by Ruthie Knox
“Okay.”
Caleb smiled, but then his forehead furrowed. “Wait, was that okay, you’ll think about it, or okay, you’ll marry me?”
Ellen shook her head, laughing at him. “That was ‘Okay, Caleb Mortimer Clark, I think you’re pretty great, and it’s possible that someday, maybe, eventually, I’ll want to marry you.’ Okay?”
“Mortimer?”
“I don’t know your middle name. It’s probably a sign that it’s way too soon for you to be talking about marrying me.”
Caleb smiled and rolled them to the side, wrapping his arms around her so tight she could hardly breathe. “Andrew,” he said against her neck.
“Nice to meet you, Caleb Andrew Clark.” She pushed her fingers through the soft bristles of his hair. “That’s going to look nice on the wedding invitations five years from now.”
“Yeah?” He kissed her again, as happy as she’d ever seen him. Happy, sexy, wonderful, and completely hers.
“Yeah. Hey—” She sat up, struck by a very appealing vision. “Would you get married in uniform, by any chance?”
He shook his head. “I’m not in the army anymore. Why, you have a thing for guys in uniform?”
“Just the one, Sarge.”
As he leaned over to kiss her again, she heard the sound of the garage door opening, accompanied by Henry’s happy babble.
“Damn,” Caleb said. Ellen’s eyes shot to the door. “It’s okay. I locked it,” he reassured her.
“This is going to happen a lot, you know,” Ellen warned him, running her hand over his chest. “Parenthood isn’t as sexy as you might think.”
“I know. But I’m up for it.” His eyes told her he meant it, and her heart told her not to worry. Caleb could handle fatherhood. He could handle anything she threw at him. “Besides,” he added, “Hank has to go to bed sometime, right? And I’m a patient man.”
He rolled off the mattress, tossed her clothes into her lap, and disappeared into the bathroom with his pants. When he came out, she was standing in the middle of the floor pulling her shirt over her head, and he took advantage, planting warm, wet kisses on her stomach while her arms were all tangled up. Ellen giggled. “Stop it.”
“You’re not really going to make me wait five years, are you?” Caleb dragged her into his arms and pressed his forehead against hers. “Because I’m not sure I’m that patient.”
“Maybe three or four.” She managed to keep a straight face when she said it, but the truth was that she’d already made up her mind. Improbable as it seemed, she knew who she wanted to wake up next to every morning for the rest of her life. She didn’t really care how long it took them to get the paperwork signed.
He did, though, and she liked winding him up.
Wrapping her arms around him, she said, “Don’t look so glum. Think about it this way. We both want to get married someday. Now we get to do the fun part.”
“What’s that?”
Parroting his own words back at him, she smiled and said, “What we’re going to do now, honey, is negotiate.”
Epilogue
Three months later
Ellen sat on her front porch with her feet up, sipping a glass of iced tea and watching Caleb rake up leaves while Henry followed him around with his own tiny rake. It was windy—typical for October—and their voices drifted to her on unpredictable currents, so that she caught only snippets of Henry’s questions and Caleb’s patient responses.
Jump now, Cabe?
Not quite yet, buddy. Give me another second to make the pile bigger.
Then, later, I’m raking! Cabe, look! I’m raking!
I see you, Hank. That’s awesome. You might want to rethink your technique a little …
Caleb had spent weeks gently correcting Henry every time he mixed up “I” and “you,” and then one morning a switch flipped, and Henry woke up fluent in pronouns. Naturally, Caleb took credit for teaching him, and Ellen smiled and praised them both.
Language development didn’t actually work that way, but she couldn’t help wondering if maybe it did, for Caleb. He had his own fluency in these kinds of things, a talent for coaxing other people into giving him their best. After all, he’d helped Ellen dismantle her own barriers between “you” and “me,” coaxing her slowly out from behind her castle walls until one day she realized that her whole perspective on self-sufficiency had changed.
