Too Hot to Handle: A Loveswept Classic Romance

by Chastain, Sandra

  “You noticed that too? I’m sorry, kiddo. I didn’t know that I was quite so obvious.”

  “Don’t you think it’s time you took yourself to the doctor? I think something is wrong.”

  “You’re right, Lacey. Something is wrong. I thought things were bad when I left Tyler. But nothing, absolutely nothing, in my life has ever been this bad before. Everywhere I look I see Matt.” Callie put her head in her hands. “Oh, it doesn’t do any good to talk about it. Let’s change the subject.”

  “Okay. John Henry stopped by while you were out walking in the woods. He just said to tell you that Tom Hicks’s chickens got some kind of virus. Looks like they’re all going to die.”

  Callie looked at her in speechless horror. “Tom can’t afford a loss like that. He has a mortgage payment due soon.” She stood up quickly. “I’ve got to help, if I can.”

  “What can we do, John Henry? Do I have enough money to do him any good?”

  “Callie, he needs five thousand dollars.”

  Callie thought for a long moment. “Tell Tom I’ll loan him the money.”

  “But where are you gonna get that much?”

  “I’ll get it, don’t worry.”

  “Caroline, are you feeling all right? You look a little peaked.”

  “I’m fine. It’s just the heat,” she murmured, blotting the perspiration on her forehead with the sleeve of her cotton shirt.

  “Maybe, but don’t you think you ought to let me—”

  “Now, look here, John Henry.” She shook a finger wearily at him. “The last thing I need is your brand of help. If it hadn’t been for you I wouldn’t have gotten mixed up with Matt.”

  “Have you heard from him?” John Henry asked casually.

  “Of course not. I don’t have a phone, and he’d know better than to call me if I did.”

  “There’s such a thing as the United States mail. And you still have a car he wants. I kinda thought he might come back to make one more offer on Ruby.”

  “If and when he comes here, John Henry, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t talk to him about me. I don’t want him to think I’ve been upset.”

  “Sounds like you’re kinda expecting him back. Don’t seem like you’d be too sorry to see him, either,” he muttered under his breath. “By the way, what are you going to do with your convertible?”

  “The same thing I’ve been doing,” she said, blowing a strand of hair off her forehead.

  “Tell me, Callie, do you like your log cabin?”

  “Of course I do. You know that I never want to live anywhere else.”

  “And if I picked up that cabin and set it down in the middle of the Atlanta baseball stadium, would you suddenly hate it?”

  “Hate it? Certainly not. I’d like the cabin no matter where it was.”

  “Then I don’t see why that doesn’t apply to Matt.”

  “But that’s different.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Certainly I’m sure. Matt’s a man.”

  “And you need a man. Reckon I’ll have to start looking again.”

  “Looking? Oh, no, you don’t. I don’t want another procession of men through my yard. I don’t want a man, John Henry. If I wanted a man, I’d want”—she caught back a sob of despair—“I’d want Matt.”

  “I’d give some serious thought to telling him that, Callie, my girl. Your grandfather wanted you to be happy. He never wanted you to let your mother’s mistakes ruin your life. Go home and think about it. I told you once, it’s not money and it’s not a place that makes people happy. It’s having somebody to love you.”

  “And it’s not money or a place that makes people unhappy either. Oh, I wish I’d never seen Matthew Holland. Until he came I could do what I wanted, when I wanted, and never had to worry about tomorrow. Now”—her voice wavered—“I don’t care if there is a tomorrow. I don’t seem to be able to do anything except think about the past. I’m turning into Matt.”

  “Maybe,” John Henry agreed, shifting the match stem he had clenched in his mouth, “and maybe Matt’s spending all his time thinking about what the future could be like if he had you. You two seemed to have swapped places.”

  Phil Myers stuck his head in at the open door to Matt’s executive-office suite. Matt glanced up and saw an unusually large grin on his partner’s pudgy face.

