Tangled Hearts (Passion in Paradise)

by Sarah O'Rourke

  Slapping her hand, Cal shook his head. “Nuh uh. My sip, remember?”

  “Oops,” Melody winced, her eyes tearful as she met his steady gaze. “Sorry. After that story, you definitely deserve your sip.”

  Cal smiled faintly as he lifted his glass to his lips. “To answer your earlier question, the kind of parent that could do something like that is the kind of parent I was better off not knowing. Don’t you cry for me, Sweetness. I did alright for myself. That nun made it a habit to watch over me over the years no matter what orphanage or foster home I was staying at and Sister Bridget never let me forget that I mattered. That old nun could be hell on wheels when I tested her patience. I got the back of my head smacked more than once by her for some of the foolish crap I pulled as a kid. Hell, when she caught me and Tommy Springer drinking in an empty confessional, she made us mop the entire church and recite the Lord’s Prayer the entire time we worked. Do you know how big the Catholic churches in Philly are? We were at it all afternoon. I prayed myself into a case of laryngitis, no lie! Couldn’t talk above a whisper and it felt like I swallowed razor blades when I swallowed for almost a week thanks to her creative form of punishment. She said it was the Lord’s way of telling me that thirteen year old boys shouldn’t be drinking. She must have been onto something there, too, because I didn’t take another sip of alcohol until I turned 21. The good Sister kept up with me until she died a few years ago. Besides my army family, she’s the only person I ever claimed as kin,” he explained, grinning as he heard Melody’s watery chuckle.

  “That’s beautiful,” Melody admitted softly, plucking a tissue from the box on the end table and wiping her nose.

  “No, babe, you’re beautiful. The story is just a page from my past. It’s my turn now,” he reminded her, more than a little ready to move her along to a much more interesting subject – namely her.

  Sniffling, Melody nodded. “Okay, hit me. Well, not literally,” she amended. “Because that would hurt. Like a lot. Because you’re… you know, huge,” she rambled as she crawled toward the end of her sofa to toss her used tissue into the trash can she kept under the end table.

  Cam adjusted his dick in his pants as he watched her ass sway in the air as she moved across the carpet. Damn, he could hardly wait to get his hands on those firm cheeks of hers, he thought silently. “First off, another thing you need to know about me is that I don’t put my hands on a woman in anger ever. You never need fear that from me, Melody. A man that’ll lay hands on a woman isn’t a man at all. He’s just a coward that’s too chicken shit to go looking for somebody that can fight him back. Second, I’m pleased to know that you think I’m huge. I can report that several sources have found me to be quite well hung as well.”

  Turning her head to glare at him, she hissed, “I was not talking about your dick, Callum Valentine!”

  “Maybe not, but I was,” he drawled, winking at her as she settled herself on her ass again.

  He watched as Melody closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “You’re silently counting to ten, aren’t you?”

  Cracking one eyelid, she nodded. “How’d you know?”

  “Sister Bridget used to do the very same thing,” he laughed. “Anyway, it’s my turn now. You ready?” he asked eagerly. He couldn’t wait to see the look on her face when he asked his question.

  “I guess,” she said hesitantly, almost cringing as she waited for him to make his query.

  “What age did you lose your virginity?” he inquired, propping his elbow on the table as he dropped his chin in his hand. “I’m thinking, twenty-three. Twenty-four, max. There’s no way you went any earlier than that. I’m betting it was that loser you were with that got to taste your cherry. Am I right? I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “I think I hate you,” she informed him through clenched teeth as her cheeks turned bright red. “And if you’re just going to answer your own questions, why bother asking?”

  “I knew it!” Cal growled. “That just makes me hate ol’ Bradley even more. Why would you give that prick a precious gift like that?” he asked, not bothering to conceal his disappointment. He’d never been good at acting anyway.

  “Because, Callum, I didn’t know he was a prick when I gave it to him!” she bit out angrily. “Besides, it was my gift to give to whoever I chose.”

