by Ruthie Knox
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 furthest 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.”
&
nbsp; “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.
Chapter Ten
Minutes later, the entire peanut gallery had cleared out.
After Henry was packed into the car, Caleb had followed Maureen home so he could do a security assessment. He must have called off the workmen when Ellen wasn’t paying attention, because Bill and Matthias had left, too. She didn’t know what that meant, decision-wise, but she expected Caleb would be back to make his intentions known.
In the meantime, she went to work. It was hard to concentrate, but it wasn’t as if she had a choice. When Henry was with his grandma, she worked. Her to-do list was as long as her arm.
Plus, she had the urge to kick some serious ass. After ninety minutes on the phone, at least half of which she spent berating the attorney responsible for Aimee Dawson’s contract, she’d won a number of concessions from the label and the promise of a revised contract in her in-box by the end of the workday.
She wrote threatening letters full of lawyer-speak until six, when she decided to call it a night, having managed to burn through most of her Richard-and-Caleb-related fury. In the meantime, her head had been growing more and more crowded with all the implications of the day’s events.
Ellen pulled a bunch of vegetables out of the fridge and called Jamie. When he didn’t answer, she sent him a text. Richard is back.
He called two minutes later, while she was still washing the lettuce.
“What does Dickhead want?”
“ ‘Hi, Ellen,’ ” she answered. “ ‘How are you? It sure is good to hear your voice.’ ”
“I’d barely even heard your voice yet.”
“But now you have.”
He sighed. “Hi, Ellen. How are you? Everything sucks here, and it’s really good to hear your voice.”
“That’s better. Richard is sober. He wants to make amends.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Apparently it means he gets to touch my arm and call me ‘Els’ again.”
Jamie made a sound of disgust. She’d never liked Richard’s nickname for her, but Jamie had taken it as a personal affront.
“Did you tell him where he could stick that idea?”
“More or less, yeah.”
She started peeling carrots and filling Jamie in on both encounters, trying to make it funnier than it had been in reality.
“I don’t see where he gets off suggesting you should let him see Henry more when he hardly ever bothers to show up for the visits he’s got,” her brother observed.
It was a fair point. Three times out of four, Richard missed his visits with Henry at Maureen’s house. He failed to show so often that she and Maureen had agreed not to tell the boy to expect him. They didn’t want Henry to spend his childhood waiting around for a father who didn’t turn up.
“I don’t know,” she said. “He is Henry’s father. If he’s sober, I suppose he has a right to get to know his son better.”
“Henry doesn’t need a father. He’s got me.” Jamie had done his best to be a decent standin dad, since both of them knew what it was like to grow up fatherless. Theirs had died before they were old enough to remember him. It was a phantom-limb situation: You got used to the absence, but you could always feel it, and sometimes it itched. Sometimes it ached. Always, it sucked.
“You live in Los Angeles.”
“True, but at least I’m not going to get bored with him and run off after some bimbo with a D-cup.”
The bra she’d found underneath the marital bed had actually been a 36C, but Ellen didn’t bother saying so. Henry had been the size of a kidney bean in her uterus at the time, an uninvited guest whom she’d already decided to let stick around. The bra was exactly what she’d needed to make up her mind that she wasn’t going to raise her child with an alcoholic serial adulterer. She couldn’t trust Richard not to wound their baby, and she’d understood what a bad role model she would be for her son or daughter if she continued to put up with the way her husband treated her.
What she hadn’t understood was that the harm had already been done. Or not done, exactly, but foreordained. Richard had fathered her son, and so he would always be her son’s father. Every month, her baby got older, and the day when he would fall under Richard’s spell drew closer. Sooner or later, Henry was going to decide his daddy was the most interesting, remarkable, amazing man alive, just like Ellen had. And then Richard was going to grind Henry’s heart to powder under the heel of his motorcycle boot, just like he’d ground up hers.
