Free HER CALLAHAN FAMILY MAN by Tina Leonard Page B

couldn’t believe Sawyer had meant to harm his family. She’d won him at the ball for a reason, and it hadn’t been just to tell him about the babies.
    Ash was right: the path didn’t point straight, with a magical road map. In fact, it was bumpy as hell and strewn with potholes.
    He’d see his wife soon enough, and then they’d get everything worked out. Somehow.
    * * *
    “I T ’ S NOT GOING to work.” Sawyer laid Ash’s keys on the kitchen counter and looked at Fiona Callahan, the eccentric aunt of the Callahan clan. “Jace doesn’t trust me. And he has no reason to.” She took a deep breath. “Fiona, I need a place to stay, but it can’t be here. Nor at my uncle’s old place.” She’d be too close to Jace, and she knew Running Bear wouldn’t want her staying anywhere near Rancho Diablo, anyway.
    Fiona shook her head. “You just let me pour you a cup of tea, Sawyer. You look exhausted. It’s a long drive from Colorado. Goodness, you should have flown!”
    “I wanted to drive. I like driving to clear my thoughts.”
    “Well,” Fiona said, putting a pretty china cup with pink flowers on it in front of her and a bowl of sugar cubes next to that, “Jace is going to want you to be with him, so you might as well get used to the idea. I’d stay put until he gets back.”
    Sawyer picked up the delicate cup. “Fiona, I can’t. You don’t understand what I’ve done. He has a reason to feel the way he does.”
    “Let’s let Jace decide how he feels, shall we?” The older woman slid a piece of spice cake next to Sawyer’s tea. “Patience rules the day, I always say.”
    Patience wasn’t going to help her. Sawyer was so ashamed she could hardly bear it. Everything had happened so quickly, had gotten away from her. She’d prided herself on being a competent bodyguard, and then had let herself operate from a position of weakness. Let herself be wrangled into a bad situation that could never be fixed.
    “Why don’t you go upstairs and take a little nap?” Fiona suggested.
    “Why are you still here?” Sawyer asked suddenly. “If it’s so dangerous at the ranch, with the Feds and the spies and the reporters crawling everywhere, why haven’t your nephews made you leave?”
    Fiona smiled. “When you’re my age, you get to do as you please. And I cook.” She tried to sound lighthearted, saw that Sawyer wasn’t convinced. “I’ve already been kidnapped by Wolf, and he doesn’t want me again. Have you forgotten I burned his last haunt down to the ground?” She looked very satisfied by that. “Life is good in my world.”
    “I can’t wait to be at that point.”
    “You’re closer than you think.” Fiona smiled at her, then turned to put a sheet cake in the oven. “It’s all about believing in your purpose.”
    “Maybe.” Sawyer’s purpose had changed. Maybe that was the problem: she’d drifted. Gotten off course.
    “Wait until those babies are born. You’ll have so much purpose you’ll be overflowing with it. Everything will get better.”
    Not if her marriage wasn’t going to work out. “I betrayed your family, Fiona.”
    “Let us decide that. Even if you did, what really happened? Isn’t our house still standing? Aren’t we still a family?” Fiona topped off her tea. “No one can take the important things in life away, if one knows what those treasures are.”
    “You’re trying to make me feel better.”
    “And I’m succeeding. Now eat that cake. I made blue-ribbon spice cake, my dear, and there’s nothing better in February than homemade spice cake with cream cheese frosting.”
    Sawyer dutifully ate a bite—and to her surprise, the cake actually seemed to make her feel better. Or maybe it was Fiona, or being in the house where Jace lived. Hope rose inside her.
    Maybe things could work out, after all. Maybe he wouldn’t regret marrying a woman from the wrong ranch.
    Maybe he would.

Chapter Seven
    Sawyer was in bed upstairs at Rancho Diablo, as Fiona had talked her