BRANDED BY A CALLAHAN

by Tina Leonard

  “That’s because you have no belief.” Ash patted Fiona’s hand. “You probably lost it in Afghanistan.”

  “No,” Dante said slowly. “I really don’t think I ever believed in anything but myself and my family.”

  Ash’s eyes went round. “Don’t let Running Bear hear you say that.”

  He sighed. “Tighe believes in magic. And spirits and things that go bump in the night. The reason I was so good at scaring you guys to pieces when we were kids is because I honestly never feared anything.”

  She shook her head. “Which makes you vulnerable.”

  “No. It makes me safe.”

  “Not if you’re the hunted one,” Ash said, her voice barely a whisper. “Pride goeth before a fall. A man with no humility lacks vision.”

  He frowned. “I make my own reality. And I don’t want my future pinned to whether or not my intended likes the way she looks in Fiona’s uncooperative magic gown.”

  Fiona’s eyes blinked open. She looked at Ash, then Dante. “Did you go look for her?”

  “Who?” Dante asked.

  “Ana, of course!”

  “You told me not to! You specifically told me that—” He shot his aunt an impatient look. “And then you went toes-up, and frightened ten years off of me! Talk about dramatic timing!”

  Fiona’s lips turned down. Burke sank onto the bed next to his wife. “Oh, I’m all right, Burke. Fetch me a bit of ginger water, if you will, and I’ll be right as rain in a minute.” She glared at Dante. “You, young man, will go upstairs and make certain the dress is carefully wrapped and put away. In its proper wrapper, in the attic closet. It mustn’t be touched by dust or anything sinister.”

  “There’s nothing sinister up there, except maybe some mice,” Dante said, trying to be soothing. “And weren’t mice supposedly beneficial to Cinderella when she needed help the most?”

  “Out!” Fiona exclaimed, and Ash gave him a push. He went out the door, feeling quite dismissed, though relieved that his aunt seemed to be back in form.

  “Holy crap.” He stood in the hallway, unsure for the first time in his life what his next move should be. Fiona said to leave Ana alone, and then she wanted to know if he’d found her. He felt like a yo-yo with a raveled string.

  She’d commanded him to secure the magic wedding dress, seeming very agitated by the thought that it might be unprotected. Men didn’t hang wedding dresses. If anything was bad karma, surely a man touching a wedding gown was, right? Especially if the woman he most admired had run from it?

  There were some things a man had to suck up and accept. A lady’s dress was not like picking up a live grenade to get it away from your men. It was not like feeling bullets whistle past your ear, and wondering if you’d have a permanent scar from the heat of it as it barely missed your brain.

  “Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble,” he muttered. “Why not? I can protect the crest of my aunt’s clan. That’s all I’m doing, sealing off the crazies from infesting the Callahan attic. Damn mice, anyway.”

  He went up the stairs, taking a deep breath as he crossed the threshold. There it was, the dress he’d cursed, splendidly white and pristine, hanging from a hanger, a vision of seed pearls and lace and jazzy, shiny things girls loved. These stupid wads of fabric fascinated women. They planned all their lives for wearing the just right creation, getting themselves all worked up over nothing. Men didn’t care about such things. When a man married a woman, mostly he didn’t care about the wrapping—all he cared about was later, when he did the unwrapping. Touching a naked woman at her most glorious. Men remembered skin and darling breasts and heart-shaped derrieres. But Dante would bet if you asked a man what the dress his bride had been wearing looked like five days after she’d worn it, there wasn’t one on earth who could tell you half a detail about it except that it might have been white. Maybe.

  But that same man would be able to go on for a year yakking about how great it had been to kiss every inch of his bride’s—

  The gown shimmered at him, waking him from his sudden burst of imaginings of Ana’s bare softness. Miles and miles of satiny skin and shy curves—

  He shook his head. Glanced at the thing again, wondering if it was taunting him with frosty white luminosity, daring him to touch it. “I have to put you back in your bag,” he told it. “You’ve caused quite enough trouble for one day. And I have to say, why you had to pick on my lady, I really don’t know. Were ten Callahan brides your limit? Did you run out of magic?”