  “Hey, Holland,” Phil called. “A bunch of weirdos are staging a protest across the street. They don’t want Texamite to cut down the old oak trees that the garden clubs planted back in the thirties. A friend of mine called from WGST radio to let us in on the action. The police are about to come cart them off—the weirdos, not the oak trees, that is. Looks like fun. Want to grab a cup of coffee and come watch the sideshow?”

  Matt stopped dictating a letter to Margaret, his secretary, and leaped to his feet. His heart pounded a tattoo against his eardrums.

  “Weirdos,” he said urgently. “Callie.”

  He raced out the office door and found a window that faced the street. Pressing both hands against the cool glass, he peered down at the pitifully small group of protesters waving signs. Poor slobs, he thought sympathetically. They didn’t have a chance. He looked hard at the women until he saw one with a head of dark hair. From a distance he couldn’t be positive, but …

  “Caroline,” he whispered hoarsely. “You’re here.”

  As Matt ran for the elevator, he passed Phil and Margaret.

  “Didn’t know you loved oak trees so darned much,” Phil called jovially.

  The air was muggy and oppressive. Matt cursed it as he dodged traffic to cross the street. His dear woman was out trying to save a bunch of ancient trees in this awful weather. He’d coax her inside the office, and then …

  “Caroline!” he yelled as he ran up behind the dark-haired woman. Matt slid his arms around her waist and nuzzled his face in her thick hair.

  “Help!” the stranger squealed. Then she twisted around and whacked him with a floppy piece of poster board.

  Matt let go of the unfamiliar woman immediately, and stepped back, speechless. “I apologize,” he managed to tell her with brusque formality, and straightened his suit. He felt a blush combine with the heat to turn his face beet red.

  The other protesters gathered around him. Suddenly he knew how Custer felt at the Little Big Horn.

  “You’re from Texamite, aren’t you?” a tiny elderly woman said accusingly.

  “Oh, no, ma’am, I’m—”

  “Take that!”

  Matt raised one arm just in time to ward off the hard thump of her purse as it came toward his head. Police sirens wailed to a stop nearby, and blue uniforms were suddenly everywhere. The protesters dispersed, chanting and waving their signs. Matt sighed, and started back toward the street, feeling despondent. Where was Callie? She never missed this kind of protest. What was wrong with her?

  Suddenly a burly hand clasped his arm. “Hold it there, bud,” an officer said with a growl. “Don’t try to sneak out on us.”

  “But … but …” Matt began to protest. The officer shook his head and began reading him his rights.

  Matt sighed. Then he calmly squinted up at the Holland Paint building and waved, hoping that Phil might see what was happening and come bail him out. As the officer led him away Matt realized how deeply Callie had affected his life. She got him into adventures even when she wasn’t around. Lord, he had to get her back somehow.

  Pregnancy was the only reason Callie hadn’t attended the oak-tree protest.

  She drove home slowly from Dr. Campbell’s office. She was distracted, and, thankfully, Ruby seemed to know the way home by herself.

  “Surprise, surprise,” Callie said out loud. “I’m going to be a mommy.”

  She’d just wanted to hear those words spoken. Now that she had, she admitted that Doc Campbell’s announcement hadn’t been a real shock. All she had to do was recall the last time she and Matt had made love, that careless, wild encounter right before he’d left. That was when i
t had happened.

  Weeks earlier she’d begun to feel the evidence, the swimmy head, the nausea, the odd sensations her body sent out. At first, as she took her daily walks, she’d tried to reject the possibility that she was carrying Matt’s child.

  But for the last few days she’d begun to feel a peculiar sense of contentment. In spite of the bouts of morning sickness, she’d walk around daydreaming, in such a fog of sensations that she couldn’t even remember where she’d been until she would come to and realize that she was cradling her stomach with her hands and staring off into the distance with a smile on her face. Lacey had begun to study her secretly, and she knew her observant friend wouldn’t be fooled for long.

  She wasn’t.

  They were sitting on the porch of the cabin, watching fireflies dance through the velvet darkness across the valley, when Lacey dived into the problem head on.

