A Camden's Baby Secret (6 page)

Livi was leaning back against the car, listening raptly, and Callan moved forward to cross his arms over the top of the open door between them as he went on reminiscing. His striking face was relaxed now, his small smile at the memory of his friends not at all tight or forced.

“The three of us were together through elementary school, middle school, high school, even college—the University of Colorado. I finished my bachelor's degree in three years, then got my master's and graduated a little ahead of them. But the three of us shared a crummy apartment in Boulder—even after they discovered they liked each other as more than friends. I was best man at their wedding.”

“You stayed living with newlyweds?” Livi asked.

“Sharing the space made the rent low enough that I could concentrate on developing software without worrying about anything else. So I could put every ounce of time and energy and everything I had into that, and then into the company I founded—CT Software. They just shuffled around me while I monopolized the computer we shared. Sometimes they had more faith in me than I had in myself.”

That made Livi think of Patrick, who had seen more in her than she'd known she was capable of.

“Once things started to go my way and I launched the company,” Callan went on, “there was no question that Mandy and J.J. should be in on it with me. I wanted them to be partners, but they wouldn't do that—not when I was funding it with the money I made from selling off the last acre of land that belonged to my family. But they let me make them my vice presidents and put them on the business side of things so we could work together every day. Which was great!” He said that with so much satisfaction.

“But when Greta came along, they wanted to raise her in Northbridge, where her grandparents were,” he said then. “So we put a marketing and distribution center here for them to run.”

“It must have been hard for you to lose them back to Northbridge.”

“Yeah. But after they moved, a day never went by that we didn't talk or video chat or text.”

“The Tellers said you're Greta's godfather,” Livi murmured, beginning to understand the reasons behind J.J and Mandy's choice of guardian. It was more about their close-knit friendship than about Callan's relationship with their daughter.

“I am her godfather,” he confirmed. “But because Mandy and J.J. were in Northbridge, I didn't spend a lot of time with Greta until now. Still, Mandy and J.J. had faith that I could and would step up to the plate for her, for them, if I needed to. And I will.”

Livi could tell that he meant it, and she had to admire his determination and dedication to his friends.

She just had the impression that he wasn't quite sure how to “step up to the plate” when it came to Greta. But there wasn't anything more for Livi to say about that except, “So you'll work on it?”

He laughed—something she'd heard a lot that night in Hawaii. The sound made a wave of warmth wash through her.

“That's your way of saying I'm not doing well?” he asked.

“There's room for improvement.”

He laughed again. “Okay. You want to be my mentor, too?”

A sweet sort of cockiness and a hint of challenge—there had been some of that in Hawaii, too, and Livi found herself smiling. “It's not like I'm an expert, but you—”

“Yeah, I know,” he conceded. “I'm a computer nerd, not a kindergarten teacher.”

There was absolutely nothing nerdy about him, but Livi didn't point that out. And she wished she wasn't so aware of just how not nerdy he was. In fact, maybe if he was more of a geek it would have kept her from falling under his spell. Which she felt a little like she was doing again, and was trying to fight.

What she did say was a goading, “You do know that Greta isn't in kindergarten, right?”

He laughed once more. “Yeah, I know that much. But it doesn't mean I know how to talk to her.”

“How about just like you'd talk to anyone else? Like you're talking to me right now.”

His expression revealed he wasn't sure he could do that.

“Just give it a try. Greta is a chatterbox. If you give her half a chance she'll do most of the work.”

“She does kind of like to talk, doesn't she?”

It was Livi's turn to laugh. “She's a nine-year-old girl and has a lot to say. But I think you can keep up,” she teased.

They'd been out here talking for a long time, so she knew she should say good-night. But Livi was still curious about the tension between Callan and John Sr.—who, according to Maeve, Callan wanted to “look after.”

And now that she had him talking about these things, Livi hated to stop before she had the whole scoop.

So—not because she was enjoying standing here in the moonlight talking to him, but for legitimate other reasons, she assured herself—she said, “And the Tellers? Are you taking them with you to Denver to keep them close to Greta?”

“Let me guess—you saw that there was no love lost between me and John Sr., and you want to know about that, too.”

Livi hadn't thought she was that transparent. But before she had the chance to respond, he warned, “It's another long story.”

“I'd still like to know,” she admitted.

He took a deep breath and sighed, seeming more reluctant to get into this one. “Mandy's folks have both passed, so the Tellers are the only grandparents Greta has left, and yeah, keeping them a part of her life the way Mandy and J.J. wanted them to be is a little of it.”

