Always (Family Justice Book 1)

by Halliday, Suzanne

  Trying to reel in his stupefied reaction, Calder failed miserably when he got a close-up of the woman’s face. If this lady was anywhere near his age, she definitely had the last laugh because she in no way appeared old enough to be approaching grandmother territory. In a nutshell, she was a classic beauty—big brown eyes that resembled melted chocolate stared up at him above a cute nose and a pair of pouty lips that should be declared illegal. It was easy to see where Tori had come by her good looks. That was one apple that hadn’t fallen far from the tree.

  Remembering his manners, he reached out to take the hand she offered and nearly fell to his knees when he felt her soft, dainty hand slide into his bigger, stronger one. Something that felt like a low-grade electrical current tingled at his wrist then slowly snaked up his arm, exploding in a torrent of sparks at his shoulder and shot into his neck. Holy mother of God. What in the hell was that?

  When she spoke, he had to control the urge to cover her mouth with his and inhale her words. He would bet she tasted divine.

  Quickly biting then releasing the center of her bottom lip, she purred, “Calder. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  Uh, was he supposed to respond? Alex’s puzzled expression suggested that was exactly what he was supposed to do. Okay. He could do this. English. Speak the English, his head screamed. She’s going to think I’m some sort of dolt if I don’t say something.

  Clearing his throat, Calder willed the sparks shooting into his neck to calm the fuck down.

  “Um, Stephanie.” Fuck. Was that him with the husky, smoky voice? Did he always sound like this? “The pleasure is all mine,” he babbled, unable to stop the pained wince on his face when his eyes shut and he shook his head from how fucking stupid that sounded.

  They just stood there staring at each other, her hand still clasped in his, silence bouncing off every nook and cranny of the workout room while fireworks shot from his head.

  Finally, Alex spoke up to break the spell, forcing Calder to reluctantly release her hand.

  “We were just about to clear out, Stephanie, so you’ve got the room to yourself.”

  She blinked those amazing chocolate eyes a couple of times as she ran her hand along her thigh. Shit. He hoped it wasn’t because his grip had been cold and clammy.

  “Thanks, Major. I’m just going to jump on the elliptical for a while and work up a good sweat.” Turning her gaze back on him, she murmured, “Nice to meet you, Calder,” and then scurried off like she was running for her life.

  It in no way helped his frame of mind when his eyes locked on her ass. The woman was a devil in disguise—all rounded and perfect and so mouthwateringly feminine as to make him wonder if he’d ever met another woman quite like her before.

  When she was out of earshot, Alex thumped him good between his shoulder blades and growled, “What the fuck, Unc? I said be nice, not act like a brain-dead teenager.”

  Calder looked one more time at the back of Stephanie Bennett and then all but sprinted for the locker room with his perplexed nephew hot on his heels. Crumpling the gym towel in his hand, he threw it into a bin and stomped off toward the shower without acknowledging Alex’s presence.

  By the time he settled beneath the spray of steamy water, he realized that he had no memory of removing his clothes. He glanced down quickly to make sure he wasn’t standing there in his sneakers as the shower poured over his skin. It wouldn’t have come as much of a surprise if he’d discovered the gym shorts, socks, and shoes still clinging to his drenched skin.

  What in the hell had just come over me, he wondered. Just weeks away from turning fifty-two, he was hardly a stranger to a sudden burst of sexual attraction, that was for damn sure—but his reaction to someone he’d been predisposed to dislike on sight went way beyond that. In fact, so far beyond that he’d reacted like, well…like he didn’t know what.

  Standing there as the water pounded, with his arms crossed in front of his chest, even his body language was off. And what the fuck with his dick, man? Did it have to be standing at attention? Shit. He was too old for this horny crap. Wasn’t he?

  After a couple of minutes, Calder reluctantly washed off and hurried from the shower, even though he’d have gladly stood there for half the morning while he struggled to get his body under control. He was ever conscious of the drought conditions hammering the entire Southwest, so he made short work of it.

  Wrapping a towel around his hips, he strode into the changing room to find Alex already dressed and sitting on a low bench, his iPhone in hand furiously tapping away. At his approach, he looked up and immediately smirked before letting out a belly laugh that almost shook the walls.

