chapter Nine
“Sweetie, that fire truck is huge, and you haven’t played with it for a week. You’re not taking it to Grammy Maureen’s house.”
“Henry take that one.”
“No, not that one either.”
Ellen scooped her son’s last four clean T-shirts out of the drawer and added them to the bag. The Thursday afternoon packing-for-Grammy’s had simplified as Henry grew out of the tiny-baby stage, but it remained a challenge due to his newfound desire to “help” by bringing her countless precious objects that he insisted had to come with him. Tongs from the kitchen. All of his fire trucks from the living room play area. The plunger from the bathroom. No, no, and eww.
She zipped the bag shut before he could come up with anything else and carried it out to drop it beside the front door, where she saw a man standing behind the screen.
This time, it wasn’t Caleb. It was an older guy in a blue uniform shirt that said “Bill” over the breast pocket, and behind him the tallest, skinniest, palest, Abraham-Lincoln-lookingest sidekick she’d ever laid eyes on.
“Hello!” Bill said cheerily. “You must be Mrs. Callahan. We’re going to have to shut off the power for a while to get these lights installed, and then for the alarm we’ll have to turn it on and off a few times. Can you show me the way to the master switch, or do I need to have a poke around myself?”
Henry meandered out of his room, caught sight of the strangers, and wrapped his arms around Ellen’s bare leg.
“You—” she began. “What—”
Scrambling. Her brain was half a beat from figuring out what was going on, but apparently her emotional intelligence had an edge, because emotionally she’d already moved on from confusion to irritation, and something like full-blown outrage waited not so patiently in the wings.
“Not to worry. A lot of women don’t know where to find the shut-off. We’ll have a look ourselves. You’ll just want to turn off the television and computers and such before we flip it.” He reached for the handle on the screen door and pulled it open a few feet.
“Out,” she managed to say, her voice thick and choked. “Get off my porch.”
“Mrs. Callahan?”
Her thinking brain caught up. “You’re not installing any lights on my house. Or any alarm system. Get off my porch. Please.” She picked up Henry, opened the screen door, and stepped outside. Bill and the Human Cadaver eased back to the top step. Bill’s jovial smile had faded slightly. He plucked a piece of paper from his pocket and inspected it, then looked up at her house number.
“This is 334 Burgess, isn’t it? Mr. Clark sent us here to do the installation. Said it was a rush job, had to be done today.”
She pitched her voice as close to civil as she could manage—which wasn’t terribly close—and said, “This is not Mr. Clark’s house. It’s mine. You don’t have my permission to install anything, nor do you have my permission to continue standing on my porch. This is the third and final time I’m going to ask you to get off my property. If you’re not gone in five minutes, I’m going to call the police and tell them you’re trespassing. Is that clear?”
Bill and the circus freak backed all the way down the steps. “Yes ma’am, that’s clear. I’ll just call Mr. Clark.”
“It won’t make any difference.”
He glanced at her over his shoulder as he scuttled to the work van. “We’ll call Caleb,” he said, loud enough so she knew she was meant to hear it, and then both of them ducked inside and left her standing on her front porch, hand on one hip, toddler on the other. Glowering.
“Cabe is?” Henry asked, unaffected by her mood.
“I don’t know, Peanut, but I have a feeling we’re going to find out.”
The van backed past the Camelot Security SUV to park on the street, and then the workmen and the security men formed a huddle near the bottom of the driveway, talking to one another and looking up at her intermittently, as if she were the enemy and they needed to regroup to come up with a superior plan of attack.
Bring on the cannons, fellas. Bring on the catapult, and that big log thing they use to bust down the doors. She was in the mood to fight for her castle. Hell, she was in the mood to dump a big cauldron of tar on the handsomest, most annoying man in Camelot, Ohio.
Henry was in the mood to get down. “Play with the chalk,” he said.
“You want your sidewalk chalk?”
“Yas.”
So she got out the bucket of sidewalk chalk, checking first to make sure the spot where they settled wouldn’t be visible to any stray photographers in the cul-de-sac. She and Henry drew pictures on the asphalt, which wasn’t the best rage-sustaining activity. Toddlers did have a way of puncturing a good rage.
Funny thing, that—how hard it was to hold on to anger around Henry, and how hard it had been to stay upset with Caleb when he’d shown up at her house with a box of tools, looking sexy as sin in jeans and an olive T-shirt that clung to his chest. Making her heart beat too fast. Paying more attention to her son than Richard ever had.
When she’d gotten close to him to reclaim Henry, he’d smelled like sawdust and brass, and she hadn’t been able to figure out what to look at, where to put her hands, what to say to him. She’d felt so irrationally betrayed, and so annoyed with herself for feeling that way, that she hadn’t even been able to meet his eyes.
