by Nora Roberts
“But we know now.” Her voice bubbled, a kind of joyful hysteria. “We know you’re safe and well. You’re here.”
“We don’t know. We don’t know how, we don’t know why. We don’t know who. We have to find out.”
“Of course we do. Of course. But what’s important is you’re here. We can go home. We can go home now and . . .”
“What?” Callie demanded. Panic snapped into her. No, she hadn’t pushed Suzanne away before. But she would now. She had to. “Pick up where we left off? I had a whole life between then and now, Suzanne. I can’t make up for all you lost. I can’t be your little girl, or even your grown daughter. I can’t give up what I am to be what you had. I wouldn’t know how.”
“You can’t ask me to just walk away, to just close it off, Jessie—”
“That’s not who I am. We need to find out why. You never gave up,” she said as Suzanne’s eyes filled again. “That’s something we have in common. I don’t give up either. I’m going to find out why. You can help me.”
“I’d do anything for you.”
“Then I need you to take some time, to think back. To remember. Your doctor when you were pregnant with me. The people in his office, the people you had contact with during the delivery. The pediatrician and his office staff. Who knew you were going to the mall that day? Who might have known you or your habits well enough to be there at the right time. Make me a list,” Callie added. “I’m a demon with lists.”
“Yes, but what good will it do?”
“There’s got to be a connection somewhere between you and Carlyle. Someone who knew about you. You were a target. I’m sure of it. It all happened too quickly, too smoothly for it to have been random.”
“The police . . .”
“Yes, the police,” Callie said with a nod. “The FBI. Get me everything you can remember from the investigations. Everything you have. I’m good at digging. Good at putting what I uncover into a cohesive picture. I need to do this for myself, and for you. Help me.”
“I will. Of course I will. Whatever you want. But I need some time with you. Please.”
“We’ll figure something out. Why don’t I walk you down to your car?”
“Go ahead, Mom.” Doug walked to the door, opened it. “I’ll be right there.”
He closed the door behind them, leaned back on it as he looked at Lana. “Sort of takes ‘dysfunctional family’ to a whole new level. I want to thank you for helping my mother pull herself together.”
“She’s very strong. She was entitled to break down. I nearly did myself.” She let out a breath. “How are you doing?”
“I don’t know yet. I don’t like change.” He walked to her window, stared out at her pretty view of the park. “Life’s less complicated if people just leave things alone.”
“Take it from me, nothing stays the same. Good, bad or indifferent.”
“People won’t let it. Callie isn’t the type to leave anything alone, not for long. She shoots off energy, a kind of restlessness even when she’s standing still. What happened here is just . . . a domino effect. One domino pushed over, to bump into the rest. To change the whole pattern.”
“And the old pattern was more comfortable for you.”
“I understood the old pattern.” He shrugged. “But it’s been knocked to hell. I just sat here and had a conversation with . . . with my sister. The second one I’ve had in the last few days. Before that, the last time I saw her, she was bald and toothless. It’s all just a little surreal.”
“And they all need you to varying degrees.”
He frowned, turned back toward her. “I don’t think so.”
“It was very obvious to this objective observer. And it explains to me why you keep going away, and why you keep coming back.”
“My job takes me away, and brings me back.”
“Takes you away, to a point,” she agreed. “You wouldn’t have to come back. Oh, a visit now and again, as family members do. But you also come back for them, for yourself. I like that about you. I like a lot of things about you. Why don’t you take a break from all this tonight. Come over. I’ll fix you a home-cooked meal.”
He didn’t know if he’d ever seen a prettier woman. At least not one so perfectly put together. Or one who managed to have a soothing way about her even as she pushed a man into a corner.
“I’m not planning to stay. You need to know that.”
“I was offering to grill some chicken, not clean out a closet so you could move in.”
“I want to sleep with you.”
