by Ruthie Knox
A phone rang.
He slipped one finger inside her. She gasped. Then another, and she swore.
The phone kept ringing.
She swore again, but this time it wasn’t the good kind.
“That’s not mine, Clark.”
“Shh,” he told her. Now that she’d pointed it out, he couldn’t pretend not to notice. His phone was ringing on her kitchen table. It was almost certainly a work call. If it was someone on his team, he needed to return the call within a minute. Two minutes at the most.
He’d always performed well under pressure.
Four more rings, and he had his zipper down, the condom on, and her shorts and panties around her ankles. She kicked them off. The call went to voice mail. He lifted her, gripping her hips as he positioned himself between her legs.
When she wrapped her thighs around him, he moved inside her, deep and hard, groaning at how tight she was, how sexy, how utterly intoxicating. “Ellen,” he said, his face buried in the silky fall of her hair. She draped her arms around his shoulders and the back of his head, clutching him to her neck and spurring him on with every eager, helpless sound she made.
Neither of them lasted long. Maybe a dozen strokes, his fingers plucking at her nipple, and she started to tighten around him. He followed almost immediately with an orgasm so stupefying, he thought he might black out.
Chest heaving, mind temporarily blank, he held her there for a long moment before he remembered the phone. When he raised his head to look at her, her eyes were still cloudy and her lips parted. He kissed her soft mouth, wishing he could carry her to bed and keep her there all morning. Make up for this crude, greedy assault with a day of languid exploration.
His phone buzzed. A message waiting.
Kissing her one more time to tell her he’d rather be staked to a hill of fire ants than leave her right now, he disentangled himself and set her feet on the floor, waiting to ensure she wouldn’t wobble. Then he made himself presentable again and checked his messages.
“Hey, Caleb. It’s Eddie. We’ve got a situation here at Miss Short’s place. She, uh, seems to think she’s going to drive herself to an appointment. Alone. You didn’t say we were allowed to keep her here against her will, but I thought she was supposed to be escorted, and this isn’t on the schedule. We’re blocking her exit, and she’s not real happy with Sean right now. Give me a call back, okay?”
He found Ellen’s shorts under the table and brought them to her. She was still standing with her head tipped back against the wall, watching him. She looked satisfied and happy and so sexy he wanted to shoot Carly and have done with it.
“I have to go,” he said with an apologetic smile. “They need me over at Carly’s.”
“Aren’t you going to ask your question first?”
He kissed her one more time, his thumb tracing the delicate line of her jaw. He’d forgotten all about the questions. He asked the first one that popped into his head. “What’s your middle name?”
She gave him half a smile. “Sydney.”
“Ellen Sydney Callahan.” It tripped right off his tongue. “I like that.”
“To think I spent the last two hours worrying about what you were going to ask me.”
“Did you? Well, don’t get too comfortable. I went easy on you this time.” He started backing toward the side door, unwilling to turn away before he had to.
“I don’t know, I’d say you roughed me up pretty good.” Her eyes sparkled with amusement.
“Sorry, honey.”
“Don’t apologize. I’ve never had a quickie with a tall, handsome man in black before.”
“You like the Man in Black thing?”
“Zorro, you can do me any time.”
She was still laughing when he closed the door. He honestly couldn’t tell if she was laughing with him or at him.
He felt so good, he didn’t really care.
The sight of Carly laying into Sean was enough to sober him up fast. He heard the words “pompous,” “high horse,” and “sue” before he made it out of Ellen’s yard. The red curls rioting around Carly’s face and the round swell of her stomach under her flouncy white shirt made an amusing contrast to the rest of her: sharp words, sharp nose, sharp elbows flying through the air as she made her displeasure clear. Carly Short, human razor blade. When she saw him, her eyes narrowed as if she were preparing to slice him up.
“You said I wasn’t supposed to go for a walk, not that I can’t drive anywhere. This is insane. This jackass can’t keep me here against my will. I’m not a prisoner. Get this car out of my driveway, Clark, or I’ll call the cops. It’s a violation of my rights!”
