Always Look Twice (23 page)

‘‘News?’’ she murmured. ‘‘What news?’’

And where was Mark?

She walked out onto the porch and scanned the area. She waved to one of the men from Texas assigned to patrol the farmhouse. The chug of an engine drew her gaze to the field to the west, where she spied Adam perched atop the seat of the John Deere tractor. Still no Mark.

Back inside, she called, ‘‘Callahan?’’

No response. Frowning, she gave the first floor another quick search, then climbed the staircase. She found him in her mother’s sewing room, sound asleep in her grandmother’s old padded rocking chair, one leg propped upon the matching ottoman, the other sprawled out on the floor. A magazine lay open on his lap. He held his cell phone clutched in his right hand.

He let out a soft snore.

The sight and the sound suddenly catapulted Annabelle back to a moment in their past when he was working out of DC and she was based in San Diego.

For a change of pace, when it was his turn to choose the spot for one of their getaway weekends, Mark had forsaken the glitz and glamour of the city and rented a cabin on a lake in the Ozark Mountains. Her flight had been diverted due to weather and she was late arriving. Four or five hours late, as she recalled. She had arrived midafternoon and instead of finding him fishing like she had expected, she’d walked into the cabin and interrupted his afternoon nap.

Ordinarily when they were together, whether on a mission or later during their marriage, Annabelle dropped off to sleep first. She had never caught him napping, never heard him snore. That day, she achieved both. He’d been stretched out on a couch with the sports page draped across his chest, sawing logs so loudly that he didn’t hear her come inside. It was the first time, the only time, she ever managed to sneak up on him.

He’d looked boyish in sleep that day, softly relaxed, a lock of hair curling down over his brow. Then he’d opened his eyes and smiled at her, a slow, steamy flash of teeth.

There was nothing of the boy in that smile, in that look in his eyes. No softness in the man whatsoever.

He had crooked his finger at her. That’s it. Just lifted a hand and wiggled that index finger and put her into some sort of sexual trance that had pulled her like the moon pulls the tides.

He never said a word. The entire time, everything he did to her, everything they did together, was accomplished without a single word being spoken between them.

She closed her eyes, remembering. The ripple of muscle beneath naked bronzed skin. The earthiness of his scent. His salty, masculine taste. The dark power of his touch as he compelled her to respond, as he freed her of all her inhibitions.

It had been rough, raw, and erotic. Fantasy sex. Forbidden sex. The kind of sex she could never have admitted she wanted. The kind of sex that brought shivers to her skin even now at the memory of it.

My God.

Now years later, here in her mother’s sewing room, she felt herself sway as she experienced that pull once again. Opening her eyes, she found Mark awake and staring at her. This time there was no wicked smile of welcome, but the look in his eyes, the heat in his eyes, was as familiar to her as . . . her dreams.

‘‘What are we going to do about this, Annabelle?’’ he asked.

She might have tried to deny she understood him, but she didn’t have the energy to lie. ‘‘Nothing has changed. We can’t keep rolling the dice. I don’t want to be a single mother.’’

He put his feet on the floor and sat forward, his elbows propped on his knees, his head resting in his hands. Annabelle took a step backward, preparing to retreat. They could start this day over again later downstairs, where the mood wasn’t so personal. Then he stopped her with a pair of world-rocking words. ‘‘You won’t.’’

Everything inside her tensed. ‘‘What do you mean?’’

After a long moment, he lifted his head. Still, his eyes didn’t quite meet hers. ‘‘If you’re pregnant, we’ll remarry. I don’t run from my responsibilities.’’

For a long moment, she felt nothing. Then pain whipped through her like a windstorm. Did the man intentionally mean to hurt her, or was he simply stupid like a . . . a . . . a man? ‘‘Why do I suddenly feel like the Irish waitress in
Caddyshack
?’’

Callahan blinked, obviously caught off guard. Then she could see him mentally reviewing the movie, saw when he recalled the scene where the waitress’s period was late and the caddy took the news on the chin, then stoically said,
We’ll just get married.

‘‘Gee, Noonan,’’ she said, sarcasm dripping from her tongue as she continued in
Caddyshack
-speak. ‘‘You hit that right in the lumberyard, didn’t you?’’

