“You’re thinking of what?”
“Painting Manie’s house. You know, that stuff you smear around when you want to change the color or prevent weathering?”
“I know what paint is. What I don’t know is why you want to paint Aunt Manie’s house. It looks fine to me.”
“Sun’s hard on paint. Let it go too long, and the stuff starts peeling, and then it has to be sandblasted.”
“Everything in Texas is sandblasted every day.”
“Not always. It’s just a little breezier than usual for this time of the year.”
“If you want my opinion, I think her house is just fine the way it is. If she sells it, the new owner might want to paint it some other color.”
“Why the devil would she sell it?” Hank was seated, Callie was standing as far away as she could and still look at the paint strips. It amused him to invade her personal space only because he knew it bothered her. It was a bully’s trick. She was surprised that he would resort to it. She dealt with it by trying hard to ignore the heat of his body, the scent of his shaving lotion, or whatever it was that made him smell masculine and sexy and clean and dangerous.
Whatever it was, it ought to be against the law.
“People sell houses all the time,” she said, adopting the tone she used to reason with difficult patients. “Either they get transferred or the children leave home and they don’t need as much space. Or maybe they retire and go to live with relatives because they need the security of having someone close by who loves them and will look after them.”
She waited for his reaction, torn between telling him everything about her plans and telling him nothing. He already knew far too much.
“Yeah, well…decide on a color while I’m gone, will you? Meanwhile, call downstairs and have my car brought around. Chances are I’ll be back sometime tonight, so go ahead and set up tomorrow’s appointments, starting at nine. You know the drill. Fifteen minutes each, with follow-up appointments next week on any I need to see again. Oh, yeah, and there’ll be a workman in to install another phone line. Stick with him in case he needs anything, okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
He sent her a sour look and raked his hand through his hair. “Look, I probably owe you an apology.”
“You do?”
“Do me another favor. Don’t overdo the big-eyed ingenue act.” Callie was wondering how he could have misled her aunt into believing he was so sweet and sensitive all these years when he went on to say, “How about dinner tomorrow night at Claire’s? I’ll pick you up about eight, will that give you time to get home and change?”
“Into what, a fairy princess? Sorry, I left my fairy dust back home in Yadkin County.”
Seven
The call came while Callie was watching the late news that night. Still clutching an apple core, she answered, expecting to hear Hank telling her he wouldn’t be home until tomorrow.
“Callie, honey, is that you? This is Grace. Grace Spencer. I forgot all about the time difference. Is it later or earlier out there?”
“It’s earlier, Grace. I just finished watching the news.”
“Yes, well…it’s the middle of the night here, and I hate like anything to have to tell you, but I didn’t want you to hear it on the news or anything.”
Oh, God, Mama and Daddy…
“I tried to get hold of your folks, but they’re out of town.”
Callie leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes in relief. “Grace, what’s happened. Is it Doc? Did he—?”
“Not that I know of. Nobody’s died or been hurt, so you can rest easy on that score, at least.”
At least? A tornado. The Yadkin River had overflowed the banks, climbed the ridge and flooded her basement with mud.
“Grace, just tell me.”
“Your house just burnt down. It’s too dark to see much—the firemen are still there, but I don’t think there’s much left. Oh, honey, I’m just as sorry as I can be.”
After a few more questions, Callie numbly replaced the phone. It could have been worse, she told herself. It could’ve been so much worse. Mama and Daddy, on the road in that old van of theirs…
Oh, Lord, what am I going to do now?
The first thing she did was make herself a cup of strong tea. It helped, if only in that waiting for the kettle to come to a boil gave her time to organize her thoughts.
I’ll have to call…
Call who? Whom? What could anyone do?
She poured boiling water onto two tea bags and added three spoons of sugar. It was only a house. Nobody had been hurt…or worse. She tried to think, shook her head and grabbed the grocery pad and a pencil. She always thought better when she could see her thoughts take shape.
Number one: check on flights home. Number two: let Hank know so he could find someone to replace her.
Call Aunt Manie?
No, that could wait. There was no point in worrying her aunt now that her recovery was coming along so nicely. There wasn’t a blessed thing she could do about it. It was Callie’s house, Callie’s responsibility. It was up to her to take care of it.
It’s not just my house, it’s my home! I just finished having it painted.
“My plants,” she whimpered, instinctively filling her mind with small, unimportant details like fresh paint and sweet potato tops she’d rooted in water, that were crawling all over her kitchen windowsills. And the material she’d bought for when she had time to make new bathroom curtains. As long as she focused on small things, the larger ones couldn’t creep up on her.
Hank had just opened his first file and poured his third cup of coffee when Callie trudged up the stairs the next morning. She was early. She looked like hell. Looked as if she hadn’t slept in weeks.
“What’s wrong, headache? Picked up a bug?”
“I have to go home. I thought about calling to tell you, but decided it’s better to tell you in person. I, um—I have to go home.”
“Sure, take off as long as you need. I can handle everything here.”
“No, you don’t understand, I have to go home. Back to North Carolina.”
