The Other Brother

by Janis Reams Hudson

  “You do good work,” Caleb told Melanie.

  She squeezed his hand. “We do good work. I guess you can go for help now. We’ll need to cut the cord, but I’d feel better if Rose and Emily were here before we tried to move her. She needs padding and blankets and water and—”

  “I get the idea. I’ll hurry.” Before he stood up, he leaned over and kissed her hard on the mouth. “You’re really something, you know that?”

  She grinned. “So are you, pal. Now, get going. See how fast those boots can carry you.”

  His boots carried him as fast as they could, but, damn, they were not made for running, particularly on rough ground. They were made for holding a man’s footing in the stirrups. They were made for dancing a two-step or the Cotton-Eyed Joe. They were made for kicking butt. And okay, they were made for looking cool. They were not made for running.

  By the time he broke through the trees and saw the yard light ahead in the distance, he was starting to breathe hard. He had to crawl through one barbed-wire fence, then cut across the corner of a pasture. A final fence, then the gravel driveway to the house.

  He let himself in the back door.

  The house had four bedrooms upstairs and what they used to call the guest room downstairs behind the kitchen. Since Sloan and Emily married, Justin had moved downstairs to the guest room so Emily’s daughters, Janie and Libby, could have the room next to their parents upstairs. Caleb had the third room, and their grandmother the fourth.

  Caleb went to Justin’s room first and woke him up, thankful to find him home and not out somewhere on an all-nighter.

  “Wake up, kid, we’ve got a problem. Get dressed while I get Sloan and Grandmother.”

  Justin groaned. “You’re gonna wake Grandmother in the middle of the night? Either it’s damn serious or you’ve lost your mind.”

  “Probably a little bit of both.”

  When he ran upstairs he made sure to make plenty of noise, clomping extra hard on the risers. He didn’t like surprising people in their bedrooms in the middle of the night. He preferred they hear him coming.

  When everyone but Janie and Libby was downstairs in the kitchen, Caleb finally explained.

  “I need your help. Melanie and I do. But before you agree, you have to know you’ll be breaking the law.”

  Justin perked up instantly. “Do tell.”

  “Is it a big law, this one we’ll be breaking?” Grandmother asked, straight-faced.

  That pretty much broke the ice, as well as announced the family’s decision to help. Caleb had never been more grateful for and proud of his family.

  He told them as quickly and briefly as possible about the Mexicans, the baby and the need for speed.

  Rose stood and instantly began issuing orders for items to take with them to retrieve the Mexicans, and in particular the new mother and baby, and bring them to the house. She determined that Emily would be more useful helping her and Melanie with mother and child, but since someone had to stay home in case the girls woke, Justin was assigned that job.

  He didn’t get a chance to protest being left out of the excitement before Rose gave him a list of instructions as long as his arm: gather all the blankets, extra clothes and anything else their guests might need. Start making sandwiches and don’t stop until he had three dozen.

  There was more, but Caleb left it to Justin to worry about. He went out and started up the SUV they would use to bring Maria and her baby to the house. Sloan would drive the pickup to carry the others.

  The baby would be called Rosa, after the American ranch where she’d been born.

  When Caleb heard that upon his return to the woods, he smiled curiously at Melanie. “Did you think that one up?”

  “Not on your life. It was Maria and Pedro. Caleb, you wouldn’t believe how excited they are that their daughter is an American citizen.”

  Caleb took her hand and pulled her aside. “Won’t she have to have a birth certificate for that to be official?”

  “I don’t know,” Melanie said. “But we’ll figure it out.”

  He smiled. “We? You’re really getting into this, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, like you’re not? Like it doesn’t make you feel good to help these people?”

  “I confess. Yes, it makes me feel good,” Caleb said. “But we better leave everything else tonight to my family, so you and I can get back to your family before Bruno shows up and finds his ‘goods’ have disappeared.”

  “You know, if I thought about it too much,” Melanie said, “it could really scare me how often you and I think alike.”

  Melanie introduced Maria to Rose and Emily and helped them clean her up and get her and the baby ready to move. Caleb then carried Maria through the woods to the SUV where he placed her, with the baby in her arms, on the blankets waiting for them in the back. Pedro climbed in beside her.

  Melanie helped Sloan herd the others into the bed of the pickup he’d brought.

  “What will happen to us now?” Jorge asked her.

  “I don’t know,” she told him honestly. “But I don’t want you to worry. We’ll figure something out.” While Caleb had been gone, Jorge had told her that some of them had family in New Mexico, others in Texas. “Maybe we can find your families here in the States. Or help you find jobs.”

  “Oh, that would be very good.”

  Melanie hoped so, but she worried about how they would be able to avoid the long arm of Immigration. The one saving grace for the Mexicans was that Immigration had most of their attention focused these days on other nationalities.

  When both vehicles were loaded and everyone was ready to go, Sloan stopped Caleb and Melanie.

  “Are you going to need some help when this Bruno character shows up and finds these people missing?” he asked.

  “We wouldn’t turn it down if you’re offering.”

  “You don’t want to call the sheriff?”