Since he looked almost angry when he said it, Lana lifted her eyebrows. “Well, that’s not on tonight’s menu. It may very well be on it sometime in the near future. But I’m still not cleaning out a closet.”
“I tend to screw up relationships, which is why I stopped getting in them.”
“I’ll let you know when you’re screwing this one up.” She stepped toward him, brushed her lips lightly over his. “Grilled chicken, Doug. Sex, unfortunately, can’t be for dessert as I have Ty to consider. But I might be seduced into heating up the peach cobbler I have in the freezer. It’s Suzanne’s Kitchen,” she added with a smile. “And always a hit in our house.”
It was going to get complicated, he thought. It was bound to get complicated. The woman, the child, the buttons each of them pushed in him. But he wasn’t ready to walk away from it. Not yet.
“I’ve always had a thing for my mother’s peach cobbler. What time’s dinner?”
Jay was staring at the pot of geraniums on the porch when Callie brought Suzanne out. His gaze went to Suzanne’s face first, Callie noted. The way a man might look at a barometer to prepare for expected climatic conditions.
“I was just coming back up.”
“Were you?” Suzanne said coolly.
“I needed a moment to clear my head. Suzanne.” He reached out to touch her arm, but she moved back in a gesture as clear as a slap.
“We’ll talk later,” she said, in that same icy tone. “I’d think you’d have something to say to your daughter.”
“I don’t know what to say, or what to do.”
“So you walk away.” Deliberately, Suzanne turned, pressed her lips to Callie’s cheek. “Welcome home. I love you. I’m going to wait in the car for Doug.”
“I’ll never make it up to her,” he said softly. “Or you.”
“You don’t have anything to make up to me.”
He turned to her then, though he kept a foot between them, kept his hands at his sides. “You’re beautiful. It’s the only thing I can think of to say to you. You’re beautiful. You look like your mother.”
He started down the steps just as Doug came out the door.
“You’re going to be in the middle of that.” Callie nodded toward the car as Jay strode toward it.
“I’ve been in the middle of that all my life. Look, I wasn’t going to ask anything, but will you go by sometime and see my grandfather? The bookstore on Main.”
She massaged her temples. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Thanks. See you around.”
“Doug.” She walked down a step as he reached the sidewalk. “Maybe we can have a beer sometime. We can give that being friends a try, and you can fill me in on Cullen family dynamics. I don’t know where to step around them.”
He gave a short laugh. “Join the club. Family dynamics? We’d better get a keg.”
She watched him get in the car, and got a reflection of those dynamics from the positions the family took. Doug at the wheel, Suzanne riding shotgun and Jay in the back.
Where would they have put her? she wondered. She started toward her own car, then spotted Jake leaning on the hood.
It put a hitch in her stride, and though she recovered quickly she was sure he’d noticed. He rarely missed anything. Deliberately, she took out her sunglasses, put them on as she walked up to him.
“What are you doing here?”
“Happened to be in the neighborhood.”
Sh
e rocked back on her heels. “Where’s your ride?”
“Back at the dig. Sonya dropped me off. Great pins on that girl. They go all the way up to her clavicle.” He offered a broad grin.
“Her legs, and the rest of her, are twenty.”
“Twenty-one. And Dig’s already staked his claim, so my hopes there are dashed.”
Callie took out her keys, jingled them. “Does your being here, in the neighborhood, mean you’re not mad at me anymore?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
“Maybe I used you, but you didn’t exactly put up a fight.”
He took her arm before she could stalk by him. “We used each other. And maybe I’m just a little pissed it was so easy for both of us. Want to fight about it?”
“I haven’t got a good fight in me just now.”
“Figured.” He moved his hands to her shoulders, rubbed. “Rough in there?”
“Could’ve been worse. I don’t know how, but I’m sure it could’ve been. What the hell are you doing here, Jake? Riding to the rescue?”
“No.” He plucked the keys away from her. “Driving.”
“It’s my car.”
