The Wrong Callahan

by Karly Lane

  ‘It’s like he resents me. It wasn’t always like this. We were fairly close after I left home and joined the army. I think it was once I got into Special Forces and wasn’t getting home as much that we kind of drifted apart. I don’t know what’s going on with him—he’s always loved farming, it was all he ever wanted to do, but lately it’s like he’s blaming me for the fact he’s never really left here, other than his few years away at uni. It bugs the hell out of him that I come home and ‘play farmer’, as he calls it, then piss off again and go back to my life.’

  ‘You’d think he’d like having an extra set of hands around the place,’ Cash agreed.

  ‘Apparently not. If I came home and did nothing, he’d bitch about that, and when I do help, that only annoys him more. So basically, I can’t win either way.’

  ‘So maybe it hasn’t got anything to do with you. Maybe it’s just something he’s got an issue with and you’re the one he takes it out on.’

  ‘I never told him to stay here and be a bloody farmer,’ Linc grumbled.

  ‘No, but it could be that he’s just reached a point in his life where he’s realising that he’s not where he wants to be.’ ‘Well, I’m done walking on eggshells around him. He needs to get the hell over it.’

  Somehow Cash didn’t think it was going to be as easy as that. Until Griff dealt with whatever his issue was, she doubted things would get any easier between the two men. Now was probably not the best time to be dredging up old hurts with Christmas and then a massive family wedding about to take place, but after all that was over … She pulled herself up. This wasn’t her problem. After New Year, she wouldn’t be here. She was quite sure the Callahans could sort out their family dramas on their own. So long as she wasn’t part of the problem. ‘I don’t think it would help matters if Griff found out about you and I.’

  She felt him turn his head and shift his body to look at her but didn’t lift her gaze immediately.

  ‘Let him get pissed off, I don’t care.’

  ‘You should care. I don’t want to make things worse for either of you.’

  ‘Look, I’m not gonna rub it in his face, but if he finds out, I’m not going to lie about it. It’s none of his business.’

  She wished that were true, but the fact was, if Griff found out about this, it was only going to cause bigger problems in an already volatile relationship. She didn’t need that kind of guilt hanging over her head. Maybe she’d been listening to Savannah too long about bad karma. ‘I don’t want you to lie to anyone, but I think it’s better that he doesn’t find out.’

  ‘I really don’t want to talk about my brother while I’m sitting next to a gorgeous naked woman,’ he said, reaching across her to slide her on top of him with unexpected skill and speed.

  ‘I’m not naked, and I’m serious, Linc,’ she said, trying to keep her voice firm despite the heady sensations swirling through her as his hands roamed lightly up her thighs.

  ‘There’s the problem then. You need to get naked and stop talking, Cash,’ he mimicked her serious tone before lifting his head to kiss her.

  The next day Linc opened the door to the spa and found Cash talking on the phone at the front counter. She looked up and smiled when she saw him and mouthed that she would only be a minute. Inwardly he cursed himself when his stomach flip-flopped as though he was a love-struck teenager.

  ‘I know for a fact you’re not booked in today for a massage, so what are you doing here, Lincoln Callahan?’ she asked in that sexy damn voice he thought about all day long.

  ‘I’m playing delivery boy,’ he said, wiggling his eyebrows at her and gave a disappointed sigh when she informed him she had a client due any minute. ‘Fine. Your loss. Pam gave me this to give to you. She said she forgot to tell you when you were in yesterday.’

  Linc handed the parcel to Cash and saw her frown slightly as she turned it over, seemingly searching for a return address before cautiously opening it.

  He watched as she ripped the outer paper off to reveal a cardboard gift box and carefully removed its lid. Inside was a wad of fifty-dollar notes, secured with rubber bands and stacked neatly. He caught only a brief glance, and he had no idea how much money was in there, but Cash quickly slammed the lid back on the box and placed it under the counter.

  ‘Everything okay?’ he asked, watching her stilted movements.

  ‘Yeah, all good. I’ll check it out later,’ she smiled, before coming out from behind the counter to slide into his arms and kiss him. ‘How’s the harvest going?’

  He knew she was trying to distract him, and damned if it wasn’t working: he could hardly recall his own name when she kissed him like that. ‘Almost done, thank God,’ he said. Now he remembered why he’d never gone into farming. The work was bloody relentless. The sound of a car engine pulling up outside made him groan.

  ‘I’ll make it up to you tonight,’ she promised.

  ‘I’ll be looking forward to it,’ he told her, kissing her one last time before reluctantly allowing her to slip from his embrace to prepare for her client.

  It wasn’t until he was up inside the cabin of the harvester, sitting in for his old man for a while, that his thoughts drifted to the mysterious package. Who would have sent Cash a shitload of money? What was it for? And more importantly, why had he detected a brief moment of panic before she’d hidden it?

  Cash tried not to think about the box out under the front counter. Damn it, just when she thought she had her life on track, he always managed to find her. Why the hell wouldn’t the man just take no for an answer?