He’d been completely unaffected. Installing the damn deadbolts over her objections, without reading the instructions, and entertaining her son while he was at it. She’d found herself tempted to toss him a few bowling pins, to see if he could juggle, too. See if there was any job he couldn’t handle.
It was only business between them. She knew that. He had a job to do, and she had to either let him do it or fire him. Instead, she kept fluttering around, a bird without talons. Screeching at him but doing next to nothing to stop him.
And all the while, admiring him. His decisiveness. His competence. His body.
Human biology was such a cruel joke.
Henry made her draw a rainbow, a pot of gold, a leprechaun, and a goat. All but the first were well outside her artistic skill set. Ellen looked up from time to time at the scrum of men at the end of her driveway and nurtured her resentment, but somehow she felt as though the battle had already been lost.
“What’s that, a giraffe?”
Caleb. Damn it, she hadn’t heard him coming. She got to her feet in a hurry, but man, he was tall. And unruffled. And sexy. And she was once again at a disadvantage, her legs streaked with green chalk dust, her pathetic attempt at a leprechaun visible for all the world to see.
“Get them out of here,” she demanded.
“Who?”
“Bill and What’s-His-Name. You’re not installing lights on my house, and you’re not installing an alarm system, either.”
“No,” he said, slowly. “Bill and Matthias are going to do that.”
“I can’t believe you. I made my views on this perfectly clear last night, and they haven’t—” Her train of thought derailed. “His name is Matthias?”
Caleb smiled. “Yep. He has a sister named Millicent. She’s even taller.”
“That’s horrible. His mother must be very cruel. Or insane.”
“Artsy,” he explained. “I think she wanted to make sure they’d stand out from the crowd.”
“That man would stand out anywhere. Except maybe at Lincoln convention in a stove-pipe hat.”
He chuckled, and she covered her mouth with her hand, horrified. She was making him laugh. She was a hair’s breadth away from flirting with him, again, now, when she was supposed to be tipping cauldrons of tar off the battlements onto his head. For heaven’s sake.
She tried again. “Get them out of here, Clark, or I’m calling the police.”
He sobered, showed her his palm with the thumb tucked over his pinky. “Three lights. One over each of the two entrances that don’t have them, one outside your bedroom window. They only come on if something moves outside, and even then only for a couple minutes before they shut themselves back off.”
“No.”
“You can leave the alarm system off during the day. All you have to do is hit one button to turn it on at night and another one to turn it off in the morning. It doesn’t even beep.”
“No.”
“Your house is not safe.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Anyone could walk in at any time.”
“But no one will. This is Camelot, Clark. The whole entire point of living in a village of two thousand people in central Ohio is that you can leave your doors open during the day, and you don’t have to have security lights and alarm systems.”
Even as she said it, she knew she was being unreasonable. Three new lights and an alarm system—it wasn’t exactly armed guards on every door, or even the Secret Service–type guys in blazers who followed Jamie around backstage when he did a show. It was middle ground. Ceding it would not mean she’d lost the whole war.
But the sound of Caleb cutting holes in her doors earlier had set her nerves on edge. She’d felt as if she were walking around naked. Turned inside out. Exposed.
It was the principle of the thing. Having decisions made for her, being told she needed Caleb, she needed anybody, messed with her head.
It was Richard.
Richard had manipulated her, controlled her, used her to feel better about himself. He’d always been telling her what she meant and what she thought, what she ought to think. Patronizing her. Pitying her. Pushing her around with words and helpful suggestions and veiled put-downs.
She didn’t want her house tampered with—didn’t want her life tampered with. Not when it had taken her this long to get it all just the way she liked it. She’d had to fight so hard for her independence, she barely remembered how to yield, and she didn’t want to have to learn all over again.
Caleb folded his arms over his chest. It hadn’t gotten any less broad since she last looked at it. His biceps hadn’t gotten any smaller, either. At some point after he left her house, he’d ditched the jeans and T-shirt for dark slacks and a pale gray dress shirt with white pinstripes. The sleeves were rolled up in deference to the heat, which gave her a rather delectable view of his forearms, ropy with muscle and sprinkled with dark hair.
She was a pervert. Only a pervert would get turned on by forearms at a time like this.
“This is a special situation,” he said. “There are enough strangers in town to fill all the rooms at the Camelot Inn, and most of them have press cards and deadlines and an insatiable curiosity about your brother. A curiosity that might extend to you and your son if they get desperate enough for a story.”
He had a point, but she was in no mood to hear it. Or she hadn’t been, until a minute ago.
Perhaps he sensed her weakening, because he said, “Let’s negotiate.”
That snapped her out of the forearm trance and brought her eyes to his face. “You’re in no position to negotiate. You have nothing I want.”
The smirk returned. “Nothing?”
