Along Came Trouble: A Loveswept Contemporary Romance (34 page)

This, on the other hand. This was ridiculous. She’d only been awake twenty minutes, and she felt as if her adrenal glands had been squeezed flat in a cider press. When she’d smelled the alcohol fumes coming off Richard, a sharp, shocking stab of disappointment had killed off the
hope she hadn’t even known she was nourishing—hope that he might stay sober and figure out how to redeem himself someday. Figure out how to be a decent person and build a relationship with their son.

A stupid, foolish, babyish hope, given who he was and everything he’d done in the last twenty-four hours. But it had kicked and screamed as it died.

Then there was the mix of relief and anger that had pricked her skin when Caleb came up behind her and tried to step in, defending her from Richard’s drunken outburst. The way her pulse had sounded in her ears again. The sick dismay that had gripped her when Richard reduced Caleb to a piece of ass she was using to scratch an itch. He’d said outrageous things, degrading Caleb and cheapening her, sullying everything the two of them had shared.

Outrageous things she hadn’t denied, because she was still heartsick and confused over what had happened between them last night. The way he’d looked at her. Fear had squeezed her lungs so hard, she could hardly breathe. Caleb wasn’t supposed to look at her that way. She hadn’t signed up for it. But when he did, her panicked reaction had been mixed with happiness she couldn’t ignore or deny, and a raw need for him that left her shaky and horribly confused.

She couldn’t begin to deal with it. She hadn’t even tried.

This morning, she’d awakened in his arms and turned automatically to bury her face in the crook of his neck, where he always smelled like cedar and Caleb. A warm, soft joy had crept through her, a suffusion of peace like nothing she’d ever felt before.

Then Richard had started shouting.

Too many feelings. She’d spent the past week on one cheap fair ride after another, screaming with frightened excitement, bracing her neck and shoulders against every jolt. But she wanted to get off. She didn’t have the guts for this, or the stamina. She was a single mother living in rural Ohio, yet somehow there was an emergency security fence around her property line and a pop star giving impromptu concerts in her neighbor’s yard. There were paparazzi at the end of the driveway taking pictures as two grown men fought over her on the front step.

Her life was not supposed to be like this. Her life was holding Henry and eating his rejected graham crackers and answering the question “Why?” four hundred times in a row until she got so bored with talking about construction equipment and steam engines she was ready to nod off.

She wanted her life back,
needed
it back. Needed to feel as though she held the reins.

Except there was still a soldier with split knuckles and a stern, beautiful face in her kitchen, and she was going to have to deal with him sooner or later. Ellen sighed and walked back down the hall, carrying his shirt.

He had his back to her, phone to his ear, but he caught sight of her coming into the room and said, “I have to go.” Then a pause. “Just call me when he does … Okay, love you, too.”

He disconnected. “My sister Katie.”

Ellen stepped close enough to hand him the shirt. “I met her.” Katie had Caleb’s dark hair and intense eyes. She’d been friendly and fun and intimidating beyond description. She’d made it clear her brother was no Romeo. Which meant Ellen wasn’t and had never been a Chiclet. Ellen didn’t know what to think about that.

Caleb’s eyes were dark and inscrutable, holding none of the indulgent amusement she’d grown used to seeing there. “She invited you to dinner,” he said. “Wednesday night at our house. We’re having my whole family over for my nephew’s birthday. Six o’clock.”

Our house
. “You live with Katie?”

“Katie lives with me.”

Ellen didn’t know where Caleb lived, any more than she’d known he lived with his sister. She didn’t know if the nephew was Katie’s son or if Caleb had another sister.

The depth of her ignorance made her acutely conscious of her selfishness. They’d done the most intimate things together, but she’d asked him virtually nothing personal. What kind of game had she been playing?

“The party’s for Clark,” Caleb said, bailing her out. “He’s turning ten. He’s my sister Amber’s kid.”

Katie and Amber, then. He could have more sisters, though. He could have brothers, too.

Ellen covered her face with her hands and tried to think what she wanted to say to him. It was surprisingly difficult. Her mind was a dark, musty attic full of truths hidden in steamer trunks and beneath drop cloths. How was she supposed to find anything?

