by Ruthie Knox
Already walking down the back hall toward her room on some private errand, Katie didn’t reply. Caleb made his way to the living room, where he took in the devastation three rowdy schoolkids and a dog had wreaked on his house in the span of a few hours. Open magazines covered the rug he’d sent home from Turkey. Couch cushions, blankets, and a folding chair formed some kind of rickety structure in the corner. There was a mystery puddle of clear liquid on the hardwood.
He shook his head at the wreckage and started putting the couch back together.
When he’d bought this place after 9/11, converting his savings and reenlistment bonus into the down payment, he figured he was probably heading into combat. He’d wanted the comfort of knowing that one day the war would be over and he would move home to Camelot and live in his own house.
He’d seen himself with a wife eventually, and maybe a kid or two. Police or security work to keep him busy. He’d never thought he would get deployed to Iraq three times in five years, or that he’d end up staying on in the army for another decade. He just hadn’t been able to walk away. Not when his men still needed him.
Never had he imagined he’d end up back home at thirty-three, a small-business owner with his baby sister as a roommate.
Not that he regretted any of it. He’d left home a cocky, aimless kid in search of new people to charm and adventures of the sort the Midwest didn’t have on tap. And he’d found them in Germany, Sarajevo, Iraq—but the military police had also given him the mission he hadn’t known he was craving. A day-in, day-out struggle to make a positive difference thousands of miles from home.
The army had taken fifteen years of the best he had, and he considered it a fair exchange for what he’d gotten in return. He’d served with honor. Now it was time to put his family first.
He surveyed the scene. Better, but he needed paper towels. While he was in the kitchen getting them, Katie came in, wet a rag, and began wiping down the countertop, her short black hair swinging around her face.
“You should try not to get so mad at Mom,” she said.
“She’s mean to him, and he’s weak. It ticks me off.”
“She can’t help it. It bugs her that Dad doesn’t remember things anymore. She thinks he just needs to try harder.”
“Yeah. It’s a problem.”
Before the stroke, Derek Clark had been a model husband and father. He’d managed the Camelot Arms Apartments with a capable good cheer, and he’d provided a decent living for the family. These days, the physical therapists pronounced him recovered, but he remained easily distracted. His short-term memory was pretty much shot. He seemed oblivious to how much his condition had deteriorated.
It made Caleb feel like shit to think about it, so he tried not to.
Katie exhaled loudly, blowing off steam, and opened the fridge door to put away a few bottles of salad dressing.
“I don’t get why she doesn’t just call me when this stuff comes up,” Caleb said.
“She doesn’t want to bother you.”
“She’s supposed to bother me. Being around for her to bother me is the whole reason I moved back here.”
“I know that, Caleb. She knows it, too, but she’s used to you being gone. I think she’s afraid to depend on you in case you decide to reenlist or something. Give it time, huh?”
Unconvinced, he grunted his assent. He’d already given it six months.
Katie pulled the trash can out from under the sink and started shoving used disposable cups and cutlery in it, her mouth set in a grimace he’d seen too often lately. Between working as his office manager, studying for the online college class she was taking, and nursing whatever private pain she’d brought back from Alaska, she had too much on her plate.
All of them did. Mom and Dad’s apartment complex was aging, getting more expensive to run every year, and the price of their health insurance seemed to double every time he blinked.
Someone had to take care of them. That someone was him.
Heading back into the living room, he wiped up the mess on the floor. He’d been hoping it was water, but it didn’t smell like water. Next week, the dog stayed home.
He returned to the kitchen and tossed the sodden paper towels over his sister’s shoulder and into the trash. Direct hit. Katie looked at the bag. Looked at him. “Don’t throw pee towels at me, Buster. I am not the enemy.”