She had a canvas bag slung over her shoulder with a towel sticking out the top, and she smelled like coconuts. “Where you headed, Squirt? Taking the baby surfing?”
“I have a doctor’s appointment, smart guy.”
He raised an eyebrow and waited for her to fess up.
“And then I was going to go to the lake for a while,” she grumbled. “I’m bored, Caleb. I can’t stay indoors all the time. I’m not a house plant!”
“Why didn’t you tell me about the appointment?”
“Because I’m not six years old, and you’re not my daddy.”
It would almost be funny, but there were at least a dozen cars in the cul-de-sac now. Which meant Caleb’s ass was on the line.
“You know they’ve taken about a thousand pictures of you since you came outside, right?” Whereas Ellen’s house was tucked back a bit behind a slight curve in her driveway, Carly’s was a straight shot from the road. Anything that happened in front of her house could be seen from the street.
“They can take all the pictures they want. I’m sick of it. I’ve decided I don’t give a flying—”
He cut her off. “And you know if you drive out of here by yourself, fifteen cars are going to be following you by the time you get to Mount Pleasant, and another ten when you leave the doctor’s office? You want to sit in the sand with a bunch of reporters for company?”
“I thought of that. I was going to ditch them.”
Carly knew every back road within sixty miles, and she drove like she did everything else—too fast, with a lot of flair but not much sense. Or she used to. Caleb hadn’t been in a car with her behind the wheel in more than a decade.
“I’ll drive you.”
He tossed his keys to Sean, who’d been standing mute with his hands on his hips since Caleb arrived. Sean was good at mute. It was half the reason Caleb had offered him a job one night a few weeks back when he’d met him at the village pub—Sean didn’t say much, but what he said, Caleb liked.
Katie had gone to high school with him, and she said he was also some kind of genius. Sean kept quiet about that, too. Caleb liked the guy. They were getting to be friends, slowly. Sean didn’t talk enough for it to happen fast.
“We’re taking Eddie and the SUV. After we go, you get Bryce off Mrs. Callahan’s driveway to cover for you, and you move my car over here. Then you call Katie and have her send the backup team over. Once they get here, drive my car to the hospital and park it on the south side. Come around the front, and Eddie will bring you back to Burgess. Then you can send the backup guys home. Got it?”
Sean nodded.
Carly screwed up her mouth and wrinkled her forehead as if she were about to object, but just then a couple more cars pulled up to the cul-de-sac, and she gave in. “Will you take me to the beach after?”
“Don’t push your luck.”
Caleb went the wrong way into town. She felt obligated to tell him. If he’d taken Granger to Shady Hill and then come around the back side of the hospital, it would have been faster.
He didn’t thank her for the advice. He was too busy driving and ordering around the lanky guy who worked for him.
Every time she twisted to look out the back, the conga line of idiots following them was a little shorter, though, so she let it go. Caleb could handle these douche bags. He’d driven Hum
mers in Iraq. Katie had shown her pictures once of him in fatigues, with a helmet on his head and some building out of Aladdin behind him. He’d been smiling that breezy Caleb smile as if there weren’t people waiting to kill him just outside the frame.
There had been, though. During his deployments, she’d never quite managed to forget it. No matter how invincible his smile, every time she heard about casualties in Iraq, she would wonder if this time he’d bit it. So she’d gotten into the habit of ragging on him unmercifully for being a jarhead.
Everybody had their coping mechanisms.
Caleb somehow magically managed to make a barricade appear at the hospital. They pulled inside it, and he got a big OSU umbrella out of the trunk, which he used to shield her from view as they walked into the lobby. He was good at this security guard stuff. It didn’t exactly surprise her. He’d always been smart, though school wasn’t really his thing.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. They rode the elevator to her doctor’s office on the third floor. Caleb glanced over at her and gave her a trademark smirk, probably trying to put her at ease. He looked particularly heart-throbbish today in a black button-up and black slacks. “Nice parasol, Buckeye,” she said.