“And I’ve been meaning to ask you. When are you going to take it in and have this crap dealt with?”
She frowned at the spray paint. “I’m getting kind of used to it. It makes a statement. What are you doing?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Dunbrook, I’m opening the car door for you.”
“Is my arm broken?”
“It could be arranged.” He decided to wipe the amusement off her face a different way, and turned it to shock as he scooped her off her feet and dumped her in the car.
“What’s got you lathered up?”
“The same thing that always lathers me up.” He lectured himself as he walked around the car, yanked open the driver’s door, got in.
“Fuck it,” he decided, and dragged her across the seat, pinned her arms and plundered her mouth.
She bucked, wiggled and tried to find some level ground as her system spun in mad circles. “Stop it.”
“No.”
She was strong, but he’d always been stronger. It was just one of the things about him that both infuriated and attracted her. His temper was another. It could spike out of nowhere and simmer in some hidden pot until it exploded all over the unwary.
Like now, she thought as his mouth ravished hers.
You could never be sure about Jacob. You could never be quite safe. And that fascinated her.
She fought to get her breath back as his mouth tore down to her throat.
“A minute ago you’re mad because we used each other last night. Now you’re ready to do it again, in broad daylight on a public street.”
“You’re inside me, Callie.” He took her lips again, took the kiss long and hot and deep. Then shoved her away. “Like a goddamn tumor.”
“Get me a scalpel. I’ll see what I can do about it.”
He tapped his fingers on the wheel as he turned his head and studied her, coolly now, through his shaded lenses. “Took your mind off things for a couple minutes, didn’t it?”
“A right jab would’ve done the same.”
“Since I don’t hit women, even you, that was the best I could do. Anyway, I didn’t come here to fool around in the car or trade insults, as entertaining as both are.”
“You started it.”
“Keep pushing, and I’ll finish it. We rented a house.”
“Excuse me?”
“Our own little love nest, sugarplum. Punch me with that fist and I might just change my policy on hitting women.” He started the car. “The motel rooms are too small, and too inconvenient. The team needs a local base.”
She’d been thinking the same herself, but it annoyed her he’d gotten to the details of it quicker. “We’ll be shutting down for the season in a few months. The motel’s cheap, and it’s only you, me and Rosie who’re staying there nightly.”
“And all three of us need more room to work. Dory, Bill and Matt will be bunking there, too. And we got us a pair of horny kids from West Virginia this afternoon.”
“And these horny kids are going to . . .”
“Bang each other as often as possible. He’s got some digs under his belt, and he’s working on his master’s. Anthro. She’s green as grass, but willing to do what she’s told.”
She propped her feet on the dash and thought about it. “Well, we need the hands.”
“We do indeed. And Leo could use a place to stay if and when he needs one. Temporary or visiting diggers and specialists can use it. We need storage. We need a kitchen.”
He headed out of town knowing she was stewing and trying to think of a better argument.
“And,” he added, “you need a base here after the season. We’ve got other digging to do.”
“We?”
“I said I was going to help you. So we’ll have a base of operations for that, too.”
She frowned as he turned off the road onto a bumpy gravel lane. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to make of you, Jake. One minute you’re the same annoying jackass you always were, and the next you’re an annoying jackass who’s trying to be nice.” She tipped down her glasses, peered at him over the rims. “You gaslighting me?”
He only smiled and gestured by jerking up his chin. “What do you think?”
It was big, and sheltered by trees. Part of the creek snaked alongside it. An active part, Callie thought as she got out of the car and heard the water gurgling. It was a frame structure that looked as if it had been built in three parts. A basic sort of ranch style, then the second-story addition, then an offshoot to the side that boasted a short deck.
The lawn needed to be mowed. The grass brushed her ankles as she walked across it toward the front of the house.
“Where’d you find it?”
