Tangled Hearts (Passion in Paradise) (12 page)

“Foster kids and
orphans aren’t exactly flush with cash when they leave the system, babe.  There
aren’t many options out there for the suddenly poverty stricken.  I hate to say
it, but most of the guys I knew that were in my boat went the crime route.  A
few of us decided that we wouldn’t have looked good in orange and hooked up
with the Armed Forces.”

“Why’d you choose the
Army?” Melody asked.

“Truthfully?” he
queried with a grin.  Seeing her nod, he chuckled.  “Remember you asked for it,
Princess,” he warned her before continuing.  “I chose Army because my recruiter
was one
hot
piece of tail.  Blonde, curvy…. She knew how to fill out a
uniform in a way that pulled all the boys to her yard.”

“You’re revolting,”
Melody returned, revolted by his answer.

“You asked for the
truth,” he returned with a careless shrug, enjoying her ire.  “Which bothers
you more, babe.  My answer or the fact that at one point in my past I looked at
another woman the way I look at you now.”

“Oh, please.  I’m sure
you look at every woman with a working vagina the same way you look at me,”
Melody snapped, flushing as she snatched her bag of jellybeans closer to her
and shoved her hand inside.

“Do you really think
that, Princess?” he asked softly.  “If so, you haven’t been paying attention at
all.”  Cal shook his head, purposefully keeping his face somber.  “Melody, I
don’t look at
any
women other than you now.  I haven’t since the first
day I put eyes on you.”  He could tell she wanted to call bullshit on what he
was saying, but he watched as she visibly withdrew from the direction of the
conversation.  He could almost see the wall rising between them.

“So, you told me why
you joined, but my question was a two-parter, remember,” she stated,
fastidiously ignoring his candid remarks about her.  “Why did you stay in the
Army?”

“Short answer?  The
bottom fell out of the world as we know it on 9/11.  Everything changed that
day.  Almost overnight, I looked up and was surrounded by these kids that had
signed up to do their patriotic duty, and
none
of them knew dick about
the war, the army, or combat in general.  But they were ready to take a bullet
if Uncle Sam asked them to do it.  Those boys and gals were just
kids.
 
I knew I needed to stay in service and do my part to take them from kid to
soldier.  Next thing I knew, I’d put in my twenty years and was workin’ on my
twenty-first and my boss was tappin’ me on the shoulder telling me it was time
to go on to the next phase in my life.”

“Was it worth it?”
Melody asked softly.  “Staying in, I mean?  Did you make the difference that
you hoped to make?”

Pinning her with his
eyes, he nodded.  “I think I did.  I was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan a
total of seven times over the past decade.  I only ever lost a handful of my
boys.  Those were pretty good numbers when you’re dealing with radical
extremists willing to die for their virgins.  I like to believe it’s –at least
in part - because I helped train them the way they needed to be trained to stay
alive.”

“I think that’s a
really good possibility from what RJ has told me,” Melody agreed softly as she
absently twirled a strand of chestnut hair around her index finger.  “He says
that you’re pretty much a legend in the unit.  Something about never asking
anybody to do what you wouldn’t be willing to do yourself.  He says the men
looked up to you.  Still do, from what I hear.  You’re their hero.”

“If I’m their hero,
then they need a better class of role models,” Cal grumbled uncomfortably,
taking a quick swig from his glass of whiskey.  At least, he thought it was
his.  At this point they were just reaching for the closest drink.  “Seriously,
babe, a hero is the guy that jumps on his buddy’s body when the IEDs start
exploding.  I was just a guy that did his job.  Big difference,” he growled,
pissed off at himself for being so uncomfortable.  It wasn’t the first time
somebody had told him he was a hero, but hearing it from her lips was
different.  For her, he wanted to be that guy everybody said he was. 

But he wasn’t.  He
hadn’t died for a comrade.  He had never been in a position to save a life. 
Oh, he knew the argument could be made that by making his boys into
well-trained combat machines, he’d saved lots of lives, but that was bullshit. 
That had been his
job.
  His responsibility.  And nothing Melody or
anyone else said could change his mind.

“Strange,” he heard her
murmur as he took another drink from the dwindling glass of whiskey.  “I never
took you for a humble guy.  You’re so arrogant about everything else that I was
prepared for you to tell me that you were like General Patton on steroids
overseas.”