True, that. She was the best friend he had in this town. Most of his old buddies had moved on years ago, drawn away to Columbus or farther afield. Katie had gone all the way to Anchorage with her high school boyfriend and started up an outfitting business, but a few months before their dad’s stroke she’d come back alone, flat broke, refusing to talk about Alaska. Caleb had given her the house to live in rent-free, never expecting they’d end up sharing it.
When he had first moved home, he’d been shocked by the change in her. She spent nights tending bar and sat around listless in yoga pants all day, snacking and watching reality TV. It was as if someone had stolen his sister—usually all restless motion and cheerful wit—and replaced her with a zombie. He’d offered her the job in the office to get her out of the house, and it seemed to have helped. She was much more herself lately.
But he still worried.
He nudged Katie away from the sink with his hip so he could wash his hands. “I don’t have any enemies.”
To his surprise, Katie put her arms around him. “That’s right,” she said. “Everybody loves Caleb.” He turned, holding his wet hands away from her back and looking down at the top of her head resting on his chest.
Affection from Katie was a rare thing. She had a big heart and a barbed sense of humor that she used to keep anyone who didn’t know her well from guessing it. “You’re getting soft,” he told her.
She poked him in the stomach. “Compared to you, everybody is soft.” When she met his eyes, he saw her concern. “You worry too much,” she said. “It’s going to be fine.”
“What is?”
“Everything.”
He sure as hell hoped so. When he started the company, he’d been counting on some business from the college. The woman who ran the campus security office had made enthusiastic noises about contracting with him for the protection of visiting speakers and dignitaries, and they’d developed a plan to set up car and bike patrols of the campus under his supervision—something the college needed but couldn’t afford to do itself, since adding a staff of full-time security employees would cost a fortune in salary and generous Camelot College benefits, whereas Caleb could do it mostly with part-timers.
During the last few phone calls he’d had with her, though, her enthusiasm had cooled. She’d told him student enrollment was down for the coming year, and her budget had taken a hit. In the meantime, Camelot Security had eaten up nearly all of his savings. Business wasn’t coming in fast enough to meet the payroll.
Hoping to lighten the moment, he stuck a wet hand down the back of Katie’s shirt, making her screech and swat at him with a dish towel. He stole it and used it to dry off his hands. “I have to get going.”
“Where are you off to? Hot date?”
There was a thought. “I have to go check on the guys at Carly’s place and maybe talk to Callahan’s sister.” If she’ll let me in the door.
Katie boosted herself up to sit on the counter and leaned eagerly toward him. “Did you meet Jamie yet? Is he as hot as he looks on TV?”
“I already told you, he’s in L.A. I’m probably not going to meet him.”
“The sister’s pretty, though. I’ve seen her around.”
“She’s a job. I’m not allowed to notice.”
Tactical error. Katie’s whole face brightened. “Ooh, you like her! With your luck, she’ll probably throw herself at you, and you’ll have to beat her off with a stick.”
“I’m not a mall cop. I don’t carry a stick.”
She gave him an impish smile. “So improvise.”
“Very funny.” Grabbing his keys from the table by the
phone, he slipped on his shoes and headed for the door. “I’m walking. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”
“See you.”
On his way down the driveway, he let himself imagine a variety of unlikely scenarios in which Ellen actually did throw herself at him. That drill-sergeant mouth softening, her hands gripping his shoulders as she rose to the balls of her bare feet and kissed him.
Never gonna happen.
And that was for the best. He didn’t need to kiss Ellen, he needed to convince her. Whatever it took, he had to find a way to make the woman let him do the job he’d been hired to do so he could exceed Breckenridge’s expectations and save his own ass.
Breckenridge was the key to turning things around. His contact there had told him the nationwide company didn’t have enough agents in the Midwest, and they hired out a lot of work. If Caleb performed well on this job, more contracts would be coming his way.
He had a mission. His family was counting on him.
Caleb wouldn’t lay a finger on Ellen Callahan.