Now she’d made him mad. He shoved to his feet. ‘‘Dammit, Annabelle, don’t—.’’

‘‘No.’’ She cut him off. ‘‘
You
don’t. I’m tired of your attitude, Callahan. This hot and cold thing simply doesn’t work for me.’’

‘‘Attitude has nothing to do with it. We’re talking about a child here. Our child.’’

‘‘You mean the child you didn’t want two and a half years ago? The child you still didn’t want yesterday up on that mountain? That child?’’

‘‘Yes, that child,’’ he fired back. ‘‘Look, you are right. I admit it. I
am
a coward. The idea of fatherhood scares the crap out of me.’’

That shocked her. She never dreamed he would admit it. The Mark Callahan she knew would never admit to such weakness. For some weird reason the fact that he had admitted it only stoked the fires of her temper hotter.

‘‘But guess what?’’ he continued, his voice frustrated and accusing. ‘‘The thought of giving you up again is almost as frightening. Been there, done that. Hated it. I’m in a bind here, Annabelle, and I don’t know what to do about it because I haven’t had the chance to think about it. I’ve been too busy trying to find a killer to even sleep, much less solve my relationship psychoses.’’

‘‘Is that what I am?’’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘‘A relationship psychosis?’’

He froze. Seconds ticked by. The he blinked and flashed a grin that laughed at them both. ‘‘Honey, you are not a psychosis—you are a disease.’’

He reached out and grabbed her wrist, then yanked her against him. ‘‘You are in my blood, in my bones, and I have finally realized that you are there to stay.’’

But she wasn’t ready to let it go. Petulantly, she muttered, ‘‘So I’m an incurable disease. Lovely. I—’’

He swooped down and hushed her with a kiss—a long, deep melding of mouths that drained her of her temper and left her feeling raw and confused.

‘‘It will be okay, Belle,’’ he said against her temple.

‘‘I promise. We will figure it all out. We just need to give it a little time.’’

‘‘Nothing is easy, is it?’’

‘‘You and I aren’t the type of people to go for easy. We are all about challenge.’’

She nuzzled against him, inhaling his familiar scent, enjoying the comfort of his arms. They stayed that way for a good five minutes before a rumble from his stomach made her laugh. ‘‘Do you need breakfast, Callahan?’’

‘‘Lunch. I had breakfast with your mother.’’

With that, the moment of intimacy was behind them and Annabelle returned her attention to matters that required immediate attention. Like her own need for coffee.

‘‘Speaking of my mother, what ‘news’ did you tell her and why were you sleeping in her sewing room?’’

‘‘Oh.’’ Mark snapped his fingers. ‘‘I almost forgot.’’

He scooped up a magazine and his cell phone off the floor beside the rocker. ‘‘The kitchen she likes is in this issue and the magazine was up here. I sat down to make my calls and that’s all it took. That chair, Annabelle. It doesn’t look all that comfortable, but once you sit down . . . wow. Do you think she’d sell it to me?’’

‘‘She’d rather sell one of her children,’’ Annabelle replied, a note of dryness in her tone. ‘‘What calls? Something about Ron Kurtz?’’

‘‘No. The kitchen. Turned out to be pretty easy, since the exact setup was already assembled and ready to ship to a builder in Florida. All I had to do was change the receiving address and expedite shipping.’’

She put the clues together. The news her mother’s note referred to was kitchen news. Always interested in countertops herself, Annabelle grabbed the magazine. ‘‘Which one is it?’’

‘‘Page twenty-seven.’’

She flipped the pages to a beautiful French country kitchen. ‘‘What part is she getting?’’

‘‘The kitchen.’’ Mark pressed by her and exited the sewing room.

‘‘What part of the kitchen?’’ Annabelle asked as she followed him downstairs, mentally reviewing just what in the kitchen was salvageable. The fridge was fine. She needed a new stove and one entire section of cabinets.

‘‘The whole thing.’’

Annabelle mentally tallied the costs, then frowned. ‘‘My parents can’t afford this.’’

‘‘The unit’s insurance will pay for it.’’

‘‘What unit insurance? There is no unit insurance.’’

‘‘Sure, there is. It’s private insurance.’’

