There were shelves lined with books and all sorts of art supplies. Down the center was a long table, and at its head stood Mallory. Much like the last time Grace had seen her, she wore black tights and a black skirt, only this time with a deep red sweater that highlighted her pale skin. She rummaged through two white bags before declaring chips a necessary side dish with sandwiches. Grace happened to agree with that rule.
She couldn’t see the other woman at the table very clearly. She was dressed for work in what looked like the kind of navy pantsuit Grace would find in her own closet, or would have a year ago. With her head down, the woman played on her phone as her strawberry blonde hair fell over her shoulder.
Grace remembered Mallory talking about Leah—Declan’s girlfriend and the woman who lived in the house with Callen. Not knowing what she’d been told put Grace on edge. Her defenses rose and her back stayed tight against the shop’s front door in case she needed to make a speedy exit.
Just then Mallory’s head snapped up, and she smiled. “Here she is.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t sound ominous.” Leah looked over, and her eyes went wide. “Wow.”
Grace’s defenses dropped, and dread set in. She had to fight the urge to hold her bag in front of her stomach. Though it could be too late for that. “What?”
“Apparently she doesn’t own a mirror.” Mallory sighed as she waved for Grace to come inside. “We don’t bite. Come on in.”
“Promise?”
Leah burst out laughing. “Do you think we’re going to interrogate you?”
“Or stone me.” Grace walked over and plunked her purse on the table across from Leah. Ignoring the quick up-and-down look from the other woman, Grace sat down.
“Clearly you’ve talked with Callen and are a little twitchy.” Leah reached across the table, stopping just short of touching Grace’s hand. “We’re not Callen.”
Grace traced her finger over the seam of her bag. When she realized she was using the thing as a shield and half blocking her view of Leah, she set it on the floor. “He’s pretty ticked off.”
“Do you always talk in grave understatements?” Mallory asked.
“I’m trying to be optimistic that he’ll come around.” Grace turned when she heard the bell over the door. She didn’t remember it ringing when she came in, but it must have. This time it ushered in a woman who sat down with the other two and immediately joined in their whispering. “What are they doing?”
Grace had lowered her voice but Mallory didn’t bother to. “Reading a dirty book but pretending to be studying knitting instructions.”
Grace wasn’t sure what to say to that, but it did make her smile. She swallowed it when one of the ladies glared at Mallory.
“Yeah, you heard me. There is no shame here. Read whatever you want and celebrate it.” Mallory finally lowered her voice as she sat down. “That’s why people come here.”
“For the berating?” Leah asked under her breath.
“The hospitality.” Mallory tossed bags of chips in front of each one of them, letting them land with a crunch. “You lived with Callen. I’m trying to image that. You seem normal enough.”
“Uh, okay.” The conversation swirling around Grace left her a little dizzy. The two women had an easy camaraderie, and Mallory came off as the same straight shooter Grace met in the diner.
“For the record, I’m Leah Baron, Mallory’s best friend and Declan’s better half.” Her smile was open, without a hint of Callen’s skepticism.
“I met Declan.” A little shorter and more muscular than Callen with blue eyes, instead of Callen’s intense green ones, but they had a shared look, all strong and in charge, that had to have kept their mother jumping over the years.
Leah’s smile fell. “Did he act like an ass? You can tell me.”
For some reason, the question struck Grace as a sign of a solid relationship. If Declan acted up, Grace had no doubt Leah would settle him right back down. The realization filled Grace with a strange longing. She wanted that ease with Callen. For a short time, she thought she had it.
“No, but he seemed to be having a lot of fun enjoying Callen being uncomfortable.”
Leah shrugged. “That’s fine, then.”
“We all like doing that to Callen,” Mallory said as she unloaded the bags.
Grace eyed the wrapped sandwiches and squinted as she tried to read the writing on each. Then she tried to figure out how many more people were coming, because she counted six packages in all.
“Declan did tell me about the meeting on the porch.” Leah dropped that little verbal bomb as she separated the packages into piles. “He said Callen looked stunned to see you and that you were smoking hot.”
Grace let the words settle in and decided they sounded pretty good. She leaned back in her chair and crossed one leg over the other. “I think I like Declan.”
“Yeah, we all do.” Leah’s expression could only be described as gooey. “You’ll like Beck, too. He’s the baby brother, who is less baby and more twenty-eight-year-old, but he’s away right now on a work assignment.”
Mallory put a water bottle at each one of their seats, then pointed to the piles on the table. “Ham, turkey or tuna?”
Grace picked up a package that looked like it said twork but more likely said turkey, and started unwrapping. The idea of hiding behind food sounded good. If they ate, maybe they’d stop all the personal talk. After all, there were other people milling around. Maybe not literally—but they had ears.
Mallory went for the tuna, but didn’t touch the white-wrapped square once it sat in front of her. “Callen. Talk.”
So much for the food-as-shield theory. “There are other people—”
“They’re fine.” Mallory didn’t even spare the ladies a look. “People come in and they chat. Those three come in and read and don’t look up unless I call out.”
