and opened the door for her. She didn’t like any of those things. Because the chuckle felt paternal, and the opening of the door felt like he was emphasizing the fact that she was a lady and he was a man.

She didn’t care for either, since she was chasing both issues at the moment. She stepped past him, and stomped across the porch and down the steps.

“Get up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?”

She turned around, huffing.

“No. But I didn’t come here so you could treat me like I was fragile. I came here because I thought you were about the only person on earth who really respected me, Jake. And now you’re being as weird about me riding saddle bronc as my dad.”

He paused, and he looked at her, his eyes going sharp like they’d done yesterday when he’d approached her suddenly. When he’d tried to throw her off balance by pretending he’d intended to kiss her.

“I saw you fall,” he said. “I saw you fall, and I can’t forget that. I heard the sound of your bones breaking on the ground.”

The intensity in his tone stopped her short. It made her feel strange. Like her boots had been tacked down to the dirt with a couple of horseshoe nails.

Then he did something totally unexpected. He reached out and touched her face, cupped her chin and held her steady. “If something would have happened to you, more serious than it did, I would have never forgiven myself.”

Something jittered through her body, and she didn’t like it. Not one bit. She pulled back, shaking off his hand.

But the impression of his touch wouldn’t go away.

“You’re being a drama queen. It was a fracture. And I’m fine.”

“But I remember it. And I don’t like it.”

“Well, as much as I’m sure it pains you to hear this, I am not in existence for the sole purpose of you liking or not liking what it is I want to do, Jake Daniels. It doesn’t much matter to me if you like it. But if you’re my friend, you’ll help me.”

“I agreed to help you, Cal, so quit being prickly. I signed up to spend time with my friend, not a cactus.” And then he walked past her, jerking open the passenger door of his pickup, another misplaced show of chivalry.

“You know women are more than capable of opening doors.” She held her hands up and wiggled her thumbs. “Damn if we don’t also have opposable thumbs.”

“And as a gentleman, I opt to use my thumbs to open doors for women, regardless of the state of their ability, just because it’s what I was taught to do.”

“Doing what your daddy taught you like a good boy?” The words landed flat, and it took her a moment, just a moment that came abreast too late, to realize what she had said. “I’m sorry.”

That was stupid. She knew about Jake’s family. She hadn’t meant it that way, and it had still hit that way. He’d trusted her with his ghosts.

She felt a slight bit of guilt she hadn’t returned the favor.

And now she was being a jerk about it.

“Jake...”

“Okay,” he said, backing away from her and making his way to his side of the truck.

When they were both inside and headed down a dirt access road on the ranch, Callie’s eyes blurred, and she finally spoke again. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m really sorry that I said that.”

“You were just giving me a hard time—you didn’t mean anything by it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I should have thought.”

“It does matter actually. Because you didn’t mean anything by it. But to answer your question, yes, my daddy did teach me that. And he wasn’t around long enough to teach me as much as I would’ve liked. So yeah, that stuff matters to me.”

“I’m just... I’m being sensitive,” she said, kicking a piece of gravel and sending a cloud of dust up with it. “And I apologize. I should never be so touchy that I end up hurting my friend without thinking. You’re not trying to upset me by opening doors for me. I get that. It’s just sometimes it really bothers me... The difference between us.”

“What’s wrong with the difference between us? It’s not a bad thing to be different. It just is what it is.”

“Not when it holds me back.”

“Do you wish you weren’t a woman?”

She was taken aback by that question. Because that wasn’t it at all. It was that...she wanted to matter. She wanted to be special. Singular.

And she had her reasons. Reasons she hadn’t shared everything with him.

She lived with enough ghosts—she hadn’t wanted them to follow her to the circuit. And it was clear her parents didn’t, either, because there were no whispers about their tragedy among the other riders.