by Nicole Helm
“You want to rent out AIF for a party?” Em cocked her head, mulling over the surprising suggestion.
Shelby nodded.
“We can pay you,” Dan offered into the silence. “I mean, not a lot. There aren’t a lot of places to have parties around here and I’ve got kind of a big family coming into town. Plus, if it’s okay, there might be a couple other kids who would want to have their parties with us.”
Shelby couldn’t read any of their faces, but eventually Callie stepped forward.
“You don’t have to pay us.”
Shelby watched as Em’s mouth dropped open a little. “They don’t?”
“We’ll do set-up and clean-up too,” Callie added.
“We will?” was Em’s shocked response.
“In return,” Callie continued, ignoring her sister’s incredulous looks, “you and Dan volunteer at AIF all summer. Say, ten hours a week.”
Shelby didn’t have time for it to sink in before she was already trying to argue. “But—”
“You’ll have to be in charge of your own food stuff, but I bet Trevor being the great brother he is would help you out with that.”
“You… We…” Shelby was too blown away to formulate a response. She looked helplessly at Dan.
“That sounds really cool, Ms. Baker,” Dan said eagerly. “You sure?”
Shelby gaped at him. Was he high? This was not the plan.
“We need you guys’ help more than we need your money. One night for a couple slaves all summer is more than worth it.”
Shelby looked at Callie, who was grinning. Somehow Callie had thwarted her plan without knowing it.
“Well, I’ll take you guys up to Mary and we’ll figure out the best day for all of us,” Em said, still looking a little shell-shocked.
Shelby finally found her voice. “Okay.”
“I think I would have rather had their money,” Em muttered to Callie, but Shelby caught it and watched Callie double over with laughter.
“Cracks me up when she gets all penny pinching,” Callie said to Trevor, and Shelby watched a moment pass between them. Shelby couldn’t pinpoint what the moment or look was about, but Shelby liked to think it might be a precursor to what she was trying to accomplish.
With the right kind of push, she’d make sure those two fell head over heels and Trevor wouldn’t think about leaving Pilot’s Point ever again. Maybe Callie’s plan actually helped her do that better. If she spent ten hours at AIF a week, there’d be all kinds of opportunities to push Callie and Trevor together.
Shelby scurried after Em, smiling from ear to ear.
“That was weird.”
Callie looked to where Shelby’s car had disappeared in a cloud of dust. “She’s got another scheme up her sleeve.”
“Yeah, but I never figured out the first one. Which is pathetic. I must be losing my touch.”
“Time to get you back to Seattle and hot shot FBI agenthood.” She hoped it sounded more joking than it felt. And really hoped it took his mind off that first scheme, so she didn’t feel compelled to explain it.
Trevor turned to take in the house. “You want to wait for Em?”
Callie didn’t turn. Needed to get her bearings first. “No, let’s go ahead and start. Putting it off won’t help anything.”
They were down to two-and-a-half weeks before Lawson and the boys would be showing up ready to make the Baker house home. It was time to suck it up and get to work. Callie and Em would work on sorting things after hours, but first they needed to look and see if any repairs would need to be made, and if Trevor could do any of them.
Today was inspection. Tonight and the coming evenings would be the emotional task of going through everything.
Callie took a deep breath and turned to face her second childhood home. She’d spent the first eight years of her life in the cabin she and Em now shared, but after Dad had died, she’d lived at the big house with Grandma and Gramps.
If she let them, the memories would crowd around until she couldn’t breathe. Instead, she focused on the job at hand. Tonight would be about memories. Chances were she’d end up crying then with Em, so there was no way in hell she was going to cry now. Especially in front of Trevor. Again.
“We’ll start in the basement. Work our way up.”
Maybe her hand shook a little as she pushed the key into the hole and opened the door, but the musty air that greeted her took away any of the remaining trepidation.
This wasn’t right. The building was a house meant to be lived in—not locked up. Lawson and his boys would live in it and love it the way it was meant to be. Grandma would like that. Gramps would too.
With the harsh sun-blocking curtains on every window, the house was dark and eerily quiet. It almost felt haunted, and that had Callie going around to every window and moving the curtains out of the way so that sunlight filtered in.
All the furniture was covered with thick drop cloths, and though Callie itched to throw them off, it would be best if things remained covered until closer to Lawson’s arrival.
“It’s so weird,” Trevor said in a low, reverential tone. “Seeing it like this. I haven’t been here in so long.”
Callie shrugged, hoping to alleviate the heavy feeling on her shoulders. “It’ll be up and running again in no time.”
She moved across faded orange carpet to the big, wooden stairs that led to the basement. They needed to check the heater, make sure there weren’t any leaks or cracks, menial things that would need to be taken care of before people could move in.
That would hopefully keep her mind off the heavy musk of dust and the choking feeling of ghosts.
At the bottom of the stairs, Callie reached up and pulled the string. It had been years since she’d lived here, but she still remembered its exact location. When the single bulb popped on, it revealed more musty, dirty air and a whole hell of a lot of work.
