Callaghan’s Way
Marie Ferrarella
To Leslie Wainger.
The best is yet to be.
Trust me.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 1
He watched her for a moment. Watched her as he attempted to cut a silhouette from the past and attach it to the woman he saw in the corridor now.
He failed, yet he knew it was her. Knew by the turn of her head, by the set of her shoulders, by the very way she moved.
It was her.
Rachel Reed had just locked the classroom door behind her and was attempting to juggle her attaché case, a stack of term paper booklets, her purse, and several oversize textbooks. Visions of the unruly spring breeze dispensing blue term paper booklets throughout the campus once she went outside convinced her that some reorganization was going to be necessary here.
It was only ten in the morning, and already she felt overwhelmed.
“Funny Face?”
Rachel had her back to the foot traffic in the corridor, and didn’t see the man who had spoken.
She didn’t have to.
She knew who it was, knew even though she hadn’t seen him in over nine years. No one else called her that. Ever.
The slightly harried expression on Rachel’s face melted away as if it had never existed. Her eyes opened wide, a combination of surprise, anticipation and disbelief mingling in them. She began to turn around just as her textbooks and attaché case slipped from her hands to the floor. A blue blizzard of term papers descended on top of the scattered heap. She hardly noticed.
Kirk Callaghan.
Here?
Everything else—the students, the lights, Bedford University itself—momentarily faded into oblivion as she watched Kirk approach her, moving like a hunter returning home from the hill. The last she had heard, Kirk was halfway around the world, in Asia somewhere. What was he doing here?
“Funny Face, is that really you?”
For a moment, she forgot, and wondered why he was looking at her so oddly. And then it came back to her. Dummy, she chastised herself. The last time they were on the same continent together, she had been eighteen and still all bones and angles topped off with an oddly round face. She had been what her mother had always promised her she would be—a late bloomer. The past nine years, and particularly the past two, had seen Rachel blossom and emerge into a lovely woman, even by her own self-deprecating standards.
Temporarily forgotten papers and books surrounded her like a haphazard pyre as Rachel held out her arms to the man who had been her brother’s best friend and her own surrogate other big brother.
She laughed. “Why don’t you give me a hug, stranger, and find out?”
The slightly uncertain look vanished from Kirk’s face. With a small laugh that was equal parts amazement and amusement, Kirk pulled her into his arms and gave her a rough equivalent of a bear hug. She leaned into him awkwardly, the fallen books and papers a barrier between them.
“Yup,” he pronounced, his voice deep and husky. “You still feel the same, Funny Face. Like a soft boy.”
A soft boy. It was an old joke between them, rooted in the days when she had wanted nothing more than to be like Cameron and Kirk—a boy. If there was an unusual trace of awkwardness in his voice, as well, Rachel attributed it to his amazement. By definition, Kirk had never been awkward. He had always been so confident, so self-assured. The dark, brooding prince every high school girl had secretly sighed over.
Aware of the students staring at them as they passed by, Kirk and Rachel drew apart at the same moment. Each studied the other.
Rachel had forgotten just how much she had missed seeing him, talking to him. Friends—especially close friends—were people you took for granted, she thought, until they were gone.
Lord, he looked magnificent. She noted the way some of the female students were eyeing him. If the words tall, dark and handsome had ever had a poster model, Kirk Callaghan was it. Wearing chinos and a light blue shirt carelessly rolled up on his forearms, he looked better than anything that had ever stepped out of Gentleman’s Quarterly. Except, perhaps, that he looked just a little worn around the edges. There was a gauntness to his face that she didn’t recall.
He looked, she thought, like a wounded warrior. A tall, noble wounded warrior, determined to remain strong despite his wounds.
She wondered what was going through his head right now. He was staring again, his sky-blue eyes sliding slowly along the contours of her face. She saw a distant, appreciative light there. It pleased her more than she would have thought.
There had been a time, she remembered, when she would have given anything to have him look at her like that. She’d been sixteen, and hopelessly, silently, in love with him. It had been just a teenage crush, and she had gotten over it. But even now it was gratifying to see the look of admiration in his eyes. Didn’t think I had it in me, did you?
Tucking a stray lock behind her ear, she grinned. “Careful, Kirk, your eyes are going to pop out of your head.”
He realized he was staring. He hadn’t meant to. It was just that she had caught him by surprise. But then, it had been a long time since he had seen her. A very long time. It was a fact of life that people changed, that they matured. But somehow he had thought, perhaps even hoped, that she would remain the same. He had come home searching for sameness. Searching for the past, because the present had become too hard to endure.
Forcing his attention to the paraphernalia on the floor, he stooped down to pick it up. “I think the proper expression is Wow.“
“If it isn’t, I’ll accept it anyway.” Humor shone in her eyes.
Yes, he remembered those expressive indigo-colored eyes. Kirk had never met anyone who could say so much with just a glance.
