Along Came Trouble: A Loveswept Contemporary Romance

by Ruthie Knox

  Nothing much to it, but it met the residents’ needs, and it had charms urban life lacked: Old-fashioned post-office boxes with bronze doors and hand-painted numbers on their little glass windows. A deli that served perfect tuna-salad sandwiches. Caleb Clark.

  “What was his rank?” she asked.

  As they waited for a car to pass, Carly peered at Ellen’s face and broke into a delighted smile. “Wow. I had no idea you even … You are a complete goner for Caleb. That is fantastic.”

  “No, I’m not.” They crossed and moved onto the sidewalk.

  “You totally are.” Carly elbowed her in the ribs. “He was asking me about you, too. Want me to pass him a note, find out if he likes you?”

  “Shut up. Forget I said anything.”

  “ ’Nother cracker, Mama.” Ellen fished one out of the sleeve and passed it back. They were nearly at the college bookstore, an all-purpose emporium that had the best coffee in town.

  “He was a sergeant, I think,” Carly said. “Sergeant first class? Is that a thing? I don’t know.” She flapped her hand, dismissing the whole idea of being expected to remember military ranks. “I’m a pacifist.”

  Sergeant First Class Caleb Clark. Yum.

  Carly saw whatever shameful expression this thought put on Ellen’s face and laughed. Ellen rolled her eyes, an adolescent affectation that did little to hide how vulnerable the conversation made her feel. How pitiably excited.

  They were inconvenient, all these feelings. Unwelcome.

  But at the same time, when had she last felt as alive as she had on the porch with Caleb last night? Even lying awake being mad at him, sneaking out with Carly and knowing he might find out … It was seductive, feeling things. She’d forgotten.

  She hadn’t forgotten the near-inevitable result, though. Here be dragons.

  “Nothing’s going to happen. But I admit, he’s very …” She trailed off. He was very a lot of things.

  “Yeah.” Carly patted Ellen’s shoulder. “Don’t sweat it. He has that effect on most women. I had a crush on him once, too, back in the day. Unrequited, of course. Took me a while to wise up and figure out Caleb made a better friend than boyfriend. He goes through girlfriends like Chiclets. And anyway, I’m not his type.”

  The assessment made Ellen’s heart sink. “What’s his type?”

  Two cars pulled up in front of the bookstore just then, one right after the other, distracting her from Carly’s answer. “You.”

  Ellen knew those cars. The brown sedan belonged to Weasel Face, and the other had at one time been hers.

  Richard. Goddamn it.

  She’d seen him as rarely as possible since the divorce—only twice since Henry’s first birthday—but the grapevine said his drinking and undergraduate screwing had gotten so out of hand, he was on the verge of being fired.

  Not that Ellen kept tabs. People volunteered the information. She tried her best to forget Richard existed, relying on Maureen to make sure he was sober for his weekly visit with Henry.

  He’d been calling her lately, and whenever his name came up among her transcribed voice mails, she just hit delete. Delete, delete, delete.

  “That’s your daddy,” Henry said, spying Richard when he straightened and closed the door of the Civic.

  “I know it, baby.” Sorry.

  “Hello, Els,” Richard said. “Hi, Henry. Fancy meeting you here.”

  The bookstore entrance swung open and disgorged two people Ellen recognized from her faculty-party days. Weasel Face clambered over his armrest into the backseat of his car, rooting around for something. Richard smiled, and Ellen marveled that he could be so much the same.

  The same disheveled mop of black hair brushing his collar. The same casual poet-wear, a T-shirt from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont paired with his favorite battered black leather vest and blue jeans.

  It was like this every time, the recognition. His familiarity was such an unpleasant distraction from her resentment. She hated being forced to remember that she’d loved him once. That she used to lie in Soldier Field in the summer with her head in his lap, smiling up at him as he read Keats to her.

  How special she’d felt in those early days in Chicago. How beyond the mundane! It had given her such a thrill back then, to think she was this man’s everything. Never once had it occurred to her that being his everything would mean she’d have nothing left for herself.

