Along Came Trouble: A Loveswept Contemporary Romance (25 page)

Strangely, the thought didn’t scare her. Much.

Later, they took a shower together, and Caleb dried her off and got her dirty again bent over the corner of the bed. He pulled back the covers and spooned her against him, untangling her hair with his fingers.

After a while, Ellen leaned over to grab the remote and put the movie on. It was way past her bedtime, and she didn’t know if they’d stay awake for it, but it hardly mattered—she just wanted to pile one indulgence on top of another.
The Big Sleep
on her TV and the hottest guy in the Midwest in her bed. Bacall should be so lucky.

When Philip Marlowe met General Sternwood among the orchids, she craned around to admire Caleb’s face. Such an absurdly gorgeous man. “Did they tease you in the army for being so good-looking?”

Caleb smiled. “You think I’m good-looking?”

“Don’t be smug. It’s unbecoming.”

He kissed her forehead. “You never said I was good-looking. I thought you were just putting up with my ugly face so you could get your hands on my body.”

She smoothed one hand over his back. “I’ve never really been a beefcake kind of girl.” Her fingers slipped down his side to trail over his hard stomach.

He chuckled and trapped her hands. “No? You like your men short and flabby?”

“Yep,” she agreed, resting her head on his shoulder. “And pale, with pimples on their backs. That way, I know they’ll never throw me over for somebody more exciting.”

He went taut, and then he took a deep breath and let it out slowly, his muscles relaxing again.

“You heard,” she said. “About Richard.”

“Yeah.”

It was inevitable, she supposed. In the early days after the divorce, she’d gone around town feeling like she had a big “S” for “Sucker” written on her forehead. As soon as she’d kicked Richard out, everyone from her hairstylist to the guy behind the counter at the deli had begun offering her evidence of her husband’s bad behavior, as if she’d be anxious now to store up knowledge of every awful thing he’d ever done behind her back.

There were rather a lot of them. Some were even over twenty-one.

“Can I ask you about him?”

She owed Caleb two more questions. It would have been three, since he’d had one left over from the chocolate-sauce round, but it had expired. Or it was about to, anyway. She was willing to fudge the timeline if it meant she didn’t have to answer three questions about Richard.

“Maybe,” she said.

“What’s up with the leather vest?”

Surprised, she looked up, and the mischief in Caleb’s eyes made her smile despite her
nerves.

“I mean, it looked pretty broken in. Does he wear it all the time?”

She laughed. Caleb tickled her ribs, turning her laughter into helpless giggles.

“Do chicks go for that woebegone poet crap? Huh? Because if that’s what you want in a man, honey, I don’t stand a chance.”

He pushed her onto her back and tickled her armpits and the backs of her knees, smiling down at her as she batted ineffectually at his hands. She laughed until she got a stitch in her side and had to curl into a fetal ball and beg him in the weak, happy voice of a little girl to stop, stop, please stop.

When she finally caught her breath, she said, “I need a drink of water.” She’d go get one. Just as soon as she worked up the energy to move her legs.

“I’ll get it.” He popped up and headed for the kitchen, scooping up his briefs and pants at the threshold and pulling them on.

“If you had blinds out there, I wouldn’t have to get dressed,” he said casually.

“I’m not buying blinds, Clark.”

“I’m not buying a leather vest.”

She smiled as she watched him disappear down the hall, admiring the shape of him. Admiring
him
.

To think she’d considered him little more than eye candy when he first showed up in her yard. She’d underestimated him. He was smart. A clever warrior, honorable and brave. Frighteningly perceptive. He already understood her well enough to know when to press and when to back off. He’d known she didn’t want to talk about Richard, so he’d played it safe and got her laughing, and now he was giving her a few minutes alone to think.

Maybe she ought to tell him. Not everything. Not all her fears, and the pressure she was under. How it got so heavy sometimes she couldn’t sleep for feeling suffocated. But maybe she could be honest about why she felt so threatened by his need to protect her.

She could tell the truth about what she wanted from him.

Only she didn’t know that herself. She’d told him she wanted sex, but it didn’t feel true anymore. Not
only
sex, anyway. Maybe something else. Something more.

