Long Way Home

by HelenKay Dimon

  “Possibly a tiny bit.” She balanced the bottom of her boots against the edge of the sidewalk. “You did all but leave skid marks behind when you raced down the hall and out of the motel.”

  “It wasn’t the sex.” That seemed obvious, but he thought he needed to be clear.

  She tilted her head, and her hair fell over her shoulder. If he reached out, he could run the smooth strands through his fingers. One brisk wind and it would blow on him. They stood that close.

  “Yeah, I didn’t think so.” She shot him a quick smile. “I was there for that part, and you seemed fine.”

  More like on fire and reeling from how fast she went to his head. “Understatement.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “It was what I realized right after.”

  Her feet fell flat and she stood up straight. “What are you—”

  “I see you don’t take good advice when it’s offered.” Marc Baron popped up over her shoulder.

  Callen didn’t hesitate. He had only one answer for this jackass. “Leave.”

  “Callen.” Grace’s eyes narrowed, and she sent him a be-respectful glare.

  Because she didn’t know. No one knew the truth but Marc, Leah, the Hanover brothers and a handful of others.

  Grace looked and saw the wiry frame and slightly stooped shoulders, the somewhat fragile body type and the gray hair, and probably thought Marc qualified as a nice man from town. Callen knew better. This guy was a hundred and sixty pounds of pure lying hypocrite. A fucking asshole who treated his daughter like dirt and Declan like a felon.

  Callen despised the guy for the last two most of all.

  For years Marc had stoked his hate for the Hanover family. He insisted the sons followed in the footsteps of their father and turned Leah into a full-time Hanover hater. Marc talked a good game about how Grandma Nanette “stole” his house. He was pretty invested in the story. True, he lost the house after he lost the money as part of Charlie’s first-ever scam, this one against the back accounts of Sweetwater, but Marc was also Charlie’s secret partner in that deal and spent his entire life burying the trail.

  Declan uncovered the truth and it nearly destroyed Leah. Not that Marc cared what his choices did to his wife, now dead, and his daughter, from whom he was estranged. But Callen cared. He loved Leah like a sister and hated seeing her ripped apart and missing the father she thought she knew.

  “I told you to get out before this family sucked you in.” Marc practically spit when he talked. His hatred stayed right at the surface and shot out of him with every word.

  Something in the tone or the fury whipping around him must have registered, because Grace moved a few steps closer to Callen. “Clearly you two have an issue.”

  No matter what Grace said and all the protestations about not being in the FBI or having him under surveillance, Callen knew she’d dug around in his life. That didn’t mean she knew everything.

  He filled her in on the basics. “This is Leah’s dad.”

  “Really?” Grace’s face softened and a smile lightened her face. “Leah is lovely. Very warm and inviting and—”

  “You’d like her better if she left that house.”

  Grace’s smile disappeared. “Excuse me?”

  “And that piece of garbage she’s sleeping with.” Marc swore under his breath, then increased the volume. A couple walking behind him gave him wide berth.

  Spouting off or not, that comment was the one step too far. Try to pin bogus charges on him and drag him to jail, fine. Callen could deal with that. Mess with Declan . . . no.

  Callen took a threatening step forward, putting Grace just behind his right shoulder and aiming all his pent-up fury in Marc’s direction. “You have two seconds to go away.”

  Marc threw out his arms in a gesture that could only be described as bring it and talked even louder. “What are you going to do to me?”

  Callen knew Marc had a heart condition. He’d used his health and history of heart attacks to blackmail Leah into staying close. That worked until she found out the role he played in the con he held up as the reason the Hanover family needed to be run out of town. Calling her mother a whore for falling for Charlie’s sick flirting hadn’t helped his case either.

  While Callen thought about ways to shut this whole scene down, Grace actually tried to do so. She reached out to Marc, but he shrunk away from her.

  “Let’s calm down,” she said.

  Almost on cue, Chef Darber appeared out of nowhere. One second people parted on the sidewalk to take the long way around the arguing group. The next Darber stepped out of the diner, still holding what looked like a third of a chicken salad sandwich.

  “Is there a problem here, Marc?” he asked his friend of more than three decades.

  “Just a Hanover causing trouble, as usual.”

  Before Callen could say anything, Grace shifted and stepped right in front of him like a human shield. “Now wait a minute. That’s not true.”

  “Why don’t we go inside and have a seat?” Chief Darber lifted the sandwich, then lowered it again without taking a bite. “We can talk this through.”

  If Darber thought his calm voice of authority would break this up, he was dead wrong. Grace did not cede one inch. “Not while your friend is lying.”

  “Uh, Grace.” Impressed but not willing to give the whole town a show, Callen put his hand on her shoulder and gave a little squeeze. “It’s okay. I’ve got this.”

  “This man came up and started talking negatively about the Hanovers and his own daughter,” Grace raged on, causing more and more onlookers to gather and listen in. Then she turned on Marc. “You should be ashamed, by the way. She is charming, and she loves Declan.”

  Marc didn’t back down either. If anything, he stood up straighter, and his cheeks flushed red. “He’s going to drag her down to the gutter with him.”