Gramps had been a packrat, and like his office at the airport, the basement was full of stacks of magazines and other airplane paraphernalia. They didn’t have to organize all of it, but if three people’s belongings were going to fit some of it had to be sorted.
The faintest hint of cigar smoke leaked its way through the overwhelming stench of grime and almost had her smiling.
“This is a lot of work, Cal.”
“Yeah.” But it would be healing work. It would hurt like hell, but going through everything, really putting it away instead of ignoring it, that would be a really positive step toward what she was trying to find.
Balance. Hope. A future.
“We won’t get to everything before they get home, but I want them to have at least something of a fresh start. They’ve had a rough few years, too.”
She surveyed the mess and tried to determine a good starting point, what needed to be done and what could be left for Law. She moved into the room that had once been Gramps’s home office, flipped on the light and felt all the strength leak out of her.
Gramps’s leather chair was covered in an inch of dust. On the table next to it were his glasses and a book marked with a bookmark. A bookmark she had made him at school in the fifth grade, with poorly drawn airplanes, laminated by her teacher.
Callie swallowed, tried to refocus. Tried not to think he was gone for the day and would be back.
The familiar feeling of being beat down returned. She’d made it a few days feeling decent about herself, so it made sense this would knock her back some. Healing? Was it even possible?
“What do you think?”
She looked at Trevor, really looked at him. The way his black hair was starting to grow out, enough that if she ran her fingers through it, it wouldn’t feel scratchy. His eyes were focused on the mess of the basement, and they were so blue it didn’t seem natural.
Broad shoulders tapered down, and his white T-shirt clung to his flat stomach, hard muscle under smooth skin. From all the work outside at AIF, his previously fair skin was now tanned.
What was so wrong with want
ing him? With, for once, taking what she wanted? New leaf? Fuck it. She wanted something more than this new leaf of feeling sad and doing the right damn thing, she wanted to feel something besides all the bad.
Changing? Yes, she was changing. Healing from years of loss and pain and not knowing what to do with it all. Why not do something good, experience something amazing in the midst of all this new, hard stuff?
“I think you should kiss me.”
He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out other than something akin to a squeak. It made her smile because it made her feel powerful. And it made her feel good.
She didn’t give him a chance to act or not act beyond that little squeak. She fisted her hands in his shirt and pulled his mouth to hers.
There was nothing tentative in her movement, much like her grief-fueled kiss years ago. But, it was different. She felt different. There was no alcohol prompting her decision, no debilitating sadness weighing down her limbs. This wasn’t desperation. No, this was freedom, and as Trevor’s lips began to move against hers, as his arm banded around her waist, she felt only one thing.
Good.
Callie gripped Trevor’s arms, enjoyed the hard muscle there as his teeth scraped against her bottom lip. Some sound came out of her she wasn’t familiar with, almost akin to a whimper as Trevor pushed her against the cement wall.
His hands roamed down and cupped her ass so that they were pressed hard together, center to center. She could feel his erection, and the thought of having him inside her had that strange noise escaping her throat again.
His tongue tangled with hers and his hands slid back up, over her sides and across her ribcage. She arched toward him, desperate for something, anything more. One hand cupped her breast and explored it until he found the sensitive nipple, while his other hand cupped her neck and pulled her mouth harder to his.
“Callie.” Her name from his lips, said so rough, so desperate, had the heat in her core exploding to something almost unbearable. Then he let his teeth scrape down the side of her neck and she was sure she was going to explode right there.
“Put your legs around me,” he instructed in a voice she had never heard. It was dark and authoritative and pretty much the sexiest thing ever.
She wasn’t used to following orders, but she was pretty sure she’d do just about anything for that voice.
When she hooked her legs around him and he lifted her off the ground, it was kind of hard to catch her breath. Until they crashed into the long table full of random rusty airplane parts.
Parts rattled onto the ground, Trevor all but dropped her, and she awkwardly found her footing before falling on her ass.
A laugh bubbled up through arousal as she found her balance by gripping the table. “Well, shit.” But his hands were on her again, on her waist, pulling her back into him and any laughter was forgotten. “Hold on a sec,” she muttered, narrowly missing stepping on a few pointy screws.
“I know, I know.” His hands dropped from her waist and he stepped away, strangely agitated. “You’re going to say we shouldn’t do this because it’ll wreck our friendship and I’m leaving in a few months and—”
Shocked at the sudden change in everything, and that he was putting words in her mouth, Callie stood where she was and put her hands on her hips. “Actually, I was going to say we need to be careful or one of us will need a tetanus shot.” She gestured at the mess around them and watched as he looked at it, his eyes refocusing on something other than her.
When he looked up at her, eyes dark and intense and so incredibly blue, she let out a long, steadying breath. She could practically read his mind. And his mind was shouting abort.
Without a shadow of a doubt she knew Trevor was about to pull the rug out from her. Again.
“Callie.” Trevor looked at her, really looked. Her eyes were so dark they almost weren’t brown anymore, her chest heaved, and she looked as though she was trying to rebuild that wall between them. Her cheeks were flushed and her hands gripped the table behind her.
Such a fucking mistake. He couldn’t get that message across to the rest of his body, but his mind knew this had been a mistake.