Oh, you cocky bastard. “Nothing.”
“I had something you wanted last night.”
“Says who?”
He stepped closer. Close enough for her to see his mid-afternoon stubble and to wonder how he’d broken his nose. Whether he’d played football for Mount Pleasant High or gotten into a fight defending some woman’s honor in a barroom on the other side of the world. Some Chiclet.
Not a hearth-and-home guy, Ellen reminded herself. Carly had told her Caleb was a player. He certainly had the charm for it. The confidence that was almost arrogance.
“You wanted me to kiss you,” he murmured.
“In your dreams.”
His eyes were black and daring. Daring her to do what, exactly? There were four men watching them from the bottom of her driveway, and anyway, Caleb wasn’t attracted to her. She was cheesecake. Better if I don’t.
“I think you still want it.” He had a bedroom voice, a low rumble designed for exchanging dirty secrets in close quarters. It made her go all shivery.
She did want it. She really, really did. But she didn’t want to want it, and he’d turned her down, and it was just plain mean of him to be changing the rules now. “You’re an insensitive, pig-headed jerk,” she said. The statement came out kind of breathy and needy.
“You’re gorgeous.”
She blinked. Opened her mouth. Looked down. Henry was ignoring them, pounding chalk into dust on the driveway. Her khaki shorts were smudged and five pounds too tight in the ass. Her pink T-shirt boasted of her visit to see the Butter Cow at the Ohio State Fair. There was a disposable chopstick holding her hair in a bun at the base of her neck.
Her brother was gorgeous. She was a hausfrau who would require a shower, a new wardrobe, and a haircut before she could pass for pretty.
“Quit trying to manipulate me, Clark. I don’t want an alarm system. Even if I had one, I wouldn’t set it. I’d forget to turn it on. I’d lose the stupid code. Jamie’s got one at his place, and I despise it.”
He stepped closer again, until they were almost touching. Not quite. But almost. He picked up a strand of hair that had escaped from her bun and rubbed it between his fingers. “You smell fantastic,” he said. “And I like it when your hair’s all falling down.”
This was not her. Men did not reduce her to puddles of lust in her driveway. This was happening to somebody else. “You’re not attracted to me,” she insisted in a fierce whisper.
“When did I say that?” He narrowed his eyes as if perplexed. “That doesn’t sound like me. I am most definitely attracted to you.”
“Last night . . .”
He cocked an eyebrow. “What about last night?”
“You said, ‘Better if I don’t.’”
“I was trying to talk myself into behaving, but I had a chance to think it over. I decided it’s the other way around.”
“Huh?”
“Better if we do.”
As battles went, this one was going badly. Caleb had her all mixed up, needy and turned on, flattered and pissed off. She needed a chopper to show up and airlift her out of here. “What are you doing to me?”
“I’m negotiating with you.”
“You’re hitting on me.”
“That, too.”
Oh, God. She had to get her head on straight, but she was trapped here with Henry at her feet, Caleb filling her entire field of vision, and a quartet of strangers for an audience.
He inched closer until his knee bumped the outside of her thigh and she had to look up to meet his eyes. “They’re watching us,” she said. Helpless.
“Mmm-hmm.” He ran the pad of his thumb over her cheek, and the light touch did something insane to her pulse. “If I concede on the alarm, will you give in on the lights?” His eyes had gone hot and dark. She couldn’t stop looking at his lips. They were very nice lips.
The lights weren’t actually a terrible idea. There had been times when she’d heard noises in the dark backyard that had kept her awake, wondering what they were. “They’ll come on every time the raccoons go after my garbage cans.”
“Let me have the lights, or I’ll have no choice but to stand watch on your front porch all night long, every night until this blows over.” He made this threat in a voice so low and full of sexual promise that her nipples drew tight. His fingers dropped to her shoulder and then slowly trailed down her arm to her hand, which he held.
“You wouldn’t do that,” she whispered, her eyes on the divot at the base of his throat. “Your feet would get tired.”
“I was military police, honey. I have thousands of hours of practice standing around guarding things.” He leaned in until his lips brushed her ear. “Though I have to say, standing out here thinking about you in there, in bed, without me? That would be a new form of torture.”
She could imagine how it would go. Caleb on her porch in the dark. Her, tossing and turning in bed, fantasizing about him. Lying awake for hours. Finally giving up before dawn, leading him to her room in the gray light of morning.
With Caleb out there guarding her, she would be the farthest possible thing from safe. She would be two steps away from becoming his next Chiclet.
She was having trouble remembering why that was a problem.
It came to her finally: Pride. Self-worth. Independence. She didn’t want a man in her life, but if she changed her mind about that, she would find one who respected her opinion and didn’t try to influence her. The kind of guy who wouldn’t attempt to bulldoze over her objections to his security plan.