“Yes or no, Ellen. It’s a simple question.”

Unsure what he meant, she had to back up the conversation in her head to find it. Dinner. She was invited to a big family dinner at Caleb’s house, where she would be … what? His girlfriend? His lover?

What did she want to be?

She ducked it. “I can’t. I’ll have Henry on Wednesday.”

“Henry’s welcome, too. I’d never invite you anywhere without inviting Henry.”

Frustration made his voice sharp, and she bit right back. “How am I supposed to know that? Some people don’t like kids.”

He laid the shirt over the back of a chair and stepped closer, crossing his arms. “You’re supposed to know because you’ve seen me with Henry, and you know I like him. Christ, Ellen. Who do you think I am, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” she insisted. “I don’t know you very well.”

She didn’t. She didn’t know about his family, and she hadn’t known how he felt about her, and she hadn’t known he was going to punch Richard. Until he’d done it, she’d have sworn
he had better control of his feelings than that, and she’d have sworn she didn’t want him to defend her.

Wrong on both counts.

His jaw tightened, and he took a deep breath and shook his head. “That’s bullshit.”

“I didn’t know you lived with your sister.”

“You didn’t
want
to know. You don’t want to meet my family, either, which is why you’re going to find a way to turn down my invitation. You think it’s safer if you keep me at arm’s length, so you treat me like a fucking sex toy.”

The blow hit her hard, as he’d intended. Would it hurt so much if he weren’t right?

She didn’t know. He
was
right. She’d been treating him like a sex toy, a roving dick she could climb aboard because it suited her purposes. She hadn’t tried to get to know him. Getting to know him would make her vulnerable. What if she fell in love again and it turned out to be a mistake, and this time she dragged her son along for the ride?

“I’m sorry. God, Caleb, I’m really sorry.”

He watched her, every inch the stoic soldier. If she was hurting him, he wasn’t going to show it.

“Why didn’t you fight back?”

Against Richard, he meant. He’d wanted her to defend him against all the terrible things her ex had said about him, to defend herself rather than let Richard run her down.

Even after everything Richard had put her through in the past few days, it had been easy to let him abuse her. Not because she believed he had a right to—she’d come too far for that.

But she also had years of practice dealing with him when he was drunk, and she’d known it would be useless to confront him. When she did that, he got angry and loud and vicious, and she’d desperately wanted to prevent a scene on her front porch that would get him arrested. If he got arrested, he’d be fired, and without his job, Richard would become an unemployable drunk.

She didn’t want her son’s father to be an unemployable drunk. He was already bad enough.

“He’s Henry’s dad,” she said with a shrug. “I don’t want things to get any worse than they already are.”

“He’s a worthless father. He sold your son out to a photographer with a criminal record, and he’s trying to worm his way back into your life. And you’re going to let him.”

“I’m not going to—wait, what? What criminal record?”

Caleb’s expression went blank.

“You mean Weasel Face? He’s a criminal?”

He nodded, grave and silent.

Child pornography
, she thought.
Murder. Rape. Jesus Christ, who did Richard let take pictures of my son?

“Burglary,” Caleb told her. “And assault.”

And then she understood it all at once, so clear and obvious that she didn’t know why she hadn’t questioned it before. Weasel Face was a felon, and Caleb had known. That was why the police had come. Caleb hadn’t called them from Maureen’s house. They’d shown up because he’d called them earlier. He’d known who the photographer was, known he was dangerous, and he hadn’t told her.

“When did you find out?”

He sighed. “Right after we met. Before I put the deadbolts on.”

“And you didn’t say anything.”

“I was trying to keep—”

“You were trying to keep me safe, yeah, I get it. I never asked you to, but it’s your thing, right? It’s what makes you feel powerful and worthwhile, Caleb to the rescue. Did you ever stop to wonder how it makes me feel? Ever ask yourself what it’s like to be the person who’s not worth informing, the little woman who’s so fucking feeble, nobody can bear to let her handle her own problems?” She turned away and walked over to the window, unable to look at him.

Her yard was empty, the garden tidy and colorful except for the place where Weasel Face had stood. There, the hosta still looked trampled, and the bleeding-heart bush listed to one side.

