by Kaitlyn Rice
His jaw tensed. “You get your way, don’t you, Cal?”
She didn’t think so. She might have maneuvered her way out of a conversation tonight—she hoped so—but she for damn sure hadn’t gotten her way.
She felt an almost frantic desire to keep Ethan near, but she couldn’t. Not if she wished to raise Luke in the way every child deserved—in one home, by the person who had nurtured him from his first second of life.
“Cal?”
She shrugged, pretending this wasn’t hell for her, too. “Guess so.”
He sighed. “I’m suddenly in no mood to talk tonight, but get it in your head that we will have this conversation very soon. Deal?”
She lifted her chin and didn’t answer.
Ethan looked at her for another few seconds. Then he finally strode across the parking lot. He got in his car, started it and drove away. Callie watched until he turned right onto the highway and traveled out of sight.
She stood in the same spot for a few minutes afterward, imagining that sweet, lost desire and something else she missed just as much: feeling safe enough to be honest with Ethan.
But losing him had taken a lot out of her. Sharing her days with their sweet baby kept her whole and peaceful. If she lost her little boy, she might become bitter.
She might become her mother.
For the life of her, she couldn’t take that risk.
A WEEK LATER, Ethan sipped his water and watched the breakfast crowd at Wichita’s Beacon Restaurant. After it had become apparent that his odd working hours and Lee-Ann’s weekend concert bookings weren’t always going to mesh, they’d taken to meeting here on the Saturday mornings he didn’t have to work. Since his west-Wichita house was nearer than LeeAnn’s east-side apartment, he generally got here first to grab a table.
LeeAnn was always right behind him, though. He’d only been there five minutes when she bustled through the door in her jeans and fancy boots, leaving behind a trail of perfume and admiring glances. That feminine confidence was the first thing that had attracted Ethan to her, with her well-toned body coming in a very close second. She worked hard to stay fit.
“It’s great to see you, Ethan.” She leaned down to press a kiss against his lips before settling in across from him. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”
“Of course not.”
As she studied the menu, he studied her. Her beaded Western shirt and gold necklace showed off a great tan—another thing she maintained diligently. As usual, she appeared to be ready to rope the world and make it hers. “You’re lookin’ good this morning,” he said.
Glancing up, LeeAnn winked at him. “You are, too. You hungry? I can’t do a whole order of French toast, but it sounds good. Have half and order another entrée for yourself.”
Ethan considered her offer. Sometimes, they ate breakfast here and went their separate ways, meeting again in the evening when they were both free. Whenever they could manage it, they had a big breakfast and spent a long, leisurely day together. This morning, neither of those options sounded interesting.
Ethan’s mind kept returning to Callie. Seeing her had thrown him back in time. However, instead of recalling the turmoil that had finally ended their marriage, he’d kept remembering the good times. He’d forced himself to get through the week without driving out to Augusta to see her again.
He dragged his thoughts back to the pretty woman sitting across from him, awaiting an answer.
“Sorry, LeeAnn. I’m not up for this,” he said. “Do you mind if we just get coffee or juice? Tonight after your show, we can do anything you want.”
“Biscuits and gravy don’t sound good?” she asked, naming a Beacon specialty he normally found irresistible.
“Not really.”
After they’d ordered their drinks, LeeAnn leveled a gaze at him. “Still thinking about last Saturday?”
“Maybe,” he said. Since he prided himself on his honesty, he corrected himself immediately. “Yes.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell her.”
“You’ve said that,” Ethan said. “I don’t know why it matters when I tell her. I will. I don’t want to just dump it on her.”
“You’ve said that,” LeeAnn said, winking again as the waitress brought their drinks.
“Any reason we should hurry?” he asked.
“I don’t know, Ethan. What do you think?”
Aha! LeeAnn was losing patience with him. Why didn’t he feel flattered at her eagerness to take the relationship to the next level? He’d thought he was ready, too.
