Fated for Love (2 page)

Wes retrieved the book, and their eyes met and held for a long, hot beat. He handed it to her and rose to his full height again. “Well, that sounds a lot more relaxing than spending a week with a group of people who are probably afraid of heights, spiders, and snakes.” He tucked the books she’d given him under his arm, ran his hand through his short, dark hair, and shrugged, causing all those hard muscles in his shoulders to flex beneath his tight shirt.

“If you add
deep water
to that list, you’ve described me perfectly.” Callie didn’t know much about Wes, other than he liked thrillers and biographies, he turned the heads of every female in the library, and he taught alpha male stuff, like hunting, fishing, and…She had no idea what else, but the thought of guns and deep water made her dizzy. Or maybe that was a side effect of being around him. She wasn’t sure.

 “Wes?” Tiffany Dempsey ran her eyes up and down Wes’s body with an appreciative smile, like a mountaineer revisiting a familiar peak.

It had taken Callie a week to realize why Tiffany appeared in the library every Thursday but never took home a single book or said a word to Callie.

Wes smiled at Tiffany in a way that made Callie blush. His eyes were as seductive as his voice. “Hey, Tiff.”

Tiffany flipped her long blond hair over her shoulder and ran her finger down his forearm. “How’s it going? Oh, I see Callie picked out some good books for you again.”

Callie was surprised that she knew her name.

“Callie knows her books.” Wes smiled down at Callie.

Knows her books.
Callie watched him walk away with Tiffany, then banged her forehead against the bookshelf, wishing she could be anyone but the girl who
knew her books
. No, that wasn’t really true. She loved books—everything about them, from the weight of them in her hands to the smell of the pages and the worlds they held between their covers. The world she loved to climb into, live vicariously through, and where she hid away from the world. She had no idea
what
to wish for. She was who she was and she liked who she was, even if she’d never be the type of woman a guy like Wes Braden would be interested in. She glanced around the quiet library. There were two women sitting at a table staring at Wes like he was made of gold. In the reference aisle, she noticed another woman, who, she realized, also came in only on Thursdays. She was peering out of the aisle at Wes, too. And then there was Tiffany, stealing every ounce of Wes’s attention in three seconds flat. Callie sighed. She’d never be like Tiffany. Callie sucked at the whole one-touch-turn-on thing that Tiffany had down pat. Tiffany was tall and lean, and every outfit she wore was tight and revealing in the all the right ways. Callie would feel silly in the tight, black minidress Tiffany wore like a second skin. She somehow managed to look sexy
and
strong, which was probably nothing more than her brazen personality. Callie was petite and far from athletic. Even though she did her Jillian Michaels DVD religiously, she could never do the things she imagined Wes doing, like wrangling cattle or riding bulls.

I wouldn’t mind riding him
, though.

She shivered with the painfully unrealistic thought. She needed that damn massage, and she hoped the masseur was tall, dark, and handsome. Maybe she’d throw caution to the wind and do all those behind-closed-doors dirty things she wished she could do with Wes and had been trying not to fantasize about.

Her damn cheeks flushed again.

She looked up at the ceiling and wondered if there was a handbook for nerdy girls who fantasized about badass men to learn to take the reins and land their men.

Stick to fairy tales, Callie.

WES SHOVED A stack of papers to the side of his desk, yanked open the file drawer, and weeded through the hanging file folders.
Shit. Where are they?
He didn’t have time for this. Wes and his partner, Chip Shelton, owned The Woodlands, a dude ranch about an hour outside of Trusty, in the Colorado Mountains, and he was meeting a group there just before dinnertime. If he could only find the itineraries he’d put together, he could get out of his office and on the damn road so he wouldn’t be late.

He moved around the desk and looked down at the fifteen-week-old bloodhound sleeping soundly beneath his desk. “Hey, Sweets. Any idea where I put those itineraries?” He hoped he hadn’t left them at his house. Wes split his time between his house in Trusty and his cabin at The Woodlands, and the last thing he needed was to make an additional trip before getting on the road to the ranch.

