The Price He Paid

by Jean Brashear

But pathetic didn’t mean not dangerous. She cursed herself for being too casual, for treating Oak Hollow like Mayberry. In her job, she dressed in clothing that never incited and clearly said Do not take me lightly. Yet here she was, on a deserted road with nothing but her wits to protect her.

  “I’d get out, but I’m still recuperatin’ from that bastard tryin’ to kill me, see. Stanley, get your ass out of the truck and help the lady inside.”

  “Mickey, I don’t think…”

  An ally, however unwilling. Callie’s attention was caught on the driver. “No need. I’m visiting Mrs. Chambers, and it’s about time for dinner.” She turned around. Granny’s was closer, she was almost certain.

  “I didn’t ask what you think, Stanley, now did I? Move it.”

  “Mickey…”

  “Damn it!”

  She saw Mickey start to open the passenger door, injured or not, and she knew her time was up. She took off running toward Granny’s and heard him bellowing. Waited for the truck to come after her and tried not to panic.

  A car appeared over the rise ahead, and she tensed.

  Then she realized it was David and nearly collapsed from relief. Thank the stars.

  David slammed on the brakes, leaped from his vehicle. “What’s wrong?” But at that same instant, his attention snagged on the man emerging from the pickup. His expression hardened to stone. “Get in the car.” He started forward.

  “Oh, yeah, come on,” taunted Carson.

  “David, no!” She reversed course and threw herself in his path, lowering her voice. “You can’t. If you touch him, you’ll be back in jail.”

  “You always do what she tells you, Davey boy?” Carson’s mocking singsong was like a red cape to a bull. “My, my…guess you best be real careful, like she says. You sure wouldn’t want to wind up back in Jackson sooner. ’Course you’ll be there anyway, so what’s the difference?”

  David brushed right past her.

  She wheeled to put herself in his way again. It was like standing in front of a freight train at full speed. “David, please!” There was no way to do this with subtlety, not now, so she put both her hands on his chest, desperate to distract him. “I’m all right. He didn’t hurt me. Take me back, please. David—”

  His focus snapped to her, but the man she saw was half-mad. Logic would make no impression. His eyes burned, and his entire body was rigid with fury, nearly shaking with the power of his craving to do damage to the man taunting him from the safety of his status as victim.

  Looking at him now, anyone would wonder how David could be innocent of the assault. If she hadn’t known other facets of him, she’d judge him guilty as charged.

  But she did know those other Davids. “Please,” she begged. “Think about your mother. It will kill her for you to go to jail again.” Her fingers were wrapped around his rigid biceps, barely covering half the circumference as she sought to hold him back. She lowered her voice. “It’ll kill you, too.” She took a deep breath. “And I couldn’t stand it, either,” she admitted. “Please, David.”

  His glare radiated loathing and a brittle rage, knowing she was right but hating it to his core.

  Being the agent of his misery ate at her.

  “Stanley, if you want your friend in one piece, I’d suggest you get him out of here now,” she called out, never removing her eyes from David’s.

  “Come on, Mickey. You’ve had your fun,” said Stanley. “He could beat the living hell out of you, and you’re in no condition to fight back. Let’s just go.”

  The silence that ensued rang with violence teetering on the edge of exploding.

  “Piece of crap.” Carson spat on the ground. “Hide behind a woman’s skirts, you stinking coward.”

  David’s entire frame reacted. His muscles readied for the charge.

  As he initiated that first step, Callie did the only thing she could think of to stop him: she fell back as though he’d knocked her down.

  Her fall snapped his fixation on Carson. When he looked down in alarm, she saw the anger recede a fraction.

  “Bring it on, you sonofa—” shouted Carson.

  But Stanley hit the gas and the pickup roared off.

  David lifted her to her feet, the movements lacking his usual powerful grace. Rage still enveloped him like a poisonous cloud. He set her aside quickly. “Get in the car.”

  “David, I know I caused—”

  “Get in the blasted car!” He rounded the hood without looking back.

  Smothering silence filled the interior of the vehicle as he drove them toward Miss Margaret’s. Callie sat like a penitent child, twisting her fingers in her lap.

  The very idea of apologizing for keeping him out of jail—out of prison for the rest of his life, curse him—rapidly frayed the reins on her own temper. Another assault charge would make his conviction on the first much too easy for the prosecution, even if he wasn’t already stonewalling all efforts toward his defense. She opened her mouth to point out that he was wrong to be angry at her. But she subsided.

  He wasn’t wrong, not really. He’d been put in a bad position because she’d taken off on her own, near dark, in a strange place. Without him… She shuddered, contemplating what could have happened to her, had she been forced into that pickup.

  Her ire receded, replaced by chagrin. Just then, he pulled into Miss Margaret’s drive and shut off the engine, then emerged and rounded the hood.

  “David,” she began, “Listen—”

  Her next words vanished as she was bodily lifted to her feet. “Damn it, Callie.” He crushed her into his embrace. “You could have been—” His voice was low and rough and haunted as he wrapped her more tightly in his arms.

  For a moment she simply stood there, catching up, relishing the feeling of safety, soaking in the warmth, the sense of being protected from all harm. It was a novel experience for Lady Justice, one she’d assumed she was too tough to need.