  “Say even one thing, Alex, and I swear you’ll regret it.”

  Watching his nephew try to choke down the laughter rubbed along Calder’s nerve endings like coarse sandpaper. Motherfucker. The damn towel did little to disguise the unfortunate erection he still carried, and at that moment, wiping the shit-eating grin off the younger man’s face was all he could concentrate on.

  “Calling Uncle Lumberjack,” Alex hooted with glee. “Pallet of wood in aisle ten.”

  “Shut the fuck up, man. This isn’t funny.”

  “Oh, hell yeah, it is. From my point-of-view anyway,” Alex snickered.

  Grumbling aloud as he pulled a t-shirt over his wet head, he griped, “Gonna change all your fucking passwords, you little shit. Then we’ll see who’s laughing.”

  “Why, Uncle Calder,” Alex jeered. “What’s got your shorts in a twist, hmmmm?”

  Glaring at his overly amused nephew, he bit out, “I swear to God if you run your mouth about this…”

  “Too late,” Alex chuckled as he held up his cell phone. “I believe my fiancée is currently picking herself up off the floor after having fallen over laughing.”

  That was it. “You have ten seconds to get the hell out of here or I’ll be using that grinning mug of yours for a target. Ten, nine, eight…”

  Alex held up his hands in surrender and started backing away. “I’m beginning to think maybe there’s something in the damn water around here. It’s like the damn Love Boat these days.”

  As he turned to dash out the door, Calder flicked the towel from around his hips, wadded it into a tight ball, and threw it at Alex’s head. It smacked him soundly, a second before he dashed to safety while his laughter split the air.

  “KEEP BREATHING, JUST KEEP BREATHING,” Stephanie chanted as she pounded away on the elliptical until her thighs screamed from the intense effort and her arms burned. Huffing loudly, she pushed and pulled on the handlebars while keeping an eye on the touchscreen and willed her mind to remain focused on what she was doing.

  Yeah, that worked about as well as a tea bag in a rainstorm when all she could think about was the wall of pumped up masculinity she’d stumbled upon. She’d always said that Alex Marquez was one serious piece of manly eye candy but holy cow, his uncle? That guy took eye candy to a whole new level. And then some.

  Calder Dane. Calder Dane. Calder Dane, her mind recited in rhythm with her legs until she realized what she was doing. Oh, my God, really? No, no, no. Not good. Not good at all.

  Switching into a slower cool down mode, she took a series of deep breaths and shook her head in disbelief. What in the heck was wrong with her that a piece of beefcake could shake her up so badly?

  So, okay. Maybe ‘beefcake’ was the wrong term. Stunner. Dreamboat. Superstud. Hunk. Yeesh. Apparently, the list of synonyms was endless. Alex’s ‘uncle’ had rendered her tongue-tied and almost speechless. And as if the sight of his incredible physique wasn’t enough to get her juices flowing, when he’d taken her hand and stared down into her eyes, she’d come dangerously close to embarrassing herself with a good old-fashioned case of the lady vapors. Imagining being wrapped possessively in those muscular arms and being pressed against his outrageously broad chest lit up her brain at the same moment that a delicious tingling warmth from his touch had invaded her senses.

  The guy was se
x on two legs with a body to die for and a face that had probably gotten him a ton of pussy over his lifetime. He had the same shaggy hair of his nephew, only in a gorgeously burnished shade of blond that looked like a sandstorm mixed with coppery flecks, and a pair of steel blue eyes that seemed to pierce her soul. She’d almost giggled like a schoolgirl when his touch had sent shockwaves pulsing through her body.

  He looked a lot like that guy from Lost. What was the character’s name? Oh yeah, right. Sawyer. Only Calder was older, with the sort of ageless masculinity that made women forget their names. Damn. Men who looked like that needed a warning label. He exuded a dangerously sexy energy that she was not normally attracted to.

  What exactly did she even know about Calder Dane beside the fact that he was Alex’s uncle? Not a whole hell of a lot. She couldn’t recall exactly what the Major had said about him yesterday during the car ride from the airport except that he was staying in the casita behind the main house. And last night Draegyn and Tori had mentioned him almost in passing. Her daughter simply stated that he was some sort of computer genius who Alex was relying on to keep Justice running smoothly while Tori and he were occupied elsewhere. End of story.

