Always a Temp

by Jeannie Watt

  “I wouldn’t last a week.”

  His brother peeled a strip off his label. It twisted into a curlicue. He let it fall and pulled off another.

  “Besides…” Nathan said slowly, “…if Dad really is all right…I don’t know if I’m even going to be around.”

  Garrett’s chin popped up. “Why’s that?”

  “You remember Suzanne, the woman I worked with in Seattle? She called me a while back. There was a job at her paper, but I didn’t apply. The next one that opens up, I will.”

  “You’re going back to Seattle?”

  “Well, it isn’t like I’m going to get blown up twice. That was kind of a freak thing, you know.”

  “Do you know what a miracle it was that the editorial job opened up here in Wesley when it did? That you had the skills to take over?” Garrett stopped peeling and took a drink.

  “Yeah. I do.”

  “And now that you’ve done the impossible, landed a journalism job in your hometown, you’re throwing it away.”

  “I can’t keep working for Vince Michaels and I don’t feel as if I belong here anymore.”

  Garrett stared at him, his bottle poised in midair. “I can understand about Vince,” he finally conceded. “But wait a few weeks, see what happens.”

  “I still feel like it’s time to move on to something else. I’d rather write than edit.”

  Garrett’s eyes narrowed. “Is it because of Callie? Are you following her when she leaves? Because if you are, it’s the stupidest move you—”

  “No.” Nathan cut his brother off. “I have no idea where she’s going or what she’s doing.” And he wished he didn’t care. “Maybe having her around made me think a little more, but she’s not the reason.”

  Garrett clearly didn’t believe him. Well, Nate wasn’t going to justify his decisions with his brother.

  “When you came back here, Dad was happy,” Garrett finally said.

  “I saw him doing those back handsprings across the lawn.”

  “He was happy.” Garrett drained the rest of his beer, then held up two fingers and the bartender nodded.

  Bringing over two more, the guy didn’t even bother to pick up Garrett’s empty. Nathan was only about a quarter of the way into his first one.

  “Speaking of Callie, she called CPS on the Hobarts.”

  “You’re kidding.” Nathan put his bottle down. “Any idea what came of it?”

  “Officially, no. Unofficially, they made a home visit. The kids tend to run around the neighborhood, but they have a grandmother who lives with them in a basement apartment. That’s where they spend their evenings. Or where they’re supposed to spend their evenings. The thing is, they have adult supervision.”

  “Anybody actually see the grandma?” Because he knew Callie didn’t believe she existed.

  “Interviewed her. She doesn’t get out much and…” Garrett shook his head. “Callie can’t see the basement door from her house when she’s spying.”

  Nathan took a long pull. So there really was a grandma. Callie had spent all that time worrying for nothing. He wondered how she was handling it. And he was also concerned about the possible ramifications.

  “Do the Hobarts know it was her?”

  “I think it won’t be too hard for them to figure it out.”

  “No.” Nathan cupped his hand around his beer, hoping they didn’t enact some kind of hill justice. Why had Callie been so certain those kids weren’t being cared for? “Any more uplifting news?”

  “I thought it was good news that the kids were being taken care of and that Callie was wrong.”

  “You like the Callie was wrong part the best.”

  “Listen, she screwed you over royally. You went into a funk for months. Then you ended up getting your leg nearly blown off.”

  “Why do you blame Callie for that?” Nathan asked quietly. Had his brothers figured out that when he’d first taken the reporter job, he’d been trying to be more dynamic? Trying to be that guy who would impress the Callies of the world? Was he that transparent?

  “Never mind.”

  “No.” Nathan put his bottle down with a thump. “Explain.”

  Garrett shook his head. “Sorry. Got carried away. I’d better get home to the parental unit,” he said, after finishing his beer.

  “Better you than me,” Nathan muttered, pulling out his wallet and flipping a few bills onto the table.

