by Zoe Chant
“No problem.” He glanced around at what suddenly seemed like a crowd of people. “Looks like some people are about to be late for work.”
There was a sudden scramble to decamp. Even Nina, who from what Lillian understood didn’t work in the Park, got sucked along in the whirlwind, leaving alongside Joel.
Teri grabbed her hand. “Cal can drive you to the Park later if that’s what he thinks is best. Keep me updated!”
“Of course,” Lillian managed.
And then even Teri was gone, and it was just Lillian and Cal, standing in the entryway to Teri’s home.
“That’s quite an impressive skill you have,” Lillian said mildly. “They really hop to it.”
Cal shrugged, but his expression was warm. “They’re all eager to do well. Good kids.”
Lillian appreciated the confirmation of her perspective on how young all of Teri’s friends were. “Why don’t you come sit down?”
“Thanks.” Cal moved past her toward the living room she’d indicated. Lillian was struck by a sudden awareness of the closeness of his body. His scent, woodsy and masculine, filled her nose and made her flush.
“Would you like some coffee?” There was that breathlessness again, damn it. “There’s a cup or two left.”
“Sure,” he said, sounding surprised. She went to refill her own cup and pour one for him.
She’d fallen automatically into hostessing, she realized, even though this wasn’t her house. Well, no one who lived here was present, and it wasn’t presumptuous to offer the man a cup of coffee, especially if it’d go to waste otherwise.
And she needed to be doing something.
She brought it to him—he’d waited to sit down until she got back, and in fact he waited even longer, until she’d taken her own seat on the couch. Old-fashioned politeness, she thought, faintly charmed.
Cal took a long drink of coffee, sighed in what looked like pleasure, and set the cup down on a coaster. He leaned forward. “Lillian,” he started.
Hearing her name in that low rumble of voice gave her such a jolt. He’d only said it a couple of times, and every time it seemed to hit her right in the chest.
Fortunately, it didn’t seem like he’d noticed. “This is a little awkward,” he was saying. “I apologize for prying into your business like this. But do you have an ex-husband?”
That was a real shock. After a frozen moment, Lillian set her own cup down, untouched, to keep it from betraying any nervousness in her hands.
“Yes, I do,” she said, as steadily as she could manage. “Lewis Jacobs. Is he involved in this somehow?”
But she knew the answer before Cal even opened his mouth to speak.
“Wayne Hennessey is the man who was following you,” he said, “and he claims that Mr. Jacobs owes him something, and he’s looking to collect.”
Lillian stood abruptly—Cal immediately stood as well—and strode over to the window. She stared out of it, not seeing anything, while she tried to compose her face.
Of course. Of course. What else could it possibly have been?
“Are you all right?” came that rumbling low voice from behind her. She shivered. Was he close? It felt like he was close.
She had the most absurd desire to turn around, press her face into his shoulder, and start to cry. As though that ever helped anything. As though anything could help this, apart from her own hard work and sacrifice.
“My ex-husband had a gambling problem,” she said steadily without turning around. “Has, I suppose. I never knew how extensive it was while we were married. Silly of me. I should’ve realized he was always lying about how much he lost.”
“Not a sin to trust your husband,” Cal said quietly.
“No, but in my case it was naïve at the very least.” Lillian couldn’t stand facing away like a coward any longer, so she turned to look at Cal.
He had the most compassionate expression. She wouldn’t have thought—his features were on the rugged side, and he’d been very composed, if friendly, when they met. But now...
“When we divorced, the courts ruled that I was responsible for half his debt,” she continued, feeling her face flush and wishing she could control it. “Even half of it was an immense amount of money. Far more than I could repay. I’ve been paying every month since, and I’ll be paying for a long time to come. And now there’s more, apparently.”
Although he’d likely done all of this gambling since the divorce. She shuddered to think of how much more money he might’ve lost in the last two years.
Cal turned away. Lillian frowned, taking a step forward. Was he—angry? Disappointed in the situation, in her?
Then she noticed that Cal’s fists were clenched.
“I used to be in the Marines,” Cal said in a tight, even voice. Lillian wondered at the non sequitur, but he continued: “So I know a lot of bad language. A lot of words I wouldn’t use in front of a lady. But I don’t know any words bad enough to describe a man who’d rack up gambling debts and ruin his wife’s life making her pay them off.”
Lillian opened her mouth. Then she closed it.
She’d been about to disclaim. To say, Oh, it wasn’t that bad. My life is just fine.
But that would be a lie. And she found that she didn’t want to lie to this man.
“Being angry with Lew doesn’t solve anything,” was what she finally came up with.
“No,” Cal said, slow and thoughtful, “but it sure is satisfying right now.” He turned around and caught Lillian’s mouth quirking up. “Does that help you? I can be angry as all get-out at that man for you. If it cheers you up, I’ll stay angry with him for a long, long time.”
It was such a sweetly ridiculous offer, coming from this serious man, that she almost laughed. “You’ve helped plenty already, discovering what’s up,” she assured him. “I guess I’ll just—call Lew and talk to him about it.”