Sweets turned sad eyes up at him and yawned, then laid her head back down on her cushy bed. Wes had found Sweets a few weeks earlier on the side of a remote mountain trail, all skin and bones and sick with distemper. With the help of his brother Ross, the Trusty veterinarian, he’d nursed her back to health and fell in love with probably the only bloodhound on earth that had no sense of smell. Zero. None. A bloodhound that couldn’t track a lost person would be of little use if a client turned up missing, but he loved her so damn much that even her missing sense didn’t make her any less amazing.

Wes leaned down and loved up Sweets; he scratched her belly and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Then he sat in his chair and rubbed his eyes with his forefinger and thumb.

“What’s that piss-ass look for?” Chip stood in the doorway, his shaggy blond hair hanging in his eyes. He’d been Wes’s business partner since they opened the dude ranch doors eight years ago and Wes’s best buddy since second grade.

Wes sighed and set a dark stare on Chip’s annoyingly amused baby blues. They were two peas in a pod—no risk was too big, no job was too difficult, and no woman was worth more than a night or two. Chip knew as much about Wes as his five siblings did, and Wes loved him like a brother, but love wasn’t the emotion that was currently brewing in his gut.

“Have you seen my itineraries for the new group?”

Chip flopped into the chair across from Wes’s desk, the amused look in his eyes now coupled with a smirk. He stretched his long legs and clasped his hands behind his head. “How can a guy who’s overprepared for anything outdoors be so frickin’ unorganized with paperwork?”

“Either tell me where they are or get out.” Wes went to the file cabinet near the window and tugged the top drawer open.

“Dude, you do this every other week. Just admit it: You have an aversion to paperwork.”

“Shut up.” Wes slammed the file cabinet closed. He peered out of his office and hollered down the hall, “Clarissa?”

“I don’t have them!” Clarissa Simmons, their secretary and bookkeeper of three years, hollered.

Chip laughed.

Wes slid him another narrow stare. “If you’re not going to help me look for the damn things, get out.”

Chip pushed to his feet. “Did you look in your put-off-until-later pile? That would be my guess.” Chip lifted his chin toward a pile of papers currently holding down the edges of an open map on top of a table in the opposite corner of Wes’s office.

Wes stalked across the floor and snagged the top file in the stack. The itineraries.

“I’ll refrain from telling you I told you so.” Chip snickered as he glanced over the map, checking out Wes’s trail for the overnight with his group. “You’re all set for your days in female hell?”

“Yeah. You want to take them?” Wes loved running the dude ranch and he enjoyed taking charge of the outings, but they’d recently lost Ray Mulligan, a key employee who ran a third of the overnight trips, which left Wes and Chip to pick up the slack until the position was filled. They had flipped for the lead on this group, and Wes had lost.

Chip held his hands up in surrender. “I’m taking the day trips, remember?” He tapped his finger on his chin. “I’m thinking big burly broads who are out to show you how little you know.” He shrugged. “You know, out for a week of fun.”

“Or four women who think that I’m part of the package.” As much as Wes loved women, fending them off during the outings had lost its charm about two months after they opened The Woodlands. He realized exactly what women must feel like when guys like him sized them up for a quick lay.

Wes slapped his leg twice, and Sweets lazily stretched, then scampered out from under the desk and came loyally to his side. She tried to climb up Wes’s legs.

“Down, Sweets.” Wes placed the pup’s paws on the floor and loved her up again. “See you up there,” he said to Chip.

He stopped by Clarissa’s desk on his way out.

Sweets’s nails clicked on the hardwood floors as she walked around Clarissa’s desk. Clarissa glanced up from the spreadsheets she was studying and eyed the file in Wes’s hand. Her dark hair curtained her serious eyes. Though she was seven years younger than Wes’s thirty-two and probably weighed about a hundred pounds soaking wet, she ran the administrative side of The Woodlands with an efficient iron fist.

“Found them, I see.” She bent to kiss Sweets.

Sweets tried to scale her legs and climb into her lap.

“No, Sweets.” Wes shook his head. “I found the file in my procrastination pile.”

Sweets whimpered, then sat at Clarissa’s feet while she petted her.

Clarissa sighed and leaned back in her chair. She was smart as a whip and cute as hell, with long dark hair and a slim figure. More importantly, she was organized and efficient, and though Wes’s siblings thought they’d hook up—given his penchant for cute females—she was a little too tough for his liking, and he’d never seen her in an amorous way. Not to mention that she seemed to have eyes only for his anally efficient partner, who happened to saunter into the room as if on cue.

