by Lora Leigh
And he didn’t care a bit to do so.
There were even times he had even gained a hint of morbid satisfaction in doing so.
He couldn’t do it to Cami, though. It wasn’t her fault the school board was filled with the high-minded, panty-starched little prudes. The bastards had seemed to actually enjoy each punishment they had dealt out to him during the few years he had attended the high school.
But he’d seen in the shamed, regretful gazes of a few of them that they hadn’t agreed with it. He could find no respect for them, but there was a part of him that could understand it.
Thankfully, he’d managed to graduate early. By the first semester of the final year he had had the credits needed to bypass attendance for the rest of the year.
The school board had been more than willing to allow him to simply return home until the end of the school year. What they hadn’t told him? Unless he was in attendance a required number of days he would lose that year and the credits he had accumulated. Had it not been for the recruiting officer who’d been shadowing Rafe during those last months of high school, then he would have never managed to graduate. He would have been forced to get a GED rather than the diploma he had busted his ass for and had suffered at the local high school to attain.
He’d been determined to have that diploma, even if getting it had been hell. It had been a fight that both he, and the soldier who had befriended him, grew frustrated with.
But Rafe had learned why that soldier had been there. Why he had befriended the three outcast cousins and drawn them into the armed forces, and away from Corbin County. Because he, too, was a Callahan. Given up for adoption by his parents when he was barely six months old, the only knowledge he had of his birth family was what his adopted parents had given him.
When he’d arrived in Corbin County, first during Rafe’s final year of high school and again six months before Jaymi had been killed, he had seen the hell his nephews had endured. It had been on that trip to see them that he had convinced them to join the Marines.
Rafe looked down at the woman in his arms and felt that familiar dark anger from his youth rising inside him. He knew that any moment she could bolt and run, then she would be gone. And the thought of it infuriated him.
He was too damned restless to sleep now. It was one of the reasons he had been drinking himself into a drunk when she showed up on his doorstep. So he could sleep. So he could escape the restlessness and the wary sense of foreboding that had haunted most of his life. Well, at least that part of his life spent in Corbin County. Twelve years in the Marines and eight of those years spent as a sniper, and not once had he felt that same dark foreboding mission. Step his ass into Corbin County with the intent to stay, though, and once again it became a near daily companion.
Easing from the bed, he felt his heart clench at her disappointed little murmur when his warmth eased away from her. She shifted on the bed, searching for him for a moment before settling back to sleep with an unconscious little pout to her lips.
She would walk away, he warned himself again. As easily as, perhaps more easily than, she had walked into his life once again.
It was better that neither one of them grew used to sleeping with the other. Better that he simply let her go. If he could. He had a feeling that letting her go again would be impossible.
Moving to the dresser on the other side of the room, Rafe pulled on jeans and a heavy flannel shirt before sliding his feet into a pair of comfortable sneakers. He collected one of the slim, fragrant cigars he preferred, a lighter, and moved to the balcony doors.
Slipping quietly onto the balcony and easing the door closed Rafe let the night settle around him.
The acrid, spicy sweet taste mixed with the smoke had the immediate effect of easing the worse of the tension that had begun to fill him.
This wasn’t the same warning, or foreboding as his recruiting officer had called it, that had served Rafe so well in the Marines. This was something he had only felt when heading into the most dangerous of the missions he’d undertaken. This wasn’t just a foreboding, it was a straight-up fucking warning.
From the moment Cami’s firm little knock had sounded on his door, those inner sirens had begun going off. And now, staring into the night, he wondered at the sense of danger he could feel edging closer.
He had hoped he could return home, slip in without too much of a ripple, keep to himself, and find the life he’d searched for around the world.
And God knew he’d searched for that place in the world where he could, at the very least, be content. He wasn’t asking for happiness. He’d learned long ago that was far too much to ask for. Contentment, though, hadn’t seemed too high a price to charge for the years he had spent defending his country. After all, he’d also been defending this little corner of America that had decided he and his cousins had no place in their midst.
Or perhaps those other places just weren’t the place whose proud mountains sustained them. That place where their fathers, their grandfather, and his father before him had planted Callahan roots. Those other “places” hadn’t been home.
Logan and Crowe too had found that contentment eluding them. Crowe had actually resigned from the Marines the year before Rafe and Logan had and spent those months alone searching for a place he could call home. Crowe had traveled around for a while, but as he’d written in his last e-mail before they’d returned, evidently there really was no place like home.
For Crowe no place like the cabin his mother had left him that overlooked the sheltered valley below. For Rafe it was the small ranch his Uncle Clyde had owned. The one that his grandmother had been raised on before marrying JR Callahan.
For Logan it had been the house his mother had owned before her death. The one she and his father had lived on. The one he had been born in. It was flat in the middle of Sweetrock. A two-story traditional American with a wide porch surrounding all sides. In the back was the roomy yard he and his cousins had played in as toddlers. Next to it was the garage where his father had allowed him to “help” work on the family car.