“But not all.”

“No,” he confirmed. “By the time I got here from Hawaii, J.J. was at the end and he knew it...” Callan's voice cracked.

Livi understood all too well how hard it was to talk about people dearly loved and lost.

He cleared his throat. “J.J. was all Maeve and John Sr. had. He asked me to take over for him, to take care of them. I promised I would and I will. But there's more to it than that promise... I also owe them.”

“You owe them?” Livi repeated.

“When my parents died—”

“When was that?”

“The end of my junior year in high school.”

“Oh. I was thinking it was more recent, but you were just a kid,” she said in surprise.

“I don't think I was ever much of a kid even before that. But I wasn't eighteen,” he said ominously.

“They died together? Driving drunk?” she guessed.

He shook his head. “They
did
drive drunk—they did everything drunk. It's just lucky that around here it's mostly open country roads without a lot of other cars to get in the way. But no, they weren't in a car accident. They died in a trailer fire.”

She hadn't expected that.

“Mandy and J.J. and I had stayed after school to work on a project,” Callan said. “It was already too late when the fire department got there—in fact, that whole last acre around the trailer was on fire by then, because without any close neighbors it took somebody spotting the smoke in the distance to call it in. But investigators pinpointed the origin to inside the trailer, at the spot where my father's chair was. I figured my old man had probably passed out with a lit cigarette in his hand.

“And then...there was nothing,” Callan concluded with a sad wryness. “I didn't have parents. I didn't have a place to live. All I had was an after-school job at the computer-repair shop. I didn't make enough to support myself.”

“I'm so sorry...” Livi said, almost regretting that she'd gotten them into this now.

He didn't address her condolences, but went on matter-of-factly again. “I was seventeen. Going into the foster system would have just been weird at that point—I was mostly grown and I'd been taking care of myself and my parents for years. But I had no resources. All that was left of my family's land was the acre the trailer was on—but it was too charred from fire damage for farming or raising livestock, and would take years to be usable again. It looked like I was going to have to drop out and get full-time work, but then J.J.—and Maeve—went to bat for me. They pleaded with John Sr. to let me move in for that last year. He didn't want to do it—he'd never liked that J.J. was friends with me. And a couple of months before that I'd used J.J.'s computer to hack into the school's system to play a dumb prank that had wreaked a lot of havoc—”

“Uh-oh...”

“Yeah... I was a kid without any supervision—no curfew, no rules and a brain that was always working and not always on the right path,” he acknowledged. “Anyway, the prank was traced back to J.J.'s computer and he got the blame. I set it right, even reversed what I'd done so I didn't get kicked out of school, but John Sr. had always been pretty down on me, and that had soured things more.”

“With him, but not with Maeve?”

“She had a soft spot for me—something I was grateful for but never really understood. She teamed up with J.J. to lean on John Sr. and he finally gave in. Under the condition that I toe the line, keep my after-school job and still earn my keep working on the farm before school the way J.J. did.”

“And you did.”

“It wasn't something I could pass up. It was just for a year, and then I'd be headed to college—if I could get the scholarships lined up.” He again nodded toward Northbridge, adding a heartfelt and desperate sounding, “And I wanted out of this town! So yeah, I did.”

“Which let you finish high school and win the scholarship you needed.”

“So I owe the Tellers.”

“Even if you still haven't quite redeemed yourself in John Sr.'s eyes for some reason...” Livi said, hoping for an explanation of that.

But all she got was stoicism from Callan. “That's just how he is. And that's how I got here.”

“So between the two things—your friend asking you to take care of his parents and you owing Maeve and John Sr.—you don't fight the way he treats you,” Livi said.

“I won't let down J.J. and Mandy on anything. Not with Greta and not with John Sr.,” Callan concluded with resignation.

Then he smiled, warmly enough to remind Livi of some of what had appealed to her in Hawaii, and said, “So, Hawaii is history—we're all the way into real life now, like it or not.”

If only you knew...

The moon had gone high into the sky as they'd talked. The way its light caught the sharp lines of Callan's face made her think about their walk on the beach, when he'd first kissed her.

He was looking into her eyes just like he had been that night. Uninvited and unwanted came a memory of that first kiss they'd shared—how instinctively she'd been drawn to it, how warm and gentle his lips had been.

She remembered thinking as she'd melted into the kiss that there was something indescribably good about the feel of that big body curving almost protectively down toward her in order to reach her mouth with his. About the pure size and power of the man himself—strong but reserved, silently inviting her in—that had added to the potency and made it impossible for her to resist drifting closer to him, to that kiss...