They were standing outside his doorway, in Manie’s area. Hank took her arm, steered her inside and closed the door. “Want to tell me what’s going on? Has something happened to one of your parents? I believe you mentioned that they travel a lot?”
“My parents? No, they’re all right as far as I know. I haven’t been able to get in touch with them, though, and I probably should.”
“Give me the data, I’ll—”
“My plane leaves at 11:10. It was the first one I could get that didn’t have a long wait in Atlanta.”
“Whoa, back up a step. Why can’t you get in touch with your folks?”
“They’re not home.”
“Okay, they’re not home. Do you have some idea where they might be? Is it important for you to reach them?”
“No. Yes. I guess so.”
“Callie, what the devil’s going on? You want to tell me about it?”
She shook her head. Her hair was short, but it was thick, curly and shiny, the color he’d heard referred to as dishwater-blond. It was anything but
“I have a number written down where I can probably contact them later, but they haven’t checked in yet and I have to leave in time to get to the airport, and—”
He redirected his line of questioning. “What airline?”
“I wrote it down. It’s not one of the big lines.”
“Cancel.”
She gave him a look that managed to combine worry, exasperation and mystification, with an added dash of impatience. “Look, I don’t have time for this. It’s going to take me an hour to get to the airport, and they said I have to be there early. I just came by to let you know. I’ll leave a list of your appointments for the rest of the week, but I have to—”
“Callie, sit down. Take a deep breath,” he commanded, and such was the authority he projected, she did both. “Now, listen to me. I don’t kn
ow what kind of emergency situation you’re in, so unless we coordinate our efforts, we’re both going to waste a lot of time and energy. First, I want you to give me whatever you know about how to locate your folks, and I’ll put a man on it. Next, either you call and cancel your reservation or I will. Call Pete and tell him to prep for a flight to—what airport will we be flying into?”
Callie was shaking her head. “Stop it. I can’t think when you come at me this way.”
“Good. Let me do the thinking.”
She suddenly blazed up at him, the flush in her cheeks overcoming the shadows around her eyes. “I said stop it! Stop trying to bulldoze me, I don’t need it. I’m perfectly capable of doing whatever needs doing. If I depend on myself, I’ll know what to expect.”
“Meaning you don’t trust me.”
“Meaning—oh, I don’t know what I mean, I only know that in an emergency I can count on me. Nobody else. I don’t need anyone else, it only confuses me.”
“Now, that I believe. Look at you, you’re shaking.”
“I am not! I’m—it’s this darned air conditioner. It’s cold as a walk-in freezer in here!” She yanked off her glasses, rubbed them angrily with the tail of her skirt and jammed them back on her face, but not before he caught a glimpse of the stricken look in her eyes.
“Ah, Callie…” He held out his arms, but she stiffened against the back of the chair.
“Don’t. Don’t touch me,” she warned, taking another deep, shuddering breath. “All right then, if you know someone who knows how to locate people when they’re on the road, you can give it a try, but that’s all. And I’m only letting you do that much because—well, because I don’t have time to go to the police or whoever and explain everything to them.”
“Fair enough. Give me your numbers—make, color, model, license—whatever you have. I’ll handle it. While I’m on the computer, I’ll cancel your flight, and then we’ll—”
“We, nothing. This is my problem, not yours. I’ll handle it.”
She was so brittle it hurt him to look at her. One wrong word and she was going to shatter into a million pieces. What the devil had happened to get her into this state?
More to the point, what had caused her to bottle up her feelings so tightly that when they blew, she hadn’t a clue as to how to handle them?
The phone rang, breaking the stillness. Hank snatched it up, listened for thirty seconds, and said, “No. Pansy, we just went over all this. Count me out.”
The sound of a high-pitched voice could be heard going on and on. Never taking his gaze off Callie, he waited, holding the phone away from his ear, and then he said into a momentary lull, “I’ll call you in a day or so. We’ll sort it out then.”
He hung up the phone, then lifted it off the receiver and laid it on the desk. As if waiting for the air to clear, neither of them moved, neither of them spoke. Warily they eyed each other, senses heightened to flashpoint.
Hank studied the woman before him, trying vainly to hang onto his objectivity. She was so damn young, with all the pride and vulnerability of the young. He tried to remember what he’d felt like at that age. Had he ever been that young? As the richest kid in town, he’d been pretty well hamstrung when it came to proving his mettle. Whatever his achievements growing up, he could never be sure his old man’s wealth and influence hadn’t tainted the outcome.
At least Callie didn’t have that particular handicap to overcome. By the time he’d been the age she was now, he’d already already gone through a marriage, an annulment, a stint in the service and a couple of wars. The press referred to them as police actions, but when someone was shooting live ammo at him, he damned well called it war.
According to Manie, Callie had worked in the office of a G.P. in some bucolic little paradise where everyone was on a first-name basis. Mayberry, U.S.A. So what the hell had happened there last night to cause her to come unglued this morning?
