The Price He Paid

by Jean Brashear

  But he knew what lay down that road of isolation, so he extended his hand for the phone and began to dial.

  When her cell phone rang, Callie was closing an old suitcase of Miss Margaret’s. She’d intended to leave two hours ago, but instead she kept wandering the house, picking up this knickknack or that, gazing out over the garden, wondering how all this would fare when it was vacant. She thought over her late-night conversation with Albert Manning and the steps she’d outlined for him to follow once he’d spoken to David while trying not to imagine how angry David would be.

  “Hello?”

  A long pause. “Callie?”

  Her eyes went wide. “David?” She gripped the wing chair beside the front window.

  Another silence ensued, one she was afraid to puncture. She had no idea what to say to him after the way they’d parted.

  “How sure are you that you can get my mother off without any jail time?”

  Her heart took a little skip. “Very. And I’m waiting for a friend to call with a recommendation for a good defense attorney.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Now?” she echoed. “Um…I was just loading the car.”

  “You’re still in Oak Hollow?”

  She waited for the explosion.

  None came. “Would you…could you drive over here instead?”

  Callie closed her eyes. Covered her mouth. After a minute she managed to speak. “Yes.”

  “Just like that, yes? No questions?”

  She shook her head, then realized he couldn’t see her. “No—yes. Are you going to let me help you, too?”

  “That doesn’t matter so much. It’s my mother I’m worried about.”

  “It does matter, David. You matter,” she insisted. “You’re important to me.”

  “Did you mean it?” His voice lowered as if he might have an audience. “When you said that you loved me?”

  “Yes.” She was afraid to hope he felt the same. Maybe she just had to be content with this beginning.

  “It’s crazy. I can’t see how we can fit. I mean, you have your life there and your career while I—”

  The climb from the depths where he was mired must seem insurmountable, she realized. “My life in Philly isn’t much, David.” Saying it out loud, she realized it was really true. From the moment her boss had exiled her, a process had begun to crack her blindness about the barren life she’d been living. Coming to Oak Hollow, getting involved with its people, finding David again—all had contributed to widening the crack and making her see how one-dimensional her life had been.

  “I shouldn’t like hearing that, but I do.” There was a small smile in his tone.

  Her heart, which had been leaden and gray, suddenly soared.

  “Callie, I’m sorry I hurt you.” He paused. “I did it because I was trying not to drag you down with me, but—”

  She sagged onto the chair arm as relief swept over her. “I have much more to apologize for. If you’d never met me, none of this would have happened. Everything you’ve suffered began with me.”

  “No. Don’t say that. You were just a mixed-up kid. Ned Compton is the villain of this piece.” His voice lowered to an intimate murmur. “Look, I—we need to talk, but not like this.”

  The forgiveness she heard had her eyes burning. “Let Albert do his magic with the judge, okay?” She cleared her throat. “And tell him I’m on my way.”

  She raced from the house and jumped into her car, holding on to the phone as if it would keep her connected to David and to the future she wanted so badly to share.

  She made the hour trip in considerably less.

  She’d left her suitcase at home…or what felt more like home than any place she’d ever lived. We need to talk. She imagined they would have a great deal to discuss before all this was over.

  But that was the question, wasn’t it? Would whatever this was between them be over once he was free? Was she crazy for thinking past the tangle David and his mother were in?

  Her phone rang just then. She glanced at the display, expecting it to be David or Albert or even Delia.

  When her office number appeared on the display, she nearly didn’t answer. Not now, not when my mind is so full of him…when there’s so much on the line. But she answered. “Hello?”

  “Where the hell are you?” asked Joe Santiago, her friend and advocate.

  “Hello to you, too, Joe.” The tension in his tone wasn’t encouraging. “I’m in Georgia.”

  “Still? Never mind. You need to get back here, Callie. Things are heating up.”

  Dread filled her. “By things, you mean me. My witness.”

  “That reporter, Tim Caraway, he’s not letting go, Cal. The D.A.’s getting cold feet. If you want your job, you’d better remind him about why he hired you in the first place.”

  “Gerald ordered me to make myself scarce.”

  “I know, but you can’t afford to listen, not now.”

  “He was pretty clear, Joe. Out of sight, out of mind.”

  “You never backed down from a fight before. What’s up?”

  She wasn’t backing down now. But it occurred to her she might be choosing a different battle. “I can’t really leave yet.”

  “What? Funeral’s over, right?”

  “Yes, but there are…complications.”

  “No, not now—” he interrupted, obviously talking to someone else. “I’ll be there in a sec.” His voice came back. “Sorry, Cal. What did you say?” He sounded harried. Running ninety miles an hour, as usual and loving every second.

  She used to get a rush from it, too. Her eyes widened. Used to—had she really thought that?

  “Callie?”

  She shook her head to clear it. “Joe, I’m losing the signal,” she dodged. “I’d better go.” Don’t do anything hasty. Don’t.

  “Cal, are you coming or not?”

  “I’ll call you back, Joe, when I can.” Before she could change her mind, she disconnected.