Grace wasn’t convinced, but didn’t push on that front. “Even so, I’m not sure it’s a great idea for me to talk behind Callen’s back.”
There was an odd crinkling sound as Mallory rubbed the water bottle between her two palms. “Why?”
“I don’t need to give him another reason to be ticked off.” And that was just the top of the list. His brother’s girlfriend sat right there. Other people from town could listen in. Really, on her mental Do Not Do This list, Grace figured she had at least the top three covered.
“What happens at Girls’ Lunch stays at Girls’ Lunch,” Mallory whispered, as if she were handing down some great piece of womanly wisdom.
Leah didn’t waste any time with idle chitchat. With her elbows on the table, she jumped in. “Is it true you’re in the FBI?”
“Was.” Grace had sensed the incoming questions. “I’ve been out for about a year.”
Leah dropped the sandwich she was in the middle of unwrapping. “Wait a second, Callen said—”
“Yeah, it’s one of the things he thinks he knows but doesn’t.” Man, it felt good to say that.
Grace had made a silent vow not to take a shot at Callen, but having a captive audience ask questions and actually want to hear the answers was refreshing. Not that she wanted the news to bump its way back to Callen. He needed to hear it from her. If only he’d give her the opportunity. Mallory and Leah were doing just that, so Grace took advantage, if for no other reason than to lift a small bit of the combined weight of guilt and frustration off her chest.
“He won’t listen to the truth.” Mallory didn’t ask. She said it as a statement.
Relief poured through Grace. For the first time in months, it felt like someone understood. Even a little. “I see you do know him.”
“We’ve had some battles.”
Leah snorted. “That’s an interesting way to put it.”
“I was trying to be nice.”
“Mallory doesn’t like to admit it, bu
t she loves Callen.”
“No, you love him, as part of some familial thing. He’s grown on me.” Mallory waved to a woman who walked into the store and hunkered down in the scrapbooking section.
Between the easy banter and the chips and the people coming in and out, Grace felt her worries about being under fire slip away. Leah and Mallory appeared genuine. They didn’t hide their nosiness but didn’t act like they were taking sides against her either.
Grace didn’t have a huge number of female friends, probably as a result of her always being outside and rushing to keep up with her male cousins and demanding father. She grew up surrounded by men, then went into a career field dominated by them.
Now, when she needed someone to talk with and confide in, she didn’t have a lot of options. None in Sweetwater. But something about these two helped her relax and unclench. If that sensation only lasted for the span of one lunch she’d still be grateful for the temporary break from the stress bombarding her from every direction.
She decided if she wanted to fit in, to be a part of the community and be near Callen, she needed to start opening up. Whether this was the right time might be open for debate, but she threw out caution and went for it. “I got injured on the job and kind of lost the love for it. Never really had a great love to begin with, to be honest.”
“Really?” Mallory wrinkled up her nose. “Then why do something so dangerous and demanding? There’s a lot of training, right?”
“Family tradition. My father, uncles, grandfather.” Grace noticed they were both nodding along as she talked. “You get the idea.”
“No brothers?” Leah asked.
“Just me.”
“That’s a lot of pressure.” Mallory leaned over and unwrapped Grace’s sandwich for her. “Eat.”
“It was easy, actually. I went with the flow and didn’t have to think.” Not really an admission that filled Grace with pride.
She hadn’t fully understood until she lost Callen how she’d let the decisions of the males around her direct her life. For once, she was trying to take charge and make some demands of her own. Not that it was working just yet, but she refused to give up on Callen. On them.
“You got . . . what, shot?” Mallory asked.
“Stabbed in the back. Walked into the middle of a drug deal gone wrong thanks to an informant who lied to save his own neck.” If she turned too quickly to her left, she could still feel the pull.
Months spent with the FBI shrink and out on medical leave convinced Grace of one thing—the FBI was not for her. With her father gone and her mother disconnected for more than two decades once she remarried and moved to Germany, there was no one left for Grace to appease in the career department.
“Stabbed?” Leah stopped with the sandwich halfway to her mouth. “Damn, Grace. That’s awful.”
“I’m thinking Callen noticed that,” Mallory said.
“Definitely.” The wound had healed by the time they started sleeping together, but he saw it. She had explained the part about walking in on a drug deal, but left out the FBI angle. More than once he traced a finger over the scar, declaring her beautiful and lucky for surviving.
“But you were able to hide being in the FBI from him?” Mallory scoffed. “Funny, but I thought Callen would be better at working his way around a woman’s body and then be nosy enough to ask questions. He sure likes to stick his nose in his brother’s personal lives.”
“He does pretty great.” When Leah made a face, Grace rushed to get the conversation back on less TMI ground. “I wasn’t in service at that point. I was out on leave and doing what I really love—true crime.”
Mallory hummed. “Committing it or reading it?”
“Researching it.” Grace could talk about this part of her life all day. She had to take a deep breath to keep from plowing ahead and boring them to death. She tried to stick to the pertinent facts only. “I look at cases, put together information, conduct interviews and review evidence, then present it all to television producers who create true crime mystery shows.”