“One of the towners who came by to see the dig mentioned it to Leo. It’s her sister’s place. Marriage busted up a few months ago, and they’re renting the house until they figure out what they want to do. There’s some furniture. It’s not much, just stuff neither of them took. We got a six-month lease that comes in cheaper than the motel.”
She liked the feel of the place, but wasn’t ready to admit it. “How far are we from the site? I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Six miles.”
“Not bad.” She strolled, casually, to the door, tried to turn the knob. “Got the key?”
“Where’d I put that?” He came up behind her, showed her an empty hand, snapped his wrist, showed her the key.
He tugged a reluctant grin out of her. “Just open the door, Houdini.”
Jake unlocked the door, then once again scooped her off her feet.
“What is with you?”
“Never did carry you across the threshold.” He closed his mouth over hers for ten hot, humming seconds.
“Cut it out. And we didn’t have a threshold.” Her stomach muscles were balled into a knot, and she shoved against him. “The hotel room in Vegas where we spent our wedding night doesn’t count.”
“I don’t know. I’ve got some fond memories of that hotel room. The big, heart-shaped tub, the mirror over the bed, the—”
“I remember it.”
“I remember you, lying in that tub with bubbles up to your chin and singing ‘I’m Too Sexy.’ ”
“I was drunk.”
“Yeah, you were plowed. I’ve had a soft spot for that song ever since.” He dropped her to her feet, gave her butt a casual pat. “So what we’ve got is the living room—common area—here.”
“What the hell happened to that sofa?”
He glanced toward the shredded arm of a couch covered with a brown, beige and red checked print. “They had cats. It was in the half-finished family room downstairs. Kitchen’s back there, appliances come with it. There’s an eating area. Bath and a half on this level, another upstairs along with three bedrooms. Another bedroom or office space over there, and over here . . .�
�
He crossed the living room, turned and gestured toward a good-sized room with a sliding glass door and the pretty little deck beyond it. Even as Callie opened her mouth, he shook his head.
“Too late, babe. I already called dibs on this.”
“Bastard.”
“Nice, especially after I saved you the biggest bedroom upstairs. We can move in tomorrow.”
“Fine.” She walked through the room and onto the deck. “Quiet here.”
“It won’t be once we’re in it.”
It felt normal, she realized. Weird as it was, this felt normal after the hour in Lana’s office. “Remember that place we stayed in outside Cairo? We were only there a few weeks.”
“A few too many.”
“It was only a little snake.”
“It didn’t look so little when it slithered into the bathroom with me.”
“You screamed like a girl.”
“I certainly did not. I bellowed like a man. And though I was bare-assed naked, I dispatched it with my bare hands.”
“You beat it to a pulp with a towel rod.”
“Which I ripped from the wall with my bare hands. Same thing.”
She could still see him, gloriously naked, not a little wild-eyed, with the limp snake draped over the towel bar.
Those were the days.
“We had a good time, anyway. We had some good times.”
“Plenty of them.” He laid a hand on the base of her neck. “Why don’t you let it out, Callie? Why do you have such a hard time letting anything out but your mad?”
“I don’t know. She fell apart, Jake. She just went to pieces up there in Lana’s office. She was holding on to me so tight I could barely breathe. I don’t know what I felt, what I feel. I can’t identify it. But I started thinking, what would they be like, what would my parents be like, what would I be like if none of this had happened? If she hadn’t turned away for that few seconds, and I’d grown up . . . here.”
When she started to move away, Jake tightened his grip, held her in place. “Just keep talking. Pretend I’m not here.”
“That minor in psych’s showing,” she told him. “I just wondered, that’s all. What if I’d grown up Jessica? Jessica Lynn Cullen would have a keen fashion sense. She’d drive a minivan. Probably working on her second kid by now. Maybe a fine arts degree, which she uses to decorate her house, tastefully. She thinks she’ll go back to work when the kids are older, but for now she’s president of the PTA and that’s enough for her. Or maybe she’s Jessie. Maybe Jessie stuck. That’d be different.”