  “No,” Melanie said quickly. “No sheriff if we can help it. I’d rather nobody got a hint of these people.”

  “All right,” Sloan said with a nod. “What do you want us to do?”

  They discussed ideas and settled on the simplest. At a prearranged signal to Sloan’s cell phone, Sloan and Justin would rush in.

  “Just the two of them?” Melanie said when she and Caleb made it back to the PR side of the fence beyond the trees. “Is this going to work?”

  “I guess that’ll depend on how many men Bruno brings with him,” Caleb said.

  “Which we won’t know until they show up and storm the house, demanding to know where their aliens went.”

  “Don’t worry.” He reached out and took her hand. “We won’t be helpless. There are four of us even without Sloan and Justin.”

  “Don’t worry,” she mimicked. “How can I not worry? Are we doing the right thing?”

  “It’s a little late to ask that, isn’t it?” He squeezed her hand gently.

  His hand surrounding hers, holding it, steadied her. “Yes, definitely too late. And useless. We are doing the right thing. The only thing we can do. When you showed up this afternoon I was mad at you for not staying home.”

  “Were you?”

  “I didn’t want you to get caught up in our problems. I wouldn’t have asked for your help.”

  “Melanie.” He stopped in the moonlight and turned her to face him. “If I had a problem and you thought you could help, would you wait to be asked to help?”

  “That’s—”

  “Of course you wouldn’t. You saw a problem Saturday night at the party, and it was headed right at me.” He grinned. “You didn’t wait for me to ask for help, you just jumped to my rescue.”

  “Yeah, and look where it got us.”

  “I am.” He slid his arms around her waist and pulled her close. “It got us out here alone in the moonlight.” He dipped his head lower. “Just the two of us, right near the place where we made love this morning.”

  “Stop it.” Melanie turned her head away and stepped out
of his embrace. “All this sex business between us is just going to screw up our friendship. You’re my best friend, the only one I can really talk to. You’re the only person who believes in me and takes my side, no matter what. I don’t want to lose that for sex, no matter how great the sex.”

  “Sex?” He took a step closer. “You think this is just about sex? Maybe for you, but for me it’s more than that.”

  “I just think we need to take a big step back.” And she did just that, and hated herself for it. “Look how you tried to protect me earlier by telling me to stay at the house. You’re already treating me differently after just one time together.”

  “I can’t help it if I want to keep you safe,” he claimed.

  “You’re not in charge of my safety,” she proclaimed heatedly. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  Caleb felt her slipping away from him. It wasn’t only her words. Words could be argued with. But how did a man argue with hunched shoulders and eyes that wouldn’t meet his? “Dammit, Melanie, look at me.”

  When she didn’t, he felt a sense of desperation that threatened to swamp him. He grasped her arms and said it again. “Look at me. This is me, Melanie. The one who’s been right beside you all this time. How many more years do I have to wait while you bounce from one man to another looking for something that’s been right in front of you your whole life?”

  “What?” she demanded, clearly shocked. “Wait. Back up. How many more years? Who are you trying to kid? You haven’t been waiting on me for anything.”

  “Haven’t I? I didn’t realize it myself until just recently.” Not until that day, in fact. Perhaps that very moment. “Yes, I’ve been waiting for you to look at me, to notice me. To love me.”

  Chapter Nine

  A shiver of sheer terror raced down Melanie’s spine. Love him? He was waiting for her to love him?

  What was she supposed to do? How was she supposed to know what she was feeling? How was she supposed to know what love was and if it was real?

  All those years she’d thought she loved Sloan, but whatever it was she’d been feeling—adoration, hero worship, puppy love—had not been the love a woman should feel for a man. She hadn’t been concerned so much that he be happy. Instead she had believed that having him for her very own would make her happy. That was not the basis for a lasting love.

  Thinking about all of this, particularly now, in the midst of their present circumstances with the Mexicans and Bruno and her parents, was giving her a pounding headache.

  She pressed her hands to her temples. “Why can’t we just be friends?”

  Caleb knew she was afraid. Hell, so was he. But he also knew she felt more than friendship for him or she never would have given herself to him the way she did in the sunshine that morning.

  Oh, she might have sex with a man now and then. A woman had needs, just as a man did. Then, too, she’d had to prove to herself and to whoever else she felt needed proof last year that she was, indeed, over Sloan. She’d spent the night with some joker from the next county, and then had never seen the man again. Caleb would be damned if she would dismiss him the same way.

  But that wasn’t sex he and Melanie had shared that morning. No, they hadn’t had sex, they had made love, and she had cried in his arms because she’d been overwhelmed by emotion.

  “Why can’t we be just friends?” he asked. “Because of this.” And he kissed her. Not a peck on the cheek or a friendly brush of lips, but an all-out lip-locking, breath-stealing, mind-numbing kiss.

  Melanie’s head reeled. It had been so long since she’d tasted him. Hours and hours since they’d shared a real kiss. She hadn’t known how much she had craved it.

  It was weak of her, wasn’t it, to want a man this badly? Was she doomed to fool herself, to make a fool of herself for another ten or fifteen years over yet another Chisholm?