  CALLIE WOKE to the smell of smoke wafting in through her bedroom window. It took her a minute to identify the odor as she fought her way to consciousness, and then, when she opened her eyes and saw flickers of orange light reflecting off the window glass, she shot out of bed.

  Her back fence was on fire.

  She ran out of the house barefoot, wearing only the gym shorts and T-shirt she’d slept in, and cranked on the garden hose, pulling it across the dark lawn. She was almost to the flames when the hose suddenly stopped uncoiling, yanking her back as she hit the end. Crap.

  “Fire!” she screamed as she ran toward the house and her phone. “Alice! Fire!” A light snapped on in the house to her left, and then in the one behind her. Callie dashed onto her porch and through the kitchen. She snatched up her cell phone off the coffee table and punched in 911. When the operator answered, Callie gave her address, and told him there was a fire in the alley, as she once again went out the back door. The fire siren went off and she could see her neighbor across the alley stringing hoses together. The old cedar boards of her shed were burning hot. Callie turned her hose on and started spraying it down so that it wouldn’t catch fire, too.

  Her throat was dry and her heart hammered. There was only one way a cedar fence would end up ablaze in the middle of the night. Someone had set it on fire.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE SIREN YANKED NATHAN up out of bed, followed almost immediately by a phone call from Garrett.

  “Someone torched Callie’s fence,” his brother snapped. Nathan’s pulse jerked. “The fire crew just got here.”

  “Is she okay?” he asked as he juggled the phone while pulling on a T-shirt and then ramming his feet into his running shoes.

  “Yeah.”

  He slapped the phone shut and went out the side door to the garage, shoving it in his pocket as he walked to the small truck. He got inside and started the ignition in one movement.

  Blood pounded in his temples as he drove the ten blocks to Callie’s. He pulled to a stop on the opposite side of the street from her place, parked facing the wrong direction and jumped out of the truck. He crossed the street and skirted the house at a frustratingly slow and painful, limping jog. A single engine sat in the alley. The fire was out and people were gathered close by, talking to Garrett. Callie stood next to her back step, apart from the crowd, staring at what was left of her fence.

  Nathan immediately went through the side gate, his only thought to make sure she was all right. He was almost to her when her gaze suddenly jerked sideways toward him. She did not look happy to see him.

  For a moment she simply stared at him, slightly shell-shocked, and then she tilted her chin at a defiant angle. “Are you here to waste your time?” she asked.

  “Shut up, Callie.” He wrapped her in his arms, not caring if she felt his twisted leg through his sweats as her thighs pressed against his. Not caring about anything except that she was safe. Callie stiffened for a moment, and then with a small exhalation, she melted into him. He buried his nose in her hair. She smelled like wood smoke, felt warm and alive. He was so damned grateful.

  “Somebody lit my fence on fire,” she whispered against his neck.

  “I can see that,” Nathan replied gently, his arms tightening even more.

  “They stacked trash next to it and lit it.” Her fingers gripped his shirt as she spoke.

  Son of a bitch. He truly wished she’d kept her nose out of Hobart business. “Have you talked to Garrett yet?”

  Callie shook her head against his chest.

  As footsteps approached,
Nathan lifted his head to see his brother with a stern expression on his face. Callie cleared her throat.

  “I’m okay,” she said as she stepped back, out of his embrace.

  I’m not.

  But Nathan let go.

  “THIS IS SERIOUS,” Garrett said, his tone matching his words. Callie had the oddest feeling he was more concerned about Nate being with her than the fire.

  “No shit,” Nate shot back. “Have you talked to the Hobarts?”

  “I will. The kids were in the alley.”

  “By themselves?” Callie asked sarcastically.

  “The old lady has trouble getting around. She pretty much stays nested in that apartment.” Garrett shifted his weight into cop stance. “I wanted to talk to you first.”

  “Not much to tell,” Callie said, feeling Nate move closer to her. He didn’t touch her, but he was there. “I woke up and smelled smoke. The hose wouldn’t reach the fire, so I called 911.”