From the beginning, he’d been honest with LeeAnn. He’d told her that he was still married, but that he’d reconcile with his wife when hell froze over. He still believed that to be the truth.
Callie owned a piece of his heart, but she’d been impossible to live with in the end.
He liked LeeAnn. She was outgoing, sophisticated and pretty in a vivid, brunette way. Basically, she was everything Callie wasn’t. But as Ethan watched her drink her glass of orange juice, he noticed the way she held it with a light touch and sipped slowly.
Why, all of a sudden, did he find it sexier for a woman to order what was possibly her first beer at the age of twenty-nine, hold on to it with a death grip and drink it so fast her eyes glazed over?
And why did Callie’s paler features remain in his thoughts as the ideal of feminine beauty?
She’d tied him in knots. Again.
“I think you should dispatch the papers to your wife and be done with it,” LeeAnn said. “She told you she didn’t want you around.”
Ethan smiled. He’d decide how to handle Callie. Maybe he should learn to be honest to LeeAnn without telling her every detail. “I appreciate the input,” he said, turning the conversation to other topics.
Twenty minutes later, he stood and tossed a couple of bills on the table. “You ready?”
“I’m ready.” LeeAnn led him from the restaurant with a sure stride. Anyone watching might think him lucky to be with her.
That was probably true. LeeAnn was terrific.
After walking her to her car, however, Ethan kissed her quickly and tried not to think of a more provocative parking lot kiss. “I’ll call you later,” he promised before he closed the car door between them.
In his car, Ethan sat for a minute, thinking. He hadn’t told LeeAnn, but he had the day off.
He had no, business heading to Augusta.
LeeAnn was right. Callie would no doubt be thrilled if she received divorce papers. She’d sign and return them, and she’d be through with him.
As he left the parking lot and headed east out of town, Ethan tried not to think about where he was going, or why. He just switched on the radio and drove. He wound up sitting in his car at Augusta’s city lake, staring at the shady clearing where he’d proposed to Callie.
He could picture the two of them, stocking the kitchen in their first Wichita apartment. They’d talked for hours about their plans. Careers in law enforcement and biomedical research. Three kids, because he’d been a lonely only and she enjoyed her sisters so much. Date nights on Saturdays and family time on Sunday afternoons.
He was a different person now.
But he was a good man, he reminded himself. This guilt was unwarranted. He hadn’t left Callie to pursue a life of debauchery. He’d left after she’d made it clear that she believed her mother’s tenets about men in general and about him in particular.
Damn it all, anyway.
Tomorrow, he’d pull those papers from his filing cabinet and send them to Josie’s address. Callie would receive them while she was within easy driving distance. If she had problems with anything, they could meet to talk.
And after the concert tonight, Ethan would take Lee-Ann out to celebrate a new start.
That decided, Ethan drove away from the lake with every intention of heading home. But he couldn’t resist driving by Isabel’s house one last time, just to see which cars were parked in front of it.
And when h
e saw the silver Toyota truck with a JO-Z vanity plate, he had to stop.
Callie’s youngest sister had been twelve when he’d met her. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been twenty-one and in her senior year of college. Rowdy and fun, Josie was the least complicated of the Blumes. Callie couldn’t blame him if he dropped by to say hello to Josie.
By the time he got to Isabel’s front door, he’d almost changed his mind. He knocked anyway, and his nerves about did him in until a stranger answered the door.
“If you’re here to help, come on in and find where you need to be,” the man said. “If you’re looking for the Blumes, they’re somewhere in the back of the house.”
“Thanks.” Ethan followed him into the living room, where the stranger and two other guys were installing new Sheetrock. On his way through the house, Ethan saw two more men ripping out the ruined kitchen flooring.
Isabel and Josie were removing old wallpaper from the top half of Izzy’s bedroom, presumably intending to match it to the newly replaced bottom half.
“Knock, knock,” he said. “I’m just stopping by to visit my favorite tomboy.”