  “So what do you plan to do?”

  “Do?” Callie pretended not to understand.

  “Are you going to tell him?”

  “Tell who what?”

  “Don’t pretend with me, Callie Carmichael. You’re pregnant. You and I both know it, and I get the feeling that you’re pleased as punch.”

  Callie felt a surge of pride wash over her as she considered Lacey’s words. “You’re right,” she admitted. “I can’t explain it, but I am pregnant and I’m very pleased. I want to have a child. I want to have this child.”

  “Are you going to tell him?”

  “No! He’d insist on our getting married, and I don’t want that.”

  “Why ever not, Callie? The man loves you.”

  “The baby will be fine. I’ll be both mother and father.”

  “Sure, and you’ll be Santa Claus and the Easter bunny. A child has enough problems in today’s world. It seems to me you’re sentencing yourself to a pretty lonely future.”

  “I won’t be lonely,” Callie protested. “I’ll have my child.”

  “Being lonely is one thing, but having loved a man and having to live without that love is a different kind of loneliness. Lonely women are unhappy women, and unhappy women don’t always make the best mothers.”

  Lacey was right. No matter how much she tried to deny it, everywhere Callie looked she saw Matt. Sometimes she’d glance up from her basket work, startled, thinking she’d just heard Matt’s voice. And William seemed cranky these days, as if he missed Matt and blamed her for his departure. Callie told herself the heat was making both her and William overimaginative.

  And then, one morning when she got up, the gate was standing open and William was gone.

  Nine

  She found a letter thumb-tacked to the gate. It was printed on expensive stationery stamped with gold initials and it read simply, “If you ever want to see, hear, or smell William again, come to my home in Atlanta. Alone. Tell the cops to stay clear or I’ll turn your homicidal goat loose on their cars.”

  It was signed, “Matt,” and underneath he’d given directions to his house.

  Callie couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. Matt was taking charge again, trying to twist her plans to suit himself, but it was hard to resist a man who’d go to the trouble of kidnapping an ugly, smelly, neurotic goat just to get her attention.

  “All right, Matthew,” she whispered. “I’ll retrieve William and we’ll talk.” She folded the note carefully and carried it into the house, her chin high. Before she talked to Matt about the possibility of a future together, she’d see her father and decide if they could overcome their differences.

  It hurt Callie a little when her father merely glanced up at her over a stack of papers on his enormous rosewood desk. Distracted, he returned to his reading and punched an intercom button on his sleek telephone.

  “Mary, I told you I didn’t want to be disturbed. This report has to be complete—”

  “Hello, Daddy.”

  His finger, with its manicured nail, snapped away from the intercom button. He stood quickly. “Callie?”

  She could tell from the shocked expression on his face that her father was surprised. In fact, she decided with pleasure, he was more nearly dumbfounded.

  It was mutual. She’d never before realized how handsome he was. She’d never allowed herself to see him as more than a shadowy figure who hovered on the fringe of her life. Funny, she’d never realized before how short he was. She was only an inch or so shorter than he. In her mind he’d always touched the ceiling when he walked.

  Wesley Carmichael came around his desk and moved slowly toward her. “Is it really you? After all this time, you’ve actually come to see me?” His voice was a whisper, an emotionally charged rope of uncertain words. “Why?”

  He was very reserved in a way that reminded her of how Matt had acted when they had first met. She’d learned that underneath Matt’s reserve lay a warm, sensitive human being. Now she wondered if the same was true of her father.

  “I wanted to tell you … that I finally understand,” she murmured.

  “Understand what?”

  He stood not more than twelve inches from her, but he could have been across the world. His dark hair was fringed with silver, and deep lines radiated outward from the corners of his eyes and across his forehead.

  “About the way you loved Mother, and the way she loved you. I came to say that I’m sorry I made your pain over her even greater.”

  Her father took her hand and led her to the couch, where he sat stiffly beside her. Callie thought how odd, how utterly like her father it was to be so polite and formal in the midst of this emotional reunion.