He was tempted to pry it out of her, but instead he said, “Give me whatever you have, Callie, and I’ll get someone onto tracking down your parents.”
She fumbled in her purse and came up with an address book. “If you get in touch, tell them to meet me.” He waited, hurting for her. She shook her head again and whispered hopelessly, “I have to go home.”
“I know, honey. I’m going to get you there as quickly as possible.”
“I hate flying.”
“It’ll take three days to drive.”
“Four,” she corrected politely, but he could tell by the glittery look in her eyes that her heart wasn’t up to arguing the point.
“Once we take off, you won’t even know you’re flying. You can sleep the whole way and wake up on the ground. That way you’ll be nice and rested when we tackle whatever it is together.”
If she’d let him help her. He’d never met a women who kept a tighter rein on herself.
He saw a chink in her armor and dived in. “What about Manie?”
“Do you think I should tell her? It’s not like there’s anything she could do.”
“Callie, I don’t even know what this is all about, remember? All I know is you’ve suddenly got to be somewhere else, and I’m doing my damnedest to get you there. I can’t help you make your decisions unless you turn over a little more information.”
She dug a notepad out of the pocket of her tan, wraparound skirt and frowned at it. He watched her weigh the pros and cons and tried to read her mind. Had he thought of her as drab? Colorless? She was neither. Subtle, yes.
Picturing Pansy, monochromatic from the tips of her beige Brunos to the top of her sleek, blond pageboy, he thought about the differences between the two women. For some obscure reason, Callie tried to play down her feminine attractions, but there was nothing she could do about that elfin quality that was so at odds with an almost military sense of organized efficiency. The combination was lethal. Even now it was beginning to fire up all sorts of inappropriate responses, both physical and mental.
“My house burned down last night”
“Come again?” It took a moment for the words to sink in.
“I said my house burned down. To the ground. The only thing left standing is the chimneys. There are—there were—th-three of them.”
“Ah, hell—ah, Callie—oh, baby…”
Somehow, Callie found herself in his arms. Somehow, her glasses left her face, and she was swallowing hard, trying to choke back the tears. Her throat ached with the effort, but she refused to cry all over his custom-tailored, open-neck, Western-cut denim shirt.
His hand continued to stroke her shoulders, to ruffle her hair, and all the while his voice was a deep, soothing rumble, like a bear growling deep inside a cave. “Ah, honey…Shh, it’s going to be all right, we’ll fix it. Whatever it takes, we’ll make it right. Shh, don’t cry so hard, you’ll get a headache.”
“I’m not crying,” she declared, the words muffled against his chest. As if to prove it, she leaned back in his arms and glared at him, fighting against the need to allow someone else to shoulder her burdens for once in her life.
It wouldn’t do. She didn’t dare, not with this man. “I never cry,” she said, and swallowed past the painful lump in her throat.
There, she told herself, slipping from his arms. She felt better now. The last thing she needed was another distraction. First Manie’s surgery, then her house burning, and now…
And anyway, he was only being kind. He was that kind of man. She’d watched him the night of the ball, taking time to speak to every woman on dowager row, taking the time to reassure that poor terrified waiter, dancing with the woman in the pink dress. She was just another employee. What was it the pink lady had called her? A charity case?
If only it were that simple.
“Yes, well…I’d better try one last time to get in touch with Mama and Daddy. There’s this place in Nashville where they usually hang out called Catgut’s.”
The rain started about halfway to the private airport outside Royal. Hank muttere
d something about a freaky aftermath of the big El Niño and the La Niña that followed.
Callie said, “Oh, no, we’ll have to wait.”
“It’s only rain. The Avenger’s waterproof.”
It wasn’t only rain, it was thunder, the low, growly type that sounded like a freight train circling the town, but there was no visible lightning. Hank did his best to reassure her, but she was already beginning to get that queazy feeling.
“It’s going to be all right, honey. Planes are designed to fly in all kinds of weather. Would I risk damaging the Avenger?” He chuckled, but she knew it was only to reassure her. “Take a deep breath.”
“I’m already hyperventilating. It makes me dizzy.”
“Okay, then count from two hundred and eleven, backward.”
“Do you realize that my whole life is spinning out of control? Counting isn’t going to help that!”
“Nice going. You’re yelling at me. Now try cursing. You know any good words? I can help you out if you need a few.”
“Heck, darn, spit.”
“Is that how you do it in Carolina? Here in Texas, we say—”
“I know what you say. I know what you’re trying to do, too, don’t think I don’t.”
“Is it working?”
She bit her lip, blinked and nodded. “I guess it must be.”
“Trust me,” he said, and she discovered, somewhat to her amazement, that she did.
Hank made two quick calls on the way to the airport. Distracted, Callie didn’t even try to follow the conversation. By half past ten they were in the air. A few minutes later, they were above the clouds, and she would have wept with relief, only they were still flying, and anyone with a grain of common sense knew that things heavier than air fell to the ground. Even birds were designed with hollow bones to cut down on the weight. They probably took a deep breath and held it every time they launched themselves from a tree limb.
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