  The lines in his face were deeper than she remembered them, and he reeked of tobacco. Her Richard had rarely smoked. Her Richard had been younger than this man, affectionate and romantic.

  But her Richard had never really existed, and the Richard Morrow standing in front of her was a lush and an adulterer and a jerk.

  He was also Henry’s father. The sad thing was, that had to outweigh every other consideration.

  “Hello,” someone said. She supposed it was her, but it felt like another woman’s voice, another woman’s tongue.

  “That is?” Henry asked. Weasel Face had emerged from his sedan, rested his butt against the hood, and started fiddling with his camera.

  “Shit,” Carly whispered. “Camera. We have to go.”

  Richard seized Ellen’s hand—a move that so astonished her, she failed to react. His palm felt perfectly normal. Perfectly familiar. It creeped her out.

  “I’m so glad to see you here,” he said, “because I’d really like to talk to you. You haven’t been returning my calls.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I’m sober. A month on Monday. I’m going to meetings.”

  The photographer lifted the camera and started shooting Carly.

  “Damn it,” Carly said under her breath, one protective hand on her stomach. She tugged on Ellen’s upper arm, pulling her back the way they’d come. “Ellen, we have to get out of here.”

  Richard didn’t release her hand. “I want to see more of Henry.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “I want to see more of both of you.”

  Ellen finally shook off the weirdness of the situation and found her spine. She pulled her hand back hard, trying to twist it out of his grasp. “Let go of me.”

  He did. Clenching his fingers into fists, Richard stuck them in his pockets straight-armed and rocked back on his heels, a Bob Dylanish affectation that had always gotten on her nerves. “Why don’t you hear me out?”

  “Ellen, seriously, now,” Carly said, with another tug.

  Ellen took a clumsy step away from Richard and reached back to stroke Henry’s bare leg, whether to reassure herself or him, she wasn’t sure. “I don’t think so.”

  Three more steps. Five. And then a Camelot Security SUV pulled around the corner, and a man beckoned them to the vehicle.

  Only as she walked away from Richard did it occur to her that she hadn’t said never. She hadn’t told her ex-husband to fuck off.

  She wondered if that small failure—that momentary tip of the hat to a lifetime’s training in politeness—would be all the invitation he needed to turn her life inside out.

  Chapter Seven

  With a happy shriek, Henry streaked into the front hallway wearing nothing but a diaper. When he spotted Caleb standing behind the screen door, about to knock, he did an abrupt about-face and ran back to his mother, hiding his face against her thigh.

  Caleb pulled the door open and leaned his shoulder against the jamb. “Still breathing this morning, I see.”

  “Yep. The Huns must be waiting to invade some other night.” Ellen’s lighthearted joke matched his attempt at humor, but her eyes flashed defiance. No soft Ellen this morning. She was ticked.

  Welcome to the club, sweetheart.

  When he’d pulled into Carly’s driveway only to find both houses empty, he’d been mad enough to punch something—mad at Ellen and Carly for not taking the situation seriously, and furious with himself for not anticipating that they would do something like this.

  But the fury had burned off quickly. In security, the
re was next to no such thing as a perfectly submissive client. Nobody enjoyed feeling powerless, and the result was a hundred different kinds of sabotage. He should have guessed Carly and Ellen would leave without telling him. What better way to thumb their noses at the whole situation?

  Bring them back, he’d ordered when Sean had called to say he’d spotted them outside the bookstore, and Sean had done it. He’d reported that there had been a man with Ellen, touching her. A disagreement. There had also been a photographer. Sean had given Caleb the plate number, but Caleb didn’t need to run it. He’d already had Katie do that first thing this morning.

  All Caleb had needed to do after he talked to Sean was make a couple of calls.

  Ellen lifted Henry onto her hip.

  “You going to introduce us?” Caleb asked.

  “This is Mr. Clark,” she said to Henry. “Can you say hello?”

  The boy buried his face in his mother’s neck. “No.”