In that moment, she hated everything. The plants. The house. Caleb. Herself most of all, for letting all of this happen to her. She’d wanted Caleb’s strength. She’d asked for it. But this was what she got for relying on a man—belittled. This was what she always got.

“I didn’t stand up to Richard,” she said, staring outside, “because I didn’t want him to lose his job.”

She heard Caleb take a deep breath. “Yeah. Well, now I’m going to lose mine.”

She turned to face him. “For hitting Richard? That seems a little harsh.”

“Breckenridge is looking for an excuse. Assault will do.”

“You’ve been working so hard.”

“Doesn’t matter. I was hired to keep you and Carly and Jamie safe and out of the public eye. This morning, Jamie’s striptease is going to be headline news all over the world, and your drunk ex-husband turned up on your porch ready to start a fight.” He let out a disgusted breath. “I deserve to be fired. I don’t have the judgment to do this job.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said without thinking.

“Maybe. But I don’t have the brains the good Lord gave an ant, so what do you expect?”

“Don’t throw that in my face. Richard said that, not me.”

“Yeah, but Richard was right. You don’t take me seriously.”

“I do.” She’d never seen him as a sex toy, not for a minute. Yes, she’d treated him that
way, but it wasn’t how she
saw
him. From that first night on her porch, she’d known he was smart. She appreciated his sense of humor, and she admired the way he did his job.

She’d also never once told him any of that. What had she told him? That he was good-looking.

She’d exploited him.
Way to go, Ellen
.

“Come to dinner on Wednesday.”

“No.”

He turned his hands palms up.
See?

She’d proved his point.

“I’m in love with you,” he said.

Her stomach sank. It was so completely the wrong thing for him to say, the wrong time for him to say it. The wrong feeling.

Rubbing her fingers between her eyebrows, Ellen tried to think herself out of the mess she’d gotten them both into, but she couldn’t. Her heart was beating too fast, pounding out
He loves you, He loves you, He loves you
, each iteration making her throat hurt from emotion she couldn’t seem to name or claim.

Part of her wanted to go to him, to kiss him, but it got overruled by the much larger part of her that just wanted to end this, to finalize her sabotage of a relationship she never should have allowed in the first place. She’d treated him unfairly, but she couldn’t see her way to doing better. Her life was a mess.
She
was a mess, selfish and guarded, too twisted up and defensive to love anybody properly.

And was Caleb really any better? What kind of love was he offering her? His protection was another form of disrespect, another brand of manipulation. She couldn’t love somebody like that. Not again.

“What do you want from me?” she asked.

“I want
you
Ellen. The whole you. I told you that from the beginning. But that was my mistake, wasn’t it?”

Abruptly, he ripped the ice pack off and straightened his bruised fingers, stretching them with his right hand. He’d swung with his left. She hadn’t even known he was left-handed, and the detail punched through her indecision, a final nail in the coffin. She had nothing to give him but more of her inattention, her misplaced resistance and stubborn fear.

His knuckles were swollen and bruised. He needed a woman who would wash out his wounds in warm water. Stitch him up. Comfort him if he lost his job, and help him understand it wasn’t his fault.

She didn’t want to be that woman.

He put on his shirt and started working the buttons with his bad hand, and she couldn’t
bear it. She brushed his fingers aside and did it for him and tried not to think about what that made her.

Caleb needed to find someone who could give him her whole heart. Someone generous and strong. She couldn’t even bring herself to go to dinner at his house.

“I’m sorry,” she said after she’d slipped the last button through its hole. “I can’t give you what you want. It wasn’t in the contract.”

He flinched, and then his eyes hardened and he stepped close enough for her to feel the heat coming off his body. He put his cold hand on her face. “You owe me an answer. From last night.”

She didn’t, but he wasn’t asking her. And the truth was, silly game or no, she owed him a lot more than a few answers.

“Ask me.” She met his eyes for a moment. It was hard to look at him directly. It always had been when things turned serious between them. When he was deep inside her, she’d never let herself hold his gaze. She’d never been willing to take the risk. She couldn’t take it now.