Then she realized what she was thinking about and how inappropriate it was.

And how she most surely shouldn't be having the absolutely insane urge to reexperience it!

She took a deep breath to clear her head and said, “I should go. Pack. Get ready to leave in the morning.”

He didn't stop looking at her even as he nodded. “Yeah, tomorrow will be a full day. I'll have Kinsey text you when she gets in, and give you the address. Will I see you... I mean, will you be there when we get to my place, or will you just drop off whatever you buy for Greta? Which I'll reimburse you for, by the way.”

“Whatever I get her can just be my welcome-to-Denver gift. And...I guess I did say I'd see her in Denver, but I don't know if it will be tomorrow.”

Tomorrow, when
he
would get to see her—that was the way he'd put it at first, as if it wasn't about Greta at all.

Tomorrow, when Livi would get to see
him
—something she was thinking and trying not to.

“I guess it depends on how things go,” she said. “When you get in. What I'm up to.”

Whether or not the doctor rid her of her anxiety or confirmed it...

“But I'll try,” she said. “For Greta's sake.”

“Sure—for Greta's sake,” he repeated.

Then he straightened and stepped back, opening the door wider for Livi to get in.

“Travel safe tomorrow,” he said.

“You, too.”

“And we'll take this show to Denver,” he announced, sounding daunted, and making her laugh at him.

She started the engine and, taking his cue, Callan closed her door and turned back to the house.

Livi put her car into gear, but her eyes followed him, guiltily appreciating the sight.

There was just no denying that he was one of the finest-looking men she'd ever seen. Even from the back, where her gaze rode along for a while on that derriere-to-die-for.

But as he climbed the porch steps she reminded herself of all that was waiting for him inside that farmhouse. All that he had on his own plate.

A lot.

Too much.

That wildly hot man who had grown up dealing with more than any child should have had to, and was now determined to pay back what little help he'd been given.

What if she had to add to that burden? she asked herself as she tore her eyes off him and finally made the U-turn to drive away.

What if she told him he was going to be a father—how would he take it?

And why, even in the midst of all that she was fretting about, was a completely separate portion of her brain thinking once more about that Hawaiian kiss?

And yearning ever so slightly for him to do it again...

Chapter Five

H
ere we go
, Callan thought as his private plane left the runway at a Montana airport, headed for Denver.

It was after four on Wednesday afternoon before they took off. Callan had been hoping to leave earlier, but it was tough to get the Tellers away. And hard on them to leave their home.

The last—and closest—of their friends and neighbors had begun to stream in to say goodbye at dawn, and the visits had gone on from there. Callan hadn't wanted to cut any of those goodbyes short. There was no love lost between himself and Northbridge or anyone in it, but for the Tellers it was a different story. They'd planned to live and die in the small town, surrounded by the people they'd shared the best and worst with for their entire lives.

So not until that stream had stopped had he texted his pilot with a departure time, and finally loaded Maeve, John Sr. and Greta into the truck of the neighbor driving them to the airport.

It had been a long, silent drive during which Maeve—sitting across the truck's backseat with her leg braced on her husband's lap—had quietly cried. John Sr. had held her hand and patted her knee comfortingly, but his own jaw was clenched so tight that it seemed as if it might lock.

In the front seat, sitting between Callan and the driver, not even the chatty Greta had said a word. She'd just clutched her favorite doll and stared pensively ahead at the dashboard, not crying like her grandmother, but looking so sad it nearly broke Callan's heart.

He couldn't have felt worse for tearing three people from the only place any of them had ever called home. But he didn't know what comfort to give for a cut as deep as they were suffering, and he didn't know what else he could have done besides moving them all to Denver with him.

He'd assured them that he would get them back to Northbridge and the farm to visit often. But his business was in Denver and that's where he had to be. That's where he had to raise Greta. And while he'd offered to pay for continuous care and help for the Tellers to stay in Northbridge, they'd agreed that they wanted to be close to their granddaughter, and so had opted to go wherever she would be.

But it wasn't a good day for any of them, and as the flight got under way, Callan suggested a movie and started it for them.

Then he settled back and, for some reason, found himself instantly thinking that at the end of the dark tunnel that was today, at least there would be Livi Camden.

Kinsey would be there, too, he reminded himself. And that was good. He appreciated that—especially after having had to manage the Tellers without her today.

But still, it was Livi he was thinking of as the bright spot.

He tried to unseat her by thinking about Kinsey and Livi side by side. Because he recognized that the nurse was very attractive. If he was going to be unwillingly haunted by images of a woman, why Livi and not her?