Rachel joined him on the floor, her short pleated skirt floating down like a dark green puddle around her long legs. Quickly she gathered the blue booklets together, then deposited them into her cavernous purse.
“Still clumsy after all these years,” Rachel murmured with a laugh as she stood up.
“Nice to know that some things don’t change,” Kirk countered.
She could have sworn that he sounded wistful, even sad. But that was silly. Why would he be sad? He had it all. Just as he had said he would.
It was uncanny, Kirk thought as he rose to his feet. The Rachel Reed he had known for most of his life had been somewhat on the plain side. The Rachel who stood before him now was light-years away from that girl. The difference he saw was the difference between a moth and a butterfly.
It made him almost uncomfortable. He wanted the moth back.
Her features appeared regal, almost elegant, now. Though she still wore that bouncy ponytail she had always favored, she was different. It wasn’t even the make-up she wore, or the smart clothing. There was something he couldn’t quite define.
Somehow he had never really thought about her growing up and changing. He’d expected her to look just the way she had when he left town. To look like the freeze-frame photograph he carried in his mind.
Kirk knew he must seem like an idiot, but he couldn’t help staring.
“Funny Face—” he handed her back her books “—you’ve become downright alluring.”
She hugged the books against her chest and laughed, a litt
le self-consciously. “Just clean living, I guess. It’s bound to pay off sometime.”
“If it paid off like that, everybody’d be pounding on the monastery doors, clamoring to get in.”
Kirk placed his hands on her shoulders. Where had this woman come from? he wondered. Had she been there all along, and he hadn’t noticed? The almond-shaped eyes were the same, and the way she held her mouth—a little defensively, despite its softness—was the same, but the rest had changed markedly.
Her face, now devoid of the slight layer of stubborn baby fat, was oval and just this side of thin. Her prominent cheekbones gave her a wild, sensual look he was totally unprepared for. It caught him by surprise, as did the quick sexual pull he felt and immediately blocked, annoyed and confused by its intrusion. He wasn’t here for that. He was here to heal. If not here, then nowhere. Returning to Bedford was his last chance. Bedford was where it had all begun.
Kirk was studying her as if he were attempting to absorb her into his system. “Wanna see my teeth?” She bared them, her eyes laughing at him.
Two students looked at her oddly as they walked by, then fell into whispers.
“Terrific,” she muttered to Kirk, looking at the students. “Now they’ll think the new criminology instructor is ditzy.”
Kirk dropped his hands from her shoulders. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. It’s just that I can’t get over you.”
She waved away his words. “Don’t apologize. I’m eating this up.”
He looked at her, the affection he always felt for her rising up, spinning a hole through the depths of his despair. He forced a smile to his lips again.
“So, do you have to beat them all off with a stick these days?”
She shook her head. “Not even with a toothpick.” She had taken her turn at love, and the dream had become a nightmare for her—and for Ethan. But that was all behind her now. She had no time for that kind of relationship. The stakes were too high. “Nobody’s breaking down my door.”
“You’re probably just not giving them a chance,” he guessed.
“Maybe.” She shrugged vaguely. The divorce, and what had come before, had left too much of a bad taste in her mouth for her to be comfortable with the idea of attempting another relationship. “I’m too busy for that right now, anyway.”
“You always were a dedicated whirlwind.” The words were almost teasing. He’d forgotten he had that in him. It felt good.
She didn’t want to talk about her, she wanted to talk about him. Kirk had lived life on the edge ever since he left Bedford. A highly respected photojournalist, he’d always gone to the world’s trouble spots. He’d led a life of excitement and daring, while she had gone about the business of mundane living.
“How did you know where to find me?” She fumbled a little with her purse, tucking away her keys. She hoped she’d be able to find them when the time came.
“I stopped in to see Cameron right after I arrived back in Bedford late yesterday.” Cameron had offered to put him up for the night. Kirk had agreed, not wanting to walk into his old house. He wasn’t quite ready for that yet.
She looked up, surprised, when he mentioned her brother. “Cameron?”
Kirk nodded. “He told me where you were.”
She drew her brows together. “Did he know you were coming back?”
The touch of feistiness in her voice had a familiar ring. He gathered it to him the way a poor man would a crust of bread. “Yes, I wrote and told him.”
“You wrote? You wrote to my brother? And he didn’t tell me?” I’ll get you for this, Cameron, she promised the absent man silently.
Kirk reached for the comfortable ground he and Rachel had always shared. Somehow, even though more than nine years had gone by since they had really talked, he had just assumed nothing would have changed between them. They had grown from children to young adults together, and nothing had changed during that time. He didn’t want things to change now. He needed them to be the same.
“Probably just slipped his mind. You know how Cameron is.” Kirk looked around as students passed them in the hall, moving a little more urgently than a moment earlier. “Listen, am I keeping you from something?”