It turned out they grew back. Hers had, anyway. But she worried for her son, hoping he wouldn’t have to pay for her mistakes. Knowing that sooner or later, he almost certainly would.
She sliced celery up fine and tried to formulate any reply other than “Yeah.” Nothing came to her.
She’d given herself to Richard cheaply, putting a bargain-basement price tag on her love and devotion. Jamie had never been able to wrap his mind around why she’d let Richard woo her, why she’d stuck by him for three years when he’d valued her so little. But then, Jamie had grown up in the spotlight, with all the benefit of their mother’s unalloyed affection and the approval of every casting agent and director who’d seen him perform and told him he was brilliant and talented and special.
Ellen had been raised in the wings, charged by her mother with keeping Jamie’s stage outfits clean and complaining to the management when his dressing room didn’t have the required brand of bottled water. She’d spent her whole childhood in the shadow of her handsome, charismatic brother. What could have been more natural than marrying the first handsome, charismatic man who told her he needed her by his side? No one but Jamie had ever expected her to do more than play a supporting role.
Until she left Richard, she hadn’t really expected more of herself.
“What do I do, Jamie?” she asked finally, reaching for more celery. It was a rhetorical question. Sort of.
“I’m the wrong guy to ask,” he said. “I can’t seem to make a good decision these days to save my life. What do you want to do?”
She wasn’t accustomed to thinking about what she wanted. Since the divorce, her life had been all about what she had to do. Living alone had taught her what she was capable of, which turned out to be pretty much whatever. She could get the job done for her clients, raise her son, and pay the mortgage. She could fix a leaky faucet and make Carly a batch of chocolate-cherry cookies. Husbands turned out to be optional. She was doing fine without one.
But what did she want?
She wanted Richard to drop off the face of the earth.
She wanted to have sex with her security guard.
These were not good answers.
“I want to incinerate Richard’s balls with a blowtorch.”
Jamie laughed. “That makes two of us.”
“I want you to come visit.”
The mirth went out of his voice. “I can’t do that right now.”
“Why not?” she asked, hoping he’d say something stupid about the press so she could bat away the objection and insist.
“I don’t want the attention on Carly and the baby, okay?” He let out a frustrated breath. “I really screwed that up. The least I can do is keep away from her.
Listen, is she—is everything okay there? Are you and Henry safe?”
“Yeah, we’re fine. Carly and the baby are fine, too. I think—” I think she misses you. But she’d promised not to say that. “I wish you were here,” Ellen said instead. “And I wish you would call her.”
“There were more pictures today,” Jamie said after a pause.
“We ran into a photographer downtown.” Ellen had left that part out of her report on Richard. “It wasn’t the brightest move.”
“My PR people would kill me if I came back to Camelot.”
“Your PR people work for you. Tell them to back off.”
“It’s not that,” he said. “It’s just, this is harder than I expected, Ellen. I didn’t know what I was getting into with her, or I might not have done it. I’m the last thing she needs.”
“I don’t get it. Why is that, exactly?”
“Because I waltzed in and messed with her life, exposed her to danger and unwanted attention, and then waltzed out again. And I did all that without even thinking about it. Carly’s going to have a baby. She needs somebody who sticks. What use am I to her?”
“You love her.”
The silence stretched out for long seconds before he said, “Yeah, I think I do. That’s why I’m going to stay away from her.”
“Jamie—”
She wanted to tell him she believed in him. That he was good enough for Carly, that he could be somebody who stuck if he wanted to be. But her brother talked right over her, and his tone clearly said the subject was closed.
“Now tell me how things are going with this security guy. Breckenridge wants to know if he’s competent.”
She thought of Caleb’s hard body behind her as she’d talked to Richard in the driveway. Richard wasn’t the threat Breckenridge had in mind when they’d hired Caleb, but she’d certainly felt safe with him standing there. Better than safe.
“Oh, he’s competent.”
“You sound funny. What’s wrong with him? I can get somebody else.”