From the other end of the house, she heard the sucking sound of the refrigerator door opening, and then the clink as he set a glass on the tile countertop to pour water from the pitcher. The bump of a shoulder against something solid as the side door stuck and then gave, opening into the kitchen. And her brother’s surprised voice saying, “Who the hell are you?”

Chapter Nineteen

Even with a baseball cap throwing his face into shadow, Jamie Callahan looked like his sister. They moved the same. Scanning the backyard through the window over the sink, Caleb had spotted him coming even before the new security light mounted over the back patio lit him up, but it wasn’t until Callahan came around the side porch, tripping a second light, that he had known for sure he was looking at Ellen’s brother rather than an intruder.

Though at the moment, even Ellen’s brother seemed like an intruder. Caleb was glad the guy was back for Carly’s sake, but his timing sucked, and his social skills left a little something to be desired.

“I’m Caleb Clark.” He offered his hand and took a perverse pleasure in realizing how short Jamie was. He had a solid build, but damn, he couldn’t be more than half an inch taller than his sister. Five-ten, maybe. With shoes on.

Callahan shook his hand firmly, but his eyes kept darting to Caleb’s bare chest as if he’d never seen one before. “You—you’re Ellen’s—”

“Boyfriend.” He was grateful Ellen wasn’t in the room to object. He was
trying
to be her boyfriend, and tonight he’d been getting somewhere. Even if she wasn’t ready to talk about Richard, she’d answered his other questions. When he’d left her bedroom, he’ had her exactly how he wanted her—naked, happy, and pink-cheeked from her latest orgasm.

Glowering as if he could read Caleb’s mind, Callahan asked, “Is Ellen home?”

“She’s in her room. I’m sure she’ll be out in a few minutes.”

Caleb couldn’t blame him for looking pissed off. If Caleb had walked in on a half-dressed stranger in Katie’s kitchen, he wouldn’t be too happy either. Of course, Katie’s kitchen was
his
kitchen, which changed the equation. But Ellen kept the spare room for her brother. Maybe it wasn’t all that different.

What would Caleb want to hear if he were in Callahan’s position?

I’m not sleeping with your sister
.

Well, he wasn’t going to lie to the man.

Instead, he said, “Aren’t you supposed to be in Houston right now?”

“Change of plans.”

“You were supposed to notify Breckenridge if you planned to return to town.”

“I decided to keep a low profile. If the vultures knew I was coming here, they’d be all over this place, but since I managed to sneak in through the back, no one knows where I am.”

“You filed a flight plan, though,” Caleb said, thinking,
Bad. Really bad
. Jamie must have canceled a big arena show at the last minute, dodged the press, and flown incognito to Ohio. He’d just made himself three hundred times more interesting. And Caleb’s job three hundred times harder.

“Yeah, they’ll find me eventually. I thought I’d give the yokels a chance to beef up security on Carly and Ellen before they do.”

“You could’ve given the yokels a chance to do that before you got here. Now they’ll have to scramble. And anyway, it’s reckless for you to go around unprotected.”

Jamie bristled. “Who are you to call me reckless?”

“I’m the yokels,” Caleb said evenly. “I own Camelot Security.”

“You’re the guy Breckenridge hired? Ellen’s bodyguard?”

“Ellen doesn’t have a bodyguard. But yeah, I’m in charge of her security. And yours, now that you’re here.”

“Not doing much of a job of it, are you, if I can walk in without alerting a single person?”

“I saw you coming,” Caleb said reasonably, though the remark had put him on the defensive. “You set off the lights, and if the door had been locked for the night, you’d have been out there on the porch long enough to catch my team’s attention.” He hoped.

“Where’s the alarm system? Carly and Ellen should have guards at their doors. Guys with Dobermans. Jesus, what kind of fly-by-night operation are you running here?”

Okay, now Jamie was starting to tick him off. “I had an alarm system put up at Carly’s place. Your sister refused one. My teams make regular patrols around the perimeter. Short of erecting a fence, there’s not much more I can do.”

With Jamie here, he might have to get that fence up after all. Maybe get the Camelot Police Department to establish a roadblock down by the stop sign. Wouldn’t Ellen love that?

“You could put men on the doors,” Jamie insisted.

“You have
met
Carly, right? And you know your sister. What are the odds of that working out?”

