Scarlet Butterfly (21 page)

Elli smiled at the thought, and then rolled her eyes.

As if that would ever happen.

“Not only did I run into the goal, but the wall too!”

Shea Adler sat with the side of his face in his hand. His glasses were crooked but he didn’t care. He was beyond embarrassed about what had happened at the Assassins’ photo shoot earlier that day.

“I can’t stand it when I get new contacts. They affect my eyes all to hell. God, it was so embarrassing, Grace. So embarrassing.”

His twin sister laughed on the other end of the phone as Shea rolled his eyes, dropping his hand from his face to get up for a drink of water.

“I don’t know why you’re so embarrassed, Shea. It was only the guys.”

“And the staff!”

“Okay, and the staff. So what?”

“And the photo people!”

“So? You’re never embarrassed about anything. What aren’t you telling me?”

Shea didn’t say anything. He wasn’t telling Grace about the beautiful brunette with the biggest and brightest green eyes he had ever seen. She had the kind of eyes that took his breath away when he looked into them; something that had never happened to him before.

“Who is she?” Grace asked with a knowing voice, “Hopefully not some dumb blonde bimbo who will suck you dry.”

“Hey, no one has sucked me dry!” Shea said defensively.

“They tried.”

“Now you know that’s not true. I won’t even let them close enough to suck me dry.”

“Whatever. You bought the last chick, Marie, a diamond necklace!”

“Because I unknowingly slept with her sister. I felt bad and since I had no intentions on starting anything with her, it was a sorry present before I stopped talking to her.”

“Oh, yeah. Well she should have told you anyway, so who is this new girl?”

“How do you know it’s a woman?”

“Because, like I said, you don’t get embarrassed. So shut up and tell me.”

“I don’t know who she is. She was the photographer today.”

“Okay, and?”

“And she was beautiful.”

“Did you ask her out?”

“No, she is kind of different,” he said sheepishly.

“What the hell, Shea? You are not making sense. Who am I talking to?” she said teasingly, “This isn’t my brother, big scary Captain Adler, because my brother’s motto is ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’ ”

Shea let out a booming laugh, which caused her to laugh.

“I don’t know. She wouldn’t look me in the eye. She was shy, cute.”

“Hmm, sounds like a winner in my book,” Grace said.

“Maybe.”

“So, anyway, the party for this weekend is almost done, planning-wise.”

“Great!”

“I’m excited. The guys are gonna have a ball.”

“That’s why I hired the best party planner in Nashville.”

Grace giggled and went on with the details, as Shea stood in his stainless steel kitchen. Grace had decorated the whole condo for him when they came to Nashville four years ago. He had just gotten traded to the Assassins from the Flyers and couldn’t be happier to be moved to a team that was going to pay a hell of a lot more than the Flyers ever did. Plus, Grace
had hated Philadelphia. Probably as much as Shea did. Luckily, they both loved Nashville since Grace would never go anywhere without Shea, and he wouldn’t go anywhere without her.

The joy of being twins!

Grace had helped pick out the condo, and even lived with him for a while to finish decorating, before looking for her own. Then she met James Justice. After only being together for a couple of months, she got pregnant. Now Grace lived ten minutes from Shea in a beautiful 1.2 million dollar house, blissfully married, with two of the greatest kids in the world, Ryan and Amelia, while running the biggest party planning business in Nashville. Shea couldn’t be happier for her, but he always got nervous at the thought that one day he might be leaving her, if he got traded again.

“Does that sound okay?” Grace asked, bringing him back to the conversation.

“Of course. Do you have a photographer?” Shea found himself asking. Grace started laughing.

“No, you never said you wanted one.”

“Well, maybe it would be a good idea. With all the new players and their families, don’t you think?”

“Yeah. Do you have a certain photographer in mind, Shea?”

“Oh hush, and get her.”

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know, but find her and get her. Offer her a price she can’t refuse.”

“You have no idea what her name is?”

“I think I heard Elli, but I’m not sure. Call Melody, she would know.”

“Fine. I’ve got three days to find this chick. Jeez, Shea.”

“I love you, Gracey,” he cooed. She laughed.