  She’d been wrong. He was here, in that second, David. Her David, the one she’d loved with all her young girl’s heart. The David who’d taken her side against everyone in his life, who’d risked everything and lost big, thanks solely to her. Yet never once, no matter how many people sought to make him see sense, had he deserted her or their baby. That precious little life that never had a chance.

  The tears that Callie thought she’d buried beyond retrieval rose in a scalding gush, bathing her heart in acid, blistering her lungs and spilling out to wet David’s shirt. She wept and wept, digging her fingers into the long muscles of his back and clinging as she had never allowed herself to do to one single soul since the day she’d left this place.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for everything…” Suddenly she sagged beneath the crushing load of her misery.

  David picked her up as though she weighed nothing. He crossed the grass and stepped onto the front porch, then settled in the old swing and began to rock her as she cried.

  “It’s all my fault. If I’d left you alone, you’d never have had to go through any of this.”

  “Shh,” he soothed, and bundled her closer. He tipped her head back and stared into her eyes. After precious, crystalline seconds, he touched his mouth to hers.

  The kiss was gentle, a butterfly’s wing against first her lower lip, then the upper one. A sweet benediction, a pardon. “Callie…” His voice, husky and tender, skimmed her ragged heart, drifted over her skin, tugged low in her belly.

  This David, the real David, could lift her misery, had always made her feel like someone who was worthy, someone different from Callie the neglected child, the unwanted one still so very much alive inside her. She’d clawed and climbed, achieved and won, but all of it was on the back of that girl she’d tried so hard to leave behind. To bury.

  David’s hands began to move, and his mouth tantalized, his touch a healing. He was the only link to that rebellious girl who’d simply wanted to be loved, she understood now.

  For a few bittersweet months, she had been. They had been young
and naïve, yes, but their bond had been real.

  How had she not recognized that she had not been whole since the day they’d been parted? That locking the past away could not work forever? She yearned to open her chest and let the sweet succor pour in to wash away all the pain of the past. Longed to do the same for him.

  She realized she could do that now, at this instant. Or she could at least try to hope her touch had the same effect on him.

  Callie sat up on his lap.

  David’s eyes were both clouded and wary.

  “Shh…close your eyes.”

  He stared. Frowned. Then to her surprise, after a moment, he complied.

  She began with his hair, stroking over it, tunneling her fingers into the thick chestnut mass, then rubbing his scalp in slow circles.

  David groaned, and she felt his big body relent a little. He looked so weary, as though he’d carried a very heavy burden for a long, long time. “Lean on me,” she murmured. When he stiffened slightly at the notion, she kept the slow strokes going. “Just for now, let me take care of you.” When at last his head lowered a little, she brought his forehead to rest against her chest, then lengthened her caresses to move over those powerful shoulders.

  David wondered where she was going with this, but it felt so good, he wasn’t sure he cared. Moment by moment, inch by inch, she was unknotting nerves tangled by the fight to survive the last fifteen years. The last three months of being a pariah.

  He realized that he had not fully relaxed since the day he’d stood over Ned Compton’s body…or for many months before that actually, as he’d struggled to protect his mother from the abuse no one but him had suspected.

  Callie’s gentle fingers returned to his face, tracing his forehead, his cheekbones, his jaw. If there was an instant of panic over not remaining alert, she soon dispelled it with the magic of her hands. With the kisses she pressed to his eyelids, his face…his throat.

  Her tongue slicked a trail down to his collarbone, and he groaned aloud. She had no idea what she was doing to him.

  His body responded immediately, vividly.

  Or perhaps she did know.

  He’d never felt this layering of sensations, of easing and soothing. Of tantalizing temptation.

  She smoothed her hands over his shoulders, kneading the tense muscles, tracing circles on his chest. Her fingers skimmed down his T-shirt and began to lift it.

  If she couldn’t feel that reaction…

  Her flesh touched his as she bared him. She set her teeth to his throat and nipped.

  He ignited like a torch. Grabbed her hips and surged to his feet, wrapping her legs around his waist.

  And bolted for the door.

  Callie gasped but never paused in covering his face with kisses, letting her hands roam. She stripped off his T-shirt. He struggled to get them inside the house and to the bed before they tumbled in a heap to the floor and he took her right where they lay.

  There were about a hundred reasons why they shouldn’t be doing this, why he should drop her right there and run as fast as his legs would carry him, away from her.

  But there was one reason he would not, could not.

  That reason was Callie.

  If hell itself reached up to drag him into the fiery pit, then that’s just what would have to happen. She was here with him at last. They’d never had a chance to truly be together without sneaking around, with only their two bodies glorying in each other as he’d sensed they could one day. When she wasn’t lost and fourteen pretending to be older, and he wasn’t wrestling with a whole town’s aspirations.

  When they were only Callie, only David…who might have made a life together, if so much else hadn’t intervened.

  So he laid her gently on the bed, and he looked at her in the moonlight.

  “A real mattress,” she marveled, and smiled really big. “Imagine.”