Cal barked with
laughter, jerking his gaze toward Melody.  “Do you know that nobody has
ever
made me laugh like you do?  No matter what kind of mood I’m in or what kind of
crap is rolling through my mind, I hear you make one of your sarcastic little
quips and just like that…” He snapped his fingers.  “I’m grinning my head off. 
How do you do that?” he asked softly.

Melody smirked.  “I
could tell you, but it’ll cost you your turn.  Are you sure that question is
what you wanna use it on?” she asked with an impish smile as she reached a hand
out to pet Goose as the huge dog lumbered into the room.

“Hell, no!”  Reaching
for the bottle of Jack he poured some more of the liquor into the glass they
now appeared to be sharing.  “I’ve got much more interesting shit that I wanna
know about you.  Like, what’s the most terrifying thing you’ve ever seen?”

Melody didn’t even
pause to think.  “Hands down, it was seeing my matron of honor’s bedazzled woo-woo. 
That shit was mind scarring,” she declared with a shudder of her curvy body. 

Cal choked on his laughter. 
“I’m not sure where to even go with that.  Why in the
hell
were you
looking at your matron of honor’s pussy?  You got some latent lesbian desires
that I wasn’t aware of?  Because, honest to Christ, that’s just hot, babe.”

Melody gasped.  “What? 
No!  I’m straight.  Like really straight.  Like a board, Cal!” she asserted
sharply.  “Not that there’s anything wrong with lesbian love.  All love is
beautiful.  For other people.  For me, love has sucked.  But it sucked inside a
strictly heterosexual relationship,” she babbled, her hand eagerly reaching for
the whiskey so she could take a bracing gulp.

“Hmmm…sounds like an
awful lot of denial there, Melody.  You sure you don’t have some buried
desires.  Staring at another woman’s cooch might be an indication that….”

“She was banging Brad! 
I walked in and found them.  That’s how I saw it!” she exploded furiously. 
“Her bejeweled goods were on full display.  I couldn’t have missed it.  And
believe me, I wanted to.  Because, really, who decorates their lady business? 
Sure, I’m all for a good grooming because – honestly – no man wants to go down
there and find that the jungle has overtaken the flower garden, but still!  To
actually bedazzle the petals of the flower…. Well, that…that’s just
pretentious
!” 

Cal bellowed with
laughter as he watched her tip the glass to her lips again.  He collapsed back
against the chair as he clutched his chest and tried to control his amusement. 
It was a lost cause, however.  The picture she’d painted with her words might
just give him a coronary. 

“It’s not that funny,”
she muttered under her breath, stealing a third drink when another round of
cackles claimed his big body, shaking his massive frame.  Raising her voice,
she glared at him and growled, “For the record, I was traumatized!  The
nightmares I have about that woman’s sequined lady bits are the stuff therapy
bills are made of!”

“Oh, God!  Stop
talking,” Cal managed to gasp through his deep belly laughs.  Forcing himself
to inhale through his nose, he made himself think about every nasty thing he’d
ever witnessed on the battlefield, and slowly, the laughter faded away. 
Looking at her across the table, he absently noted she’d drained the leaden
tumbler of Jack Daniels.  He couldn’t say much… if she’d laughed at him like that
then he probably would have drained it, too.  “Okay, babe,” he said when he
could keep the smile from his voice, “You’re right.  Seeing that image would
be… scarring.  Especially the way you saw it.”  Somehow, he managed to keep a
straight face.

“Thank you,” Melody
returned primly, her eyes slightly glazed as they stared at him. 

“For the record, what
you described… it is pretentious.  And there is nothing worse to a real man
than a pretentious pussy.  A woman that feels the need to deck her puss out in
jewelry is obviously lacking in the talent department.”

Melody beamed.  “See,
that’s what I
thought
, but I’m glad to have it confirmed by a guy.”

“Consider your
suspicion officially confirmed.  Besides, any man that would stick his dick in
another chick while he had you waiting at home… well, he’s a man that didn’t
deserve what he had.”

Cal watched Melody yawn
and smile sluggishly at him.  It was clear that the alcohol was starting to
loosen her up.  “You okay?” he asked when her head lolled backward.

“Yeah,” she sighed
dreamily.  “I’m just getting comfortable.  It’s my turn, right?”

“Right,” he confirmed.