  Callen would have gone off, would have lost his fucking mind, but the soft touch of Grace’s hand on his outer thigh calmed him right back down.

  “Declan seems like a good guy to me,” she said, clearly trying to defend Declan and tweak Marc a bit at the same time.

  “I gave you solid advice.” Marc poked Grace in the shoulder. “If you’re too stupid to take it—”

  That was it. Callen didn’t care if he got arrested. No one touched Grace without her consent. And the name-calling? No fucking way.

  The chief got there first. He grabbed his friend’s arm and dropped the sandwich in the process. Pulling Marc back, Chief Darber lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “Marc, settle down right now.”

  “See!” Grace turned around, gesturing toward the crowd that had gathered. “Other people watched him launch the first verbal volley Callen, and now we have this.”

  “Maybe we should bring in that FBI agent and let him settle this once and for all.” Marc leveled his threat directly at Callen. “I am counting down the days until you get dragged off in handcuffs.”

  As if the FBI scared Callen. Walker and his type had been hunting him for years. Tracking him and never finding anything.

  “If Walker were here he would listen to me, not you.” Grace raised her voice to match Marc’s. “He would tell you to leave Callen alone.”

  Now that amounted to a pretty big overstatement since Walker had been beating the arrest-Callen drum for a long time. “I don’t know about that,” Callen mumbled in her ear so only she could hear.

  “Did you say Walker?” The chief squinted as he asked the question.

  “I’m his former partner.” Grace had been dropping one info bomb after another, but that one had more than one nosy onlooker whispering to the person beside him.

  Marc’s head actually dropped forward. “You’re FBI?”

  Seeing Marc Baron’s mouth fall open in shock just about made Callen’s year. Forget the problems between
them and the questions still to be answered—that comment from Grace erased a lot of his remaining anger, leaving only the questions behind.

  “Was FBI, but I still have my contacts and remember my training.” She looked from Marc to the chief. “You might want to keep that in mind before you go issuing threats to innocent, law-abiding citizens.”

  “We’re done here.” This time the chief tugged harder and shifted Marc out of the path of Grace’s wrath. The sandwich squished under their shoes and the murmur of the crowd died down as the chief took off, towing Marc beside him.

  It took another few minutes for the crowd to disperse. Many nodded and a few smiled. After months of being an outcast, Callen realized Grace had just given him some sort of credibility in about two minutes and four sentences.

  Standing in the middle of the sidewalk with the fall sun beaming down and the cool breeze kicking up, Callen was grateful to and a little in awe of her. He’d recognized her strength from the start. He’d seen it in action. One of the things he’d always admired and liked most about her was her refusal to take his shit—and he had been pretty shitty. But this was a whole other level.

  She’d gone all mama bear on his accusers, ready to strike and willing to highlight whatever fact she needed to tilt the argument in her favor. Every word was the truth, at least he thought so, but using the FBI against Marc had been a stroke of genius.

  Her admission also had a good portion of the lunchtime diner crowd silently cheering her on. Knowing Sweetwater and the speed with which gossip flew here, as in most other small towns, Callen guessed she’d be something of a hero by midnight.

  He thought that title fit, but he really had no idea what to say. Other than his brothers, people didn’t rush to his defense. But now she had and he didn’t hate the sensation. “Well.”

  She turned on him, clearly still on an adrenaline high with a shot of energy pouring through her. “What?”

  “That was sexy.”

  Her shoulders fell and she gave him one of those twisted-lips looks that let him know she thought he’d lost his mind. “That’s what does it for you? Me yelling?”

  “I hate to admit it, but yes.”

  She shook her head. Might have said the word idiot under her breath. “I will never understand you.”

  That made two of them. He wanted to hold on to his anger and confusion and insist they talk about the baby. He might have done at least one of those things if his mind hadn’t blanked on him. “Probably not.”

  She frowned. Looked like she wanted to put a hand to his forehead to check for a fever or injuries or something. “I have to leave anyway.”

  That was just about the last thing he expected her to say. This woman kept him jumping, and he always lagged a mile or so behind. “And here people tell me I’m the one who has a problem with running.”

  “You do.” Grace tugged on the edges of her sweater, bringing them closed and covering her shirt underneath. “I actually need to meet Leah.”

  Yeah, he didn’t love that idea. “Why?”

  “Stop looking like we’re going to come after you with pitchforks. We do talk about things other than you, you know.”

  Once again he couldn’t call up a comeback that made any sense. “Okay.”

  “She asked me to come over to the house.”

  “My house.” His turf. The one place he could hide and lick his wounds.

  “And hers, yes.”

  But the more he turned the idea over in his empty head, the better it sounded. “Good.”

  “Really?” The skepticism came through in her tone and in the grimace on her lips.

  “We can talk there.”

  A strange wariness seemed to fall over her. “Why does that sound like a bad thing when you say it?”