  Nowhere in that description had she heard the words ‘hot’ or ‘sexy’. Stopping the elliptical, she climbed off and swiped the gym towel across her face and down her neck where sweat had run into the cotton sports bra she had on. Grabbing for the water bottle she’d stuck in the machine’s holder, she ripped off the cap and downed half of it. Unfortunately, not even the icy cool water was enough to quench the fire burning in her overactive imagination, sparked by the seriously hot surprise she had in no way been prepared for.

  Stephanie was reluctant to date. She just didn’t see the purpose in getting involved with someone, anyone. Convinced her best days were behind her in the romance department, she’d been content, although sometimes itchily so, to avoid emotional entanglements, preferring the occasional flirtation to anything more substantial. It had been years since she’d let any of those casual encounters become more than a make-out session. Sleeping around for the sake of sex just wasn’t her style any more than finding her undies dampened by a chance meeting with a smoldering pair of blue eyes and a set of pecs that begged to be licked.

  She seriously hoped that what she was experiencing was just a surge of pre-menopausal hormones because there was no way she was up for anything else. She was in Arizona to help her daughter prepare for the birth of her first child. She was going to be a grandmother soon, goddammit. That was it. Zip. End of the line. Calder Dane was an unwelcome distraction, no matter how yummy he was.

  “OH, LOOK SWEETIE,” LACEY COOED as she stooped down next to the all-terrain stroller and pointed into a group of pinõn pines nearby. “That’s a roadrunner! See?”

  Cam watched the sweet interaction between his adorable wife and infant son with undisguised joy. Dylan might only be two months old and adept at little more than holding his head up, but the way his Ponytail kept up a non-stop narrative during the baby’s every waking moment, you’d think they were carrying on a conversation. And maybe they were.

  Not too unlike what he experienced during the precious quiet times with his son, when he murmured about guy things like learning to catch a baseball or how he couldn’t wait to teach his boy the joys of reading. He’d come to enjoy reading during the long months of Lacey’s blissful pregnancy when they sat side by side while she taught herself to knit and he read aloud. Life was fucking great in the Cameron household these days.

  Chuckling when she straightened and returned to pushing the fancy stroller along the road, he couldn’t help but remark, “Be glad Zeus isn’t running around out here. She loves to chase those little buggers. Raven, too. One day they might even catch one and then watch out! Holy shit, but that’ll be funny.”

  “Language, Daddy,” Lacey reminded him with mock indignation. “I don’t want Dylan’s first words to be off color.”

  Cam couldn’t help but laugh. “Off color? Fuck, woman, he’s gonna have to learn how to curse like the rest of us outnumbered males if he doesn’t want to end up with a box of dolls stashed under his bed.”

  “Oh, be quiet you,” Lacey giggled. “I can hope, can’t I? But you’re right—this whole place is like ground zero for swear words. Doesn’t help that Tori has a black belt in naughty language and Meghan’s not far behind.”

  Slinging a possessive arm about his wife’s shoulders, he hugged her close and chuckled. “It’s only you, my delicate flower, who thinks there’s any merit whatsoever to watching your mouth.”

  His heart filled with a lot more than love when she glanced sideways at him from under her lashes and whispered, “Well, you’ve found plenty of other ways for this mouth to be naughty than with some vulgar language.”

  And man oh man, had he ever. His sexy ponytailed wife had taken to subjecting him to some scorching hot intimacies featuring her lips and tongue that made him a happy man indeed.

  “Speaking of which,” he drawled lazily, “isn’t it about time we had some alone time? You know, some horizontal rhumba with your legs in the air and me fucking the giggles right out of you?”

  Lacey stopped pushing the stroller and huffed at him with female indignation oozing from every pore of her face. “Seriously, husband? Is that all you think about?”

  “Hardly,” Cam answered with a sly wink. “And look who’s talking. I seem to remember your doctor saying we should wait at least seven weeks before being intimate. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t it you who tried to force the issue way before then?”

  “Shush you,” she giggled. “I can’t help it if you’re like movie star gorgeous. Besides, I don’t remember you putting up all that much of a fight.”