“Best job ever.”
If Grace hadn’t liked Mallory before then, that comment would have done it. “I’m working on a book where I have the rights from the family to tell the story.”
“That is so cool.” Leah sounded a little in awe.
Seemed fair, since Grace had felt that way since she walked into the store. The place was homey and the women beautiful. Not model-perfect, but striking and interesting. Friendly and real.
“So why does Callen think you’re out shooting people and framing him for stealing silverware?” Mallory asked.
“He and my former partner have a history.”
Mallory stopped unpiling the fixings on her sandwich and glanced up. “You don’t mean Walker.”
In a flash, she morphed from open and charming in a friend-who-would-tell-you-that-you-had-food-in-your-teeth kind of way to closed off. It was as if she was trying very hard not to jump around and show interest in the new topic.
Walker was very private and tended to keep his dating relationships to quick encounters. Grace knew because she gave him crap about his lone-wolf thing. Maybe that’s why she recognized Mallory’s expression as more than a casual thing. Then there was the part where she referred to him as Walker and not Agent Reeves or some other title.
And Mallory knowing Walker meant he either was or had been in town. “You know him?”
Mallory bit her lower lip. “You could say that.”
“How?” But Grace had a good idea she knew and definitely did not want a detailed description.
“He’s a pain in the ass,” Leah mumbled, but not in a low voice. One loud enough that one of the couch ladies turned around.
“He’s misunderstood.” Rising to Walker’s defense was so ingrained that Grace did it without thinking. She’d spoken up for him to FBI superiors and fellow agents. No question his people skills needed some work, but he was a good man—or he was on every topic except Callen. “That’s part of what I was trying to understand. Walker has this obsession with Callen, with the whole family. I don’t get it and was trying to work through it.”
“But you ended up sleeping with Callen instead.” Mallory tiptoed through the comment, emphasizing each word as she went.
“That’s a bit of a story shortcut, but yes.” Sleeping, falling in love with, planning a future around. “I never set him up or used him to gather information for Walker. I want you to know that. Callen doesn’t believe me, but it’s the truth.”
“This is a mess.” Leah shook her head. “No doubt Callen is partially responsible for that, but still it’s a mess that could be resolved, maybe partially, with a good conversation.”
As if that was news. Grace had believed that since that awful Thursday when Callen came home from his construction job looking like he’d lost his mind. “I’ve tried.”
Leah sighed. “And Callen won’t listen.”
“Yeah, he’s good at talking.” The sandwich-dismantling over, Mallory slapped the top piece of bread on the sandwich again. “Kind of sucks at listening.”
“But since you love him, you have to keep trying.” Leah grabbed Mallory’s abandoned tomato and put it on her own sandwich.
“Oh, interesting.” Mallory traded the tomato for a pickle. “Is that a guess, or a known fact?”
“Guess.”
“But I think you nailed it. Definitely looks like she’s got a case of love, not like.” Mallory finally took a bite of her sandwich masterpiece.
Leah gestured toward Grace. “Not hard. Just look at her face when she says his name.”
And they were off. Grace sat there while the conversation ping-ponged between Leah and Mallory. Since they were talking about her and her feelings, Grace felt odd being a spectator, but it really didn’t sound as if they needed her help.
She tried anyway. �
��It’s hard to keep up with you two.”
“No, I don’t buy that.” Leah wagged a finger at Grace. “You might not be FBI now, but you’re trained. If I had to guess, I’d say you’re sitting there listening and analyzing.”
Busted. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Mallory waved the apology away. “It’s probably second nature. Over time it will fade—or it better, or we’re going to get testy and make you have salads for lunch.”
Grace held up her hands in mock surrender. “Not that.”
“I like her,” Leah said.
Mallory winked. “So do I.”
“Grace?”
She didn’t hear the bell over the door this time, but she recognized the voice. She looked to the front of the store. She was on her feet before she realized she’d stood up. “Walker? What are you doing here?”
“Good question,” Mallory mumbled.
In the same room, feeling the energy zip back and forth. All the pieces fit together. Mallory . . . Walker. No doubt about it. They had a thing.
Grace turned to Mallory. “When you said you knew him, did you mean—”
“Why are you here?” Walker cut off her question. “God, Grace. Please tell me not for Callen . . . still? He left you. Maybe you should take the hint.”
The chair scraped against the floor as Mallory stood up and shot Walker a don’t-mess-with-her scowl. “We’ve been over your tendency to be a complete ass. For the record, this is one of those times. Tread carefully.”
Walker loomed at the opposite end of the long table from Mallory. “You don’t know what he did to her.”
“I do not care, FBI boy.” They shot comments back and forth as if no one else was there and the three older ladies hadn’t turned around on the couch to catch the fireworks.
The long table didn’t hold them back either. They both looked ready to lunge, and Grace wasn’t convinced they’d do verbal battle if they met in the middle. No, Mallory had a jumpy edge, as if she could climb all over Walker and not care who was watching.
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