Callahan looked at the floor for a few beats, and when he raised his head, a reluctant smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. Caleb caught his first glimpse of Jamie’s fabled charisma. The guy was movie-star handsome, and he had a gleaming Hollywood smile. “Zilch. Ellen would kick them off the property, and Carly would invite them in to play poker and eat weird sandwiches.”

“Welcome to my life.”

Jamie leaned one hip on the counter and studied him, friendlier now. “So you and Ellen, huh?”

Caleb braced his hands behind him and forced his muscles to relax, unsure how best to
approach this situation. “Yeah.”

“You like her?”

“Yeah.”

How articulate. Ellen’s brother was going to think he was a caveman.

Jamie nodded, and then he apparently decided Caleb was all right, because he said, “That’s good. She deserves a little fun.”

Caleb wanted to correct him. He didn’t want Callahan thinking all he was after from Ellen was a good time. He didn’t want anybody thinking that. But just then, Ellen appeared from down the hall, and he lost his train of thought. She’d combed her wet hair and put on ratty track pants and her purple T-shirt. She had a big, glorious, open-hearted smile on her face that lit him up from across the room. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to take her in his arms and swing her around in a circle and tell her he was falling hard for her.

But it was probably a good thing he didn’t, because it turned out she wasn’t smiling at him.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, crossing the room to throw her arms around Jamie.

“I got your message.” He gave Ellen a quick squeeze, then asked, “Have you seen Carly?”

Ellen nodded, grabbing Jamie’s hat off his head and tossing it on the table. “I went over this afternoon. She seems fine. Prickly as a cactus, though.”

That made Caleb smile. No one noticed. Ellen had given all her attention to Jamie, who’d fixed his own attention out the window at the dark shape of Carly’s house.

Scrubbing his hand over the two-day stubble on his chin, Jamie asked, “Did she … Does she mention me?”

Ellen shook her head. “Oh, no. I am
so
not getting in the middle of this. If you want to talk to Carly, you go over and talk to Carly. I’m not playing messenger for you.”

Jamie sighed. “She won’t return my calls. Or my texts. I don’t think she’ll let me in.”

If Jamie was used to compliance, he’d fallen for the wrong woman. Maybe Carly would be good for him.

But would he be good for her? Carly was going to have a baby. She needed stability—a guy who would watch out for her and the kid, not make her life more complicated. Someone who could appreciate her charms, such as they were, and tamp down her more reckless impulses. Jamie Callahan had run at the first sign of trouble, and now that he was back, it seemed he was too spineless to even knock on her door.

“What do you expect, an engraved invitation? She’s pissed at you.”

Jamie glanced at him, surprised. “How well do you know Carly?”

“Better than you.”

“Nobody knows Carly better than me.” Jamie looked taller when he said it. Maybe the guy had a spine after all.

“You care about her?”

“I love her.”

Ellen beamed, but the declaration irritated Caleb. If Jamie loved Carly, he had a hell of a way of showing it. “Why’d you leave her here alone, then? She’s got nobody to take care of her, and you hurt her and yelled at her and abandoned her to the sharks.”

“I was trying to protect her.” Jamie put his hands on his hips. “I didn’t want her to have to deal with—” He broke off suddenly, glaring at Caleb exactly the way Ellen did when Caleb had made her angry. “You know what? It’s none of your business.”

“Carly’s my friend. You should’ve asked her what
she
wanted. She can make up her own mind.”

“Oh my God, would you both shut up?” Ellen said. “Seriously, you can have your pissing contest some other time. Nobody’s going over to Carly’s house tonight anyway. It’s way too late.”

Caleb cracked a sheepish smile. Maybe he’d gone a little overboard. It had been a long day, but Carly probably didn’t need him to be her white knight. He wouldn’t mind passing the lance along to Callahan, provided the guy showed himself capable of carrying it.

“Sorry,” Caleb said, and Ellen rewarded him by returning the smile.

“No problem,” Jamie said. “Ellen, you got anything to eat?”

They left the argument behind to sit at the kitchen table and watch Jamie eat what was left of the pizza while he turned the details of his escape from Houston into a funny story for their benefit. His heart didn’t seem to be in it, though. After he finished the tale, Ellen peppered him with questions, but he kept glancing over Caleb’s shoulder at Carly’s dark house, rubbing his jaw and brooding until Ellen got him talking again. After a while, she touched his arm and asked, “Are you okay, Jamie? Really?”