That sobered her up fast. Lew was going to deny everything. He was going to whine that it wasn’t his fault. He was going to use the conversation to try and convince her to take care of it all for him. She could hear him now. “I’m in real danger from these guys, Lil! Can you front me something to pay them off for now, and I’ll get it back to you when I win big?”
Lew was never going to win big.
“Hey,” Cal said softly, and she started. “Where did you just go?”
The question was quiet but serious. Like he truly cared about what was going on in her frazzled mind.
She shook her head, trying to shake off her own—what, girlish infatuation?—at the same time. “Nowhere. Thank you very much for your help, I truly appreciate it. Now that I know what the problem is, I’m sure I can figure something out.”
There. That was the appropriately adult response. No hint of a plea to stay and keep his large, reassuring, masculine-smelling self by her side until this was over. Because frankly, between her whiny ex and her overbearing mother, there was no way that would turn out well.
But Cal frowned. “I don’t want to say you don’t know what you’re doing, because I can tell you’re a capable woman—”
Can you? How?
“—but the Hennesseys and their crowd are dangerous, Lillian. If they’re after you, I’d be more comfortable if you let us help you out.”
So would Lillian, to be perfectly honest. But, “I can’t impose to that extent. From what you and Teri have said, it’s going to be like trying to ride herd on some kind of—of outlaw gang or something.” She shook her head. “That sounds like a bad Western. But they’re clearly not going to listen to reason, is my point.”
“Then we give them something else to listen to.” Cal’s voice was serious.
Lillian stared at him. She wasn’t used to this. She was used to people who complained about their problems, who ducked out of responsibility, who tried to put everything on her. Who ran away when the going got tough.
This man was looking her in the face with those cool, iron-gray eyes and telling her, I’m stepping up and
taking responsibility for this.
“You shouldn’t put yourself in any danger,” she said. “None of this is your fault.”
“None of this is your fault, either,” Cal pointed out. “You didn’t gamble, or borrow any money, or do anything wrong.”
“I married Lew.” Bitterness seeped out through her voice.
“Why?”
The question took her off guard. Strangely, it seemed to have taken Cal off-guard too: he was already backpedaling hastily.
“I apologize. That’s truly none of my business.” The faintest hint of pink colored his neck.
This big, strong man was blushing. Lillian found it...terribly endearing.
“I was young,” she said impulsively. “I was in college, living at home, and I desperately wanted to get away. Lew was another student, and he seemed like something miles away from the...squalid minutiae of living at home.”
She tried a smile, and it sort of worked. “Of course now I know that the minutiae are what make up everyone’s life, and looking down on them is a one-way ticket to being dissatisfied. But then, I was just struck by how much of a dreamer he was, the sort of things he said in class. He loved philosophy, art, and literature, and I wanted to be a librarian, so I thought it was a match made in heaven.”
She laughed without any humor. “I didn’t quite make the connection that being a dreamer didn’t translate into having any practical skills. All Lew ever wanted to talk about was big ideas. He’d forget to do the dishes. He’d quit a good job because he thought it was boring. He thought it was stupid that I cared about things like making money and having a clean house and dinner on the table every night—he had these dumb romantic ideas of, of living in a garret in Paris and subsisting entirely on absinthe and Great Art.”
Cal laughed softly.
Lillian looked at him. His eyes were crinkled at the corners. Suddenly their color didn’t seem so darkly iron-gray—there was a hint of silver in them that she hadn’t noticed before.
“I don’t mean to make fun of you,” he said. “It sounds like a nightmare to me, frankly. But the way you described him—I can picture him no problem. I can see how you must have felt, living with someone like that. Please keep going.”
Lillian waved a hand. “Well, there’s not much more to tell. We started fighting, and then fighting more, because I was both the breadwinner and the housekeeper and I resented it, but he thought I was getting all worked up over nothing. And believe me,” she could hear the emotion starting to come out in her voice, “there is nothing more frustrating than having your spouse tell you, over and over, that they don’t care that you’re unhappy.” She shook her head, feeling the echoes of remembered pain, then took a deep breath and continued.
“But he could never see it that way. He thought that he could just...convince me that I was being wrongheaded, and that his way was the best way. And then we’d eat air for dinner every night, I suppose.”
“Or absinthe and Great Art.” Cal’s voice was wry, and he was looking at her with such...intense compassion that she had to look away.
So she smiled humorlessly at the front window and said, “Oh, no. That was the other thing. First we had to move to New York or Paris or Berlin. Someday. And then we could start that chapter of our lives. Where he thought we’d get the money to do that, I have no idea.” She paused. “Well, I suppose now I do.”
“The gambling,” Cal said softly.
Lillian nodded. “It’s so easy to see what he thought would happen. He’d win big, come home one night and surprise me—’Honey, we’re moving to Paris!’ And then we’d live a life of leisure, I suppose. Without considering that no matter how much money he won, I’m sure he’d run through it like water, because that was just the kind of man he was. Anyway, that’s how he excused going along with the judge’s ruling about splitting the debt. It was all for me, you see.”
“Even though you didn’t know about it and would’ve told him not to do it if you had,” Cal finished.