  The last few blocks before the jail, she tried to picture herself back in the middle of that adrenaline-fueled existence where the dregs of humanity rubbed grime on her soul daily, only she hadn’t realized how dingy her world had become until she’d been faced with green mountains and crystal blue skies. There were problems here, yes—she only had to bring Mickey Carson or Ned Compton to mind—but there were also folks like Granny Chambers and Albert Manning and Luella Sims…

  And David Langley. A hero once again.

  She parked her car and rubbed sweaty palms on her thighs before getting out. Part of her was jubilant that he seemed to be giving her a chance.

  Part of her was terrified of letting him down.

  You can do this, you know you can.

  But then what? What happened if she did get him cleared? What did she do about Philly? When he was free, what would he choose?

  As she made her way down the hall to the interview room, she was more nervous than she could recall being in years.

  And then she saw him, standing there with his hands bound. She was relieved to note that the two of them were alone at least. In some ways it felt as if they were meeting for the first time, only so many shadows hovered in the background.

  She ventured one glance at his eyes.

  Mossy green. Soft. Looking as uncertain as she felt.

  For once in her life, Callie had no words.

  Still, there was touch. She crossed to him, took his shackled hands in hers and realized that the simplest words were the most right. “Thank you.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Thank you?”

  “For giving me a chance. For letting me help you. I know it’s not easy.” She halted when he squeezed her hands and lowered his head to hers.

  “What’s not easy,” he said in a low, intimate tone that gave her the shivers “is standing here like this, when I want so badly to hold you.”

  All the air escaped from her lungs. “Really?” She blinked hard. “I won’t let you down, David, I promise. I’
m good at what I do.”

  His expression turned carefully blank. “What about your job? Don’t you need to get back there?”

  He was looking out for her again. She sighed. “You’re not the only one who hasn’t been forthcoming. I’m not really sure I have a job to go back to.”

  “But you might? If you didn’t hang around?”

  “I honestly don’t know, and I’m not sure I care.” She stilled with the shock of saying the words out loud.

  “Callie, you don’t have to do this.”

  “Hush.” She really didn’t know if she cared about saving the life she’d left. “Right now the important question is, do you trust me, David? Will you place your future in my hands?” She braced for his response, clear just how huge such a request was for him.

  He took his time answering, searching her face thoroughly. But he never let go of her. “I trust you as much as I’ve ever trusted anyone,” he said. “I’m realizing that some of what happened to me was because I thought I had to be some kind of hero.”

  “You are a hero, David. And not just to me.”

  He looked away for a minute, then caught her eyes with his tender expression. “It’s hard, Callie, I won’t lie to you about that. I don’t trust much anymore, but I do believe in you, and—” He cleared his throat. “I don’t want to say I love you for the first time while standing in a jail.”

  A smile rose like morning inside her. She gripped his hands more tightly and didn’t even try for composure. “You don’t have to.” She waggled her eyebrows playfully. “But I’d sure like to hear it as soon as I get you out.”

  “Then hurry up, lawyer lady.” He smiled back, slow and sweet and tempting. “’Cause that’s not all I plan to do once I’m out.”

  Callie didn’t want to go, but she wanted much more to have him all to herself, to begin the process of setting David Langley free to choose whatever future he wanted.

  “I can’t tell you exactly how long it will take,” she said, “but I won’t rest one second until then, I swear.”

  His big hands surrounded hers, and she clung just as hard.

  At last he let go. Stepped back, eyes locked on hers with both hope and promise in them. “I’ll be waiting, sweetheart. You be careful.”

  “You, too.” She devoured him with her gaze.

  Walking out of there without him was the hardest thing she’d ever done.

  She stopped in the doorway and blew him a kiss. Watched those serious eyes hold her like a caress.

  Then Lady Justice rolled up her sleeves, donned her most lethal stilettos.

  And went to work.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Mickey Carson didn’t budge on his version of events.

  Not that David was surprised.

  Others at the bar that night did, though, as did Carson’s flunky Stanley about the second assault accusation, after Callie made it her business to be sure everyone in Oak Hollow knew that David had never killed anyone, that who they’d believed he was as a boy had been the truth.

  Now, however, he knew himself to be a different person, one who couldn’t quite catch up to the notion that he was free. Callie had organized the dizzying parade of legal procedures, Albert Manning had pitched in and Randy Capwell had returned to town in time to help get all the charges against him dropped.

  He still had a criminal record, but the process of obtaining a pardon from the governor was underway. More importantly, Callie had spoken, prosecutor to prosecutor, to the D.A. with a convincing argument that his mother’s case was not worth pursuing.

  Suddenly the citizens of Oak Hollow could not do enough for him. Had he wanted to, he could become mayor, could have a job anywhere he wished, could ask for practically anything he wanted.

  But all he wanted was Callie.

  “You were supposed to sleep late,” she accused in a sleepy voice. “We celebrated half the night.”

  He rolled onto his side and studied her. “It’s my first day as a free man. I don’t want to waste it.” He reached out, brushed a tousled curl from her eyes. “How do I begin to thank you, Callie? I…” He shrugged one shoulder, completely at a loss.