  “Figures,” Ellen said.

  “He can call me ‘Caleb.’ ”

  “I’ll be surprised if he calls you anything at all. He’s kind of shy around new people. Is that a bag full of unpickable locks?” The question was casual, the tone anything but. She was performing for Henry.

  “There’s no such thing as an unpickable lock. This is a bag full of locks that are going to be a big improvement on the ones you’ve got. You planning to tell me what happened downtown?”

  “No.”

  As much as he wanted to press, he knew that if he did, Ellen would kick him out. She had every right to. It was her house. Plus, he’d deserve it if he questioned her judgment in front of her son.

  “Nice place,” he said instead.

  It was. What he could see of it, anyway. Too comfortable to be called fancy, Ellen’s home had vaulted ceilings and an airiness that made his Prairie-style ranch seem cramped and small by comparison. Like the yard, she kept it clean and tidy—no small feat considering she had a toddler.

  “Nice try.”

  “What’d I say?”

  “You’re sucking up so I’ll invite you in.”

  “I’m trying to give you a compliment.” He lifted his toolbox a few inches. “You care where I start?”

  “I haven’t said yes to the locks yet.”

  “Say yes now.”

  She stared at him, her nostrils flaring slightly. Breathing shallow and fast. “No.”

  Damn it, why did she have to be so territorial? What rational person resisted replacing old, weak locks with newer, better ones?

  Whatever was going on with Ellen, it wasn’t rational. He’d made his case last night, and she’d brushed it off. For some reason, she didn’t want to believe she might be in danger.

  She was, though. Or she could be. When Katie had checked the plates on the photographer’s brown sedan this morning, she’d come up with expired tags registered three years back to a Martin Plimpton of Georgia.

  It was entirely possible that the man Caleb had run off Ellen’s property wasn’t the same Martin Plimpton who had outstanding warrants in Illinois for burglary and assault, but the safe thing to do was to assume he was. Caleb had put a phone call in to the Mount Pleasant police. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a lot of faith they’d be able to find Plimpton and bring him in for questioning. It was up to Caleb to make sure Ellen, Henry, and Carly were safe.

  If he told Ellen about Plimpton, would she change her mind and let him install the locks? Maybe. Maybe not. He wasn’t inclined to share the information until he knew one way or the other whether the photographer from yesterday was the same guy. He’d asked Katie to keep digging.

  Meanwhile, the locks had to go in. He propped the screen door open and unpacked his drill and one of the deadbolt kits.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to start right here.”

  “You can’t drill holes in my house without my permission.”

  “Actually, I probably could. But you’re going to give me your permission.”

  She flushed. “I’ll call my brother and have you fired.”

  “For installing locks you need?”

  That flummoxed her temporarily, but she rallied quickly. “I’ll call the police.”

  “You could do that. They might be on my side, though.” He turned away from her, opened his toolbox, and found a tape measure.

  When she spoke again, it was in a whisper. “You’re no better than the rest of them.”

  Caleb dropped his laid-back-guy act and took a good, long look at her. She was absolutely furious, which he’d expected. He figured that in Ellen’s emotional universe, he was doing the exact same thing as the photographer from yesterday—invading her space and ignoring her wishes. But unlike Plimpton, Caleb had a good reason.

  What he couldn’t understand was why she looked so goddamn hurt.

  Caleb took a deep breath and let it out. He’d fouled this situation up on day one, but there had to be a way to fix it. Had to be a way to talk her into letting him do this without stepping on one of her emotional land mines.

  Though it would sure help if he knew where the mines were.

  “Ellen, if you tell me no again, I’ll go,” he said quietly. He met her eyes and made sure she knew he was telling the truth. “It’s your house. I told you I worked for you, and I meant it.” She crossed her arms. “But listen, we’re not talking about a big change here. We’re talking about a couple of locks. One more key you have to put on your keychain, and a bolt you have to flip closed at night. That’s all. It’s nothing. It’s like the porch light. Something I can do that you can’t, and I want to help you with it.”

