Emmie turned on her side so she could run her hand across Caleb’s bare chest. “You know what I liked best about tonight?”
Caleb captured her hand and twined his fingers with hers. He smiled out of the corner of his eyes. “Chatty, are we?”
“You know how I get.”
“Okay, what did you like best about tonight?”
“Watching you with Vicky. You’re so good with her.”
“I like kids. As much as I can I volunteer with SEAL Pups. The children of SEALs don’t spend a lot of time with their fathers. Other SEALs try to be a male presence in their lives.”
“And you know what else? I thought I could see a family resemblance between you. It’s funny, neither of you looks like Teague.”
“Do you do that to turn me on?” Emmie asked, not looking up from the ecology text she was halfway through.
Caleb did look up from his book. Except for reading, the only thing he had been doing was lying beside Emmie in bed, oh, and he had his hand on her shoulder.
Most people had an agenda when they asked a question. They were trying to plan their next move or they needed you to agree to something. Not Emmie. Emmie asked because she wanted to know. As near as he could tell, she liked to know everything, but particularly how this bit connected to that bit. Probably what led her into a study of ecology.
The fact that she didn’t have an agenda—she simply liked to acquire information—shouldn’t blind him to the fact that she looked for connections all the time, and she might have asked the question because she saw a possible connection. Remembering this salient detail was the only way it was possible to keep up with her.
He drew a circle on her satiny skin with his finger. “I do it because I like to. He closed his book and set it in the small bookrack on the nightstand. These days there was a matching bookrack on Emmie’s side of the bed too. “Does it turn you on?”
“Yes.”
He stroked the top of her arm over the feminine swell of the deltoid. “Here?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He slid down the bed to get a better angle on her mouth. Just before his lips closed on hers he thought he detected a cream-pot glimmer. No agenda, hell!
She’d been running an experiment. He’d been had!
There is nothing more contagious than chuckles when you’re in contact with the diaphragm of the person chuckling.
Chapter 31
“EMMIE, THIS IS CHARLOTTE CALHOUN.” CHARLOTTE had a voice like the center of a Three Musketeers bar. It was sweet, soft, soothing, just substantial enough to say you could always depend upon her, but need never fear she would be difficult. Like a Three Musketeers it was always exactly the same. Emmie had been dragged to Charlotte’s wedding by her grandmother. Charlotte and Teague had attended her grandmother’s funeral, where Teague had delivered the eulogy. Nevertheless, until this morning, Charlotte had never called Emmie. “How are you this morning?”
“I’m fine, thank you. How are you?”
“Fine, thank you. I hope you’ll forgive me for calling so early. I called because I was hoping you’d know how to contact Chief Dulaude.”
Emmie chuckled inwardly and filed the exquisitely tactful phrasing of Charlotte’s request for future study. Now that she had accepted that she shaded the truth from time to time, she had decided she should become more skilled at it. Nothing about her choice of words suggested Charlotte had called her because she figured Caleb had spent the night at Emmie’s house. In her bed.
“He’s not here right now, Charlotte, but I am expecting him.” Emmie was rather proud of her answer. She wasn’t in Charlotte’s class, but she was making progress. Both statements were true. He had kissed her thirty minutes ago before his morning run and promised to return. Neither sentence admitted he had spent the night. In her bed. “Can I give him a message?” Emmie reached for a pencil to jot down a telephone number.
Charlotte hesitated. Emmie could hear a man talking in the background. “I need… I need to talk to him. Will he be there soon?”
Emmie took back everything she had thought about Charlotte’s perfectly controlled voice. Charlotte was just barely hanging on.
“Probably not too long, maybe half an hour. Is something wrong, Charlotte? Can I help?”
“I’m at the doctor’s office with Vicky. He wants her to go to the hospital to run some tests, but she’s… she’s hysterical. She knows ‘tests’ mean more blood draws.” Again, Emmie thought she heard a man’s voice. Though Emmie couldn’t make out what he said, Charlotte apparently answered whoever it was. “She’s not a spoiled child! She tries to be brave, but she’s so scared of needles. She’s had four blood draws in the last two weeks, and it’s horrible for her. Every time is worse than the last.”