“Ethan!” Josie set down the paintbrush she’d been using to apply a chemical stripper, then rushed across the room to throw her arms around his neck. After a warm hug that did much to feed Ethan’s courage, he backed up, smiling as he studied Callie’s youngest sister.
Just below average height, voluptuous Josie had very dark, very short hair. Isabel was a couple of inches taller, with lighter brown hair and an hourglass figure. And Callie was a blonde, of course, and just four inches shorter than his own six-two. Except for similar upturned noses and full lips, the Blume sisters were all very different in appearance.
Josie glanced at the peeling wallpaper with a grave expression. “The place looks awful, doesn’t it?”
“It’s much improved over past weekend,” Ethan said, gazing across at Isabel. “I can’t believe how fast your house is coming together.”
“I’ve had a lot of help,” Isabel said, her expression as calm as usual.
He returned his attention to Josie, and recalled the one thing that the Blume girls did have in common. A quality they had each inherited from their mother—fortitude.
They wouldn’t be bested by any disaster.
Callie had inherited their mother’s strongest and most difficult traits. He wondered where she was today. He’d seen the little Mazda outside, but maybe one of her sisters had dropped her off at Isabel’s boyfriend’s place. “Is Callie babysitting again?” he asked.
“Ha!” Josie said.
“No, she’s not babysitting.” Isabel spoke loudly, scowling at Josie.
Josie returned the glare, then she and Izzy engaged in a sibling dispute using only their facial expressions.
Isabel must have won, because she finally turned to him and said, “The baby is spending the morning at a church day care. The two older kids are with their dad. I think they were planning to muck out the hog bins. Roger said they’d missed doing that all last week because of the flood. The smell had begun to waft all the way to the house.”
Whoa! That was too much information. Ethan didn’t care where the kids were and what they were doing.
He’d been fishing for information about Callie, of course, but her sisters weren’t biting. They stood in the middle of Isabel’s bare, torn-apart bedroom, eyeing him.
He could simply ask to speak to Callie, but this was more fun. He raised his eyebrows, shoved his hands into his pockets and waited.
A moment later, he began to whistle.
Finally, Josie said, “Aw, heck, Ethan. Callie’s in the basement if you really want to see her.”
“It can’t hurt to say hello,” he said, grinning as he set off in that direction. Walking through Isabel’s house, he listened to the sounds of hammers and scrapes and murmured voices as a houseful of people worked to repair the flood damage. The place looked just as odd as it had last week, but in a different way. He’d never seen so many men inside it. When Ella was alive, she’d hired only female plumbers and electricians, and she’d done that only after she’d exhausted herself trying to fix various problems on her own.
At least Isabel hadn’t followed in her mother’s footsteps in that way. Thank God.
When he’d gone halfway down the basement steps, Ethan was struck again by the ravages of the flood. If the upstairs appeared odd, the basement was surreal. Every scrap of wallboard had been cleared—it must have disintegrated in the floodwater. Isabel was left with little more than a muddy cement foundation and wet wooden studs.
A couple of industrial-size fans were running on either end of the oblong space, but the basement still carried the foul odor of standing water. Ethan spotted a plastic poinsettia that had moored itself between two ceiling cross-beams, and realized the amount of work left to do here.
And that he wanted to help do it.
Today. Tomorrow. Hell, he’d even volunteer to help until Isabel’s house had been restored to its preflood state. Maybe by then, he’d think of a way to talk to Callie.
She stood facing the far wall, attacking a muddy stain with a scrub brush. Her left hand was now bare.
He kept his ring in a tiny stone box in his sock drawer. He wondered what she’d done with hers. He couldn’t ask, though. He couldn’t handle more than the task at hand.
At the moment, he intended only to inform her that he was determined to stay and help. He tried to clump loud enough to alert her to his arrival, but the fans were too loud. He faked a cough instead.
She noticed him, then let out a raspy chuckle.