  Ellen stared at him for a long time. “Fine,” she finally said, before turning her back on him and taking Henry into the kitchen. Caleb told himself that was what he wanted, that he’d won this round.

  He didn’t feel particularly victorious.

  The work was familiar, and he let himself start to relax as he did it. He tried sorting through what had just happened, what he felt about her, but he thought about all the wrong things. The way she’d smelled last night, like wine and cinnamon. Her merlot-stained lips. Those slender white hands on his chest.

  In the long moment before he’d walked away from her porch, she’d seemed so ripe and sweet, he’d wanted to do more than kiss her. He’d wanted to have her, to imprint himself on her. To lose himself in all that softness and make her his own.

  Maybe some people would chalk a moment like that up to the wine or to temporary insanity, but he couldn’t bullshit himself. He’d only had one glass, and there was nothing temporary about this insanity. His attraction to Ellen wasn’t going away.

  Neither was he.

  But their nonrelationship was about to get a lot more complicated. If her reaction to the locks was a fair barometer, by mid-afternoon Ellen probably wouldn’t even be speaking to him anymore. Which dramatically reduced the odds he’d need to repeat last night’s painful exercise in self-control.

  Caleb drilled out the cylinder hole. It dropped to the deck with a puff of sawdust. As he swapped the big hole saw for a smaller one, Henry peeked at him from the kitchen.

  “That man is?” Henry asked. Ellen came up behind him and laid one protective hand on his shoulder.

  “That’s Caleb, honey. I already told you that.”

  “Doin’?”

  “He’s installing a new lock on the door.”

  “Cabe has a drill!”

  “Yep, he has a drill.”

  “Use it for?”

  “He’s making a hole for the lock to go in.”

  “Henry do it. Henry use a drill.”

  “No, sweetie, you need to stay over here with Mama.”

  But Henry was a toddler—his mother’s denial was all the provocation he needed to wiggle out of her grip for a closer look. When the bit punched through for the bolt hole, Caleb backed it out and offered up the warm plug of wood to Henry, who took possession of the treasure with a huge, dimpled smile. Apparently all it t
ook to get on Henry’s list of people worth cozying up to was the right tools.

  Caleb wished Ellen were that easy.

  “You want to help out, buddy?”

  “You don’t have to do that,” she protested. “He’ll just get in the way.”

  “Nah, it’s fine. I have nephews. They always want to help when I’m fixing things.” And it always makes Amber like me better when I take her kids off her hands for a while.

  Fishing around in his tool chest, he found the small pair of safety glasses. “If you want to stand close, you have to wear these to keep your eyes safe. Can I put them on you?”

  A solemn nod from Henry. Caleb slid the glasses over his ears. “There you go. Now have a seat. I need somebody to look at these directions and tell me what I’m supposed to be doing.”

  Henry plopped down on the threshold and began paging through the instruction book with a serious expression, stopping every now and then to ask “This is?” or “That is?” He soaked up Caleb’s explanations with an impressive attentiveness for such a little guy.

  “How old did you say he is?”

  Ellen lingered near the kitchen, clearly unable to decide what to do with herself. She was still angry, but he guessed she didn’t want to spoil Henry’s fun without a good reason. “He turned two in May.”

  “Good vocabulary for a kid his age.”

  “Yeah, talking is pretty much his primary function.”

  “Want your steamroller,” Henry said.

  “It’s in your room, Peanut.”

  Henry left and came back a minute later with an assortment of plastic construction trucks, which he put to work in the sawdust.

  “You can go do something else,” Caleb told Ellen. “If he gets bored and starts causing trouble, I’ll holler.”

  She didn’t want to. It was written all over her face. She wanted Caleb to leave her house alone, leave her kid alone, leave her alone.

  Whereas what he wanted to do was burrow as deep into her life as he could get. Insane, he told himself. You met her yesterday.

  But sometimes life didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. Caleb had spent enough time in combat to get used to the idea that there weren’t any rules, really. There was just life. And life was for the living.