  “I don’t know, but let’s hope we’re both wrong about our concerns.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Declan wished he could be anywhere except the middle of the kitchen at Shadow Hill right now. Upstairs, maybe, or hiding in the shed out back. He should have known by the terse call from Leah. She’d said she was on the way home in the middle of the day and he should wait for her. That kind of thing never turned out great for him. He always hoped the message meant they’d be hitting the bed. Usually it meant they needed to talk.

  Who knew there would be so much talking.

  When she walked in a few minutes ago, Callen came in behind her, took one look at her expression and headed back outside. The lucky bastard.

  Declan watched Leah move now. She was a bundle of energy in a gray pantsuit. Last thing in the world he wanted to do was waste time fighting. Not when there was a perfectly good mattress right upstairs.

  He waited for a break in the action, for her to wind down and stop stomping around on the hardwood floors. At the moment she was on a second round of “what were you thinking” about his decision to go over to the motel and talk with Grace earlier.

  He didn’t regret it. But he was rethinking his choice to tell Leah about it right away.

  She took a breath and he dove in. “Are you going to stop yelling anytime soon?”

  Her body froze and she spun around. The glare she leveled in his direction could melt a good-sized city into a big puddle of nothing. That told him what he needed to know.

  She bit out a response anyway. “No.”

  “I’m allowed to protect Callen.” Admittedly, his delivery and timing probably sucked, but so what? Callen mattered, and Declan would not apologize for acting the way a brother should. “He’s not doing okay.”

  “Because of Grace?”

  The comment made Declan wonder what version of this mess Leah had been watching. Callen got battered by their mother, Charlie, the FBI and now Grace. He fought a constant battle, the type that would drive Declan insane if he sat in the middle of it.

  And Declan had a simple bottom line as he stood by the butcher block island with his hands grasping the edge and his knuckles turning white. “I don’t want my brother to get hurt.”

  Leah let out a little sigh. The type women did when men finally hit on a reasonable defense of their idiocy. “Honestly, I think he’s been hurt a lot in his life.”

  That was kind of the point. “Then he deserves a break.”

  She came around the island and met Declan on the side closest to the kitchen sink. With her arms wrapped around his neck and her feet up on tiptoes, she leaned in and balanced her forehead against his cheek. “He has to figure this out on his own, Declan.”

  He didn’t let the opportunity pass him by. He captured her mouth in a searing kiss that let her know Callen was officially the last topic worth talking about at the moment.

  “Hello.” There was a sharp inhale of breath. “Sorry. I knocked, but no one answered.”

  Leah pulled back and turned toward their guest. The smile on Leah’s face did nothing to stop Grace from slowly backing out of the room, toward the front of the house.

  Looked like the fun times were over, or at least on hold. Not the first time that happened in this traffic accident of a house. But that didn’t mean Declan had to like the interruption.

  “The doorbell is on the fritz,” he said. “And it’s hard to hear anyway when Leah is in full-on angry woman mode.”

  “Really? That’s what you say right after you crawled out of the doghouse?” Leah said.

  He was pretty sure he’d be able to get out again, or at least he hoped that was true. “In addition to the doorbell, there’s also trouble with the plumbing, the foundation, half the steps on the staircase—”

  “She gets the idea.” Leah motioned for Grace to come further inside the kitchen. “Declan, don’t you have something to say to Grace?”

  He’d fumble through this somehow. Or he thought he could until he spied Grace. “I . . . what?”

  She hid her mouth behind her hand and pretended to cough
.

  There was no mistaking that reaction, so he had to ask. “Why are you laughing?”

  Grace shook her head. “If you could see your face. You look like you want to yell but worry Leah will break you in half if you do.”

  Leah joined Grace in looking. Then she frowned. “Declan, say it now.”

  “No, it’s okay.” Grace waved off the concern as she stepped closer to Leah. “We’re good.”

  Declan liked Grace more with every passing minute. “See?”

  “Really, Leah,” Grace said. “He was watching out for his brother. Honestly, I like the idea of someone looking out for Callen.”

  Yeah, Declan definitely liked her. “Me, too.”

  “Not to state the obvious here, but maybe you can both do it,” Leah suggested. “Working together. A wild idea, I know.”

  Not a bad plan—and he guessed Grace could be much more persuasive than he could. “I’m starting to think so.”

  “Exactly where is Callen?” Grace peeked around corners. “He had to get here right before me since we were both downtown and my bank pit stop took about three minutes.”

  “He’s out there.” Leah nodded her head in the general direction of the back door. “We can chat later. Seems more important that you talk with Callen now. And I’ll keep Declan occupied so you guys can have some privacy outside.”

  “Thanks.”

  After a small pat on Grace’s shoulder, Leah grabbed Declan’s hand and tugged him toward the stairs.

  Not that he was complaining with where her mind went, but . . . “Are we really not watching whatever happens out there?”

  Leah glanced around him toward the back door as it closed behind Grace. “‘Some privacy’ means not listening in. We’re still watching.”

  Now that was more like it. “For a second there I thought we were going to let Callen fumble through his love life without an audience.”

  “Lord, no.” Leah had Declan in the hallway and on the bottom step. “We’re going to go upstairs and watch over this from our bedroom.”

  The words were enough to send heat flashing through him. “You know where that will lead, right?”