  Wes Sullivan wasn’t a man people refused. No one, that was, except his daughter. After Johnny’s death, Cash cut any ties with her father that still remained, but even after he’d been put in prison, he continued to have her tracked down so he could send her money. The first few times it happened, she’d bundled it up and sent it back to her father’s trusted club treasurer with a note telling him she didn’t want any of her father’s money or anything more to do with him. The next year she had a package delivered to her front door with no postmark and the club had moved underground to avoid being raided by the police. With nowhere to return it to, Cash had done the next best thing and donated it to charity. It had been a while since she’d received a delivery and she had hoped her father had given up on her. Today’s package only proved that Wes Sullivan never gave up and that he could find her whenever he wanted to—even from behind bars.

  She knew he was only trying in his misguided way to be a good father. He was providing for her by sending her his cut of the club’s profits from the illegal enterprises they had scattered all around the country. The fact that she’d left him and his life behind when she was seventeen didn’t deter him. She’d despised the violence of his world—the world that had killed her mother, after she’d given up even trying to be a mother and wife, and then her brother. She was so tired of the messed-up childhood she’d endured. She’d wanted so much more for Johnny, but her father had never known any other kind of life. She knew cutting him from her life after Johnny’s death had hurt him, and that in his own warped way he’d really tried his best to be a father to her, but it wasn’t enough. She refused to end up like her mother.

  Opening that box earlier had made her feel dirty. Maybe it was a sign. Maybe it was the universe’s way of reminding her where she’d come from and that all the big plans she had to mould herself into something better were just a waste of time. Who was she to think she could possibly ever fit into the Callahan’s world when she’d grown up the way she had?

  Her heart was heavy for the remainder of the day, and for the first time, Cash texted Linc to call off their plans for the evening. She couldn’t face him. She couldn’t find the energy to pretend she was fine when all she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and cry.

  Linc frowned at his phone as he pulled it out of his pocket. She was cancelling on him? He had a strange feeling that it was connected to that damn box he’d delivered this morning. What had she gotten he
rself into? A million things raced through his mind—none of them very comforting. Could she be caught up in dealing drugs? He immediately dismissed it. No, not Cash. That couldn’t be it, but he couldn’t shake the gut instinct that something was not right.

  He lay awake late into the night. More than anything he wanted to go to Cash and find out what the hell was going on, but something held him back. What if she was caught up in something bad? Were they at a point in whatever this thing was where he had a right to know what was going on? What was he to her? A boyfriend? A friend with benefits? Did that give him any say in how much he should know about her past? All he did know was that for the first night in weeks he was sleeping alone, and he missed having that warm body curved around his more than he liked to admit.

  Nineteen

  Linc wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve before banging in the last nail to secure the loose timber floorboard of the old shearing shed. It had been years since the Callahans had used it for its original purpose. It had been built during the height of Stringybark’s heyday when wool ruled the market. His great-granddad had returned from the war with grand plans for Stringybark, determined to create his legacy by doubling the number of sheep they ran and increasing the size of the shearing shed to make it one of the biggest in the district. His gamble had paid off and the property had gone from strength to strength with each new generation. While the sheep had been replaced by crops after a devastating drought that had gone on for almost ten years back in the 1990s, Stringybark still dabbled in sheep, but the emphasis was now on meat rather than wool.

  As with most things around the place, the shearing shed wasn’t wasted, it was used for storage. Linc’s father came from an era when you didn’t replace something if it could be fixed. There was no flogging things off just because a new model had come out. That was all well and good, except that when something broke down, as older machinery had a tendency to do, there was always a long delay to source spare parts and replace them. And that’s why Linc was spending the day starting on the renovations in the shearing shed, instead of driving a chaser bin around the paddock filling up with grain. A broken cutter bar had put one of the headers out of action, and while it was never great timing for a breakdown, on this occasion it was even more frustrating because there was so much work to get to after harvesting in order to have the place ready for the wedding.

  ‘It’s looking good in here.’ Hadley came into the shed carrying an insulated bag that she set down on the ground beside him. ‘Mum sent lunch,’ she said as an afterthought, while she surveyed the shed.

  ‘I’m starving.’ Linc wiped his hands on his pants before unzipping the bag to pull out a stack of cling-wrapped sandwiches and a thermos of coffee. ‘There’s no cake today,’ Linc said, searching the bag.

  ‘You’re lucky you got what you did. Mum’s been on the phone all morning.’

  ‘Why? What’s going on?’ It was not like his mother to skimp on the goodies in his lunchbox. He was getting used to being spoilt with a homemade lunch every day.

  ‘The hall committee just had a donation of over thirty grand to put towards their fundraiser for the Holm family. You know, Larry and Katie’s little girl who needs that operation?’ she added when Linc frowned slightly. ‘Some anonymous good Samaritan donated it.’

  This piqued Linc’s interest immediately. ‘Anonymous?’

  ‘Yep. Everyone’s trying to figure out who it was. The phone’s been ringing off the damn hook all day.’

  An image of bundles of fifty-dollar notes in a box flashed though his mind and his eyes narrowed slightly. ‘Sounds like a bit of a mystery.’

  Linc refocused his attention on finishing the floor repairs after a short break for lunch. He had a strong suspicion he knew where the donation had come from and he needed to find out what the hell was going on. Right or no right—he was determined to get to the bottom of it.