“I love you, too. Bye.”

“Bye.”

He hung up his phone, tucking it into his pocket with a grin on his face. He went to his fridge, smiling at his niece and nephew’s pictures before opening it to get a beer. He popped the top as he walked to the dimly lit living room. He sat down on his leather couch and turned on the TV to catch some of the highlights before turning in for the night. He had an early practice in the morning. Plus, he was volunteering with the team tomorrow afternoon over at Vanderbilt’s Children’s hospital.

As Shea drank his beer, he found himself grinning. If Grace came through, he would be seeing the beautiful photographer by this weekend.

And this time, he would conquer
.

“Get out of my yard!” Ellen shouted.

The weasel-faced photographer ignored her, too busy snapping photos of the house next door to pay her any mind.

No surprise there. This was the fifth time in as many days that a man with a camera had violated her property lines. By now, she knew the drill.

They trespassed. She yelled. They pretended she didn’t exist. She called the police.

Ellen was thoroughly sick of it. She couldn’t carry on this way, watching from the safety of the side porch and clutching her glass of iced tea like an outraged southern belle.

It was all very well for Jamie to tell her to stay put and let the professionals deal with it. Her pop-star brother was safe at home in California, nursing his wounds. And anyway, this kind of attention was the lot he’d chosen in life. He’d decided to be a celebrity, and then he’d made the choice to get involved with Ellen’s neighbor, Carly. The consequences ought to be his to deal with.

Ellen hadn’t invited the paparazzi to descend. She’d made different choices, and they’d led her to college, law school, marriage, divorce, motherhood. They’d led her to this quiet cul-de-sac in Camelot, Ohio, surrounded by woods.

Her choices had also made her the kind of woman who couldn’t easily stand by as some skeevy guy crushed her plants and invaded Carly’s privacy for the umpteenth time since last Friday.

Enough
, she thought.
Enough
.

But until Weasel Face crushed the life out of her favorite hosta—her
mascot
hosta—with his giant brown boot, she didn’t actually intend to act on the thought.

Raised in Chicago, Ellen had grown up ignorant of perennials. When she first moved to Camelot, a new wife in a strange land, she did her best to adapt to the local ways of lawn-mowing and shade-garden cultivation, but during the three years her marriage lasted, she’d killed
every plant she put in the ground.

It was only after her divorce that things started to grow. In the winter after she kicked Richard out for being a philandering dickhead, their son had sprouted from a pea-sized nothing to a solid presence inside her womb, breathing and alive. That spring, the first furled shoots of the hosta poked through the mulch, proving that Ellen was not incompetent, as Richard had so often implied. She and the baby were, in fact, perfectly capable of surviving, even thriving, without anyone’s help.

Two more springs had come and gone, and the hosta kept returning, bigger every year. It became her horticultural buddy. Triumph in plant form.

So Ellen took it personally when Weasel Face stepped on it. Possibly a bit too personally. Swept up in a delicious tide of righteousness, she crossed the lawn and upended her glass of iced tea over the back of his head.

It felt good. It felt
great
, actually—the coiled-spring snap of temper, the clean confidence that came with striking a blow for justice. For the few seconds it lasted, she basked in it. It was such an improvement over standing around.

One more confirmation that powerlessness was for suckers.

But then it was over, and she wondered why she’d wasted the tea, because Weasel Face didn’t so much as flinch. Seemingly unbothered by the dunking, the ice cubes, or the sludgy sugar on the back of his neck, he aimed his camera at Carly’s house and held down the shutter release, capturing photo after photo as an SUV rolled to a stop in the neighboring driveway.

“Get
out
of my
yard
,” Ellen insisted, shoving the man’s shoulder for emphasis. His only response was to reach up, adjust his lens, and carry on.

Now what?
Assault-by-beverage was unfamiliar territory for her. Usually, she stuck with verbal attack. Always, the people she engaged in battle acknowledged her presence on the field. How infuriating to be ignored by the enemy.

“The police are on their way.”

This was a lie, but so what? The man had already been kicked off her property once this
week. He didn’t deserve scrupulous honesty. He didn’t even deserve the tea.