  “You’ve come at last,” he murmured. He studied her intently for many seconds. She kept her gaze on him and lost track of everything around her. “You’ve changed, Callie. You’re softer. There’s a gentleness about you that reminds me of your mother.”

  He reached out and curled her hair behind one ear. His intimate gesture shocked her, and she felt tears pressuring the backs of her eyelids. He smiled uncertainly.

  “What can I do for you, Callie?” Now she saw in his eyes the earnest desire to please her. She cleared her throat roughly.

  “Perhaps … perhaps we could start by going to lunch.”

  He looked wistful. “You don’t ask me for much. You’ve never asked me for much. And I’ve always had so much to give.” She looked away, her eyes burning. “It doesn’t matter,” he added quickly. “You’re here, and that’s all I care about. Come on. We’ll scare up the biggest steak this side of the Mason-Dixon line, and I’ll insist that you talk my ears off, the way you did when you were very little. Remember?”

  She remembered. Over lunch she talked and he listened, and they felt the years soften into a blur. They weren’t close, Callie knew, and they might never be, but she’d made a first step, and she felt a special glow as she left the restaurant with her arm through his. She’d told him all about Matt, and he’d actually been sympathetic.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you to visit this interesting fellow?” He held onto her arm as though he were afraid she’d slip away and be gone forever.

  “No,” Callie said firmly. “This is another of those things I have to do by myself, as usual. I just had to come here today … Daddy … and make certain that you don’t mind if I sell Mother’s car. I want Matt to have it, no matter what he decides about me.

  “If that idiot doesn’t appreciate your coming to apologize, he doesn’t deserve that car.”

  He walked her to the curb, where he hailed a taxi. “Where are you staying?”

  “At the Ravinia Hilton. I have a room on the twelfth floor, where I can see the entire Atlanta skyline. I sat there last night and watched the sun set. It was magnificent. Not as beautiful as a mountain sunset, but close.”

  “And you’re really going to leave the valley and move back to town?”

  “Yep, if a certain businessman will have me.”

  “Call me,” Wesley said as he closed the door to the cab. “Come home if he … I mean, I do
n’t want you hurt, Callie. Promise me you won’t close me out this time.”

  She smiled at him, her eyes full of promises.

  Callie spent the rest of the afternoon shopping at a mall near the hotel. She selected a ruby-red silk dress that clung seductively to her body. Gossamer-sheer panties and a lacy bra made her smile as she contemplated Matt’s expression when he discovered them. Sheer, flesh-colored stockings and red high heels completed her outfit.

  She took a deep breath, piled her packages into the Fiesta, and hoped fervently that she wasn’t about to make a fool of herself.

  Back at the hotel Callie swallowed her panic, then donned the underwear, the sheer panty hose, and finally the red dress. After she applied the first makeup she’d worn in years, she decided that she looked like a Neiman-Marcus version of a gypsy or, perhaps, Scarlett O’Hara in modern dress.

  The summer sun had just set as she wheeled the Fiesta into the fashionable suburban subdivision where Matt lived. No homes were visible from the street, only numbered mailboxes without names, adorned with little metal placards that announced which security service protected each residence.

  Callie drove up the driveway, grateful that the gate was open. A canopy of trees shielded the house, then the trees gave way to open space, and she saw an ornate Victorian monstrosity sitting stiffly on top of a hill.

  The driveway carried Callie around behind the house past a brick, ivy-covered stable that was brightly lit. She slowed Ruby as she realized that the stable wasn’t for housing horses. Instead, each stall had been enlarged to accommodate a shiny convertible. Each car was polished to perfection. The collection seemed more like artwork than modes of transportation. Over each stall was a heavy brass plate stamped in Gothic script with the year, model, and manufacturer’s name for the car displayed there.

  Only one space was vacant, she noticed. Callie jerked Ruby to a stop. One space with a plate that read, “1953 Fiesta, by Oldsmobile.”