The house was surrounded by other similar houses. Once, long, long ago, before his mother had given in and married the father of her child, Logan had played with the neighborhood children there. He had been accepted, and had known a childhood happiness that Rafe only barely remembered while Logan refused to discuss. And none of them could pinpoint why it had changed. Why had their grandfathers, their entire families, turned on the children left behind? What had made them suddenly hate and despise the sons that cherished daughters had given birth to? And why didn’t anyone seem to have the answers to those questions?
Rafe puffed on the cigar again, frowning into the swirling snow and listening to the moan of the wind. Rafe knew it had begun with the daughters marrying the Callahan brothers. Still though, that animosity hadn’t grown against their children until after their deaths.
A grimace tightened his face as he forced himself away from the maze he was beginning to step into. Questions without answers, they could pile up into a mess inside his brain if he let them. There was simply no way to figure out why the families that he and his cousins should have been able to turn to had turned their backs on them instead.
They were the sons of the daughters those three men were known to have once cherished and adored, until the night they had eloped with the three brothers. Three brothers who had spent every day since their return from the military accusing the barons of having murdered their parents, JR and Eileen Callahan.
After twenty-two years of asking “Why”? and of all but begging the good people of Corbin County to just explain what sin they felt their parents had committed, Rafe, Logan, and Crowe had simply stopped caring.
They’d had enough of it the three days they’d sat in that tiny jail cell, frozen with shock and horror, accused of killing a woman all three of them considered their best friend.
It had taken three days for Uncle Calvert, a Marine recruiter, and the lawyer he had hired, to ge
t their release.
Then for another three days Rafe and his cousins had lived in silent shock beneath the care of the man who had raised them and the uncle they hadn’t known still lived.
If it hadn’t been for Ryan, they would have rotted in prison. If they had lived that long. Before Ryan had made it to the jail with the lawyer, all three of them had been beaten so badly by the sheriff and his deputies that it had taken all they had to walk out of the jail.
The evidence at the scene of the crime had been conclusive, the judge had decided. The DNA testing on the blood indicating an older male had gone along with the FBI’s profile of the serial murderer. A profile the FBI stated the Callahans in no way matched. The judge had further concluded that as much as he would love to see Rafe, Logan, and Crowe Callahan locked up for the rest of their natural-born days, he couldn’t in all conscience bring them to trial for a crime he was certain they hadn’t committed.
A man who didn’t know them and hadn’t taken the time to learn anything about them would have loved to see the three of them locked up for the rest of their natural-born days.
Son of a bitch, that memory still had the power to amaze him, and never failed to confuse him.
Leaning against the balcony railing, Rafe flicked the cigar ash over the edge of the railing and narrowed his eyes against the snow.
Their fathers hadn’t been scions of society, but neither had they been the dregs of humanity. And for not the first time in Rafe’s life he was beginning to wonder exactly what three cherished daughters could have done to their families to ricochet back on those daughters’ children? And once again he was asking questions he couldn’t answer.
Now, here Rafe was, right back where he had started, and wondering what the fuck he had come back for. What had made him, Logan, and Crowe hunger for this particular little place in the world?
Because insanity must run on the Callahan side of their genetics, he decided as he puffed the cigar once again and relished the aromatic burn that filled his senses.
He’d be damned if he knew where to go from here, though. He could rebuild the ranch; it had been damned profitable before Clyde Ramsey had died.
Rafe, Logan, and Crowe had had plans for the ranch. They’d been certain the climate would have to be different when they returned and living there wouldn’t be the hardship it had once been. He’d be damned but they couldn’t have been more wrong.
The quiet musings and his enjoyment of the cigar were disrupted by the sound of a powerful snowmobile motor cutting its way through the heavy windswept snow falling from the sky as well as that layered on the ground.
Strong LED lights cut through the white walls of fluff falling around them and traversed at least two feet of heavy, wet snow as the powerful machine made the precarious turn between snow-hidden fences.
Logan or Crowe. The new snowmobiles were unmistakable, and only they were insane enough to be riding through a blizzard for whatever it was they wanted. It could be as simple as sharing a cup of coffee or as complicated as heading back out for whatever wild-assed idea one of them had.
They were bored. He’d sensed it weeks before. And things could get dangerous, especially for Rafe, when Logan and Crowe were bored.
There were times Rafe felt as though he was the adult and his cousins were no more than wayward overgrown children. Very dark, very cynical, but nonetheless as wild as hell and without the normal cautious attitudes most adults displayed at their age. Hell, their time in the Marines as snipers should have fucking matured them. At least by a few more years than it appeared it had.
Sighing heavily, he turned, tamped the cigar out in the small ashtray kept on a ledge by the door, then slipped back into the bedroom.
Cami was still sleeping peacefully, sprawled out on her stomach, her pretty rounded ass emphasized by the silk sheet lying over it.
He pulled the comforter over her body then tucked it to her shoulders before moving for the door. Opening it he headed to the kitchen his steps quick and silent as he moved down the wood stairs.