Rachel twisted her wrist to glance at her watch. “Oh, God, yes. I’ve got another criminology class to teach in ten minutes.”
“Criminology,” he repeated.
He couldn’t quite see her teaching a course like that.
She detected the surprise in his tone. “And why not, I’d like to know?” She stood straight and arched her shoulders in a defensive movement. It was an old habit, one she did for his benefit.
Kirk held up his hands in mock surrender. “No reason that I’m willing to mention and run the risk of being pummeled to the ground.” The smile she had always loved tugged at his lips.
“That’s better. C’mon, walk me to my next class.” Moving briskly, she led the way down the long corridor.
Kirk lengthened his stride to catch up to her. “Walk or run?”
“Exercise is good for you, Callaghan. Besides, the next class is in another building. If I don’t move fast, they’re bound to start without me.” She shifted her books slightly to keep them from falling. “I’ve got a classful of eager beavers.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her struggle. He took the textbooks from her. “Here, give me those. I might as well carry your books, too.”
“You never did before,” she reminded him, although she gratefully surrendered the research books.
“It’s the new me.”
“There was nothing wrong with the old you.” She noticed that he didn’t respond. Something was wrong.
Kirk held the swinging door open for her, and they stepped outside.
The campus, a relatively small one, was respectably old and ivy-covered. It gave off an aura of stability, like an ancient Southern grande dame who had gracefully aged in the role of a matriarch. He hadn’t attended college here, had been eager to get away. But Rachel had gone here, as had Cameron. For the first time, as he looked around, Kirk wondered what he had missed.
Rachel stopped on the bottom step and turned to look up at Kirk, a question preying on her mind. “Tell me more about this correspondence you and Cameron shared, O so-called friend. You two wrote regularly?”
Kirk shrugged. “If you could call once or twice a year regular.”
Rachel resumed walking. All around them, new shoots of grass were pushing their way out to form a green carpet on well-tended lawns. Here and there, black birds hopped about, searching for worms.
It was spring, the time of birth and new promise. But for the moment, Rachel’s mind was in the past. “I would have called it regular, if the letter had come to me. Why didn’t you answer any of my letters?” She’d written to him on occasion, but he’d never responded. She’d assumed the letters had never reached him, and after a while she’d stopped writing.
She was looking straight ahead, and he couldn’t tell if she was baiting him, or if she was annoyed. If she was, he couldn’t really blame her.
“I know, and I wrote back.”
Then he had gotten them? It wasn’t like Kirk to lie. Rachel looked at him dubiously. “I never received any letters.”
He gave a small, self-deprecating laugh. The few notes he had addressed to Rachel had all wound up as crumpled pieces of paper in the trash.
“That’s because I threw them all out.”
They passed an ancient willow, its long, wispy green fingers strumming idly along the tops of the blades of grass like an indolent guitar player strumming his instrument.
“That makes it hard for the mailmen to find them and do their job. They’re supposed to buck rain, sleet and gloom of night, not search for letters hidden in wastepaper baskets.”
“Some of the places I’ve been,” Kirk told her quietly as he remembered, “didn’t even have wastepaper baskets. Besides,” he added ruefully, “I was never very good at putting things down on paper.”
“
I would have taken inkblots, you idiot, as long as you had sent them.” She had missed being in touch with him all this time. “You wrote to my brother.”
He shrugged evasively. “That’s different.”
“Yes,” she agreed dryly. “Those letters you put stamps on.”
Kirk stopped just before they came to the entrance of the building. He peered at her face, looking for signs he could recognize, signs he associated with the Rachel he had known, the one who, along with Cameron, he had returned to see. “Are you angry with me?”
“Yes,” she answered honestly, although a smile was fighting hard to surface. She could never be angry with Kirk, at least not for long. “We were supposed to be friends.”
“I’d like to think we still are,” he said quietly.
She let the smile capture her lips, silently wondering why he sounded so serious. Didn’t he know that they were friends for life, whether or not he remembered to drop her a line? Of course he did. He was probably just suffering from jet lag, or something equally transient.
But there was something in his eyes that bothered her, a look she didn’t recognize. A look that had nothing to do with the Kirk she knew.
“I guess I should take pity on you. You’re probably down to your last friend.”
Kirk opened the door of the building and held it wide as she stepped through. “Something like that.” Two more students ducked inside before he released the door.
Rachel waited for him to join her, then continued walking. She struggled to sound breezy as a legion of questions suddenly crowded her mind, all of them centering on Kirk. “So, how many people did the fine young photojournalist alienate in his world travels?”
“Whole countries,” he answered, without a smile. And myself.
The corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled. “You haven’t changed, then.”
“That’s just it.” The words were low, quiet, as if he were speaking to himself, rather than to her. “I have.” And I’ve lost sight of who and what I am, or what I’m supposed to be.
When he didn’t elaborate, she stopped to look at him as carefully as he had looked at her. Something instinctive told her to tread lightly.
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