She took a step back. A small step. Progress came in small steps.
“No alarm. No lights. You got that, Clark?” She poked him in the chest for emphasis. It was like poking a cinder block. But yeah, okay, nicer. Firm and warm. Her hand flattened out on his chest. “Don’t mess with me. Don’t try to push me around. Don’t manipulate me.”
He captured her fingers and held them in place, which gave him both of her hands. Leaning in, he brushed his lips over hers, very lightly. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
If she’d been able to think, she would have figured out that as responses went, his didn’t even make sense. As it was, she had to close her eyes and breathe for a minute. Then she’d take another step backward. In a minute.
She was still reeling when Henry said, “That is?” and she looked down the drive to see another car pulling up behind the security SUV.
Maureen’s car.
With Richard in the driver’s seat, his mother beside him.
She pulled away from Caleb and said several of the worst words she could think of under her breath. How unfair that she should have to collect herself from this Caleb onslaught, only to have to withstand another one from Richard.
But then, as her mother had always told her when she complained, life wasn’t fair.
“That’s your daddy again, sweetheart. Shall we go say hello?”
All the way to the car with Henry in her arms, Caleb walked beside them, expressionless and stern. This was his soldier face, she realized. Strange that she hadn’t seen it before now.
Richard had one arm draped casually out the car window and was tapping a finger to the music. Something Celtic. It figured that he’d put on one of his CDs for the two-mile drive over. Richard always insisted the driver got to choose the music. He also always insisted on driving.
Her challenging stare did nothing to wilt his enthusiasm. “Hi again, Els,” he said. “You look great.”
She glanced down at herself for the second time in five minutes. She was still wearing the khaki shorts and the Butter Cow T-shirt. Was she missing something, or had the entire world gone mad?
“Maureen? What’s going on? You know he’s only allowed to see Henry on Saturday mornings.”
Maureen made a pained face and looked at her lap.
“We were hoping I could spend some more time with him this weekend,” Richard said.
“Call your lawyer. We have a custody agreement.”
Richard let out a long breath and pushed his hand through his hair. “I want to make amends, Ellen.”
“You’re not driving him anywhere,” she replied. It was petty, but she couldn’t help it. Even if he hadn’t had a drink in a month, she didn’t want her ex-husband driving her son around. Not ever, but if she couldn’t prevent it, then at least not until he’d done a hell of a lot more to prove he could be trusted than show up at her house unannounced and declare his intention to make amends. Whatever that meant.
“Not just with Henry,” he said. “I want to fix things with you, too.”
She became aware of Caleb standing behind her, close enough that she could feel the heat of his body. “There’s nothing left to fix.”
Richard reached out and stroked her arm where it was wrapped around Henry. “Els. Come on, be reasonable. I told you I’m four weeks sober. I’m really serious about this. I’m trying to make some changes. Give me a chance.”
Recoiling from his touch, she backed into Caleb, who steadied her with one hand on her hip. He asked, very quietly, “You want my help with this?”
She shook her head. Looking past Richard, she caught Maureen’s eye. “You drive, Maureen. Take Richard home to his apartment before you take Henry to your place. Saturday morning is it. No other visitation. You understand me?”
Maureen frowned, but she unbuckled her seat belt and got out of the car. As she came around to Ellen, she smiled at Henry and said, “Hey, pumpkin! Ready to go to Grammy’s house? I have a surprise for you this week.”
Henry held out his arms for her and asked, “Prise is?”
“I’ll give you a hint. It’s something sweet, with frosting on top.”
“Cupcake?”
“That’s right! Only one guess. Aren’t you clever?” She opened the back of the car and started buckling Henry into his seat. Ellen backed up to make room for Richard to open his door and move around to the passenger side. Caleb backed up too, but his hand didn’t leave her hip. She saw Richard notice it, caught the narrowing of his eyes and the flattening of his lips, and thought, Good. He deserved to feel jealous after everything he’d put her through.
She could hear Henry nattering in the backseat. “Cabe has a screwdriver, Gammy Meen! An’ a drill. He showed you how to use it.”
“That sounds like fun!”
Richard lifted his hand as if to touch her again, and she backed away quickly, stepping on Caleb’s foot and plastering her whole backside against him. He didn’t move, just held her there. Solid and strong. Richard dropped his hand.
“I want more than one morning a week,” he said. He was frowning in a way she recognized from when they were married. Angry. She’d never seen him so angry and so controlled at the same time. Usually, when he was this mad, he was also drunk, and he spoke incessantly, rage-dumping his every self-righteous thought on the people around him.
Richard didn’t deserve more than one morning a week with her son. He didn’t even deserve that.
“Earn it.”
She turned her back on all of them and walked up the driveway to retrieve Henry’s belongings.