Chapter Five
As he cut across one dark corner of the campus, Caleb pondered the mystery of Camelot College. He’d never thought to question it growing up, but surely there was a story to explain how this collection of imposing granite buildings had come to be nestled among the cornfields. The architecture gave the place an unexpected flavor of New England, as if someone had hoped to bring Yale to the Midwest.
The college drew people in, but it was Camelot that got a hold on them. It had certainly gotten a hold on his family. Dad had sunk his savings into the Camelot Arms Apartments when Caleb was only four years old.
Enthusing about the virtues of becoming his own boss and the income stream they’d siphon from an endless supply of student renters, Dad had driven the Clarks two hundred miles from Detroit to Camelot and separated Mom from her relatives, inflicting a wound she’d never properly recovered from. Mom still talked about moving back to Michigan one day. Everyone but her knew it was never going to happen.
For Caleb, Camelot was home, and he was a homebody. In basic training, he’d run his mouth about how great Ohio was so often, he’d earned himself the nickname “Buckeye.”
Caleb passed the tennis courts, crossed the invisible line that divided the campus from the town, and emerged onto Ellen’s street. Only two paparazzi vehicles lay in wait tonight when he checked in at the security SUV. Eric and Cassie told him they’d logged a few others doing drive-bys, but it had been a quiet afternoon.
He found Ellen lounging on a weathered Adirondack chair on her recessed front porch, a glass of red wine in her hand. The open bottle sat beside her foot, along with an unused second glass. His eyes flicked to the empty chair next to hers.
Rather than approach, Caleb veered off to the left, seizing his chance to do a quick assessment of the house while she didn’t look inclined to run him off with a shotgun.
The inventory didn’t cheer him up any. Both the exterior door off the kitchen and the French doors in back had cheap, worthless locks and no deadbolts. Most of the rear wall was plate glass, which effectively turned Ellen’s living room into a fishbowl. The overhanging roof threw deep shadows over all the entrances, but only the front porch had a security light, and if the black, sooty spot on the flat surface of the bulb was any indication, it had burned out.
Ellen’s place was a home invasion waiting to happen. She didn’t have even the standard homeowner protections—blinds on her windows, deadbolts, and floodlights to make break-ins less likely. She needed those, and more. He wouldn’t recommend an alarm system to just anybody, but he’d sure as hell insist on one for anybody with a relative as famous as Jamie Callahan. That, and a tall, solid fence with a gate and a keypad.
Time to find out just how persuasive he could be.
“Hey there, Ellen Callahan.” He planted one foot on the bottom porch step.
“Hey yourself, Camelot Security. Doing a little trespassing?”
“Yep. Is that wineglass for me?”
“No.”
“Who’s it for, then?”
She shrugged. “Always a good idea to have a spare.”
Caleb smiled at her wit, and a moment later, so did she—a soft killer of a smile that came so easily, he thought the wine must have helped it along.
“Hank go to bed early?”
“Henry. Yes. Twenty-five whole minutes. He was all worn out from the zoo today, poor guy.”
Caleb gestured at the empty chair beside her. “I know we don’t have anything to talk about, but maybe I could get off my feet for a minute?”
She waved a hand, the movement as loose as the smile and ten times more relaxed than she’d been this morning. “Have at it.”
He climbed the three steps and took a seat. Without asking, Ellen poured him a generous glass of wine and handed it over.
Since he’d last seen her, she’d put her hair up in a knot with a Number 2 pencil stuck through it. A bunch of strands had escaped to cling to her neck. It made her look half-undone, which made him think about undoing her the rest of the way.
One direction he really didn’t need his mind to go.
He tried the wine. It was better than the sour, grape-juice-tasting Communion fare they’d served at church when he was a kid—his permanent comparison standard. “Not bad.”
She looked pointedly at his fingers, which held the glass in an awkward grip. He always worried he’d break the stems off. “I’m going to guess you’re not a wine guy.”
“Afraid not.”
“You don’t have to drink it. Camelot has enough wine guys already. I’m not trying to convert you.”