“Thanks, Munchkin.”
Her phone buzzed again, letting her know she had texts piling up. She ignored it.
When it was her turn to go into the examining room, Caleb rose to his feet, clearly intending to come with her.
“You can stay in the waiting room with the husbands and boyfriends,” she said. “I don’t need an escort.”
“Too bad. You’re getting one.”
So he tagged along as she got weighed and had her blood pressure taken, and then he posted himself outside the exam room door, which meant that the whole time the nurse was asking her the same sixty-seven tired questions somebody asked every time she came in for a checkup, Carly had an image of Caleb in her head, lounging in the hallway and charming the pants off the staff.
An image that made her angry, because she wanted Caleb to be Jamie, joking with the receptionist or sitting with her in the exam room, holding her hand.
And she wanted herself to stop wanting that.
The doctor arrived and asked her the sixty-seven questions over again, same as always. Carly’s phone buzzed for the third or fourth time. The Wombat kicked her hard in the bladder.
Back off, Buddy. It’s probably just Nana wanting to know if I’ll bring her bing cherries and bikini wax, or some other god-awful combination of things.
The Wombat gave her another sound punt.
Fine. I’ll check the damn phone. You happy now?
When Dr. Gordon’s back was turned, Carly slid the phone out of her pocket. Every text was from Jamie.
JCallahan: R u OK?
JCallahan: TMZ sez u r @ hospital.
JCallahan: Call me.
JCallahan: Srsly. Call me.
She turned the phone off.
Dr. Gordon sighed. This was nothing new. Dr. Gordon was something of a freak of nature, built like a linebacker, with the bedside manner of a clinically depressed clown. She had the clown feet, too, tricked out today in the longest pair of sad beige flats Carly had ever seen.
But she was good people. She’d received the Nana stamp of approval.
“Your blood pressure is still too high,” Dr. Gordon said.
“Oh. Bad high, or just let’s-keep-an-eye-on-it high?”
“Bed-rest high.”
Carly looked down at the Wombat-bump. “Preeclampsia.” She’d read her pregnancy books. At one time, she’d read nothing but pregnancy books, one after another. She knew the score.
“Possibly preeclampsia,” echoed the good doctor, with an expression that suggested she was going to off herself as soon as she left the room.
“That’s not good.” Carly tried to think of something funny to say to deflect the worry, but she couldn’t. She just couldn’t.
Sliding her hand into her pocket, she wrapped her fingers around her phone. It was so pitiful to want Jamie here. No doubt the urge would pass as soon as she got her land legs back. She wanted him only because he’d shared so much of this pregnancy with her, and because she’d just had such a shock. A really fucking awful shock.
“Do you have anyone who can help you? You’re going to need family or friends to take care of you.”
Jamie.
But Jamie was gone.
“Caleb,” she said, clutching the phone so tight her fingers started to hurt. “He’s right outside.”
Chapter Sixteen
Carly was white, her lips compressed in a flat line. She looked like hell.
The doctor offered him her hand. “Thanks for coming in, Mr. Clark.” She was younger than him and nearly as tall, with a long face and kind eyes.
“Carly has elevated blood pressure,” she explained. “We’ve been keeping an eye on it, but it’s not coming down, and combined with the protein in her urine, we need to be concerned about the possibility of preeclampsia. I’m putting her on a modified form of bed rest.”
“What does that involve?”
“She’ll be permitted to leave her bed for bathroom visits, and she can spend two hours a day sitting up on a bed or couch. I don’t want her walking around or climbing up and down stairs any more than necessary. She’s going to need help. She tells me you can be counted on to assist her.”
Carly stared down at her lap, clearly uncomfortable.
“Of course,” he said. “We’re watching for bad headaches, blurry vision, and abdominal pain, right?” His sister Amber had been on bed rest with high blood pressure the first time she was pregnant. He remembered the drill.