He’d forgotten about the clothing left tossed on the floor until he stepped into the brightly lit kitchen to see Logan twirling a pair of tiny violet panties on one finger while he held up a matching lace and silk bra with the other. He looked from one to the other with curious moss-green eyes. As though trying to determine exactly what it was or why it was there.
Glancing at Rafe, he dropped the lingerie on the table, then picked up the sweatshirt and read the front of it. Rafe watched as his cousin visibly tensed before turning the sweat shirt and reading the back.
Flannigan #12, Corbin Co. Teachers Softball League.
“Cami Flannigan,” Logan mused softly as Rafe began picking up the clothes, folding them haphazardly, and laying them on the counter. “Did you lose your mind sometime between the agreement we made about Corbin County beauties and whenever you picked her up at?”
The agreement? They weren’t to fuck any woman within a hundred miles of Sweetrock.
“Don’t start, Logan,” Rafe warned him quietly, unwilling to start an argument with Logan that could end up waking Cami.
“You don’t think her father caused us enough trouble after Jaymi was killed? Come on, Rafe, he bombarded your commanding officer with e-mails about us for years. Even Clyde wasn’t safe from Mark Flannigan’s vindictiveness. Do you really want to give him another shot at us? What the hell do you think he’s going to do when he learns you’re fucking his baby girl?”
Mark Flannigan wouldn’t give a damn one way or the other Rafe knew. From what Rafe had learned over the years, Cami’s relationship with her father had only grown colder. The only reason Cami’s father would even pretend to care would be if he could destroy the Callahan cousins with it.
“What I think is that this is my business,” Rafe informed him as he moved to the other side of the kitchen and began making more coffee. “Now, tell me why the hell you’re here in the middle of a blizzard rather than sitting in front of a fire in the house?” Rafe shot him a disgruntled look. “Didn’t we just spend three days opening the house and moving you in?”
And it had sucked, too. Every day neighbors had glared at them from porches or through their windows. Old men had shot them the finger while teenage boys steered a wide path around them. It was more than apparent they weren’t welcome and they sure as hell weren’t wanted.
“I was bored.” Logan shrugged, his expression smoothing out to cool disregard.
“Try again,” Rafe snorted. “Why are you here?”
Sure, he was bored, but his cousin had ridden over thirty miles in a blizzard on a snowmobile. The fact that Crowe had tinkered enough with the engine to make the vehicle capable of it didn’t mean it wasn’t still a damned dumb decision.
Logan leaned back against the inside of the bar counter, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared back at Rafe quietly. Behind him, the darkened living room reflected the fiery red glow of the coals in the fireplace and the large oil portrait of Rafe and his mother when he had been three, standing at her knee.
With long blond hair, dark blue eyes, and porcelain, delicate skin his mother had been Corbin County’s homecoming queen her senior year in high school, voted most likely to succeed, and was considered one of the most beautiful young women in the county.
Her father had commissioned the portrait when she was eighteen. It had taken three years for the artist to get to it. When she’d insisted on including her son, he’d refused to complete payment. Her mother’s older brother Clyde had paid for it instead and hung it over the fireplace.
As she was elegant, considerate, and compassionate, it was often hard to imagine she was actually a part of the cutthroat, icy-eyed Roberts clan. Sometimes, Rafe had heard his father joke, he believed his mother-in-law must have had a lover who fathered Ann Roberts Callahan, because there was no way in hell the heartless Marshal Roberts could have fathered a child so beautiful and warm-hearted. But Rafe had always heard how Marshal had spoiled and adored his da
ughter. And how he’d fallen into a drunken rage the night she eloped with Sam Callahan.
Logan shifted, drawing Rafe’s attention back to him. “I tried to call, but the phones aren’t getting reception and the land lines are down somewhere between here and town. I thought I’d head out and check on you.” He made it sound as though he had done Rafe a favor.
“In a blizzard?” Rafe arched his brow quizzically. That wasn’t like his cousin. “What happened Logan?”
Rafe could feel the suspicion building inside him stronger now. He knew Logan, and he knew that was bullshit.
“You heard from Crowe lately?” his cousin asked rather than answering the question.
“This morning. He met me out at one of the line shacks to check the condition of it. He seemed fine and didn’t mention any problems. Do we have any problems?” They sure as hell didn’t need any.
Logan shook his head. “Probably just my paranoia,” he finally sighed. “Or the fact I’m the one in town and easier to access.”
“No doubt it’s ‘not’ your paranoia,” Rafe growled. “What was it?”
He grimaced. “Someone was in the house while I was out at the grocery this morning. When I returned, the tape placed at the top of the door had been moved and replaced and the strand of hair in the lock was gone.”
“That doesn’t sound like paranoia to me, Logan,” Rafe growled. “What makes you think it could be?”
Logan’s lips thinned. “Because nothing was on the security camera but the neighbor kid knocking. If he was messing with my locks at the same time, I might have to kill him.”
Rafe hid a smile. The boy, Logan’s neighbor’s brother, had decided to torment Logan however possible.