Cowboy Outcasts (4 page)

“I’ll cook some chicken for you,” he said as he
walked.

“That’s okay. It’s late, don’t bother.”

“I said I’d feed you. Regardless of your little
stunt, I won’t have you go hungry.”

“I don’t eat meat…or chicken.”

He stopped dead in his tracks, only a few feet
from the door. “How do you expect to live? All I cook is meat. This ain’t some
fancy vegetarian buffet.”

“I’m not trying to be difficult.”

Callum flicked on the lights after they entered
the house. The first thing he noted, when he could see with perfect clarity,
were the scrapes on Hailey’s knees. Any cowgirl in her right mind would have
worn Wranglers out on the fields, not little cotton shorts. He didn’t know what
to make of her. She lived in the tiny town but knew little about country
living—besides her book learning.

“Sit down,” he said, leaving no room for
argument.

She complied, lowering into one of the wooden
chairs. There used to be a family member occupying each of the hardwood seats.
Now it was just him.

“I’m okay,” she said, wincing when he attempted
to touch the bloody scrapes.

He shook his head and went to collect the
medical kit from above the fridge.

Callum was used to taking care of himself. He’d
broken a rib a few years back.
Arden
had bound him tight and the wound healed without the need to visit an overpriced
doctor. Many of their injuries over the years were brawl-related as opposed to
accidents working the ranch. They were two to be messed with before
Arden
decided he wanted
more out of life and moved out. It seemed his brother took Callum’s courage with
him when he left.

He carefully dabbed at her knees with iodine on
a cottonball as he crouched in front of her. Callum noticed her legs weren’t
half bad, long for a woman of her height. When he’d glance up to see if she was
in pain, her big, blue eyes were crystalline with unshed tears.

“What’s done is done,” he appeased. The last
thing he needed was a woman crying her eyes dry in his house. He wouldn’t have
a clue how to comfort her. Women were a rare commodity in Callum’s life. The
townswomen rejected him on sight, and the last time he’d travelled to the city
for a one-night stand was when
Arden
still lived at home.

“I should have waited ‘til morning.” She sucked
air in through her teeth as he cleansed her wounds. “It won’t happen again.”

“Damn straight it won’t. In fact, maybe it’s
best if you head back to the university tomorrow morning.”

“No,” she snapped. “Please…please give me a
little time to prove myself.”

He grunted, checking her legs for other
injuries. When she reached out and touched his face, he froze. “What’re you
doing?”
 
He instinctively grabbed her
wrist and held her in place.

“Your face. It’s bleeding.”

Callum hadn’t even catalogued his own injuries,
only concerned with the girl. He was alive, that’s all that mattered. “It’s
nothing, I’m sure,” he said.

“Let me help.”
 
She bent over and grabbed a cottonball from the medical kit on the
floor. With one hand she secured him, gently cupping his face at the jaw. With
the other she blotted the wounds. “It’s my fault you got hurt.”

“I’m a cowboy. I’ve lived through much worse.”

“I can see that,” she said. “You have a lot of
old scars.”

She began to explore his face with a fingertip,
running it along the faint white lines of old injuries he remembered well. Each
one told a story. The touch was new to Callum but so was the look of concern on
Hailey’s face. People didn’t care about him. He was so used to being
disregarded that he was leery of any kindness.

“Nothing to trouble yourself over.”

“Are you hurt anywhere else? You had quite the
scuffle.”

“I said I’m fine.” He stood up and backed away.
Tension was making his tics act up, but this was different than before. She
brought new unfamiliar feelings to the surface, ones he had no desire to
explore. Whether nerves or attraction, it was best to keep his distance from
the scientist and let her do her job. Love was not in the cards for a misfit
like Callum.

She rose to her feet just as quickly, only
reaching his chest in height. He could toss a slight thing like her over his
shoulder in a heartbeat. “Take off your shirt so I can make sure. Look, it’s
torn and stained with blood.” She snagged his shirt, making him feel more
claustrophobic than ever.

Three,
two, one. One, two, three. Three, two, one.

Callum brought his hand over hers. “Don’t,” he
warned. She didn’t know what she was getting into looking up at him with those
big, deceptively innocent blue eyes. She’d destroy him if he allowed it.
Luckily he was used to depriving himself of female companionship. It had been a
long dry, fourteen months since the last time he enjoyed a woman’s body. Ms.
Watson wasn’t going to change that now, bringing temptation to his doorstep in
the guise of charity.

“Are you afraid of me?” She smiled, a slight
curve of the lips. He was just being paranoid. What was wrong with allowing her
to care for his injuries? He’d just done the same for her. It meant nothing.

He tugged off his T-shirt, not wanting to appear
more abnormal by refusing her offer. So far Hailey wasn’t repulsed by him and
his frequent subtle noises, which were quickly becoming louder and more
difficult to control. He didn’t want to change that now. She stared at his bare
upper body for a long moment before acting. He wondered just how bad his
injuries were if she was at a loss for words. Callum looked down, patting down
his chest and abs. “What is it? You see something, darlin’?”

She walked around him, trailing her hand from
his stomach, around his side, to his back as she moved. It was a slow, sensual
drag, which had the unwelcome reaction of making his cock thicken in his jeans.
“Your back,” she murmured, running her fingers down his spine. “You’ve been a
little gored yourself.”

He felt perfectly fine. “You sure about that?”

“Sit. I’ll clean it up,” she said.

Callum sat down sideways on the chair and leaned
over his knees. She rummaged through the medical kit for a minute, and then he
felt the cool swipe of iodine on his broken skin. Whatever he had, it couldn’t
be serious. But for some reason he humored the girl, allowing her to continue
touching and caring. It was addicting.