“Yes. Also nausea or vomiting, dizziness, or sudden weight gain. I’d like to see her back here on Monday, and you should call the office if she experiences any of the symptoms, alone or in combination, before then.”
“Got it.”
They covered a few other details, the doctor gave Carly a quick pep talk, and she left. Caleb turned to Carly. She was biting her knuckle, a bad habit he’d thought she’d kicked in middle school.
“Sorry about that,” Carly said. “She asked if I had anybody who can help me, and I … I said I had you.” Her eyes filled with tears, which she swiped at viciously. “But you don’t need to put yourself out. Just give me a ride home, and I’ll call Nana. We’ll be fine.”
He wondered how many appointments she’d had to come to all by herself. Her husband had walked out on her when she finally got pregnant after years of trying, Nana was too frail to take care of her anymore, and Jamie Callahan had high-tailed it out of town the second their relationship started getting difficult. Carly was effectively alone, and Caleb had been too self-centered to think about how she must feel, stuck by herself in the house she’d grown up in, trying to cope with her losses and plan for the future.
Some friend he’d turned out to be.
He put his arm around her and rested his chin on top of her head. “You’re going to be fine. Both of you. We’ll get you sorted out. This is just a precaution. The doctor said so herself.”
Carly put her face against his shoulder, the closest thing to a surrender he’d ever known from her. He let her rest there, already thinking ahead about how to make this work. Thinking about this new wrinkle to his mission, now that protecting Carly meant a lot more than keeping her out of view of the press.
Nana would want to help, but someone would have to help Nana. He and Katie would need to put together a list of Carly’s friends who’d be willing to take shifts with her and bring food over.
Should he call Mitchell? Did the not-quite-ex-husband have a right to know, given that he was in Baja drinking too much and chasing after board bunnies?
Probably not.
Did Jamie Callahan?
Sorting through the possibilities gave him a nice hit of energy. For the most part, he enjoyed the slower pace of civilian life, but every now and then the shit hit the fan and he recognized how much more alive he felt, more
himself, when there was almost too much to deal with. Surround him with cranky people and logistical difficulties, and it was like, Damn, this is what I was trained to do. Bring it on.
Carly wiped her face on his sleeve and straightened up.
“I think I got snot on your shirt,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it. The shirt was already having a rough day.”
He waited while she got dressed, then walked her to his car, which Sean had left in the lot like he was supposed to. She wouldn’t let Caleb carry her bag without a fight, which didn’t surprise him in the least. He hadn’t expected Carly to be a compliant patient.
There weren’t any photographers staking out the car, at least. He went through a drive-thru to buy her a sympathy milk shake and took her home, settling her down on her couch with a glass of water, her phone, her laptop, and strict instructions not to move until somebody showed up to help.
Then on to the next item on his list—Mom. On the drive over to the apartments, he brought Katie up to speed. She promised to find someone who could sit with Carly this afternoon and to start working on a schedule for the coming days.
From the lot in front of his parents’ place, he called Ellen. She didn’t pick up, so he left her a message filling her in on what was happening with Carly and suggesting she might want to think about telling her brother.
He didn’t know if she’d welcome the idea. He didn’t have the first clue what was going on in Jamie Callahan’s head. But if the guy felt anything for Carly, he’d get his ass back to Camelot. And that would create its own set of headaches.
His parents’ place was a converted apartment that took up the entire floor above the rental office. Caleb found his mother sitting at the table eating lunch. “What are we having?” he asked, wandering into the kitchen.
“It’s just leftover manicotti. If I’d known you were coming over, I would’ve gone to the grocery store.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you.” He dished cold pasta onto a plate and stuck it in the microwave. He’d been home six months, and she still treated him like the prodigal son, fixing his favorite foods and keeping beer in the fridge for him as if he might redeploy next week and she wanted his time home to be special. It had been nice for the first month. Now it made him wonder how long it was going to take before Mom accepted he wasn’t going anywhere. “How’s your day been?”