“No, I’ll drink it.” He’d drink ditch water if it gave him an excuse to sit here and talk to her.
Ellen raised one knee to balance a bare foot on the lip of the chair. In place of the skirt she’d had on earlier, she wore a pair of loose black pants that left her calves bare and pooled up on the thigh of her bent leg. He had some trouble dragging his eyes away from all that pale, smooth skin.
Tall woman. Long legs. Ellen looked pretty damn good all over.
And he was ogling her, blatantly, and at great length. Smooth.
She tugged her pants back over her knee and quirked her mouth in a way that suggested she found his attention amusing.
Everything about her was so casual tonight, it was throwing him off his game. He’d come over here prepared to do battle with Amazon Ellen, and instead he got this woman with the butter-soft body and the seductive smile. The one he’d met this morning, very briefly, before he started talking security and she’d hardened up on him.
The most intriguing woman he’d met in a long time. Fun to talk to, if you liked getting sassed. A hell of a lot of fun to look at.
Since moving home, he’d been too distracted to think much about women. When had he last been on a date? In Germany, maybe. Jesus, that would make it almost two years ago. Pretty shoddy record.
Army life and relationships didn’t mix well, and his personal life had been on hold for a long time.
Now he mentally extended the period of stasis for another few months. He had a business to build, a family to worry about. He needed to stop thinking about Ellen’s legs—hot though they were—and focus on the job. The key would be to ignore the nice unfurling buzz he was getting just from sitting here next to her.
“So how was your day?” he asked.
“Fine.”
Nothing in the way she said it made him think it was true. He prodded, “Yeah?” and got another quarter-smile out of her.
“No. It was a death march. You?”
“Pretty much covers mine, too.”
“What happened?”
He tipped his glass her way. “You go first.”
Ellen drank her wine and rested her head against the chair back, watching the clouds. The sun had sunk behind the house, but dusk was a good half hour off yet. “You don’t care about my day.”
It wasn’t unkind, the way she said it. Only matter
-of-fact.
“Well, I don’t know. Maybe I do. You haven’t told me about it yet. Could be exciting.”
The gray top she’d changed into clung to her breasts when she shifted in the chair, and he found himself staring again. She had a body built for sin, ripe and softly rounded as a peach.
“… and you were here for that.”
Caleb blinked. He’d lost the thread of the conversation. Down Ellen’s shirt.
“Sorry, I was here for what?”
“The vulture.”
“What vulture?” He’d have remembered birds of prey. He wasn’t quite that hopeless.
“Jamie calls the photographers vultures.” She spun her index finger around in a circle. “Because they’re always hovering around.”
“Looking for fresh kills to pick at?”
“Exactly.”
He decided against pointing out that his team was keeping the vultures at bay. She wasn’t inclined to be appreciative, and he wanted her to like him before he started trying to talk her into accepting more security.
Hell, he just wanted her to like him.
“So what made today a death march?”
She frowned, her eyes losing focus as she thought about her answer. “Lot of work. I spent a couple hours on the phone this afternoon with somebody I was hoping would take fifteen minutes. Ran out of time to do what I wanted.”
“Which was what?”
She looked at him sidelong. “Nothing important.”
He let it drop. “So this was a client you were talking to?” Carly had told him that Ellen was an entertainment lawyer with a firm in Columbus, but she worked from home most of the time.
“No. Pro bono, I guess. A fifteen-year-old singer who’s about to sign a bad deal with a record company. I practically had to get down on my knees to convince her and her mother to agree to wait a day or two until I’ve reviewed the whole contract and talked to the corporate counsel.”
“What’s the matter with the contract?”
“They way they’ve written it, she’ll record an album, they’ll send her on a few tours, and if she doesn’t make a killing, the label will cut her loose in three years owing them money. It happens all the time. Everything about the industry is upside down, so they make the contracts greedier and greedier. And the artists go along with it, because they all want to be big stars.”