Her eyes traveled down the slope of the yard to stop at the fence skirting the property line. As fences went, it was handsome enough. Eight feet tall, cedar, stained and weatherproofed, with a deep new flower bed stretching along its length.
She’d negotiated hard for that flower bed. Caleb spread the mulch for her, and she’d selected the plants from the nursery and put them in the earth on her hands and knees. New hostas, bleeding hearts, lungworts. He’d moved her tulip tree and bought her a second one to stand nearby at the corner of the property. None of it looked like much now, but it would grow. It would thrive.
She didn’t love the fence, but she loved him, and that turned out to be a lot more important.
After three months with Caleb, Ellen could see that she’d taken the wrong lesson from her mascot hosta. She’d thought the plant’s survival proved that she, too, could endure anything. But it was a perennial, for Christ’s sake. Surely the point was that it kept coming back.
Renewal. That was what her life had been missing. That was the pulse that beat at her wrists, the sap rising in her blood, the beautiful pinch of emotion in her throat when she watched Caleb with her son or woke up in the dark to hear her lover groan, caught in a nightmare, and she was able to hold him, soothe him, talk him through it.
She’d spent the past few years hibernating. Now her life had these green shoots, this promise of fullness, and there were moments when gratitude overwhelmed her.
Caleb finished raking a pile of leaves onto a bright blue tarp, plopped Henry down in the middle of it, and hauled him down the driveway, threatening to dump him out front and leave him there for the leaf trucks. She watched her dark-haired lover with her light-haired son, and she let the late afternoon sun warm her bare feet where they stuck out from under the porch roof. It was a perfect day of the sort that came only three or four times a year in Ohio. Bright blue sky, crisp air, a breeze.
They were a perfect family, suspended in a perfect moment.
Of course, tomorrow it was supposed to rain, and it would turn colder soon. Last week, Caleb had questioned her parenting one too many times in a twenty-four-hour period, and she’d snapped at him and sent him home to sleep alone.
He worked himself ragged, especially now that his business was taking off, and he didn’t like it when she got on his case about that. Sometimes she still got scared and hid behind a self-protective wall, and he didn’t like that, either.
But he always coaxed her back out.
Interdependence required these terrifying acts of faith. She kept reminding herself to practice trust, to believe that Caleb would deserve it. He hadn’t let her down yet, and the longer they were together, the more deeply she believed that he never would. That no matter what missteps either of them made, he’d never fracture her trust irrevocably.
Caleb and Henry walked back up the driveway, Caleb dragging the tarp behind him, and Ellen heard the familiar rumble of the garage door going up. She set her tea down and stood, knowing he’d need help folding the tarp to put it away. “Go grab the big rake for me, okay, buddy?” Caleb asked Henry.
“No.”
“Do it now, and I’ll give you fruit snacks when we get inside.”
Henry smiled and ran off to get the rake. It was clear across the yard, which made its retrieval a big job, but Henry would do just about anything for fruit snacks.
“You shouldn’t bribe him,” Ellen said, picking up one end of the tarp.
“I just wanted a minute with you. I haven’t talked to you all day.”
It was true, more or less. Henry had a tendency to insert himself into every con
versation she tried to have with Caleb. He adored Caleb, but he hated having to compete for Ellen’s attention. She kept hoping he’d get over it, but so far, no luck.
Thank God for Maureen.
“Are we shaking this out?” she asked.
“Yep. Close your eyes.”
She did, holding tight to the corners and letting Caleb do the shaking. Her arms rode along as passengers. When she opened her eyes, she saw leaf litter in Caleb’s hair and smiled. “Am I covered in leaves, too?”
“You have some in your hair.” He brought his hands together to fold the tarp lengthwise, and Ellen did the same.
They flipped the tarp flat, and Caleb walked toward her to match the ends. When he got close, their fingers met, and he handed over his corners of the tarp while his mouth moved over hers in a long, slow, lazy kiss that made her wish Henry’s bedtime were a whole lot sooner.