  But she wasn’t a child this time. There was no one urging her to please him, to eat her vegetables, tie ribbons in her hair, rope that steer faster so Caleb will like her better.

  This time there was only Caleb and her. Just the two of them, and she didn’t think she had the nerve to open herself to him the way he seemed to want. What if she opened herself, and there was nothing there?

  She was afraid to find out.

  He wanted too much from her. She wasn’t brave enough to love him. She got along just fine without being in love, didn’t she? Why did things have to change?

  She pulled away from him and stepped back. Her chest was heaving, trying to supply air to her lungs.

  “I’m going home,” she said. “We’ve been gone too long.”

  He let her go, reluctantly, it seemed. She turned away, and in that last glimpse of him in the moonlight she saw in his eyes that she had hurt him.

  She stopped, hung her head.

  He walked past her and kept going.

  “Caleb, wait. I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too.” But he kept walking.

  A new fear seized Melanie. What if she was wrong? What if these confused and confusing feelings she had for Caleb meant she was truly in love with him? What if this was her last chance with him? What if she hurt him, pushed him away one too many times and he let her put distance between them, let her hold him at arm’s length?

  Was that what she wanted? To lean on him but never hold him again? To confide in him rather than kiss him? To shake his hand or slap him on the shoulder as one good friend might do to another, instead of making sweet hot love the way they’d done that morning?

  Or, maybe, if she pushed him away hard enough and far enough, to lose him altogether.

  Oh, God, no. She couldn’t imagine her life without him. Didn’t that mean something?

  “Caleb, I’m sorry. Wait. Please?”

  Ten paces ahead, he slowed to a stop.

  Melanie rushed to his side. “Please don’t be angry with me,” she begged.

  He let out a long breath. “I’m not angry.”

  “I’m scared, Caleb. You want something from me I’m not sure I can give you.”

  He turned and cupped his hands on her shoulders. “All I want is for you to be yourself, Melanie. Just be honest with me, and with yourself. That’s all.”

  “No.” She smiled sadly. “That’s not all, but even if it were, it’s not so easy a thing you ask, for me to be honest with myself. That’s the part that scares me. Can we just…”

  “Be friends?”

  “I was going to say take it slow, so I don’t feel quite so much like I’m in over my head with you. I don’t want to hurt either one of us, and I’m afraid I will.”

  He let out another long breath and slipped one arm around her shoulder and started them walking again toward her house. “Sure, we can take it slow. But, Melanie, the one thing I don’t want you to do is hurt yourself. I don’t ever want that.”

  As they topped the rise and the house appeared two hundred yards ahead, the true meaning of his words sank in. He loved her that much, that he would rather she hurt him than herself. No man had ever loved her that much before. It made her feel all soft and quivery inside. Her eyes stung and her heart hurt.

  What did a woman do when she was loved by a man like Caleb Chisholm?

  That question echoed over and over inside her head as they crept quietly along the fence and came up to the house at the angle that would keep them hidden from Little Donnie.

  She was still pondering the question as Caleb pushed open the window in the den and gave her a leg up. She crawled through into the room as quietly as possible, hearing nothing but the television from the living room.

  It was as she straightened and turned back toward the window that the truth hit her, and when it came, it seemed so simple, so inevitable and natural, that it took her breath away.

  Suddenly she leaned out the window. “Caleb?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” she whispered, shaking her head. “I just wanted to tell you I love you, too.”

  While he stood the
re and gaped, she ducked back inside the room and rushed out to find her parents before she had to face Caleb again. She’d said the words and meant them. But what if she’d been wrong and they weren’t what he’d wanted from her? What if he was standing out there right now laughing because she thought he loved her? He hadn’t actually said he loved her. He’d said he wanted her to love him. There was a big difference. Wasn’t there?

  A woman could go crazy thinking about such things.

  Okay, so she loved him. That didn’t have to change everything, did it? They could still be friends. They’d just be closer friends than before. Intimate friends.

  That had a nice ring to it. Intimate friends. A little on the hollow side, but a nice ring, nonetheless.

  Caleb stood outside the open window, too stunned for a moment to do more than stare at the empty spot that had, only an instant before, held Melanie’s face.

  Had she really said she loved him, or had it all been in his head, because he’d had a sharp, burning need to hear those words from her.

  There was only one way to find out. He practically dived through the window, only to find the den empty. He found her in the living room explaining to her parents what had been happening.

  George was still slumped in the corner of the sofa, snoring lightly.

  “And she had the baby right there on the ground,” Melanie said.

  “In the woods?” Fayrene gasped. “That poor woman.”

  “I’ll say. With nobody to help her but Caleb and me. Oh, Caleb, there you are. I was just—”

  “What did you just say?” he asked carefully.

  Melanie pursed her lips. “There you are?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Before that.”

  “Maria had the baby on the ground in the woods?”

  “Melanie.”

  “Later.”

  “Is there something the two of you would like to share with us?” Fayrene asked.

  “No,” they said in unison.

  Ralph shook his head. “Illegal aliens, right here on the PR. What was Bruno thinking?”

  “That he was going to get away with it,” Caleb said.