  She sprawled there, all moon-silvered curves and magic, and held her arms out to him. He wanted to join her more than anything in his life, but—

  “Stop thinking,” she whispered. “We both do too much of that.” She rose to sitting and reached for his belt buckle.

  If she opened the buttons of his jeans now, this would all be over in seconds. “Uh-uh.” He grasped her wrists and lifted them above her head while pressing her back into the sheets and letting his mouth do the talking for him.

  Soon she was squirming and sighing and driving him half out of his mind, but he was determined not to stop until she’d gone crazy right along with him. He teased and tormented, each caress torturing him as much as her.

  Then her hands slipped loose and she tried to unseat him to reverse their positions.

  He shook his head. “Not yet, Callie. Please let me do this. Let me have you.” With an uncertain smile and hope in her eyes, she relented.

  So he ruthlessly restrained the ache of craving to drive himself into her and instead focused on the tenderness he sensed she needed. With his body, with his lips and hands, he paid homage to the woman she’d created out of a small, wounded girl.

  And when he set his mouth to the heart of her and heard her gasp, then moan, a warm flame lit within him, the first spark of light in a long darkness.

  Truth to tell, she probably had more experience in lovemaking than he did. He’d gone from being a grieving teenage father to the brutality of prison, and he’d only been with one woman, one time, since his release. He wasn’t completely sure he was doing this right, at least until he felt her body gather, registered the trembling in her legs, sensed the power growing within her at each touch of his tongue, each caress of his lips…

  “David—” Callie gasped. Came apart in his arms. She gripped him fiercely as she flew, then melted like butter. In the moonlight slanting across the bed, her mouth curved in a beautiful, very satisfied smile.

  Though his own body burned to join her, still his heart warmed at the sight of her. He smiled back.

  After a moment, she pounced. Toppled him to his back and began to torture him again. He was ready, so ready—

  Then, with a sinking heart, he realized he couldn’t let her. Imprisoned her hands to stop her. “I’m fine.”

  Her eyes went dark with hurt. “You’re not. Why would—”

  He’d never imagined he could still blush, not after all he’d been through in his life, but a mingle of shame and embarrassment burned his cheeks. “I just—I don’t have anything to protect you. I didn’t—I never expected…”

  If Callie had ever doubted that she could still love him, this moment would have ended that concern. She tangled her fingers in his and bent to him, unable to stem her smile. “No modern woman of a certain age group,” she murmured just above his lips, “even one with a social life as pathetic as mine, goes anywhere without condoms in her purse.” Then she swiped her tongue over the seam of his lips. “Wait right here, big guy.” She leaped from the bed and was back in seconds, brandishing them with triumph.

  “Now,” she grinned, waggling her eyebrows at him, “Just lie back and think of England.”

  When he laughed, she thought she’d never heard anything sweeter. Laughter had been scarce in their time together, both years ago and certainly since she’d returned.

  But I refuse to think about the real world tonight. Instead, she tossed the condoms on the bed and dove at him.

  At first they played, then Callie, still tingling from the bliss he’d given her, attempted to do the same for him and draw out this unspeakable pleasure.

  But if she’d thought to control the pace, she’d been wrong. All too soon, David, bared under her touch and breathtaking to behold, took charge again. “This is going to be too quick,” he warned. “But I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

  “I think you already did,” she said on a moan.

  “I barely got started,” he vowed. He took her soaring again. Gave her rapture, but gave her something more.

  Hope. Sweetness. Much lay ahead for them to battle, but they would triumph, together this tim
e, she was determined. United once more, only this time she was no scared teen.

  But all of that was for later.

  For now, David’s lean, hard body filled her, thrilled her…rocketed her back to bliss. The power of the man, the joining…together, they were so much more than when apart. She’d often derided the notion of a magical click.

  Until, as they clung to each other in the aftermath, she felt it.

  Now she understood how badly she’d needed to experience the bond. Abject terror gripped her at the prospect of having this precious unity torn from her again. Callie closed her eyes and forced herself to calm. There was so little she could control right now, but she could be in command of her reaction.

  Resolutely she cleared her mind of fears that would wreck the beauty of this moment, this man. Instead, she cradled his head where he lay heavily against her breast. “I love you,” she murmured softly.

  For one priceless second, she thought she felt his arms tighten back.

  But he said nothing, and she said no more.

  Soon slumber claimed them both.

  Chapter Fifteen

  David woke before dawn. Someone was too close to him. Instantly the old prison reflexes kicked in. He braced to defend himself.

  Then he heard soft breathing and remembered.

  Callie. Oh, sweet heaven, Callie. The night and its glory swooped in, obliterating every other thought in a rush of overpowering tenderness and sharp, aching need.

  He turned his head and saw her blond curls against his bicep as she cuddled into his side. One slender, pale hand lay over his skin bronzed from spending every possible second outside. He’d thought the freedom to be out in the air, to move in any direction he chose, was the sweetest blessing of his release.

  Until this moment, it had been.

  But now there was Callie.

  Going back in a cage would kill him. He’d believed that to be the worst fate possible, but suddenly there was something even more devastating.

  Walking away from her now.

  But he had to. There was no win for him, no matter what she might believe. She didn’t know the whole story, and he couldn’t tell her.