Arden
never planned to marry and was quite vocal about it. He frequently
told Callum that a good woman was a rarity. That their mother was the last. He
supposed he’d come to believe it, not even bothering to look. If he did, it
wouldn’t be a girl like Hailey. She was too naïve, her skin flawless and
youthful. He estimated her to be in her early twenties, young and fickle, but
she claimed to be twenty-six. She wasn’t even his type. He supposed the
sun-kissed streaks in her dirty-blonde hair were pretty, as was her little
pixie nose.
No
. He was just
repressed, his dick trying to find beauty where it shouldn’t.

The kitchen was like a morgue—quiet and
uncomfortable. He had nothing to say, so just allowed her to finish bandaging
him up.

“Where are your parents?” she finally said. The
question was a simple icebreaker, but Callum never responded well when asked
about his mom and dad. He bit the inside of his cheek before speaking.

“Gone,” he said.
 
“Buried back home. It’s what they would have wanted.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

He shrugged. Callum wanted to tell her
everything. There was so much stored inside him never given a chance to be said
or shared. His parents had toiled and struggled since arriving in the country decades
earlier. His mother was pregnant with
Arden
and he came along three years later. In all the time they worked the land, they
never returned to
Ireland
.
Arden and Callum worked extra hard to save enough money to send them home for
their wedding anniversary—it would be the last trip they ever made. The airport
shuttle that picked them up from the airport went off the road, killing
everyone instantly when it veered into oncoming traffic. The coroner said the
driver went into a diabetic coma, but the cause didn’t change the outcome. At
least they died in their homeland, which was a small consolation to the tragedy
that left two brothers alone in the world that didn’t want them.

“That was a long time ago. The wounds aren’t
fresh.” He stood up and reached around his body to feel the edge of the bandage
Hailey had applied. “Am I fit to leave, nurse?”

She stared at him, a silent connection passing
between them. He wondered if she felt the same thing, or if he was just so damn
deprived of attention that he’d read something into nothing.

****

Hailey was at a loss for words. The man had the
body of a god and had just wrestled a wild boar with his bare hands to protect
her. She couldn’t help that her heart pitter-pattered to a new beat, one
spelling out Callum’s name. Why did he remain so aloof? Did he only see her as
a problem to deal with? Did she want him to look at her with lust in his eyes?

She was probably still in shock after having
that wild animal trap her in the woods for so long. She’d been cold, terrified,
and hopeless. At one point she’d given up, expecting never to see the light of
day again. Then she heard him call her name—her savior. He was the most
unlikely hero after being so abrupt with her earlier. Now she was seeing a
softer side to him, although he tried to keep it under lock and key.

Callum retired to his bedroom and she settled in
Arden O’Shea’s old room. It felt like a presence lingered with all his personal
items still on display.
 
After slipping
out of her clothes, putting on an oversized T-shirt Callum provided, she
quietly padded around the room. She pulled open one of the wooden dresser
drawers and found a small photo album. Hailey couldn’t resist slipping it out.
With only the gentle radiance of lamplight, she cuddled on the bed to look
through the pictures. Most were of rodeo events with several men in the
pictures. Then she came across a few of Callum and Arden. They looked a lot
alike, both devastatingly handsome. What on earth could have alienated them
from the rest of the town?

When she heard footsteps creaking along the
wooden floorboards outside her door, she shoved the album under the extra
pillow and pulled the covers over her. The door cracked open an inch. “You
still awake?” he asked.

“Come in.”

The door opened fully and a nearly nude cowboy
strolled in. He’d taken off his hat, shirt, and even unbuckled. His Wranglers
dipped so low she could spy the masculine trail of dark hair disappearing
behind his zipper. “I don’t like that you didn’t eat tonight. It’s my place to
make sure you have food. There’s bread in the kitchen and I have a small
vegetable plot to the side of the house. You help yourself.”

“Thank you.”

“You comfortable?”

“It’s–It’s great.” She fiddled with the edge of
the blanket. Part of her felt like a love struck twelve year old, shy and
awkward, while another yearned for him to ravage her. It was an odd mix of
desire and fear sparked by the way he stared at her. Even with the long shadows
cast on the wall behind him, she could still make out the intensity in his eyes.
What was he thinking?

“If you need me I’ll be just down the hall.”

She nodded politely, her voice not capable of
working.

“And you can find me in the fields come
morning.” With that he slipped out the way he came, his footsteps outside the
door marking his retreat. She felt bereft once he left but also exhausted from
the day’s events. For the first time, she fell asleep dreaming of impossible
fairy tales rather than research notes.

Chapter Four

The next morning, Hailey knew she had to get
started on her research as soon as possible. Callum wouldn’t put up with zero
progress, especially after the nightmare she’d caused yesterday.
 
Planning out her research on paper was a lot
different than implementing it in the field. She began to doubt her ability to
get the job done. The wild hogs were lethal creatures if not handled properly.
Studying them would be difficult in the day since they acted mostly at night.
She figured lack of food in an overpopulated species was the main culprit.
Finding a solution was more of a challenge. She had to come up with a long-term
answer, not fall for short-term fixes like traps, shotguns, and poison
suggested by many.

Once outside, she spotted Callum’s combine in
the fields. He wasn’t too far off, so she cut through the field to reach him.
The earth rumbled as the machine harvested the wheat.

“Callum!” she called out over the roar of the
engine. Hailey wanted him to show her the areas being destroyed by the hogs.
She’d also brought him a little picnic lunch as a peace offering.