Chapter 5

5

C allum still felt the body-blow of Iris's declaration as she took the turn-off to the ranch's quarter-mile drive. Each bump and rut jarred him until he wanted to release some of the pain with a scream.

He kept his jaw locked tight.

So she hadn't thought about him after he'd left. That was what he'd wanted, right?

He'd never wanted to cause her pain.

And it wasn't as if he'd walked around mourning her. He'd closed and locked the door on everything he'd felt for her and gone on with his life.

"Daddyyy," Brandt whined. "Are we there?"

"Almost."

Out the window, he got his first glimpse of what was now rightfully his. The fields were green with spring grass stretching as far as the eye could see.

"Cows!" Levi shouted.

Barbed wire kept the cattle contained. Several head were spread out across the nearest pasture, grazing in a contented way that was at odds with the chaos he felt inside.

In the distance, he could see the metal roof of the barn just over a rise.

All of this was his. When he'd signed the purchase papers, he'd felt a surge of pride. And something ugly, too. Gladness that he was taking something of Joe's.

He'd started working for Joe at fifteen as part of a work program on the boys' ranch where he'd been assigned. The foster placement was supposed to be temporary, but he'd known that's where he'd age out. No one wanted to adopt a teenager. Not one with his juvenile record.

Initially, he'd hated the Red Cedar Ranch. Joe was an exacting taskmaster, and the work was physical and dirty. During the school year, he'd worked there after school on weekdays and all day Saturday. In the summer, it'd been a forty-hour workweek. Unpaid. He'd been carted there nearly every day, along with two other boys, both older than Callum.

He'd resented it. Resented Joe, who'd told the boys in no uncertain terms not to talk to his nieces. Jilly and Iris were off-limits.

That hadn't been a problem. Callum knew them from school by reputation only. Jilly was in his grade. Iris a year younger.

They were popular girls. Not cheerleader types, but the kind of girls that everyone liked. He was invisible to them.

Until he wasn't.

Iris had doctored him up once when he'd been hurt on the ranch. He'd been shocked by the urgent want that had pulsed through him. For her to talk more. For her to touch more than just his wrist. For her to see him.

For a kid who'd been alone a long time and had decided things were better that way, the few stolen moments with Iris had opened up a hole inside of him.

He'd avoided her for months, which wasn't hard to do on a massive ranch like Joe's. It was more difficult at school, but he pulled it off.

Until she'd accosted him in the hallway just before an all-school assembly. She'd been laughing with a girlfriend, and her eyes had lit up when she caught sight of him.

And that empty sinkhole inside of him had filled right up. Even more when she'd followed him into the row of stale-smelling auditorium seats and sat so close to him that their shoulders brushed. She'd whispered offhand comments about the vice principal that'd made him want to laugh—but he'd been in trouble so much that he didn't dare.

The next day, she'd waited by his locker to say good-morning.

After that, the Red Cedar became the center of his world. He was careful to stay under Joe's radar. He couldn't give the man any reason to fire him.

It hadn't been long before he'd been head-over-heels for Iris.

He'd cleaned up his act. He never wanted her to see the ugly side of him. He worked his butt off, kept his nose clean.

And in the end it hadn't mattered.

Some injuries, you don't heal from .

She was talking about a physical injury, but her words hit him in the soft underbelly. Wasn't that why he'd come back to Sutter's Hollow? Because there was a part of him that was still broken?

Joe was gone. Did that mean Callum's chance for closure was gone too?

A jarring bump in the road had him clenching his teeth against the urge to cry out. His grip on the door handle tightened until his knuckles were white. Surely they were almost there.

And then, Iris guided the van over the last gentle rise, and he caught sight of the trailer and, in the distance, her farmhouse. She pulled up in front of the trailer—there wasn't a driveway yet—and put the van in park.

The trailer looked just the same as when he'd bought it from a sales lot. Plain white. Not much to look at. He was planning to build a house for himself and the boys in a year or two. Once they got settled in.

What he hadn't expected was a worker operating a backhoe about a hundred yards from the house. Digging the water well, Callum realized.

No one was in sight working on the electric.

And there were cardboard boxes overflowing from the open front door and out onto the grass. Had the movers left the job unfinished?

He got a kick to the back of his seat that made his eyes cross with pain. He must've made some noise, because Iris took off her seatbelt and turned around in her seat.

"You okay?"

"Fine." He used the handle to try and open the door, confounded when it didn't roll back the way it had at the hospital.

"Child lock," she murmured. She hit some button up front, and his door swung open.

"Yay!" Levi cheered.

"Out!" Brandt said.

"No," he ground out as he swung his leg toward the ground. He fought with the crutches for a few moments and finally settled on his good leg.

The rain had turned into a fine mist.

It took him too long to hobble to the front porch. That was his messy scrawl on the first box. And the next. What had he paid the movers for if they weren't going to put his stuff where it belonged?