“I know. What you said. It’s true.”
But her voice wasn’t steady and her eyes searched his for some kind of answer. Some kind of rebuttal.
He didn’t have one, but he did have the truth. If they didn’t get it out now, then this type of thing would keep happening until they ended up in bed together or never speaking to each other again. The former was extraordinarily enticing, but what he really wanted, needed was Callie in his life. Not Callie as some kind of fling.
Trevor took a deep breath and framed Callie’s face with his hands. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
She was confused for a moment and then she tried to look down, but he couldn’t let it be that easy. She deserved more, and she had to see it not just hear it. “Believe me when I say there is a part of me that would like nothing better than to finish what we started.”
“Yeah, that part is called your dick.” When he didn’t even crack a smile, she shrugged a little, tried to wriggle away. “Jeez. It was a joke.”
“I don’t want to joke. I want to be honest. I want to…” God, he wanted to kiss her again. To feel the soft expanse of her skin. He wanted to take her clothes off slowly and…
Trevor closed his eyes, tried to erase the images careening through his mind. “I want to explain because I don’t want things to be weird between us again.” He reopened his eyes. “You mean too much to me for us to go down this road. Because, bottom line, I’m leaving.”
She wiggled again, but he held firm and she stilled. “I get it, Trevor. Really.” Her eyes refused to meet his.
“That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t say this.” He waited and waited until she finally met his gaze again. “I don’t want to be the one that hurts you. Maybe that’s egotistical of me to think I could, but I don’t want to be the one who walks away and leaves you hurting. I’ll have to walk away, Callie. You know that.”
“Yes, I know.” Her voice was soft and it caused him to gentle his hold, to brush the pads of his thumbs across her jaw.
“Don’t,” she said, a slight crack to her voice, and that hint of vulnerability was the only thing that had him dropping his hands.
She took a step away from him and wrapped her arms around herself. Like magic, she pulled herself together, hiding all the little chinks in her armor, all those pockets of vulnerability, and suddenly she was Callie standing in front of him. Strong, invincible, in charge, and he wobbled in her shadow.
“Now, brace yourself, Trevor, because I’m going to be really honest here.” She tried to smile to lighten the mood, but it didn’t reach her eyes. It didn’t reach anything. “You could hurt me.”
She let that hang in the air for a minute, her eyes holding his, her hands clutching her arms as if that was her grip on strength.
“Callie.”
“So, you’re right. We can’t do this because I’m starting to think I’m finally getting to a point where I can heal. Finally getting to a point where I want to. I think that means letting myself have a real relationship if the right guy comes along.”
Something clutched in his heart, but was immediately gutted by her next words.
“You’re not the right guy, Trevor.”
He should nod and accept that, but he couldn’t. He had to know it wasn’t that simple. “Because I’m leaving.”
She stepped toward him and traced his hairline with her finger before she met his eyes again. “Because I’m Pilot’s Point.” She dropped her hand. “And you’re not.” Flat. Final. Sure. He wished he could feel any of those things, mostly sure.
He took her hand in his, squeezed. “Is it pathetic we’re letting addresses keep us from doing this?”
She shook her head almost vehemently. “No. They aren’t just addresses. You’re FBI through and through, and without AIF, I’m nothing. It’s more to us than just. It’s who we are.�
��
He swallowed and when she pulled her hand away, he let it fall, let the connection end. For the first time in his whole life, he wished he could be Pilot’s Point. He wished he could stay.
Chapter Nine
Trevor jammed his thumb against the remote. Some crappy teenage girly music blasted from upstairs. Outside, the weather reflected his mood. Dark, windy, the threat of rain and thunder in the distance.
The windows were open and he knew he should shut them, but the smell of an impending spring storm kept him from completing the action.
He’d lived in Seattle for four years, but it had never become home. That was okay; he hadn’t been looking for a home. Staying in Pilot’s Point held no appeal, but there were things he’d missed about it, things that felt comforting now.
Spring thunderstorms. Fresh Iowa corn on the cob. Callie.
The crux of his shitty mood. He couldn’t get the taste of Callie out of his mouth, the memory of her long, lean body pressed against his, or the fact he’d been the one to back away. Again.
Everything he’d said to her had been the God’s honest truth. Just the thought of hurting Callie had his stomach cramping painfully. He didn’t want to be the one who walked away from her willingly after all she’d lost so unwillingly.
So he’d backed away, when it had been the last thing he’d wanted to do. Things remained fine between them. Normal. Except for the fact every time he saw her, heard her voice, or thought about her, images and sensations of that basement moment flooded his mind.
Then his thoughts would run toward the dangerous. Because there was a problem he hadn’t figured out. He was leaving whether or not they were sleeping together. Whether or not there was more beyond friendship. He was leaving. What was the point of staying apart?
Not hurting Callie, and maybe not hurting himself. Hell, if he could always remember those two very important pieces of information.
Thunder boomed and he raised his beer in a silent cheers to it. He wanted a storm that would shake the windows, that would pelt rain down on the earth and slash the sky with lightning. He wanted something to feel more out of control than himself.