  “Do you know of any reason someone might do this? Any hostile contact with anyone?”

  Wow, if he’d asked that after Grace’s memorial, she would have had quite a list. But right now she only had one.

  “Mrs. Hobart came to see me. Told me I was making it possible for her ex to gain custody,” Callie said stonily. All because of her knee-jerk reactions. “She was very upset.”

  “When was this?”

  “Today.”

  Garrett put his hands on his belt. “Okay. Just so you know, there’ll be extra patrols through this area for a few days.”

  Callie bit her lip. She was probably going to see if the motel had a room. “I—”

  “Great,” Nathan interjected.

  “Lock everything. I’ll be in contact tomorrow.”

  “I’m staying with her tonight.” Nate met his brother’s eyes.

  Garrett nodded, then glanced back at the smoldering remains of the fence. “Good idea,” he said expressionlessly. “I’ll see you two tomorrow.”

  Nate touched Callie’s shoulder. “Let’s go inside.”

  He led the way into the house through the back door.

  Callie stopped in the kitchen, which looked so stark now that she’d sent almost everything to charity. “Nate…I…” She halted. She what?

  Nate didn’t give her time to waffle. “Do you want to come to my house or have me stay over?”

  “Your place,” she said. “I want to get away from here.” When in doubt, run.

  “I’ll wait while you get whatever you need.”

  All Callie needed was her purse, a few personal items and a change of clothes, which she shoved into her day pack. “I’ll follow you,” she said once they were outside.

  “Fine.” Unlike Dane, he apparently didn’t mind if she kept her freedom. He got into his small truck, which was facing the wrong way, and did a U-turn in the street. Callie followed him to his house, where she parked at the curb. Why was he doing this? Friendship? Guilt? Something more?

  Nate stood and waited for her in the bright light of the garage, then, his hand against the small of her back, he guided her into the house.

  “You want something to drink?” he asked once they were inside. Callie glanced around at the kitchen, having seen it only once before. It was a man’s space, with buff-colored walls, dark cabinets, brushed chrome appliances. A few dishes on the drain board, a newspaper on the table, but other than that, everything in its place.

  “Just a glass of water.”

  He filled a blue highball glass with ice water from the fridge and then poured himself two fingers of Laphroaig. He held up the bottle. “You sure?”

  She took a sip of water. “I’m sure. I don’t think alcohol will help. I don’t know if anything will help. Damn, Nate. They lit my fence on fire.”

  He lifted the whisky, hesitated, then set the glass back on the counter untouched. Callie took another swallow of water, then she, too, put her glass on the kitchen island that stood between them.

  “Why’d you come?” she asked. After their last conversation, he’d been the last person she’d expected to see.

  “Garrett called me.”

  “He must have told you I was okay.”

  Nathan let out a long breath. “I had to come.”

  “Why?”

  “Because regardless of everything, I care. All right?”

  “All right,” she repeated, as she tried to make sense of her jumbled thoughts. He cared. He wouldn’t let her near him, but he cared.

  “It’s just that there are some things we have trouble with,” Nate said.

  “Like talking? We never used to have that problem.”

  “Maybe something happened,” Nate replied darkly.

  Callie let her chin dip toward her chest. Something had happened all right. “Since I’ve come back,” she said, “I’ve been pretty universally despised by those who knew me way back when.”

  “I—”

  She held up her hand to cut him off. “I’m not saying I didn’t deserve it, but I never meant to hurt anyone with the things I did. And now…” The intensity of his expression caused words to momentarily escape her. She swallowed. “Now…” She tried to form the words, tried to make some sense of what had happened. To digest the fact that someone hated her enough to risk burning down a neighborhood. To keep from being affected by the way he was staring at her.

  “If you start crying…”

  He sounded both gruff and desperate. Callie couldn’t help herself. Nate cursed and moved around the island as she wiped the back of her wrist under her eyes. She thought he was going to hold her again, let her get his shirt all wet.

