Callie's Cowboy by Karen Leabo Page B

away.
    â€œSam, wait. You don’t understand. This has nothing to do with my job at the paper.”
    â€œThen what exactly
is
your role, huh, Callie? Just an average, concerned citizen?” Fury rolled off him in waves. She could feel them washing over her.
    She hadn’t meant to make him angry. She’d just wanted to be honest with him, because she didn’t like deceiving him. “Will you let me explain what’s going on?”
    He took a deep breath, seeming to get hold of his temper. “Okay.”
    As she gathered her thoughts, wanting to choose just the right words, she noticed her boss staring her down from across the room. “Um, this isn’t really the time orthe place to discuss a sensitive matter, and I have to get back to work. Can I call you?”
    Stubbornly he shook his head. “I want you to look me in the eye when you explain why you’re mucking around in something that ought to be left alone. Don’t you know the pain such groundless speculation could cause my mother?”
    Callie didn’t dare tell Sam it was his own mother who was most suspicious. “Tonight.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œCome over tonight and I’ll explain things to you. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not asking you out on a date.” Or had she? He didn’t appear so angry anymore. In fact, the look he gave her was hot enough to melt her fillings.
    She glanced around nervously. At least no one other than her boss was staring at them, or blatantly eavesdropping. “I’ve really got to go,” she tried again. “Tonight? I’ll meet you on neutral ground if you want.”
    â€œI’ll come to your house,” he finally agreed.
    â€œOkay, then.” That gave her the rest of the day to figure out what she would tell him.
    Callie tried, she really did, to concentrate on the damn city council story. But she hadn’t done this type of mundane reporting in a long time, and the words that should have come automatically from her brain to her fingertips to the computer screen now had to be dragged one laborious syllable at a time.
    â€œYou were late to the council meeting this morning, Miss Calloway.”
    Callie jumped, not having expected company. She’d left instructions with her secretary that she wasn’t to be disturbed until this dumb story was finished. Unfortunately, nothing was going to keep Tom Winers, publisher of the
Destiny Daily Record
, out of her office if that’s where he wanted to be.
    â€œMorning, Tom,” she said after taking a fortifying gulp of cold coffee. She didn’t have time for this.
    She and her boss had never enjoyed the best of employer/employee relationships. After the
Record
’s former editor had moved on, Tom had stepped into the man’s rather large shoes and had all but driven the paper out of business with his brand of “journalism,” learned from tabloid talk shows, no doubt. The staff was desperate for anyone to take over the reins, and Callie was the most qualified.
    She and Tom both knew he’d promoted her more because of pressure from the rest of the staff than because he harbored any real faith in her abilities.
    Even now, two years after she’d moved her things into the editor’s office, Tom was still trying to trip her up so he could prove he had been right all along and reinstall himself as editor.
    â€œIs there something I can do for you, Tom?” She glanced at her watch, thinking about deadlines and her jam-packed schedule for the rest of the day.
    â€œYou certainly can. You can tell me why you’re locked up here in your ivory tower doing a routine story any intern could handle. You have more important responsibilities. Like wearing shoes.”
    Callie didn’t respond to the rib. “Joey’s sick with the flu, Emma’s on vacation, and Eloise is covering the cattleauction over at the fairgrounds. Unless I wanted to send Amelia