“You’re still here?” Chip sat on the edge of Clarissa’s desk, and her eyes took a slow roll down his torso.

“Heading out in a sec.”

Chip glanced at Clarissa, and their eyes held for a split second too long.

Clarissa lowered her eyes and began shuffling papers on her desk. “All set for the group?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be.” Wes ran his eyes between Clarissa and Chip. The air practically sizzled between them, but every time Wes brought up the possibility of Chip going out with Clarissa, Chip refused to acknowledge there was even a spark of interest. “Do you have my cheat sheet?”

Clarissa grabbed a piece of paper from the corner of the desk and pushed it across to Wes.

“Kathie Sharp, Bonnie Young, Christine Anderson, and Calliope Barnes, midtwenties, three married, one single, all experienced with high school sports and hiking, yada, yada. No medical concerns, no worries.” She looked up at him from beneath her long bangs. “You’re doing the overnight, right?”

“Yeah.”

Her eyes widened. “Four twenty-something women and one hot wrangler, tents, moonlight, margaritas...”

Wes didn’t live by many rules. And though it wasn’t an official rule, he refrained from hooking up with Woodland guests, much to several sexy guests’ dismay. He slapped his thigh, and Sweets came to his side again. “Have a little faith. The last thing I need is some woman suing me for my trust fund, my resort,
and
my dignity. No, thanks.”

She rolled her eyes and pointed her pencil at him. “Wes, what if one of them is your soul mate? I wish you’d at least leave that door open a crack.”

“Colorado’s a big state. Too many pretty horses in the corral to be roped to just one.” Wes turned and headed for the door with Sweets on his heels.

Sweets jumped onto the front seat of Wes’s pickup truck and settled onto the plaid blanket he’d bought the first night after he’d found her. She rested her head on the books he’d gotten from Callie and looked up at Wes with another yawn. Wes picked up the book on the top of the stack.
Dark Times
. He ran his hand over the cover, thinking of Callie and knowing he’d never have time to read three books with the busy days ahead of him. He usually got through at least one of the books she chose for him. She had good taste, and even if he didn’t get through a single book, he couldn’t stop himself from going back for more. He smiled as he set the book back down, thinking of her curvy little body in that tight black skirt and how flustered she became every time she saw him. She was sweet and proper and nothing like the women he was usually attracted to, and as he drove out of Trusty and headed into the mountains, he couldn’t help but wonder what it might be like to take her hair down and run his fingers through it—and he was powerless to quell his desire to climb beneath her conservative facade and help her move from women’s fiction to erotica.

“THIS IS INCREDIBLE. I’ve never seen a spa like this.” Callie stepped from her friend Kathie Sharp’s Toyota FJ Cruiser and stood beside Bonnie Young. Bonnie was tall and blond and had been Callie’s roommate in college her freshman year, and when they pledged their sorority, they’d met Kathie Sharp and Christine Anderson. The four of them had been best friends ever since.

Kathie and Christine exchanged a look. Christine tucked her short, pin-straight blond hair behind her ear and grabbed her bags from the truck.

Bonnie gripped Callie’s hand.

“Honey, this spa is a little different,” Bonnie explained in the calm, mother-hen tone she was known for. She was their voice of reason and the chosen one of the group to dole out bad news.

Callie took a hard look at the property. Acres of pastures and paddocks surrounded a cedar lodge. She turned back toward the road and noticed that they’d driven beneath a wooden arch. As she turned back toward her friends, she caught sight of two log cabins set up high on a hill. At the foot of the hill, horses grazed by a wooden bridge crossing a stream.

“What exactly do you mean by
different
?” Callie asked. “Are we staying in the cabin instead of the lodge? Because I totally don’t mind.”

“Oh, that’s great. Yes, that’s what she meant.” Kathie picked up Callie’s quilted bags and handed them to her, then slung her own designer bag over her shoulder and carried the smaller one. “Christine, Bon, why don’t you check us in and we’ll start up toward the cabin? The reservations are for cabin two.”

Kathie stopped on the bridge to admire the view. She was a historical fiction novelist, and she found inspiration almost every place they went. “This would make a great writing retreat, wouldn’t it? I could sit right here with my laptop and write about the Wild West.”