  Instead he took her teary face in his hands and kissed her. Deeply, his fingers threading through her hair, making her want to melt into him even though their bodies were a good ten inches apart.

  It was crazily erotic to have him holding her face, with only their mouths touching. He showed no signs of ending the kiss anytime soon, but Callie needed more. She wanted to feel him against her. She reached for him, trying to press closer, but he ended the kiss, taking hold of her wrists and confusing the hell out of her. He released her and backed away, slowly dropping his hands, his expression oddly unreadable.

  Callie stared at him, not understanding what had just happened. Finally she asked, “Are you doing to me what I did to you?” It was the only explanation she could come up with.

  “No.”

  She almost wished he’d said yes. “Stop playing this game, Nate. You say you don’t want to waste time with me, then you show up like a knight errant. You kiss me like that and then back off. I’ve had one hell of an evening. I don’t need this on top of it.”

  “I’m not doing this to hurt you, Callie.”

  That was the last straw. Not doing this to hurt her. “Then what’s the deal, Nate? What is wrong with two people, two freaking lonely people, because I know you’re lonely—I recognize the signs—giving each other some comfort? I did an awful thing to you, but I was eighteen. You’re thirty.” She let out a shuddering breath. “If you’re not doing this to purposely hurt me, then I’d like to know what the hell the deal is.”

  He didn’t answer, so Callie persisted, partially sobbing as she said, “Tell me!”

  “You want to know what the deal is?” he answered, suddenly angry. “The deal is that I all but blew my leg off a while ago. I used to be whole but part of me is pretty damned ugly now and I’m still trying to come to terms with it, okay? How’s that for a deal?”

  For a moment Callie simply stared at him, trying to process what he’d just told her. Then she tilted her head. “Well, at least you’re talking to me,” she said matter-of-factly. But she was shocked. Her eyes went to his thighs, trying to see…whatever.

  “You want to see?” he dared her.

  “Yeah.” Her eyes came back up and what she saw in his face belied his challenging tone. “If you can handle it,” she added, knowing those few words would guarantee he’d follow through. He was, after all, a guy.

 
Nathan popped the buttons on his jeans and pushed them down, letting them drop around his running shoes.

  Callie felt sick as she studied what was left of his right leg. She couldn’t look away, not after goading him into showing her. So she did her best to keep a clinical expression as she took in the long, jagged scars, shiny white with pink edges, twisted over the remaining muscles of his leg, a divot missing from his quadriceps and an oddly shaped calf where the muscles had been stitched together around missing tissue. The still-angry burn scars on his calf and ankle. Once again she felt tears welling, thinking of what he had gone through, but did her best to hold them back.

  Silently, Nathan lifted his black T-shirt to show similar jagged scars on the right side of his torso. She simply shook her head, unable to find the words. He dropped the shirt back down, then leaned to hoist his jeans up over his ruined leg.

  “How?”

  “Shrapnel from an explosion.”

  “Shrapnel,” Callie repeated solemnly. “Of course. I should have known.” She sent him a sharp look. “Have you been living some kind of double life?”

  He shifted his weight. “I worked as an investigative reporter when I was in Seattle. This was my first investigation and ended up being my last. I arranged to meet a contact in a sting operation. Instead I got set up. My partner and I were lucky. It was an incendiary bomb. We should’ve been killed.”

  “Your partner? How is he?”

  “She. Suzanne Galliano. She was behind me. She got only a few burns from falling material and one minor shrapnel wound to the face. She’s still working in the Seattle area. I spent quite a bit of time in the hospital because of the threat of infection, then eventually came here to finish healing. The Star editor job opened up while I was here, and I took it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

  “I don’t talk about it.” Nathan stared out the dark kitchen window. A moment passed and it became obvious he wasn’t going to talk anymore about it now.

  “Nate…”

  “Maybe we should call it a night.” He didn’t wait for her reply, but picked up her pack where she’d set it at the base of the island, and limped out of the kitchen. Callie considered staying right where she was, but what would that accomplish?