Not sure if Charlotte had been speaking to her, Emmie made a sympathetic sound. “I’m so sorry. Does the doctor suspect something serious? Silly question. Of course, he does. What can I do?”
“Vicky says she will stop fighting and go to the hospital if Chief Dulaude will come with her. I don’t know why she’s fixated on him.” Emmie thought she heard a male voice in the background say, “… can’t believe you indulge her like this.” Charlotte talked over it. “Do you think Chief Dulaude would do that?”
“She’s trying to control you,” the male voice in the background put in.
“I’m sure he’ll do what he can,” Emmie reassured her. After getting Charlotte’s number and the address of the doctor’s office, she assured her she’d get right back to her.
Caleb felt ridiculously good when he saw the phone number his cell phone displayed. He’d called Emmie’s number enough times to memorize it. This was the first time she’d called him though. He slowed down so that he wouldn’t be panting when he called her back. Man, it felt so good. He laughed at himself. He was as eager as a kid. Wanting to be cool, to play it right. His heart thumped with anticipation at talking to her, although he’d left her less than forty-five minutes ago. Maybe she wanted him to pick up milk or bagels. That would be good. In fact, even if she didn’t ask, he might.
“What’s up?” he asked, when she answered on the first ring, knowing he had a huge smile on his face.
“I just had the strangest phone call from Charlotte Calhoun. Vicky needs to go to the hospital for some tests, and apparently, she’s flinging a fit, unless you’ll go with her.”
“Why me?”
“Charlotte says she doesn’t know why. I think it’s because she respects you, plus she’s got a bit of hero-worship going on. Do you want to know what’s really strange? Caleb, Vicky’s afraid of needles, just like you. Do you think something like that could be genetic?”
“According to some studies, it may be. About eighty percent of people with trypanophobia have a relative with it.” At the time he had come across an article on the phobia, he hadn’t known any of his relatives—assuming he had some—so the information had been totally academic. He hadn’t considered how it would feel to recognize kinship. Suddenly, the implications of phrases like member of the family, blood kin, like a brother to me, took on personal meaning.
He wasn’t starry-eyed about how well kinship always worked. A lot of his friends thought their relatives were pains in the ass. But people like that, people who were kin to each other, understood at a deep cellular level what it was like to live with certain traits. They understood, from the inside, what it was like to be you.
“That’s the medical name for it, trypanophobia?” He heard the scholarly curiosity in her voice and knew she was writing it down, probably to research it the first chance she got.
“Or belonephobia. Or needle phobia.”
“So. Do you think this means Uncle Teague really is your father, and she’s your half-sister?” He hadn’t corrected the impression, okay, the lie, he’d handed Emmie that he thought Calhoun might be his father. The DNA test he’d had run on the glass Calhoun had used at the wedding reception made paternity ninety-nine percent certain. Strange. T
here could be a link with Vicky when he had nothing at all in common with Calhoun. “Caleb?” Emmie asked when he didn’t reply.
“I’m getting used to the idea.”
“I don’t understand. What is there to get used to? Do you think she’s your sister?”
Caleb wrenched his mind from the thousands of competing thoughts about what it meant to be related to a little girl and accepted that he was in charge of getting the kid to the hospital. “Can you pick me up? I’ll call Charlotte and tell her we’re on the way, as soon as I shower.”
“No! I’m not going to do it. You say ‘just one,’ but it isn’t just one. It never is.” Caleb could hear Vicky’s raised voice as soon as the elevator stopped on the pediatric floor. He shoved past the man and woman in front of him and turned down a corridor, guided by her voice. “You lied! You said we’d wait. No. Get away from me. No more sticks! No more sticks. No more sticks.” Vicky’s protests dissolved into sobbing screams. Caleb slapped the room’s door open without slowing.