Lillian nodded. “So there you go. The whole silly, sordid story. If I’d left him the first time he told me washing the dishes didn’t matter, everything could’ve been prevented.”
“If he’d realized something was wrong and maybe learned that even in Paris, dishes still need to be washed, then everything could’ve been prevented,” Cal said with a hint of ferocity that surprised her. “From my perspective, all of the ifs should be on his side. You married a college student with his head in the clouds—well, there’s plenty of those out there. The question is, when do they realize they’re not in philosophy class anymore and grow up.”
He’d taken a step or two forward, so he was standing right next to her, as though ready to take her arm, offer his help. It felt strange to be so—so supported like this. Lillian wasn’t used to having someone so staunchly on her side.
Her mother had berated her for being so foolish as to marry a man who would leave her in debt, her father had declined to comment, and she’d left Teri out of the loop as much as possible, not wanting her baby sister to learn what an idiot she was. Her college friends had all moved on, and Lillian kept a professional face on at the library, not wanting to be the subject of gossip at work.
But it had made the divorce the loneliest thing she’d ever done. And she’d accepted that all of the struggle and pain would be hers alone, forever, because it seemed best to keep it inside—to protect herself.
But Cal was right here, towering over her and looking like he wanted to protect her.
“Well,” she said briskly, not sure how comfortable she was with the feelings that Cal’s warm, fierce gaze was giving her, “all the ifs in the world aren’t going to help anything now. Lew has kept gambling, and it’s still a problem.”
“But it shouldn’t be a problem for you,” Cal insisted. “The man’s caused you more than enough problems, and he should’ve figured that out by now.” A long pause. “Maybe someone should tell him that.”
Lillian was certain, suddenly, of what Cal was thinking. That ferocity was still there, and his eyes—much more silvery now, it must be the light—had darted toward the door.
“Do not go threaten him or rough him up.” Lillian countered his intentions before he could get more specific. “He’ll weave it into some story about how he’s the victim and he needs my help more than ever. And he’ll likely call the police on you.”
She surprised herself with the severity of the tone. Maybe it was ridiculous—looking up at this powerful ex-Marine, telling him what he could and couldn’t do on her behalf.
But Cal was nodding. “Yes, ma’am.” A quirk of a smile, as the ferocity faded into the background. “As satisfying as I might find it, right about now.”
“Believe me,” Lillian said dryly, “so would I. But it won’t work, and it’ll likely get you in trouble.”
“I’d risk trouble, but not if it didn’t help you out.” Cal shook his head. “That’d just be dumb. All right. We’ll find another solution.”
That was another novelty: she’d objected, and Cal had listened to her. She wasn’t looking at half an hour of arguing her point, followed by the likelihood of him doing it anyway.
Which was something she’d thought she’d left behind when she divorced Lew...only to move back home so she could repay her debt and remember that her mother was exactly the same way.
But Cal was just—respecting that she knew Lew better than he did, and accepting that with, We’ll find another solution.
Then she really heard what he’d said. “Wait,” she objected. “We don’t need to find anything. I really don’t want to take you away from your job any further, or get you in trouble with the local shifter community, or get you caught up in anything illegal. That’s absolutely not fair to you.”
“None of this is fair, Lillian. And I’m more interested in how unfair it is to you. Besides,” Cal said slowly, “one of the reasons the Glacier area is such a haven for shifters is that everyone respects one another and pretty much minds
their own business. I told Wayne Hennessey in so many words that you were part of our community, and he straight-up ignored me, just threatened worse.”
“He threatened you?” That was it. Lillian wasn’t going to be party to bringing down violence on an innocent man like this. She was going to work this out on her own, whatever it took—
“No, Lillian.” Cal’s face was serious again. “He threatened you.”
That brought her up short. “...Oh.”
Cal moved closer. Lillian restrained herself from leaning into him. She could feel his body heat, though, and it was somehow reassuring.
“The police don’t like getting involved in shifter business,” he was saying. “The locals know we exist, of course—hard to live in this town and stay ignorant—but there’s no protocol for handling us and they’d rather stay away. So it’s more than likely that in a case like this, with no hard evidence of anything, they’d just do some cursory questioning, keep their noses out of it, and make everything worse.”
He looked her in the eye. “Which means that it’s up to us, the shifter community itself, to police behavior like this. Threatening an innocent woman because of a debt she didn’t incur? That’s unacceptable. I won’t allow it.”
Lillian had another flash to that imaginary Western, and Cal as the local sheriff, saying, Not in my town.
It should’ve been silly. But somehow, it wasn’t at all. That firm conviction, in that deep voice, standing so close to her and saying he wouldn’t allow her to be hurt...she had to work hard to control that breathlessness again.
“All right,” she agreed finally. “We’ll work together.”
Cal nodded. “Good. I want to keep the kids out of it as much as possible.”
Meaning Teri and her crowd. “I agree.” She wasn’t drawing anyone else into this mess, that was for sure.
She looked around. “That probably means I should get out of Teri’s house. Scratch that, that definitely means I should get out of Teri’s house. But...I can’t go home. I live with my parents.” Saying that brought a blush to her face, because she was well into her thirties and it was embarrassing. But—well, it was true.
