Opposites (Never) Attract (Calloways vs. McGraws Book 2), page 2
“Kaitlyn?” Tag asked me, one un-manicured eyebrow raised.
“It’s my professional name.”
He looked me up and down like he was finally taking in my appearance. Two thousand dollar business suit, contacts, instead of glasses. A white gold Rolex watch. Shoes that cost as much as a horse, and not an oversized backpack in sight.
It took everything in me not to cock my hip and dare him to look all he liked.
That ugly duckling he once knew was long gone. I’d killed her with my Louboutin stilettos.
Tag snorted. “Your name’s Sunshine, Sunshine.”
“That’s it,” Kirk said. “I’m getting security.”
Kirk stepped behind me on his way to the conference room door. Tag held up his hand, and like a well-trained dog, Kirk stopped in his tracks.
“Excuse me, sir,” he told Kirk, like he was being totally reasonable. “I just need a minute to talk to an old family friend.”
When I didn’t move, he cocked his head in a way that was entirely too familiar, even though I hadn’t seen him in years.
“Easy or hard, Sunshine? Either way, this is happening. You decide.”
“I think I just had an orgasm,” Ellen whispered, loud enough for the room to hear.
“Fine,” I said, behind gritted teeth. I walked toward him with an authority I hoped surprised him a little. Not at all like the Sunshine Calloway he’d once known. I hoped. “Everyone, if you’ll excuse me a minute? Please take this opportunity to discuss amongst yourselves strategies to increase those returns for Q4.”
I held my breath as I brushed past Tag out the glass door. I didn’t want to smell him. Wind and weather and rawhide. Horse and cedar and sage.
I didn’t want to remember what home smelled like.
The door slowly closed behind us, but I could feel all the eyes staring at us through the meeting room walls.
“Follow me,” I said between clenched teeth, and I strode past reception.
Matthew, my administrative assistant, stood nervously in front of his desk, which was the gateway to my office. “Kaitlyn, I’m so sorry. I tried to stop him. But he’s so…big.”
“It’s okay, Matthew,” I assured him. “We’ll need coffee for this meeting. Can you grab us a pot?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Of course. Coffee.”
Matthew sprinted off.
I opened the door to my office and stepped back to let Tag walk through. He hesitated, the idea of walking in front of a woman probably painful to him, but I gave him a look I’d been perfecting for nearly a decade. A single raised right eyebrow that said don’t fuck with me.
He only chuckled.
I’d slayed captains of industry with that eyebrow. Not only wasn’t Tag intimidated, but he found it funny.
He was going to have to learn very quickly that I was no longer the ugly duckling school girl I’d been. I didn’t hide in corners with books on macroeconomics. I didn’t avoid people or parties anymore. I didn’t suffer bullies who called me nerd, loser, or, my personal favorite, un-fuckable.
Smarty Sunshine was dead. She was the shy little girl I’d buried when I got on the plane to New York and Columbia University. Armed with the healthy investment portfolio I’d been building with my birthday money since the eighth grade, I made myself into a whole new person.
Kaitlyn Calloway was a powerful swan. With teeth.
Columbia graduate at nineteen, Wharton School of Business graduate at twenty-one. She’d risen steadily through the ranks of one of the most prestigious brokerage firms in the city. She lived in the upper east side in an apartment with a doorman. She went to only the most high-profile parties. She was invited out for drinks nearly every Friday night.
And she was hit on regularly by very hot New York men.
Me. I was hit on by men. Stop referring to yourself in the third person.
I waited until the door was closed behind us. The soundproofed glass walls were tinted so I could see out, but no one could see in.
Billion-dollar decisions happened in this office. There could be no risk of eavesdroppers.
“What’s a qufor?” Tag asked.
“Huh?”
“Sounded like you wanted more money out of your qufor, but I don’t know what the hell a qufor is.”
It took a second until I realized what he was talking about. “Q. Four. It means fourth quarter of the year. October through December.”
“Why not just say that?” he asked.
“What are you doing here, Tag?” I asked, straight to the point.
“Leroy McGraw is dead.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said.
You could take the girl out of Last Hope Gulch, but you couldn’t leave The Calloway/McGraw drama behind entirely. I knew what was happening back home, but I’d refused to engage with the insanity.
The last year had been beyond ludicrous from my vantage point in New York.
“Your sister is married,” he said. “To Ethan McGraw.”
My phone was silently buzzing in my hand and I hit the space bar on my desktop, waking up my Mac. The Asian markets were active and North America was responding.
Time was money in the trading world and Tag was costing me both.
“Again, not new information. I don’t care what Leroy McGraw’s will said, I told Harmony she was insane to do it.”
Old man Leroy McGraw apparently had been a drama queen in his will. Trying to right every wrong between our long-feuding families by insisting that one of his sons marry one of my sisters in order to save the town and the Feud Day Festival. Or, it seemed he was prepared to donate all of the McGraw land to the federal land bureau.
And, of course, my do-gooder, people-pleasing sister raised her hand and ended up married to her high school nemesis, Ethan McGraw.
When Harmony told me about it, I thought she was joking, but no, that’s just the kind of stuff that happened in Last Hope Gulch.