“Any chance I tired him out enough that you can put him to bed early?” Caleb asked.
“Not unless you want to get up with him at five in the morning.”
Caleb wrapped his hand around the back of her head and kissed her again, pulling her close enough to crush the tarp between them. This kiss wasn’t so slow and lazy. This kiss dissolved her inner thighs. “Tonight,” he said.
“Tonight,” she agreed. “We’ll make it good.”
“We always make it good.”
“But this time you raked my leaves, so I’ll make it extra good.”
He smiled. “I didn’t do that for sex, but I’ll take it.”
“I know you will.” She knew why he’d done it, too. The leaves had been another item in their protracted wedding negotiations.
She glanced over at Henry. He was walking backward, holding on to the rake with both hands and dragging it toward them, grunting in a pantomime of grown-up effort.
“I’ve been thinking about what I owe you,” she said when Caleb released her. She made the final fold of the tarp against her stomach and started walking toward the garage. “About setting a date.”
Caleb was right at her heels. “And?” He caught her shoulder and spun her around.
“I’m thinking end of February.”
“That’s an interesting choice. Can I ask …”
“I’m thinking Jamaica,” she added.
That put a smile on his face. “Ah. Jamaica gives a whole different spin to February.”
“Small ceremony, hot sand, lots of drinks with little umbrellas in them.” She smiled. “We’ll make a great escape of it.”
“Do you need to escape? I thought we were doing pretty good here.”
“We are. I just like the idea of a new beginning in a new place.”
He dipped his head and kissed her again. “If you like it, I like it.”
Henry came barreling up, dragging the rake behind him. “Fruit snacks,” he said, and dropped the handle strategically between her legs and Caleb’s, forcing them apart.
“I love you,” she told Caleb as she backed up a step.
“Fruit snacks,” Henry insisted.
Caleb grinned in that way he had. That way that told her, the morning they met, that the two of them were a team, and they were in this together, and they were going to have a hell of a lot of fun. “Fruit snacks it is.” He met Ellen’s eyes. “And I love you, too.”
She admired the wedge of his back as he walked inside ahead of her, guiding Henry with a hand on his shoulder.
That first morning, she had thought he was trouble. She was so sure that Caleb had come along to upset her routines, fracture her independence, and she wouldn’t be able to carry on along the narrow path she’d made for herself.
She’d been right. But as it turned out, trouble was exactly what she needed.
Acknowledgments
This book owes its existence to Faye Robertson, who read six thousand words that I’d dashed off in a random outburst of creative effusion and demanded more Caleb, stat. Faye fell in love with him long before I did. I thought I was working on a subplot. Silly me.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to my agent, Emily Sylvan Kim, whose praise for the first draft of this book gave me the courage to turn it into a longer, fuller story. When I set out to write this book, I assumed it would turn out to be a longish category romance. Silly me, redux.
But my editor, Sue Grimshaw, deserves most of my thanks for Along Came Trouble, because Sue did me the immense favor of not liking the book. At all. Her comments upon first reading it guided me through months of rewriting, and they made the book much, much better. Whatever pockets of suckage may remain are my fault, not hers, and are probably a consequence of my being stubborn.
I reserve a heaping platter of gratitude for my good friend Serena Bell, whose conferences via Twitter DM kept me sane during the revision process. It might be possible to revise successfully without a good friend at whom one can incessantly spew one’s neurotic thoughts, but I don’t want to try it. Thanks to Serena, I didn’t have to.
And thanks, finally, to Random House’s Angela Polidoro for her editorial acumen, Meg Maguire for telling me to nix all the nicknames, Ruth Meacham for helping me with the lawyer stuff, Romance Man for complaining about the bodyguard cliché, Jessica Scott for making sure I didn’t say anything excessively stupid about the military, Amber Lin for giving me feedback that inspired one last do-over of the opening chapter, and everyone else who read partial or complete drafts of this novel and offered me impressions and advice. There are rather a lot of you. I’m in your debt.