In one glance he took in the cowering child squeezed between the bed and the nightstand, her tear-stained cheeks and terrified eyes, the elderly man, Fairchild, pulling the little girl’s arm, and the shocked young woman, her blue lab coat and carryall of vials and test tubes proclaiming her a lab technician.
“Stop,” he commanded. All three took his command to mean them. Vicky’s wails ceased, the technician took a step back, and Fairchild released Vicky’s arm. He stood and straightened the cuffs of his gray suit.
Vicky scrambled to her feet and launched herself at Caleb with a frantic cry. Not content to fling her arms around him, she tugged at his coat and belt as if she were to trying to climb him. He lifted her into his arms, and she immediately clung to him, arms around his neck, legs wrapped around his waist. Deep tremors shook the little body.
Little kids were his soft spot. He hated to see them scared, hurt, or neglected, and he had seen too many in Afghanistan. Many of the mountain villages were preyed upon by the Taliban-aligned forces, and terrible reprisals threatened for any resistance to their tyranny.
“You are interfering,” Fairchild snapped. His pale blue eyes glittered with dislike.
“Yes I am.” Caleb kept his voice light, as if the notion had just occurred to him. For now, Fairchild was powerless, and they both knew it. A pissing contest would only upset Vicky further.
Caleb carried Vicky to the bed. She tightened her arms into a stranglehold around his neck. “Easy, Little Bit. I’m not going to let go of you. I’m just going to sit on the bed, so you’ll be more comfortable.”
“Where’s Emmie? I want you, and I want Emmie.” Vicky sobbed. The breathless quality of her crying, and the way her little heart pounded against his chest scared him.
“Emmie’s coming.” He arranged her on his lap and cupped his hand around her head when she hid her face against his chest. “She’ll be here in a minute.”
The lab tech edged toward the door, a placating smile on her face. “If it’s all right, I’ll come back in a while.”
Fairchild ignored her. “You’re not doing her any favors you know.” He sneered at Caleb. “Sooner or later she will have to do as she’s told, and you’re just making it harder.” At face value his words might be reasonable, but Fairchild’s tone dripped contempt.
His presence challenged Fairchild’s authority. Caleb wondered if that was enough to make the older man dislike him. Not that he gave a shit what Fairchild thought. He had no intention of discussing Vicky with him. To Caleb’s way of thinking, Charlotte Calhoun was the only person with the authority to direct Vicky’s care. “Where is her mother?”
“Here,” said Charlotte from the door. Despite her smooth, imperturbable face, her deep brown eyes burned hot. The tech ducked behind her and escaped. “What happened?”
“The technician came in a few minutes after you left.” Fairchild adjusted the amount of white cuff showing at his wrists, again. “I saw no reason for her to waste her time. After all, we’re here to have these tests done. The sooner they’re complete the sooner she, and we, can leave. You, Charlotte, have spoiled Vicky. You have refused to set firm limits, and now she is paying the price. She has no respect for authority. I have told you again and again, and now you see the results. She refuses to cooperate even when it is for her own good.”
Charlotte let her leather bag slip from her shoulder. “Wait a minute. The technician came in to do a blood draw, and you let her? When you knew how hard I had worked to persuade Vicky to trust me? I had promised her nothing, nothing, would happen until Chief Dulaude got here.”
“You shouldn’t have to bribe her with rewards for being obedient.”
Charlotte tilted her head to one side, her eyes narrowing. “I was not out of the room for ten minutes—and the woman in admitting said I needn’t have come at all. She planned to bring the papers here. I’m putting a lot of things together, Edward. You said the Senator couldn’t be reached for several hours. You said it would cause speculation if Chief Dulaude walked into the hospital with us, and you talked us into arriving separately. You suggested I get the papers out of the way while we waited. You didn’t just disagree, you deliberately undermined me.”
“Charlotte, you’re upset about nothing—a child’s tantrum!”
Charlotte’s face turned hard and her voice very, very soft. “Get out. Do not come near me or my child again.”
“As usual you’re reacting emotionally. You’re being unreasonable.”