“I’ll leave when they make me,” he said.

“I’m going to press charges this time.”

The photographer squinted into his viewfinder. “Go ahead. I’ll have these pictures sold before the cops get here.”

“I’m not kidding,” she threatened. “I’ll use every single sneaky lawyer trick I can think of to drag out the process. You’ll rot in that jail cell for days before I’m done with you.”

And now she sounded like a street-corner nut job. Not the kind of behavior she approved of, but what was she supposed to do? It was already too late to give up. If she stopped pushing, he would win. Unacceptable.

A tall man stepped out of the SUV. One of her cedar trees partially blocked the view, but she caught a glimpse of mirrored sunglasses and broad shoulders.

“You’re going to be so sorry you didn’t listen to me.”

Weasel Face didn’t even look at her. “Go away, lady.”

“I live here!” She hooked her fingers in his elbow and yanked, screwing up his aim.

The stranger at Carly’s must have heard the escalating argument, because he turned to face them. Ellen’s uninvited guest made an ugly, excited noise low in his throat, edged forward, and smashed a lungwort plant that had been doing really well this year.

Ellen considered kicking him in the shin, but she hadn’t remembered to put shoes on before she rushed out of the house. She settled for a juvenile trick, walking around behind him and sinking her kneecaps into the back of his legs. His knees buckled, and he lost his balance and staggered forward a few paces, destroying a bleeding-heart bush. Then he shot her an evil glare and went right back to taking pictures.

“
Leave
,” she insisted.

“No.” He snapped frame after frame of the stranger as he sauntered toward them and Ellen fumed with anger, frustration, embarrassment, disappointment, fear—all of it swirling around in her chest, making her heart hammer and her stomach clench.

By the time the SUV driver reached her property line, she recognized him. In a village as small as Camelot, you got to know who everybody was eventually. This guy hadn’t been around long, maybe a few months. She’d seen him at the deli at lunchtime, always dressed for the office. Today, he wore a white dress shirt with charcoal slacks, and he looked crisp despite the damp July heat.

One time, she’d been chasing after Henry at the Village Market, and she’d turned a corner and almost walked right into this man. They’d done a shuffling sort of dance, trying to evade one another, and for a few seconds, she hadn’t had a single thought in her head except
Whoa
.

Big guy. Very
whoa
, if you went for that kind of thing.

The two invaders assessed each other for a few beats before
whoa
took off his sunglasses and tucked them into his pocket. He stepped around the obstructive cedar tree and extended his hand to Ellen. “Hi. Caleb Clark.”

She shifted her empty glass from one palm to the other, gripping the slippery surface too tight because an eddy of uninvited relief had turned her arm muscles into limp, noodly things. “Ellen Callahan.”

Caleb’s hand was big and warm, a work-roughened paw that went with the low voice and the hard body. He could be anybody, here for any reason, but a zingy little pulse low in her belly declared that the cavalry had arrived, and the cavalry was really something. It annoyed her—one more primitive, irrational feeling to cope with on top of all the others.

Caleb pumped her arm up and down once, a strangely formal ritual. He didn’t let go of her hand. A mischievous smile crept over his lips. “You’re a scary woman, Ellen Callahan,” he said. “If I were this lowlife piece of shit, I’d be quaking in my boots.”

“You’re wearing dress shoes,” she pointed out.

Caleb looked down at his wingtips. “That I am. I also have the good sense not to step on your plants.”

Weasel Face mumbled something to himself that included the words “might as well” and
“Jamie’s sister,” regrouped, and raised the camera to take pictures of Ellen.

She pulled her fingers from Caleb’s grip so she could cover her face. It was hard to be menacing while cowering, but facelessness was her best shot at spoiling the photos. She didn’t want to see herself on the news tonight wearing this particular outfit.

“Get off her property, or I’m going to make you wish you’d listened to her.”

Caleb issued his threat casually, as if he were flicking a speck of dust off his sleeve. When she peeked at him from behind her hand, he wasn’t even looking at Weasel Face. He was watching her. His lips had settled into a confident smirk that established a confederacy between the two of them she hadn’t expected.