Private insurance? Then suddenly, she knew. Callahan Casualty, no doubt. ‘‘But—’’

‘‘Annabelle, think.’’ His green eyes bored into her. ‘‘Your mother told me that your father is a proud man. The damages to your mother’s kitchen happened because of the unit. I’m the unit commander. I’m the head Fixer. Let me fix this.’’

‘‘Head Fixer? You?’’ She snorted even as a warm rush of affection flowed over her. For all his faults— of which there were many—Mark Callahan had always had a generous heart. ‘‘I guess that when it comes to kitchens, the Fixers could follow a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.’’

‘‘Exactly.’’ He grinned at her, then added, ‘‘Well, except when one Fixer tells another where to find the kolaches your mother mentioned before she left?’’

A short time later she sipped from her cup of freshly brewed coffee and refused his offer of ten dollars for the last fruit-filled pastry, the single one she’d claimed from the entire plate now empty but for crumbs. Only then did she feel up to facing the day.

‘‘Were you able to find out anything more about Kurtz after I went to bed last night?’’

He nodded. ‘‘I prepared a dossier. Made a copy for you.’’ He pushed back from the table, saying, ‘‘Let me get it.’’

Annabelle watched him walk away, knowing she should keep her mind on the business at hand, but unable to look away from his very fine butt. She took a bite of her sweet roll and sighed.

A minute later, he tossed a butterfly-clipped, two-inch-thick stack of papers in front of her. ‘‘Whoa. All this? What time did you go to bed last night?’’

He shrugged. ‘‘I don’t know. I lost track of time.’’

She flipped through the pages. ‘‘Does anything in here say where he is right now?’’

‘‘That I couldn’t find. If he’s flying, he’s using false ID. I found no rental cars, no current credit cards, but get this. He was last seen at his current address in upstate New York four months ago. That was just a couple weeks after he had a visitor.’’ He paused, waited for her to meet his gaze, then said, ‘‘Dennis Nelson.’’

‘‘Our Dennis Nelson?’’ When he nodded, she took another sip of coffee and considered. ‘‘That’s the trigger.’’

‘‘Yep. I suspect so.’’

Annabelle drummed her fingers on the table. ‘‘Now that we know who we are looking for, we will find him, right? People can’t hide in this day and age. Not for long, anyway.’’

‘‘We’ll find him, Annabelle.’’

The farmhouse telephone rang then, and Annabelle rose to answer it. Her sister Lissa called with the news that she was bringing lunch from one of their favorite restaurants in town. Annabelle knew better than to tell her that she’d just finished breakfast. While the sisters chatted, Annabelle noted that Mark had wandered over to the framed pictures that crowded one wall of the entry hall—her mother and father’s proud ‘‘Hall of Fame.’’

Annabelle visualized what he saw. Adam at bat at T-ball, his eyes scrunched shut. Lissa in her ballerina costume at Halloween. Amy poised to dive into the pool at her first swim-team race. Annabelle was up there, too, of course. In the high school drama club’s production of
Our Town.
Riding her bicycle with her best friend, playing cards clothespinned to the spokes of their wheels to turn them into ‘‘motorcycles.’’ In front of the army recruiting office with Sergeant Harwell the morning she left for basic training.

She watched the smile on his face slowly fade as he reached the north end of the wall. The baby section. Annabelle and her siblings, Adam’s three children, and Lissa’s four. Her mother grouped the babies together because she loved to point out the family resemblance between them all.

Lissa’s voice came over the receiver. ‘‘. . . Daddy’s color was putrid. I swear, Anna-B, what is wrong with Aunt Polly?’’

‘‘If I try to answer that, we will still be talking when it’s time for my shift at the hospital tonight.’’

Lissa laughed and declared she was on her way. They said good-bye and Annabelle hung up the phone.

Mark stood in front of the babies, his hands shoved into his pockets. The strain on his face made her heart break all over again.

Looking for something . . . anything . . . to distract him, she said, ‘‘Lissa is on her way with lunch. You have to promise me not to tell her that I just ate breakfast.’’

He grabbed on to her conversational distraction like a lifeline. ‘‘Oh yeah? What’s it worth to me?’’

Before she could answer, his cell phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket, checked the number, then answered, saying, ‘‘Hey there, Noah.’’

He turned away as he listened and Annabelle slowly became aware of the subtle stiffening of his stance. She moved around to see his face.