  “Yeah, but you waited long enough to give your virginity away. Wouldn’t it have been nice if the fucker had been worthy?” Cal muttered as Melody snatched up the tumbler of whiskey and took a gulp.

  “I wasn’t that old. What were you? Twelve, thirteen when you lost yours?” she snapped, blowing her hair out of her face in a huff.

  “Fifteen,” Cal answered blandly, laughing again when Melody’s eyes threatened to bulge out of her head.

  “Fifteen!” she echoed with a yelp. “You were a baby, Cal!”

  “I grew up in the streets, babe. By their standards, I actually was a late bloomer. I was fifteen. She was eighteen. It was a quick exchange of bodily fluids in an alley in downtown Philly,” Cal returned, lifting a hand to scratch his stubbled cheek, grinning when her eyes widened at that last bit of information. God, she really was an innocent, he thought with a pleased sigh.

  “That’s… that’s…. criminal. Literally! You were jailbait!!”

  “No such thing as jailbait where I come from, sweets. You’ll be happy to know, though, that I did wear a rubber. I’ve always worn a rubber no matter who I was banging.”

  Melody clapped her hand over her ears. “Will you PLEASE stop telling me that stuff? I do not want to know. These scintillating details about your sex life are…”

  “… are things you will need to know before we take things to the next level,” Cal supplied smoothly.

  Melody shook her head. “Uh, no! I do not! Because we will not be taking things to any level. You and I” she growled, gesturing between them with a finger, “are NEVER gonna happen.”

  “You and I,” he replied, mimicking her finger gesture, “are already happening, Princess. You just haven’t realized it yet.”

  “Whatever,” she declared, shooting him a look of disgust. “Whose turn is it?”

  “It’s your go and my drink,” he returned easily, reaching out to relieve her of the glass in her hand. “What’s your question, Melody? I’m happy to tell you anything you’d like to know about my prior sex life,” he added to needle her.

  “No, thank you,” she denied him primly as she pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “I know more than I ever wanted to already about that side of you. Instead, I want to know why you went into the military and what made you stay there for over twenty years.”

  “Which do you want: the canned and packaged response that I always gave my soldiers or the truth?” he asked curiously.

  “How about you give them both to me and I’ll decide which one I like better,” Melody offered, popping a jellybean in her mouth.

  “Well, my PC response to your question when a soldier would ask it was that I joined the Army because I wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself. I wanted to make a difference and change lives. And I guess that’s not exactly a lie. I did want those things…. later. But the thing I was looking for the most when I enlisted was just to find a way out.”

  “A way out,” Melody echoed, her face the picture of confusion.

  “See, when you grow up in the system and on the streets, most times when a kid – especially a boy – turns eighteen, his options are severely limited. Back then, most times he was gonna end up one of two places. Jail or one of the Armed Services.”

  “Why?” Melody blurted, clearly stunned.

  “Foster kids and orphans aren’t exactly flush with cash when they leave the system, babe. There aren’t many options out there for the suddenly poverty stricken. I hate to say it, but most of the guys I knew that were in my boat went the crime route. A few of us decided that we wouldn’t have looked good in orange and hooked up with the Armed Forces.”

  �
��Why’d you choose the Army?” Melody asked.

  “Truthfully?” he queried with a grin. Seeing her nod, he chuckled. “Remember you asked for it, Princess,” he warned her before continuing. “I chose Army because my recruiter was one hot piece of tail. Blonde, curvy…. She knew how to fill out a uniform in a way that pulled all the boys to her yard.”

  “You’re revolting,” Melody returned, revolted by his answer.

  “You asked for the truth,” he returned with a careless shrug, enjoying her ire. “Which bothers you more, babe. My answer or the fact that at one point in my past I looked at another woman the way I look at you now.”

  “Oh, please. I’m sure you look at every woman with a working vagina the same way you look at me,” Melody snapped, flushing as she snatched her bag of jellybeans closer to her and shoved her hand inside.