He stepped near enough to speak to her without having to holler. “Callie, you don’t have to say a word to me, but I’m planning to stick around to help. Pretend I belong with the crew upstairs.”
Looking stern, she dipped her brush into a bucket containing a liquid that smelled like bleach. He watched her scrub for a minute, then he took the brush from her hand and stepped in front of her to add some muscle power. The stain disappeared.
He smiled as he returned the brush, but she responded with a deeper scowl. She sidled a few feet away from him and attacked a new stain with a vengeance. After a moment, she said, “I’d have thought you’d know better than to show up here.”
He would have thought so, too. But he played dumb and asked, “Because of last weekend?”
She kept working, but raised her eyebrows.
He wondered what bothered her most. Seeing him at all, knowing about LeeAnn, or that kiss in Mary’s parking lot. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, thinking he’d cover all the bases.
“I’m not worried.” She skittered across the wall two more feet. “You’re the one with the girlfriend.”
Aha! It was LeeAnn. “She knows I talked to you,” he said. “I’m honest with her.”
“Then she knows we kissed and you got hot enough to…” Callie’s voice trailed off as she glanced at his groin, and her kitten-gray eyes lit with awareness.
Need shot through Ethan as fast as lightning.
He and Callie might have lost their desire for each other while their marriage was failing, but lately they weren’t having any trouble finding it.
He watched her as she resumed her scrubbing. She wore light blue sweats, her hair was pulled into a sloppy ponytail and her bare face shone with the sweat of her work.
This woman appeared to reside in a different world from the perfectly dressed, perfectly poised woman Ethan had left this morning in Wichita.
Most men would go for LeeAnn in a heartbeat.
Most would avoid a shy, workaholic scientist who believed that men were worthwhile only on a short-term basis.
But Callie intrigued him more.
Damn.
He couldn’t do it again. He had tried and he had failed.
“Don’t worry about my reaction to you,” he said, his tone gentle. “It’s probably normal to think about your first love that way. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”
/>
Callie kept scrubbing. After a minute, she turned to peer at him.
“You want to help?” she asked.
“Sure.”
She handed him the brush. “Have a blast,” she said. “But get your Dudley Do-Right thrills out of your system this morning, okay?”
After nudging the bucketful of cleaner toward him with her foot, Callie jogged up the stairs.
Chapter Four
Making a beeline for Isabel’s bedroom, Callie strode inside, yanked the door closed behind her and stood leaning against it. “Did you guys talk to Ethan?” she whispered to her sisters.
Josie peeled off a long strip of wallpaper, dropped it into a wastebasket and swiveled around. “Sorry. I’m the one who told him you were downstairs.”
“Neither of you mentioned Luke, did you?” Callie asked.
Isabel glanced over her shoulder. “I said he was at the church day care, but I implied he was there because Roger was busy. Don’t worry. Your secret is safe.”
“Thanks.” Callie relaxed against the door. “I’ll need your help again in a few minutes. I’m supposed to get Luke from the church at one o’clock, so Ethan has to be gone before then.”
“You really should tell him, Cal.” Josie’s hazel eyes were unusually serious as she stepped closer.
“Why?”
She rolled her eyes. “Because Luke is his kid.”
Callie sighed and shook her head. Every time they’d discussed how to handle Ethan, she and her youngest sister had had this same debate. But Josie had never gone beyond casual dating. She hadn’t been around kids much. Either she didn’t understand Callie’s dilemma, or she chose to ignore it. “And what will happen if I tell him?” Callie asked.
“Ethan will know he’s a dad.”
“I live in Denver,” Callie said, knitting her brow. “Ethan lives in Wichita, and he’s the one who left me, remember? Do you want your nephew to wonder which place is home? Ethan might even win full custody. He is Luke’s biological dad, and a well-liked police officer. Do you want me to lose Luke?”
“Of course not.”
“We were fine without our dad,” Callie pointed out.
“Maybe, but at least our dad had a choice.”