Oh! And also, Justin Timberlake. Thanks for Jamie Callahan. For the record, I think you’re cute.
Photo: Mark Anderson, STUN Photography
Ruthie Knox graduated from Grinnell College as an English and history double major and went on to earn a Ph.D. in modern British history that she’s put to remarkably little use. She debuted as a romance novelist with Ride with Me—probably the only existing cross-country bicycling love story yet to be penned—and followed it up with About Last Night, which features a sizzling British banker hero with the unlikely name of Neville. She moonlights as a mother, Tweets incessantly, and bakes a mean focaccia.
Read on for excerpts from more Loveswept titles …
Read on for an excerpt from Ruthie Knox’s
How to Misbehave
Chapter One
Friday, July 16, 1999
When the tornado siren began to scream, Amber was alone in the building with him.
Him.
The foreman. The guy with the deep tan and the hard hat and the oh-my-lord arms.
Everybody had a different name for him. One of the lifeguards called him “the Italian Stallion.” A patron had referred to him as “Mr. Yummy.” Rosalie, the weekday receptionist, said his name was actually Patrick Mazzara, and he was trouble.
Amber just thought of him as “him.”
She thought of him a great deal more than was good for her.
Gusts of wind flung the sound of the siren at the building, drowning out whatever noises he might have been making behind the thick plastic curtain that separated the construction zone from the rest of the center. But he was definitely over there.
Knowing when he left was part of her job. As program director, Amber opened Camelot Community Center at seven in the morning and locked up at five. Sometimes, like today, she had to wait around for him after everyone else had gone home. She would sit behind the counter of the tall, curved reception desk and imagine herself pushing aside the plastic curtain to ask when he might be finished cleaning up. It’s twenty after. I need to head home.
She never actually did it, though. She’d never been brave enough to initiate the conversation, and there was nothing so pressing on her agenda that she couldn’t wait for him.
Except, right now, the siren seemed kind of pressing. Herding all the people in the center down to the basement in the event of an emergency was another one of Amber’s responsibilities, which meant she should probably get off her tush and round the man up.
Bu
t then she’d be alone with him in the basement.
The notion simultaneously thrilled and frightened her. On the one hand, it felt a little bit like Providence tapping her on the shoulder. Is this what you wanted? Here you go! Carpe diem!
On the other hand, she was female and alone. She didn’t go into dark basements with strange men, and especially not with large strange men who’d been described to her as “trouble.” Because what if? What if seven hundred different horrible things happened?
Smart girls didn’t ignore the what-ifs.
They didn’t ignore tornado sirens, either.
She might have sat there forever, immobilized by indecision, if the phone hadn’t rung at the exact same moment his shape materialized as a red-and-blue blob behind the plastic sheeting.
“Camelot Community Center. This is Amber. Can I help you?”
“Why are you still by the phone? Don’t you hear the siren?”
Her mother. Perfect.
“Yeah, I hear it.”
He shoved the curtain aside and walked across the lobby, past the desk toward the front doors. Surely he wasn’t—
“—have to go to the basement,” her mother continued. “It’s not safe near all that glass. Really, you should be—”
He was. The man pushed open one of the entry doors, and Amber shot out of her chair.
“Hey!” She dropped the phone and scooted quickly around the desk. “You can’t go out there. The siren.”
When he frowned, he looked even more intimidating than usual. “I’m only checking it out.”
He had the door propped open with his right arm and leg. Not leaving.
“Right. Sorry.” All the blood in her body attempted to relocate to her cheeks. “I’m, uh, supposed to take you down to the basement. Hold on a second, and I’ll get off the phone.”
She crossed back to the desk in a rush and leaned way over to retrieve the phone from the far side. “Mom, I have to go. Be safe. I’ll call you when it’s over.”