  She knew she wasn’t going to be able to fob off Linc for too much longer. It had already been two days since her father had barged his way into her life once again. She’d spent a sleepless night trying to come to terms with the jumble of emotions the package’s arrival had created. She missed Linc. When she was around him she felt alive. He awakened things inside her that she hadn’t felt in a long time. She was happy. She hated that the arrival of her father’s money had intruded on all of that like a rude reminder of her past and where she’d come from.

  There was no way she was keeping it—she didn’t need any help from him, she never had.

  Her father had disappointed her too many times as a child to take the risk of letting him back into her life. Her parents’ volatile relationship hadn’t been easy on her as she grew up. As much as she’d often wished she had her father in her life, the reality was that every time he did come back, it only ended in her mother spiralling into a pit of depression when he left again. Even at a young age, Cash had known she’d never become her mother. She would never be that dependent on anyone—her father, other men, kind-hearted friends—but herself. She remembered the indignity of watching her mother asking people for money to buy food when she’d sobered up and realised she’d spent everything they had on alcohol. She’d hated that look of pity on the faces of her mother’s friends.

  Cash paid her own way through life. She never once had to accept anyone’s money, and she was not planning on starting now.

  The answer to her problem had come to her while she was in town waiting to be served at the store. Pam had been talking with another woman about the hall committee wanting to raise funds for a local family with a sick child who needed urgent treatment, but they weren’t sure if they could raise the necessary money in the short time they had.

  Cash had asked for some postage stamps before heading to her car and withdrawing the box she’d placed under the front passenger seat. Taking out the money, she had quickly transferred it into a large yellow envelope, scribbling a note about using it to help towards the little girl’s treatment; then, addressing it to the hall committee treasurer, she had placed it in the bright red postbox out the front of the post office.

  It had been as though a weight had lifted from her shoulders. The heavy cloud of depression that had seemed to hover above her had cleared and for the first time since the parcel had arrived she had felt the sunshine on her face. It felt good to help someone. Maybe the money had come from illegal business dealings, maybe not, she didn’t know and she didn’t care. Regardless of how it was earned, it was now going towards helping someone who desperately needed it.

  She heard the familiar sound of a vehicle approaching and braced herself for the questions that were sure to come. Linc was not a man easily fobbed off.

  He came to a stop with one foot propped on the bottom step as she waited on the verandah. ‘Hi,’ she said, watching him for an indication of his mood. He didn’t seem particularly annoyed, but there was something about his demeanour that made her wary.

  ‘Everything okay?’ he asked.

  ‘Yep,’ she answered.

  ‘I didn’t get a brush-off today, so I figured it was safe to come over.’

  ‘I wasn’t giving you the brush-off,’ she said softly.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Seriously. I just needed some time alone.’

  ‘That sounds like a brush-off to me.’

  ‘I just had some things to sort out. It wasn’t about you and me.’ This was getting off track, she needed to avoid any questions that related to the damn package. ‘I missed you.’ ‘Are you in some kind of trouble, Cash?’ As she narrowed her eyes slightly he went on to add in a don’t-bother-to-deny-it tone, ‘I saw the money in the box.’

  ‘It’s really none of your business, Linc.’

  ‘I’m making it my business.’

  ‘Are you serious? You’re really going to stand there and do the whole macho thing?’

  ‘I’m worried about you.’

  ‘There’s no need. I’ve got it all under control.’

  ‘Cash, who
sends that much money in the mail?’

  God, this man was relentless. Fine. He wanted to know, she’d tell him. Maybe this would be the thing that woke him up to what he was getting into. ‘My father. Okay? The package was from my dad.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he just deposit it in the bank?’

  ‘Because that’s a little hard to do from behind bars.’

  ‘Your father’s in prison?’

  ‘Yep.’ Great. Well, that certainly makes the break-up scene a lot easier, she thought, feeling her buoyant mood plummet once again.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Murder.’ Technically it was discharging a firearm with intent to murder, and a few other bits and pieces, but it was basically murder.

  She was pretty certain not much managed to stun Lincoln Callahan, but this had.

  ‘So you see, sometimes it’s best to leave things alone.’ She turned to walk away, angry at having to reveal the dirty truth about her past and frustrated that it hurt so much to feel so exposed.

  ‘Cash, wait. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get pushy, I was just worried about you.’

  ‘I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time. I don’t need anyone’s help.’

  ‘Too bad,’ he said quietly, making her stop and glance back at him. ‘I’m here and I care,’ he shrugged, taking the remaining steps to stand in front of her. ‘I want to know everything about you, Cash. The good and the bad. Will you tell me about your dad?’

  He had no idea what he was asking of her. The only person who knew about her childhood was Savannah. This wasn’t something she told just anyone. But suddenly she realised that Linc wasn’t just anyone. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Everything,’ he said simply.

  Oh right, so just everything then! ‘We’re going to need something stronger than beer,’ she warned him, turning to lead the way inside. She wasn’t sure they made anything strong enough to make her family history sound palatable, but she found some bourbon in the cupboard and took down two glasses. This would do for starters.