  The gown was hardly a fitting foe, troublesome rag that it was. And it really didn’t deserve his animosity, even if it had made Ana cry. Sighing, he reached for the hanger.

  To his astonishment, the gown filtered away, disappearing into the thin Rancho Diablo air that existed, indeed lived for, mysticism and tales of legend. He waited, astonished, his blood pounding.

  Chapter Six

  He was in all kinds of trouble.

  Dante replaced the hanger and tried to assess what he was doing in his doughty aunt’s attic with a disappearing dress. “If you could reappear, you’d make my life a lot easier,” he said out loud, mainly to calm his racing heart.

  Nothing.

  He sank into a window seat and pondered what to do next. SEALs assessed, they didn’t panic. He had an upset lady on his hands, who had tangled with the supposed magical purveyor of happy wedding dreams. Obviously that scenario hadn’t gone well, not to mention that her sweet attempt at seducing him had ended with them both trussed in the back of a pickup, and that had hardly been the stuff of a woman’s fantasies. He had a gown that had hit the road—or air—and that wasn’t going to go well when he had to go downstairs and put in the report to Fiona. “Nuts. I’m beginning to get cranky,” he muttered, stating the obvious to himself, which didn’t help much.

  Apparently, the lesson was that everything was out of control at the moment, no different from when he’d been on top of Firefreak, hanging on for dear life and preservation of limb. He’d survive this, as he’d survived more dire circumstances in his life. But things had gotten sticky. Dante got up, grabbed the plastic cover that was supposed to protect the magic wedding gown, zipped the bag up and shoved it back into the closet. The bag hung limply, devoid of its charmed contents. Shaking his head, he turned off the lights and went downstairs to check on his aunt.

  She sat in bed, surrounded by adoring family. Her silver-white hair was pulled back in an elegant coil, and she wore a gray lace dressing gown that made her look like a queen holding court, though that court was just his brothers—the family jesters—and his capable sister.

  “Here’s my able-bodied nephew,” Fiona said. “Did you take care of it, Dante? I know you did, I don’t even have to ask. You’ve never messed up a mission.” She smiled, trusting him.

  Was it worth upsetting her? The regal aunt still looked so pale. Maybe it was best to wait until she was stronger to mention that her treasured mystical apparel had shazamed. On the other hand, perhaps he’d better just suck it up and confess that there was a great chance he’d offended the gown with his cursing, and it had hustled back to magic land. Fiona looked at him expectantly, confident that her nephew would have taken care of the matter as a Callahan did, with efficiency and thoroughness. Ash blinked at him, wondering at his hesitation. Jace frowned, Galen raised his brows, and Tighe— “Hey, twin. When did you get here?” Dante demanded, shocked to see his brother.

  “About five minutes ago, and clearly not a moment too soon.” He glared at Dante. “I let you go off on your own, and apparently you’ve lost your mind.”

  “Probably.” He thought about the gown and shook his head. “I’ve got it together more than I look like I do.”

  Tighe didn’t look convinced. “I stopped by to see River. Apparently, Ana packed up, gave notice and headed out.”

  “What?” All his confidence sli
d away. Dante stared around at the pitying expressions of his family, painfully aware that they thought he was the equivalent of the classroom dolt. “She can’t be gone! She would never leave those little boys, she loves them...” He let his voice trail off as the faces staring at him became even more sorrowful. “Where did she go?”

  “We don’t know,” Fiona said.

  Ash came to tuck her head onto his shoulder, and though her silent support was bracing, it was horrible that everyone felt so sorry for him. I’m gone for her, I knew I was crazy about Ana, and everybody else did, too, except Ana.

  Maybe that was for the best.

  “Well, I guess Ana did what she had to.” He thought his tone sounded quite practical. “Women. Who can predict what they’ll do?”