  “Do you really think that, Princess?” he asked softly. “If so, you haven’t been paying attention at all.” Cal shook his head, purposefully keeping his face somber. “Melody, I don’t look at any women other than you now. I haven’t since the first day I put eyes on you.” He could tell she wanted to call bullshit on what he was saying, but he watched as she visibly withdrew from the direction of the conversation. He could almost see the wall rising between them.

  “So, you told me why you joined, but my question was a two-parter, remember,” she stated, fastidiously ignoring his candid remarks about her. “Why did you stay in the Army?”

  “Short answer? The bottom fell out of the world as we know it on 9/11. Everything changed that day. Almost overnight, I looked up and was surrounded by these kids that had signed up to do their patriotic duty, and none of them knew dick about the war, the army, or combat in general. But they were ready to take a bullet if Uncle Sam asked them to do it. Those boys and gals were just kids. I knew I needed to stay in service and do my part to take them from kid to soldier. Next thing I knew, I’d put in my twenty years and was workin’ on my twenty-first and my boss was tappin’ me on the shoulder telling me it was time to go on to the next phase in my life.”

  “Was it worth it?” Melody asked softly. “Staying in, I mean? Did you make the difference that you hoped to make?”

  Pinning her with his eyes, he nodded. “I think I did. I was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan a total of seven times over the past decade. I only ever lost a handful of my boys. Those were pretty good numbers when you’re dealing with radical extremists willing to die for their virgins. I like to believe it’s –at least in part - because I helped train them the way they needed to be trained to stay alive.”

  “I think that’s a really good possibility from what RJ has told me,” Melody agreed softly as she absently twirled a strand of chestnut hair around her index finger. “He says that you’re pretty much a legend in the unit. Something about never asking anybody to do what you wouldn’t be willing to do yourself. He says the men looked up to you. Still do, from what I hear. You’re their hero.”

  “If I’m their hero, then they need a better class of role models,” Cal grumbled uncomfortably, taking a quick swig from his glass of whiskey. At least, he thought it was his. At this point they were just reaching for the closest drink. “Seriously, babe, a hero is the guy that jumps on his buddy’s body when the IEDs start exploding. I was just a guy that did his job. Big difference,” he growled, pissed off at himself for being so uncomfortable. It wasn’t the first time somebody had told him he was a hero, but hearing it from her lips was different. For her, he wanted to be that guy everybody said he was.

  But he wasn’t. He hadn’t died for a comrade. He had never been in a position to save a life. Oh, he knew the argument could be made that by making his boys into well-trained combat machines, he’d saved lots of lives, but that was bullshit. That had been his job. His responsibility. And nothing Melody or anyone else said could change his mind.

  “Strange,” he heard her murmur as he took another drink from the dwindling glass of whiskey. “I never took you for a humble guy. You’re so arrogant about everything else that I was prepared for you to tell me that you were like General Patton on steroids overseas.”

  Cal barked with laughter, jerking his gaze toward Melody. “Do you know that nobody has ever made me laugh like you do? No matter what kind of mood I’m in or what kind of crap is rolling through my mind, I hear you make one of your sarcastic little quips and just like that…” He snapped his fingers. “I’m grinning my head off. How do you do that?” he asked softly.

  Melody smirked. “I could tell you, but it’ll cost you your turn. Are you sure that question is what you wanna use it on?” she asked with an impish smile as she reached a hand out to pet Goose as the huge dog lumbered into the room.

  “Hell, no!” Reaching for the bottle of Jack he poured some more of the liquor into the glass they now appeared to be sharing. “I’ve got much more interesting shit that I wanna know about you. Like, what’s the most terrifying thing you’ve ever seen?”

  Melody didn’t even pause to think. “Hands down, it was seeing my matron of honor’s bedazzled woo-woo. That shit was mind scarring,” she declared with a shudder of her curvy body.

  Cal choked on his laughter. “I’m not sure where to even go with that. Why in the hell were you looking at your matron of honor’s pussy? You got some latent lesbian desires that I wasn’t aware of? Because, honest to Christ, that’s just hot, babe.”