And the bigger question remained—how was he supposed to drag twenty boxes up three steps and into the trailer with a broken leg?

His phone rang. Thinking maybe it was one of the nanny candidates calling him back, he juggled his crutch and almost toppled himself, managing to pry his phone out of his hip pocket.

Unknown number . Local area code.

He answered with a gruff, "Hello?"

"Mr. Stewart? This is Amanda Elliott."

The social worker. His stomach plunged. What did she want? How did she even get this number?

"I tried to call the hospital to check in on you and was informed you'd left." Her tone was clipped, and he could imagine her fierce frown at learning he'd discharged himself AMA.

She hadn't asked a question, and he had nothing to say. He eyed the minivan, where Iris was getting out of the driver's door. She stuck her head and shoulders back inside, probably to talk to his sons.

"Are you settling in at Miss Tatum's house?"

Some injuries, you don't heal from .

He felt like he had a bull rope cinched around his chest so tight he couldn't draw a full breath. "I think the boys and I are gonna stay at our place." Even though it felt impossible to deal with the moving boxes, and getting groceries, and wrangling his sons with a bum leg. Wasn't he the king of overcoming impossible odds?

His answer didn't seem to please the social worker. She cleared her throat delicately. "We've had another concern raised."

That rope coiled tighter. "Who made a complaint now?"

She hesitated. "It was a message on my machine, and they didn't leave their name. They also muffled their voice." Her tone became clipped again. "But the concern they raised was valid. Is it true that you don't have water or electricity at your residence?"

He narrowed his eyes, watching Iris straighten so that her head and shoulders were visible above the minivan. She was so beautiful that it made him ache.

She would've seen the backhoe arrive to dig his water well. She knew his place wasn't ready yet.

But so would anybody else in town. The sale of the ranch was public record, and the semi-truck carrying his trailer would've driven right down Main Street. Sutter's Hollow was a small town that shared everything—including the juiciest gossip.

Who would've called social services on him? Somebody who wanted to make trouble.

"It's true," he said. "But it's only for a couple of days. The well is being dug as we speak."

The backhoe chose that moment to let out a grating rumble.

Callum tried to look at the giant machine and the gaping hole in the ground through the eyes of a three-year-old boy. It looked like an adventure.

To a father, it only looked dangerous. And he wasn't exactly up to chasing Levi or Brandt if they got a notion to check out the construction equipment up close.

His head began to pound again.

"I'm afraid that's unacceptable," Amanda said in his ear. He barely heard her over the noise in his head.

"I'm going to hire a nanny," he whispered. He didn't know whether she heard him. Besides, he hadn't been able to find someone for today. For right now.

He felt like he had on that horrible night ten years before. Everything was spiraling out of control.

Yesterday, he'd been on top of the world. Right now, his world was falling apart. He couldn't lose Levi and Brandt. Not even for a day or two. Not even for an hour.

The social worker was still talking, but he couldn't register what she was saying.

What if he took the boys and ran?

Right. His truck was undriveable at best, totaled at worst. And anyway, how exactly was he supposed to drive with this massive cast on his leg? He would never put his sons in danger like that.

Running wasn't the answer. Running had cost him the things he'd loved most.

Which meant he had only one choice.

He was going to have to swallow his pride and ask Iris for help. As of now, she was the only person who'd reached out a helping hand—no matter how grudgingly it had been extended.

Surprised?

Maybe I would be if I'd given half a thought to you once you walked away .

It was going to hurt being around her. It always had.

Something hot lodged in the base of his throat as he watched Iris round the van and walk toward him. She stared him down and raised her brows—as if she were daring him to stop her—as she bent to heft one of the boxes. She carried it past him and inside the trailer.

Doing what he couldn't manage.

His eyes darted to the minivan's rear window. His boys' heads were just barely visible through the glass and over the booster seats.

Levi and Brandt were worth whatever hit to his pride this was going to take.

"Miss Elliott?" he interrupted her. Didn't wait for her to acknowledge. "Turns out, the boys and I are going to stay with Iris after all."

She squawked something about a follow-up house call, and he hung up on her.

He tried to breathe through the cinch at his chest. Half-turned his head so he'd see Iris when she came through the front door. He tried to school his features out of the rank desperation that permeated every pore of his body.

When she appeared, her eyes were soft with compassion. And that unmanned him. He didn't deserve it, not after all these years. He never had.

He scraped for words that didn't come.

"Offer's still open," she said. No-nonsense. Casual. As if they hadn't clawed each other up with their words earlier. "It'll be good for Jilly to have a distraction for a few days. Why don't you go get in the van? I'll lug these inside real quick so they won't get soaked." She leveled a stare on him that told him she knew just how much his leg was throbbing.

So he went.

If he could survive getting stomped on by a fifteen-hundred pound bull, he could survive a few days in Iris's company.

He had to.