  That remark didn’t draw him anything but puzzled stares. Dante decided to head off with the shreds of his dignity hanging in tatters but at least still partly available to him. “Glad you’re feeling better, Aunt Fiona. I’m sorry for the trouble I caused.” He kissed her cheek.

  She grabbed his hand. “You did make sure the gown was tucked away carefully?”

  He couldn’t lie. He just couldn’t. Never had, didn’t plan to start now. “Aunt Fiona, the dress disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?” She looked at him, her lower lip trembling slightly. “What do you mean? Did Ana borrow it?”

  “I don’t think so.” He patted Fiona’s hand. “It just simply filtered away.”

  She blinked. “Oh, disappeared, disappeared. I see.”

  She didn’t see, and he didn’t, either. His aunt probably thought he’d exacted his revenge on the evanescent cloth, as he’d threatened. Gowns just didn’t vanish into the ozone, nothing did, not really, and so, he’d gone from hero to heel in a fraction of a second.

  Fiona released his hand and leaned back against the snow-white pillows again. She looked somehow more fragile than she had just thirty seconds before. He glanced around at his family, who didn’t hide their disappointed expressions.

  There was only so much a man could take.

  “I’m going out for a while,” Dante said, departing to the relative safety of anywhere but Rancho Diablo.

  * * *

  THE OBVIOUS THING to do was to go talk to River. Ana’s friend and colleague would know more than anybody about what had upset Ana enough to make her leave her precocious, adorable charges. Dante decided he had nothing to lose by stopping in to see if he could dislodge any information from the woman who had given his twin little to no encouragement.

  Tighe was in the same boat he was—a sinking boat—though his brother didn’t seem to know it yet.

  He knocked on the door. River opened it with Sloan and Kendall’s two toddlers hanging on to her, precious with their wide eyes and wondering expressions.

  “Hi, Dante,” River said. “Your twin just came by. Busy day at the ranch, huh?”

  “I guess.” He waited until she waved him inside. “I heard Ana might have gone out for a bit.”

  She knelt on the floor to stack blocks with the kids. “It’s true. We have a sub coming in a couple of hours.”

  “A substitute bodyguard?”

  “Absolutely. Sloan would never allow Kendall and the kids to stay here unless they were completely covered, especially not after what happened in Hell’s Colony with the sniper getting hit and all. And of course you and Ana getting dragged off.”

  His many transgressions were stacking up on him. “I guess I’m not exactly dream-date material.”

  She smiled. “Probably not.”

  There was little he could do about that. Rancho Diablo was a hot location; it was impossible to predict from where the next attack could come.

  “If it makes you feel any better,” River said, “Ana did say that the night she spent with you was amazing.”

  Amazing, hell. They hadn’t made love, hadn’t kissed. She’d know amazing when he finally got her in his arms. He shoved his hat back on his head. “Do you know why Ana left?”

  “There’s only so much I feel I can tell.”

  She’d actually said more than he’d expected her to. “I understand. Thank you.” He’d been left with the consolation prize that the woman he had a major thing for at least thought he had potential.

  Although not enough to not give him up.

  “This might sound strange, but did Ana tell you if she’d tried on Fiona’s magic wedding dress?” What woman ran from a dress? Weren’t ladies generally more inclined to knock down everyone in their path to get the perfect gown on their body and a man to the altar?

  River looked confused. “She didn’t mention it. Isn’t that dress a Diablo fairy tale?”

  It was impossible that River didn’t know of the Callahan family legend. Dante studied her, wondering if she was stringing him along, but then his cute nephews toddled over and struggled to get in his lap, and he grinned. “Got new trucks, guys?”

  He admired their new toys and they stared up at him with big navy Callahan eyes. “I have a funny feeling Ana’s going to miss you terribly, gentlemen.”

  “That’s exactly what she said when she left,” River said. “In fact, they’re a big reason Ana realized she couldn’t stay here any longer.”

  He glanced up at River, intrigued by the information she was divulging. “What do you mean?”

