She smiled again and went back to the galley.
Caleb drank a little more of the Scotch.
This was one of those times having an entire jet to himself was one damned fine idea. He could pace, as he had already done; drink, as he was now doing; talk to himself and avoid all contact with humanity except for his pilot, his co-pilot and the cabin attendant.
Now if could only avoid contact with himself….
But he couldn’t. His head was full of nonsense.
He kept going over that last confrontation with Sage, trying to figure out how they’d gone from making love to making war with hardly any time in between.
He kept seeing her face, the anger in her eyes …
The passion in them, only a little while before.
“Dammit,” he said, and he put aside the tumbler of Scotch, plucked the satellite phone from its niche, punched in a number, heard Travis say hello.
“It’s me,” Caleb barked.
“Caleb?”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
“Well, no. What you said was ‘it’s me,’ and I hate to tell you this, dude, but there are probably zillions of me’s in this world, and I’d bet I know at least a couple of hundred of them.”
“Very funny.”
“Yeah, well, we aim to please.”
“Is Jake with you?”
“You want to be accurate, I’m with Jake at El Sueño. As you’ll be, in a little while … or are you calling to say you’re not gonna make this meeting?”
“Are you in the ranch office? Switch to speaker phone, okay? But shut the door first.”
“Any more instructions?”
Caleb closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers.
“Travis.”
“Yeah?”
“I want to talk to both of you. And I need to warn you, I’m not in a good mood.”
“Nothin’ new there, pal. You always were too uptight for your own—”
“Trav. I need—I need advice.”
Silence. Then he heard his brother say, “Jake? It’s Caleb.” He heard him say something else, too, but the words were muffled as if Travis had put his hand over the phone.
A second later, he heard the slightly hollow sound that meant Travis had switched to speaker phone.
“Caleb?”
“Jake?”
“Yes. Caleb, Travis says—”