The place was out about ten miles from town, a nice flat parcel of property with the mountains behind it. The house itself was a big, white farmhouse with a green metal roof. Different to the rustic place at Hope Springs, but he liked it. The driveway was gravel, long and winding, with tall, dense trees on either side of the road.
But when he came through the trees into the clearing where the house was, there was a surprise waiting for him in front of the house.
An old, beat-up pickup was parked there, and he could see a lone figure leaning up against the hood. He parked the truck and got out, making his way over to the figure.
In the darkness, he couldn’t quite make it out, but he had a feeling he knew who it was. Early and unannounced.
Entirely in keeping with what he knew of his friend.
“Cal?”
And two wide, brown eyes looked up at him from beneath the brim of a white cowboy hat, long, glossy brown hair shifting with the motion. “Jake. I’m really glad to see you. Because... I don’t just need a job. I need a husband.”
CHAPTER TWO
CALLIE CARSON WASN’T known for her shy and retiring demeanor.
But she was a woman of her word, and always had been.
She’d been raised to follow the Code of the West, and she took it seriously. Applying it equally and fairly across all situations and circumstances. She believed in truth and justice, and that made this entire situation a whole big mess.
Because it required her to lie.
Required that she take something as sacred and important as marriage—not that it was anything she’d ever wanted for herself, but still, she respected the institution—and turn it into a tool that she could use to get what she wanted.
She wasn’t thrilled about subterfuge. Not remotely. But there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot she could do. Her father hadn’t left her with any good choices.
Her father, who she’d always felt was on her side. He’d raised her as one of his sons, had begged her mother to let him do that after her sister had died. Pale and weak from an illness that had ravaged her from birth.
Let me have her. Let me make her strong.
And he had.
But then... Then this had happened and he’d apparently hit his limit with his belief in her, and Callie wasn’t sure she could ever get over that.
Her dad was her best friend. Her ally.
But when she’d fallen off that horse fourteen weeks ago, more had shattered than just her arm. Jake had left, and even if it wasn’t related, she’d been broken and he’d been gone.
And then there was her dad.
Her dad, who’d been her constant support, her biggest champion through all of her endeavors in the rodeo, calming all of her mother’s fears, had turned into a near stranger.
He’d put his foot down, said that there would be no discussion of her going out for saddle bronc. And the fight had been...epic. But he’d raised her to be who she was. She stood her ground, and fought for what she believed in.
And in the end it came down to the insurance. To money.
She’d wanted to do it aboveboard. She’d wanted to do the right things, but he’d made it impossible.
And now she was going to lie to him.
“Say again?” Jake asked.
It would be funny if she didn’t feel so serious. She had stunned Jake Daniels into silence. Jake was the kind of man who wore in charge with all the ease of worn work boots. And she had effectively silenced him. Put him on the back foot.
In fact, right at the moment, her friend’s ridiculously handsome face was incredulous, even in the dim outdoor light.
That face had felled a thousand buckle bunnies, girly women who had the secrets to femininity stitched into the sequins on their jeans. But she doubted any of them had ever gotten him to make that face.
Her lips twitched. “Did you need me to get down on one knee, Daniels?”
“No,” he said slowly. “You can skip that. But you might want to give an explanation of some kind, Cal.”
Only he called her Cal.
Jake Daniels had been her best friend since she was sixteen years old, and she knew that most people wouldn’t get it. But that nickname was a piece of it. Cal. Like she was part of the rodeo, really and truly. A friend to her. Not just Callie Carson, daughter of the rodeo commissioner, Abraham Carson, but someone who mattered to him specifically. Someone with her own relationship to him. He’d been a mentor in many ways from the first moment they’d met, and there was something about his renegade recklessness that called to her. That reached down into something inside of her that she never accessed before and woke it up.
He made her feel brave.
He was a daredevil of the highest order. A bad boy who cut a swath through the buckle bunnies of the rodeo circuit, and even if she didn’t approve of that sort of behavior, what she appreciated about him was the commitment. To every single thing he did.
The complete and total lack of fear in his every action.
The way he didn’t care about what people thought.
She had tried her best to take on some of his attributes. Oh, not going after the buckle bunnies. That wasn’t really her thing.
No, as far as Callie was concerned the rodeo was all there was.
Ever since she’d first witnessed the spectacle of the rodeo when she was too little to walk, and had known her future was on the back of a horse. To when she’d learned to barrel race and had started competing in her teens. All the way to discovering that what she really wanted was to break new ground in saddle bronc, and become the first woman to compete in the event in this particular Pro Rodeo Association.
She’d been working toward it, and her dad hadn’t been thrilled with it, even in the beginning. But he’d fostered that tenacious spirit in her so he hadn’t stopped her, either.
Until the accident.
“Let’s go inside,” she said. “And I’ll explain.”
“I think you can explain just as well from out here.”
“I can’t,” she said. “Because I can’t see your face well enough.”
He paused. “And that has to do with...?”
“I need to know. What you think about all this.”
He shook his head. Then he walked over to her truck and opened the driver’s side door. He took out her duffel bag and retrieved her hat from the dashboard, then plunked it onto her head. Then he slung the bag over his shoulder. “Come on. Explain yourself.”
They made their way up the front steps of the surprisingly nice ranch house.
“Well, I didn’t expect this,” she said, looking around.