Apparently, Fairchild couldn’t grasp, “Get out.” Caleb thought he would have to add his persuasive abilities. Fairchild’s weapon was words, his favorite ploy driving like a tank over anything he didn’t agree with. Any SEAL worth his salt knew you didn’t engage an enemy where he was strong. The more he could make his point to Fairchild without saying a word, the more effective he could be.
“I’m going to put you down on the bed,” Caleb told Vicky softly. “You’re all right now.” Vicky’s arms tightened briefly, then let go. “Good girl.”
His size alone was probably enough to intimidate Fairchild, but Caleb didn’t underestimate small men. Neither Caleb’s height nor his spare build were necessarily assets in SEAL work. Many SEALs were average and shorter, and he’d had his ass kicked more than once. If there was going to be a confrontation, he wanted Vicky behind him.
Caleb stood. He smiled. Not a nice smile. He took a step toward the much older, much smaller man. Fairchild fell back a step. Good. Caleb smiled again and jerked his head toward the door. The man’s pale blue eyes went to Charlotte. He caught the cuffs of his coat in his palms and jerked the sleeves tight. It made him look like a stick puppet.
He stalked to the door Charlotte had left open, but turned back to fire a parting shot. He didn’t see Emmie, who hesitated in the doorway, taking in the tense atmosphere in the room. “Charlotte,” Fairchild warned, “do not think this man is your friend. He’s trash. A low, manipulating opportunist.”
“That’s funny,” Emmie exclaimed from behind him as if she’d made a delightful discovery. “That’s what my grandmother said about you.”
“What?” Fairchild whirled around.
“Um-hmm.” Emmie gave him her most wide-eyed look. “‘Opportunist.’ That was her very word! Hey, Charlotte—” Emmie peeped around Fairchild and waved. “Mr. Fairchild, you know when you said the other day that you and my grandmother were friends? I didn’t remember that, so it got me thinking about what I do remember. You know my grandmother liked to speculate about how people arrive at their places in life. She was talking about you one day. I wish I could recall more, but what I do remember her saying was, ‘I reckon Mr. Fairchild was useful to Mr. Calhoun—she always called people Mr. and Mrs.—of course, Mr. Calhoun was Uncle Teague’s father—but (this is what she said) ‘personally, I don’t see why Teague keeps the little toad around.’”
Caleb bit down on the inside of his cheek. Emmie was channeling Aunt Lilly Hale. Just when he thought her tone couldn’t get any b
lander, it did. And her eyes got wider. “Don’t you think that was interesting, Mr. Fairchild? I do. I’d be happy to tell you more about it sometime. Of course, like I said, I don’t remember much more she said about you.” Fairchild was edging away. “But I remember things she said about other people—oh, but you were leaving, weren’t you? Don’t let me keep you.”
Fairchild threw a glare at Caleb and Charlotte, and a look of disgust at Emmie, and stalked off.
“I don’t know when I’ve laughed so hard!” Charlotte wiped her streaming eyes. “Look at that!” She examined the dark smudges on the balled up tissue in her hand. “Emmie, you’ve made me ruin my makeup. I haven’t done anything to destroy my eyeliner in public since before Vicky was born!”
Emmie chuckled to think a woman could live for ten or more years with perfect makeup. She was still challenged to remember to put on lipstick, and she knew she would never take it seriously. Somehow, there wasn’t a gap between her and women like Charlotte anymore. They were part of a continuum.
“Fill me in,” Emmie said, from her perch on the arm of the room’s easy chair in which Caleb sat. Anyone coming into the room would assume she was on his side. Well, she was. Sometime in the last few days, all feeling of existing at the edge of life, of being insignificant even to herself, had disappeared. She enjoyed feeling like a participant, and even more, she appreciated knowing she and Caleb could relate as a team. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get here earlier. I had to go over to campus long enough to hand out exams. A graduate student will collect them, but I’ll need to go back soon. Talk fast. What did I just walk in on?”
Charlotte stroked Vicky’s hair. “Sweetie, tell us what happened before I got here.”
Mary Margret Daughtridge SEALed Bundle Page 55