  River went into the kitchen and began making little plates of snacks for the boys. “Ana said she’d gotten too attached. What started out as a simple bodyguard position turned into a lot more.”

  Dante kissed his diminutive nephews on their heads. Ana had been with them about a year, since before Sloan had married Kendall. Too headstrong to be sent off away from her husband forever, Kendall had returned with her own security detail, Ana and River, who pretended to be nannies but were actually in charge of protecting the twins. The lines had been blurred a long time ago as Ana and River really enjoyed being with the children and part of the Callahan family. They took their job very seriously. Dante was completely comfortable with Ana and River overseeing the safety of his nephews. “I can understand how Ana could fall for these little guys. They’d steal anybody’s hearts.”

  “Yeah.” River looked away for a moment. “Occupational hazard. Ana’s totally professional, though. She wouldn’t have left only because she cared too much about the boys. She left,” River said, hesitating, “because she’d begun to want a child of her own. Very much.”

  Dante blinked. Felt a little ball of excitement lodge inside him. Heck, if she really wanted a child that badly, he’d be more than happy to give her one. The thought was so strong as it came to him that he tensed, worried for a moment that he’d spoken his thought out loud. It had been so real. Of course he’d love to have a child with her. “Sounds pretty normal to me. Doesn’t it to you?” If he hung around these little guys most of the time, he’d want a child, too.

  He did want a child.

  Dante swallowed hard. That was a new thought. He noted River hadn’t answered his rhetorical question, but he sped on, his curiosity prodding him. “So, nothing happened that involved an enchanted dress?”

  River shook her head. “Not that she mentioned. She was upset when she came home, but she’s been planning to give her notice ever since you two got back from...you know.”

  “She’s been planning to leave since the Halloween thing?” That was two weeks ago. Dante’s heart clenched up, tightening his chest.

  River nodded. “Ana took it very personally that she hadn’t been able to stop the kidnapping. She felt like she hadn’t checked your room out thoroughly enough. And felt guilty that it could have been these little boys who got taken instead of the two of you. Carelessness isn’t good in our line of work.” River’s expression was so sad that Dante felt for her, and for Ana, too.

  “It wasn’t her fault. It was an ambush.”
It had been his focus that was entirely distracted by the lady who’d shockingly appeared in his bed.

  “It’s the job of a bodyguard to secure a location.” River shrugged. “Ana felt she’d gotten too close to her job.”

  “You mean she thought she’d gotten too close to me.”

  “And the boys.” River set the snacks on the coffee table and reached out to smooth a hand over each small head. “Between wanting a child so badly, and letting an attacker get past her, it was time for her to move to another position. She gave notice as soon as you two returned from your unplanned trip.”

  His brain felt Firefreaked. Ana wanted a child, she thought she was at fault because a kidnapper had gotten inside his room, she and the magic wedding gown had clearly not taken to each other—

  “Ana doesn’t think she can have a child,” River said. “There’s a possibility she can’t, anyway.”

  Dante braced himself. “Anything you can share?”

  “I probably shouldn’t, but maybe you should know. She had what was diagnosed as endometriosis in her early twenties. The doctors thought they could solve the problem since it appeared to be confined to one ovary. She’s very worried about her chances to have a child with only one ovary. The doctor didn’t seem all that optimistic.”

  He rose. “Thanks for telling me.” It didn’t really faze him. He’d never had a problem hitting targets. “Any idea where she went?”

  “Home.”

  Dante kissed each of his nephews goodbye, giving them each a last, fond hug. “Where’s home?”

  “South Dakota.”

  Great. “Don’t tell me. She didn’t hail from a hot spot of commerce and nightlife.”

  She laughed. “I’m afraid it’s a bit more remote than that. Ever heard of Buffalo Gap?”

  “Nope.” Didn’t matter.

  He could find it.

  Tighe walked in without knocking, and the boys ambled over to his brother with surprisingly steady steps. Then one sat down on his diaper hard, and Tighe scooped up his brother, knowing that would set the one on his bottom to scrambling to his feet in order to be held, as well.