  Melody gasped. “What? No! I’m straight. Like really straight. Like a board, Cal!” she asserted sharply. “Not that there’s anything wrong with lesbian love. All love is beautiful. For other people. For me, love has sucked. But it sucked inside a strictly heterosexual relationship,” she babbled, her hand eagerly reaching for the whiskey so she could take a bracing gulp.

  “Hmmm…sounds like an awful lot of denial there, Melody. You sure you don’t have some buried desires. Staring at another woman’s cooch might be an indication that….”

  “She was banging Brad! I walked in and found them. That’s how I saw it!” she exploded furiously. “Her bejeweled goods were on full display. I couldn’t have missed it. And believe me, I wanted to. Because, really, who decorates their lady business? Sure, I’m all for a good grooming because – honestly – no man wants to go down there and find that the jungle has overtaken the flower garden, but still! To actually bedazzle the petals of the flower…. Well, that…that’s just pretentious!”

  Cal bellowed with laughter as he watched her tip the glass to her lips again. He collapsed back against the chair as he clutched his chest and tried to control his amusement. It was a lost cause, however. The picture she’d painted with her words might just give him a coronary.

  “It’s not that funny,” she muttered under her breath, stealing a third drink when another round of cackles claimed his big body, shaking his massive frame. Raising her voice, she glared at him and growled, “For the record, I was traumatized! The nightmares I have about that woman’s sequined lady bits are the stuff therapy bills are made of!”

  “Oh, God! Stop talking,” Cal managed to gasp through his deep belly laughs. Forcing himself to inhale through his nose, he made himself think about every nasty thing he’d ever witnessed on the battlefield, and slowly, the laughter faded away. Looking at her across the table, he absently noted she’d drained the leaden tumbler of Jack Daniels. He couldn’t say much… if she’d laughed at him like that then he probably would have drained it, too. “Okay, babe,” he said when he could keep the smile from his voice, “You’re right. Seeing that image would be… scarring. Especially the way you saw it.” Somehow, he managed to keep a straight face.

  “Thank you,” Melody returned primly, her eyes slightly glazed as they stared at him.

  “For the record, what you described… it is pretentious. And there is nothing worse to a real man than a pretentious pussy. A woman that feels the need to deck her puss out in jewelry is obviously lacking in the talent department.”

  Melody beamed. “See, that’s what I thought, but I’m glad to
have it confirmed by a guy.”

  “Consider your suspicion officially confirmed. Besides, any man that would stick his dick in another chick while he had you waiting at home… well, he’s a man that didn’t deserve what he had.”

  Cal watched Melody yawn and smile sluggishly at him. It was clear that the alcohol was starting to loosen her up. “You okay?” he asked when her head lolled backward.

  “Yeah,” she sighed dreamily. “I’m just getting comfortable. It’s my turn, right?”

  “Right,” he confirmed.

  “’Kay,” she said happily with a jerky nod before nailing him with a blinding smile. “My question is have you ever been married or in a committed relationship? And if you were in one of those things like marriage or a relationship, did ya ever cheat?” Leaning over the table, she pointed one long finger at him as she whispered loudly, “The answer better be ‘no’, buster, or this nice, innocent game is gonna turn into a bloodbath. I can’t stand cheaters and you,” she threatened, coming to her knees so that she could poke his chest, “Well, you gotta sleep sometime!”

  “Babe, believe me, if you walk into my bedroom, the last thing I’m gonna be doing is sleeping. Promise from me to you on that, babe.”

  Melody rolled her overly bright eyes. “Whatever. Answer. The. Question,” she ordered, punctuating each word with a poke.

  Wrapping his hand around hers, he lifted her offending finger to his mouth and nipped the tip gently. “For the record, I’ve never been married. Never really been in a long-term relationship that was going anywhere. The women I was with always knew I was a short timer because I told ‘em so upfront. Back then, I wasn’t interested in creating a home with the kids, the dog and the white picket fence. They all knew it from the top because I told them I wasn’t ever gonna give that to them. They were decent chicks that were all good with what I could offer them.”

  “And that was?” Melody asked, her face inquisitive as she studied him from across the table.