  “Well, what’s a guy to do when his wife surprises him with some come-hither eyes while she’s down on her knees?”

  Lacey sighed at the memory he conjured up and turned to him, throwing her arms around his neck and pressing her delectable body against his. With her fingers creeping into the hair on the back of his head, she groaned and captured his mouth with her lips. They stood there, arms wrapped tight around the other and kissed like sex-starved maniacs.

  “You know, I wanted to make love to you that night but you weren’t ready. It’s been better to wait. Let your body adjust to all the changes.”

  His wanton wife pushed her hips into him and wiggled. The shimmy shot heat into his groin at an alarming rate of speed.

  “I’m ready now, Cameron. And you know perfectly well it’s not just you with that legs in the air scenario taunting every waking hour.”

  Oh, God. She was going to be the death of him some day, he was sure of it. Throughout her entire pregnancy, his wife had been like a sex machine, climbing all over him morning, noon, and night. He’d been awakened countless times by her wicked tongue. Doing all sorts of sexy things intended to rouse him from sleep so she could ride him with abandon until she flew apart shuddering helplessly in his arms. Shit. Truth be told, he’d taken her from behind with that gorgeous ass of hers staring him in the face and her beautiful pregnant belly nestled in some pillows just a few days before Dylan’s birth.

  He was mapping out a sexy scenario involving a long warm bath and a bunch of flickering candles, maybe even a bottle of expensive champagne for the resumption of their marital sexy times, when Lacey cupped his sex through his jeans and sighed. Fuck. If she kept that up, he was going to have her right here in the middle of the road.

  “I bought a black corset,” she murmured into his ear. “And some naughty lace panties that tie on the side.”

  “Excuse me?” he wheezed. His virginal bride was turning into quite the seductress.

  “You heard me,” she drawled as she suddenly disengaged from him and began pushing the stroller along the road.

  He just stood there with a dumbfounded, slack-jawed expression watching her delicious ass stride away from him in a pair of stretch jeans that clung to her every curve. As Lacey’s s
ignature blond ponytail swung and swayed with each step, he wondered out loud, “How did I get to be so fucking lucky?”

  WHEN SHE RETURNED TO DRAE and Tori’s house, Stephanie found her pregnant daughter laughing gleefully at her husband as he pantomimed his technique for changing diapers. It was good to see Tori with a smile on her face and Draegyn so relaxed.

  Using his hands to demonstrate, he insisted that, “Cam says, it’s all about the lift and shoosh. Ya’ lift the baby’s ass by the ankles and shoosh the diaper underneath.”

  “Shoosh?” Tori giggled. “Is that even a word? I’m not sure Bunny Cha Cha wants to get shooshed.”

  Draegyn looked up as Stephanie entered the living room and grinned. “I’m right, aren’t I, Grandma? First lift and then shoosh.”

  Grandma. Yikes! Every time she heard the word, she didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.

  “Actually, I kind of agree,” she answered with a wry grin. “And you’d best do it quickly too—especially if Bunny Cha Cha turns out to be a boy—unless, of course, you like being covered in pee.”

  Bunny Cha Cha. Geez Louise. Only Tori could come up with such a ridiculously adorable way of referring to their baby. Truth be told, Stephanie had been pleased when the newlyweds decided against finding out their child’s sex beforehand. She was glad they held off. That moment when a newborn’s cry rang out in the delivery room and the doctor said, ‘congratulations, it’s a whatever’ was special.

  “See! Told you,” Draegyn teased as he bent low to kiss his wife.

  Stephanie sighed. Whatever misgivings she’d been harboring about the good-looking former ladies’ man were quickly vanishing under the glaring evidence of the man’s blatant devotion to her daughter.

  “Hey, Mom,” Tori chirped excitedly when Draegyn straightened. “Lacey and Dylan are heading up to the big house. Meghan called down and asked us to come by for brunch. Get in some baby snoodles. You up for it?”

  Seeing the way Draegyn’s expression brightened as his wife smiled warmed Stephanie’s heart. Thank God, Tori seemed better than she had after her arrival yesterday. The haggard, struggling woman she’d been so distraught to discover had been replaced by a happier, lighter individual who wasn’t nearly as pathetic as she appeared just twenty-four hours earlier.