“’Kay,” she said
happily with a jerky nod before nailing him with a blinding smile.  “My
question is have you ever been married or in a committed relationship?  And if
you were in one of those things like marriage or a relationship, did ya ever
cheat?” Leaning over the table, she pointed one long finger at him as she
whispered loudly, “The answer better be ‘no’, buster, or this nice, innocent
game is gonna turn into a bloodbath.  I can’t stand cheaters and you,” she
threatened, coming to her knees so that she could poke his chest, “Well, you
gotta sleep sometime!”

“Babe, believe me, if
you walk into my bedroom, the last thing I’m gonna be doing is sleeping. 
Promise from me to you on that, babe.”

Melody rolled her
overly bright eyes.  “Whatever.  Answer.  The. Question,” she ordered,
punctuating each word with a poke.

Wrapping his hand
around hers, he lifted her offending finger to his mouth and nipped the tip
gently.  “For the record, I’ve never been married.  Never really been in a
long-term relationship that was going anywhere.  The women I was with always
knew I was a short timer because I told ‘em so upfront.  Back then, I wasn’t
interested in creating a home with the kids, the dog and the white picket
fence. They all knew it from the top because I told them I wasn’t ever gonna
give that to them.  They were decent chicks that were all good with what I
could offer them.”

“And that was?” Melody
asked, her face inquisitive as she studied him from across the table.

“The expectation of
fidelity, a good time, and an even better great fuck,” he returned honestly,
unashamed.  He had a past.  Hell, he was in his forties.  Of course he had a
history.  It wasn’t a bad one, but it was a history, nevertheless.  The sooner
she knew about it and accepted it, the better for both of them.  “Look, Melody,
I was no knight in shining armor, but I wasn’t a dick either.  I made it a
policy a long time ago to never lie to those I give a shit about.  And while I
knew those girls I saw back then were never gonna be my wife, I cared enough
about ‘em to give ‘em my dick.  That means I stayed truthful with ‘em.  I think
my longest of those girlfriends – if you wanna call ‘em that- lasted a couple
of years.  I never cheated on her or any of them and I always used protection
with them.  I think if you talked to any of them now, they’d tell you I was a
decent man, but I was never gonna go the distance with them.”

Melody pressed the
fingers of the hand he wasn’t holding to her mostly numb lips.  “I don’t get
it.  You had a successful career.  Despite what I might have said in the past,
you don’t
seem
like a sociopath.  If these were good women that you were
screwin’ around with, then why wouldn’t you wanna take it up a notch with one
of them?  You can’t tell me none of them were Callum Valentine’s version of
marriage material.”

“Yeah, I can.  Because
none of them were The One.  If they were, I’d be happily hitched,” he returned
evenly before biting the tip of her finger again before circling the tip of his
tongue around it.  “C’mon, babe.  Put the puzzle together for me,” he groaned
when she pulled her hand away from him.

“I can’t!  I think you
lost a few pivotal pieces of it, jackass.”  Scrubbing a hand down her face
before dropping it back to the table, Melody squinted at him.  “Basically, you
just told me that you aren’t marriage or committed relationship material, Cal.”

“Nope,” he denied with
a shake of his head.  “I told you that I wasn’t that
for them
,” he
corrected.

“Uhmmm… you haven’t
changed who you are, have you?  You’re still the same man,” Melody argued
fiercely.

“I’m the same man,
babe, but the way I live my life has changed,” Cal pointed out calmly, watching
as she struggled to comprehend what he was trying to convey to her.  “Mel, one
of the primary reasons that I was never interested in settling down before
now
was that I never knew what was going to happen.  The military owned my ass. 
When they said to move, I went.  If the Army said deploy, I was the first one
on the plane.  It was my calling.  And as much as I enjoyed the company of some
of those women I dated, none of them were enough to ever make me want to change
the way I lived my life.  Any woman that I hooked myself up with was gonna come
second to the Army.   I didn’t go looking for someone I could see forever with
because I’d watched what happened to the women my fellow soldiers married.  It
would always start well enough.  They’d be happy and in love for a time, and then
we’d get deployed and those women would begin to feel abandoned.  Those
feelings would often lead them into another man’s arms.  That would lead my
comrades down a dark path.  It was a vicious circle that I learned to avoid
early on.  Now, I’m free, Melody.  Retired.  I can dedicate the time it takes
to building a strong, loving relationship.  My woman can
be
my first and
only priority.  At least, until the babies start to arrive.”