“You should know, my vote was to tell Old Man McGraw and his sons to screw themselves and let the Bureau of Land Management take the ranch. Last Hope Gulch can figure its own shit out. No one agreed with me. Obviously.”
Tag had no response to that, so I answered an urgent email from one of my bigger clients. If I played my cards right, I believed that my client, a Singaporean tech entrepreneur, was the key to getting my partnership sooner rather than later.
I hit send with a flourish and looked up to gauge what the silent, broody cowboy thought about my utter disinterest in his small-town soap opera.
He was just standing there. Arms at his side, not moving.
“What?” I asked, because I felt like he was expecting something from me.
“Waiting for your full attention, Sunshine.”
“My name is Kaitlyn, now,” I said.
“Known you since you were a baby. That’s going to be hard.”
“Around here we strive for what’s hard,” I said, then glanced down at my thousand dollar watch to let him know he was wasting his time. “You have my complete attention. For exactly fifteen more minutes. Then I have work I need to get back to.”
“Can’t do this on a clock. How about I take you out to dinner?”
I blinked. Then I blinked again. Going on a date with Tag Durham, was my teenage dream come true.
“I’m sorry. Did you just ask me to dinner?”
“First time in New York. Heard there’s good food here.”
“The best food in the world is here.” I said, like I was defending New York’s honor.
He knocked his hat back further on his head and grinned at me. My cold heart skipped a beat. “A steak is a steak, darlin. Don’t see how much better it can be in a city that doesn’t have any cows, but I’ll bite. Can you get us into some fancy ass place?”
“I know the manager of 4 Charles,” I said, but he had no idea that 4 Charles was the hardest reservation to get in the city. My flex was wasted on him. “But we’re not having dinner. Just say whatever it is you need to say, then you can head back home.”
“What I need to say to you takes time. Besides, don’t you want to show your old friend from home some of the big city sights?”
I bristled at the word friend.
Fifteen years ago, if Tag had called me his friend it would have sent me over the moon. He’d been everything I’d ever dreamed about in a guy. Tall, strong, handsome. Never a bully. Always looking out for those who were younger or smaller or weaker, which was just about everyone in his orbit. He was every girl’s crush even though he’d dated Jenny Masters exclusively since his junior year.
Who was he dating now, I wondered?
It didn’t matter. Tag Durham,was definitively my past. I stepped toward him, needing every inch of my height, and I gave him my best - I am not here to play games or suffer fools - voice. “Just because we’re from the same nowhere town in Wyoming, doesn’t make us friends. If the McGraws and the Calloways have proven anything, it’s that.”
“I’m not a McGraw.”
I sniffed. “Might as well be. They all but adopted you into their conclave of assholes.”
He tilted his head back and laughed. Reminding me of my teenage fascination with Tag’s Adam’s apple. I used to imagine licking it.
Now, I imagined sinking my teeth into it and ripping it out like a female lion.
I tugged on the bottom of my suit coat.
“Sunshine, my daddy worked for the McGraws for thirty years, and now I work for them too. Nothing asshole about that. Just a cowboy making a living. Now, I’ve taken enough time out of your day. I can see that, what with you being so important and everything. You find a fancy place for us to eat tonight, and we’ll talk.”
“You said you were here to take me home,” I reminded him.
He lifted an eyebrow.
“When you interrupted my meeting, you said you were here to bring me home. That’s not going to happen. You know that, right?”
“We’ll talk.”
“Tag…”
Matthew knocked on the office door and peeked his head inside. “I have coffee. Also, Jared’s heard about the…commotion, and would like a word with you later this afternoon.”
Of course. Jared.
Jared had been awarded partner last year and was currently the biggest pain in my ass. Nitpicking my every move as he assessed if I was partner-worthy myself.
Quietly, Matthew stepped into the office, placed the tray with a carafe and cups on a table by the window.
“Sunshine. Hear me out,” Tag said, tucking his hands in the pockets of his denim coat. “If you give me the time and I can’t convince you to come home, then I’ll go.”
“Matthew,” I said, my eyes riveted to Tag and the beard on his face that looked impossibly soft. This was undoubtedly a mistake, but I was going to honor my teenage self. “Thank you for the coffee. Could you do me a favor and call my dear friend over at 4 Charles and ask him if he can get me a table for two tonight?”
“Tonight?” There was a pitch to his voice that I knew all too well. It was his that’s impossible tone.
But I had transformed myself from Sunshine Calloway of Last Hope Gulch, to Kaitlyn Calloway, senior leader of one of the largest brokerage firms in America.
Which meant nothing was impossible.
“Tell Johnny it’s a special occasion,” I said, with a smile to Tag. “There is an old friend from home visiting in town.”
Tag smiled back and I had to look away, flustered and weirdly giddy.
Cowboy charm. It was a helluva thing.
TWO
TAG
New York fucking City.
How the fuck did people breathe in this place? The only thing that made walking on the sidewalks tolerable, was the fact everybody knew where they were fucking going and they were trying to get there fast.