  She placed one slender finger against his mouth. “You don’t have to. It was my very great pleasure.” Then her solemn tone turned to teasing. “Although I could think of a thing or two we haven’t tried yet…”

  He shouldn’t let her make light of it. If it took the rest of his life, he would keep trying to tell her what it meant that she hadn’t given up on him when he’d thought his life was over.

  “You’ve got that serious look again,” she said. “What am I going to do with—”

  “I love you so much,” he interrupted. “Callie, I want to spend my life with you. I don’t know how, I don’t know where…I have no education to fall back on, no idea what kind of job I could get.” He gathered her to him. “But I’ll love you with everything in me. I’ll work hard, and I’m smart. I’ll make up lost ground if it’s the last thing I do.” She snuggled into him, and he said a silent prayer that he be allowed to make her life all that even a windmill-tilting boy had never dared to dream.

  “I think you should go to college. Or focus on your woodcarving,” she murmured, right before she swirled her tongue over his ear.

  “What?” He lost her words in the surge of physical response to what was still so new, so overwhelming.

  She rose and straddled him, let the quilt they’d bundled into last night fall from her shoulders. As she swiveled her hips and sent his mind reeling, she gave him a huge smile, punctuating each word with a gentle poke of her fingernail against his chest. “College. Beautiful carvings of wood.”

  “You’re kidding.” His head spun. He couldn’t possibly.

  “Do you not know how talented you are?”

  He hadn’t dared to imagine so much for a very long time. “Where would I do it, Philadelphia?”

  A shake of her head. “I don’t live in Philadelphia anymore.”

  His eyes narrowed. He captured the hands that were stroking. Tormenting. “Stop that. What do you mean you don’t live there?”

  “I’m a woman of property, you see.” She smiled. “I don’t need that job.”

  He thought he saw shadows. “But you loved it.”

  The eyes grew fierce. “I lived for it. It was all I had. That’s not healthy.” She bent to him. “I love you, not my career.”

  “But you’re good at the law, Callie. You can’t just—you don’t want to live in Oak Hollow, surely.”

  “Why not? At least I do if you’re here.” Uncertainty burgeoned. “That is, I thought we…”

  “You thought right.” He pulled her down, cuddled her. “If you mean that, I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  She nestled in. “That’s good.”

  “But you won’t be happy simply being a landlord, don’t give me that. If you leave your job, what will that do to your career prospects?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said in small voice.

  He knew it did. “Albert Manning wants to retire, and folks around here will need a good lawyer. Or I heard Randy Capwell ask if you’d like to set up a practice with him. Would those be too big a comedown from being Lady Justice?”

  Her smile was wry. “I like lawyer lady better. You get me hot when you say that.”

  “Be serious, Callie. Oak Hollow’s not important to me.” He stared off into the distance, wondered how the beauty of the place compared with the taint of recent history.

  “I think it is,” she said, tilting her head back to look at him. “And I’ve found that I have a taste for the other side of the table. I liked defending you and your mom. But that’s not the issue. What do you want to do?”

  He pondered the wealth of options he might have, the dizzying freedom of choices. “I have to earn my own way. I’m not living off you.”

  She smiled. “You won’t. We’ll both live off Miss Margaret’s bounty. If we stayed here, we’d have a house free and clear plus som
e income every month. If we don’t, there’s still the money coming in.”

  “That’s yours, not mine.”

  She sat up. Poked him again. “Don’t give me that. Miss Margaret adored you. You never gave her a bit of trouble, which is more than you can say about me.”

  “She didn’t leave all this to me, Callie.”

  Her look was sly. “Well, then, I guess you’ll just have to make an honest woman of me so I’ll share.”

  She drove him crazy, that wily brain of hers. “I intend to.”

  Callie grew serious. “You really mean it, don’t you?”

  “Dead serious.” He sat up, too. “Callie, I want to make a family with you.”

  “But what about college? Or your art? Or both? You could even travel, and—”

  He hushed her with a kiss that turned quickly carnal. When she was writhing against him, he dredged up the last bits of control. “I swear I never met anyone who loved to argue any more than you.” When she narrowed her eyes at him, he stroked down her body, rewarded by her gasp.

  “There’s no reason we can’t manage all of it, lawyer lady.” He gazed at this woman who was his miracle. “You’re smart, I’m smart. We both work hard. And we’ll make incredible babies…” He fell silent as their gazes met and the tragedy of those long years ago shimmered between them.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t—” she began, shadows stealing over them again.

  “You were too young, honey. Your body wasn’t ready. We’ll be fine, I really believe that. If you’re willing, that is. If you’re not, that’s okay. You’re what matters.” He touched his forehead to hers. “I’m ready to take chances, my love. How about you? Gamble on a beat-up old ex-con?”

  Her smile was tremulous, but her eyes warmed with hope. “The only crime you’re guilty of,” she said, stroking his jaw, “is stealing my heart.”

  “Do the crime, do the time.” He held out his wrists. “Lock me up, lawyer lady, and throw away the key.” He bent to kiss her. To love her, to hold her for the rest of their lives.

  Thankful to his marrow for every day of pain, every heartache, every bump in the rough road that had brought her back to him.