Claustrophobic as hell from the steel and glass buildings surrounding me, I didn’t look up. Just kept my eyes forward and counted down the street blocks until I got to my hotel.
Once there, I had to ride the tin can up to my floor, which I also hated.
It was me and two other men on the elevator. We were so tightly caged, that at one point, a shoulder brushed against mine. I growled in my throat at the man standing too close to me. He immediately crowded the other guy instead.
Good choice.
As soon as the doors opened, I stepped out, even though I knew it wasn’t my floor. I found the staircase at the end of the hall and climbed the extra eight floors just to avoid the moving box.
The room where I was staying was considered a deluxe. It barely fit a king-sized bed and a desk.
The view, though…this was why so many people chose to live on top of each other in this city. It was why Sunshine chose to live here. When you were this high, it felt a little like floating on top of the world.
My cell phone buzzed in my pocket and I checked the screen.
Harmony: Did you find her? Did she say yes? Did she kick you in the balls?
Me: Yes. No. No. Going to have dinner tonight.
Harmony: Remember what I told you.
Me: Yes. No picking her up and carrying her out of the city allowed. Even though it would solve a lot of problems.
Harmony: Yes, that too. But you can’t tell her the real reason she needs to come home. You just have to make her come home. To her family.
Family. That was a loaded word these days.
But I understood family. Dad, the McGraws. Hell, everyone in Last Hope Gulch was family. Good, bad or ugly.
Only I didn’t think about Sunshine like family.
Sunshine was always something else.
The Last Hope K-12 school system never knew what to do with her. They kept skipping her grades ahead, until how special she was became lost in how awkward she was.
Sitting in on all my senior classes when she was only fifteen, she was still smarter than everyone else. So painfully awkward and earnest, she became an easy mark to the assholes who didn’t see she was meant for bigger things.
Sticking up for her was just the right thing to do.
There were times in high school when I could practically feel her eyeballs on me. Figured it was probably just some starry-eyed crush, but I never called her out on it.
Sunshine had no friends that I ever saw her with, because she had no one in her age group who could relate to her. Certainly the boys in school would have nothing to do with her.
From an early age, she’d been saddled with the nickname Smarty Sunshine, and she’d never been able to shake it. Too smart, too awkward, with glasses, braces, bad hair and pimples – the poor kid didn’t stand a chance.
Not like her sisters, who were all red-headed knockouts.
In so many ways, she never fit in anywhere.
Not with school friends. Not with the town. Not even with her family.
Which, now that I knew the truth…made sense.
She fit in here, though. She looked expensive and sleek with that sharp haircut and those killer red lips. That suit that probably cost more than my truck, that hugged all the curves she didn’t have when she was fifteen. Everyone in that office watched her like she was the fucking boss.
Alone in this hotel room, I could allow myself to think it. To say it.
“Hot.” I breathed. Sunshine Calloway had grown up, from an awkward kid, to a beautiful woman, who, by the looks of it, was really, really good at making money.
Something the McGraws were counting on.
Pulling open the door of the fancy steak house, I stepped inside and let the door close behind me. Immediately, the noise from outside was gone. The sea of people shouting into their phones. The non-stop honking of horns. Trucks rattling through the streets. But once the door of the restaurant shut behind me, all of that was suddenly muffled, leaving just the quiet hush of a fancy restaurant that smelled like money.
Call me crazy, but I wanted my steak houses to smell like meat and fire, but I wasn’t going to complain.
If it got me ten minutes alone with Sunshine, I’d take it.
She was waiting at the end of the long mahogany bar, speaking to a man who was hanging on every word she said. For a second, I watched the exchange, fascinated by her in her element, the same way I’d been fascinated by her in that conference room. She commanded attention here. Demanded it.
The guy wasn’t putting any moves on her, but he said something that made her laugh and tip her head back. Her blond hair caught the light from the chandeliers overhead and turned all that warm blond hair to gold and bronze.
I realized, watching her, I’d never heard her laugh. She had a good laugh. Throaty and rich, nothing faked. It was a sound that hit me in the gut and made me want more.
She’d changed out of her killer suit into wide-legged pants and a yellow plaid jacket that screamed fashion, without much common sense. It was raining outside and that jacket wouldn’t protect her against the elements even a little.
Still, in that color, she lit up the whole damn room.
I’d never seen her so…I couldn’t think of the word I was reaching for.
Hot, sure. That was easy. Everyone looking at her could see she was drop-dead gorgeous.
Happy.
That was it. I’d never seen her happy. Never with her guard down. Never not braced for judgement or hurtful nicknames.
She never stood with her chin raised and her shoulders straight, head tipped back in laughter. That realization sucked. She had to leave home to be happy.
I felt this irrational and overwhelming bomb of anger. Pissed at myself, her family, and the entire population of the Gulch, really.
A lot of people had treated her like shit.
And none of us did enough to protect her.
Now I was here to demand that she come home and save all our asses with that big brain of hers.
She was going to tell me to go fuck myself and she was going to be dead right to do it.
Telling her the truth bomb I’d learned at Leroy McGraw’s second will reading wasn’t an option.
That was something that needed to come from her mother. Her sisters.