No matter how hard he tried, however, it wasn't Kinsey who occupied his thoughts, it was Livi. The same way she'd been popping into his head almost constantly since they'd reconnected.

But why? Sure, at first maybe guilt for the way things had played out in Hawaii had caused it. But since they'd cleared the air about that? It was still happening and he couldn't figure it out.

He hadn't even thought this much about Elly, the woman he'd
married
. Of course, that had been part of the problem.

With all his energies focused on his business, he hadn't been there for Elly much. Instead, he'd delegated a lot of the “husband” responsibilities to his assistant. It had been up to Trent Baxter to pick out her anniversary presents, give her a lift when her car broke down, escort her to the society benefits Elly liked and Callan hated.

But somewhere during the course of that Trent had overstepped his bounds and taken Callan's place in bed with Elly, as well...

Lesson learned—marriage wasn't for him. And now, with the responsibility for Greta and the Tellers on his shoulders, he doubted he'd even have time for casual dating. So his preoccupation with Livi was a waste of time.

And yet he still couldn't get her off his mind.

What the hell was going on with him?

Maybe it was happening because when he was thinking about Livi he wasn't worrying about the change his life was taking. He wasn't fretting about how he was ever going to adapt to the whole family thing or meet everyone's needs. Every time he thought about
that
he felt as if he was rushing straight into another monumental failure like he'd had with Elly. Times three.

So maybe thinking about Livi was some kind of escape hatch.

After all, he'd met her the first time in a tropical paradise. So now, when he needed a breather, maybe his mind just made some sort of connection—Livi equaled a getaway. And Lord knew he needed that, if only in his thoughts.

His divorce had been finalized just four months ago. Two months later he'd lost the people he'd been closest to, the friends he'd depended on, for most of his life. Since then he'd been running himself ragged, going back and forth between Northbridge and Denver. But the hardest part was dealing with the Tellers and Greta.

He had his marriage to prove what a colossal failure he was when it came to emotional relationships with anyone other than Mandy and J.J.—who, he knew, had done most of the heavy lifting to keep their friendship going.

And now here he was, dealing with not one, not two, but three people who weren't Mandy and J.J., and the relationships and everything else that came with them.

He was up to his neck in it and definitely needed some relief. So somewhere in the course of things, he'd apparently connected rest and relaxation with Livi, and surely that was why he couldn't stop thinking about her. Why she seemed like the light at the end of the tunnel. That's all it was.

That was why last night, standing out in the fresh country air alone with her, talking, Callan had felt more relaxed than he had in two months. But he certainly wasn't looking for a repeat of their affair.

Sure, that night in Hawaii had been great.

Sure, he felt something good wash through him the minute he caught sight of her now.

Sure, he'd lost track of time, talking to her last evening. And his willful brain had even drifted into thoughts of kissing her under the Montana moonlight the way he'd kissed her under the Hawaiian moon.

But none of that made any difference.

A vacation fling was one thing, but with Livi stepping into Greta's life, he was going to have to be around her on a regular basis. If he wanted to be with her, it would have to be a real relationship—and he knew better than to try for that. He'd bombed out so thoroughly with Elly that he was in no state of mind to try again anytime soon. Or maybe ever. But certainly not when his divorce was only four months old. Not when he'd lost his own support team in Mandy and J.J. Not when he had the Tellers and Greta, who all needed what he was already afraid he might not be able to give—time and attention and thought.

And not when Livi was a Camden. Greta needed a woman to turn to, and Livi might be able to fill that role for now. But with time, Callan hoped to be able to find someone else to take over, both because he knew Mandy wouldn't want a Camden in her daughter's life, and because he wasn't sure himself if he could trust her. He knew that that was where some of his own issues overlapped and made things worse. After his experiences with Elly, he was finding it a struggle to consider trusting any woman again.

And when the any-woman was a Camden?

As far as he was concerned, no one could be less trustworthy than a Camden...

* * *

“You're awfully pale. Are you feeling okay?” Kinsey Madison asked.

Livi had arrived late Wednesday afternoon at Callan's condominium, located in a stately building behind Denver's Cherry Creek Shopping Center. Kinsey was already there and had shown her around the expansive four-bedroom, four-bath place. Then Kinsey had helped her arrange the dolls and stuffed animals she'd brought for Greta, after which Livi had offered to help make Maeve's accommodations more comfortable. They'd been hard at work when the nurse made her observation.

“I'm fine,” Livi answered. “Long day, is all. You drove all the way from Northbridge today, you must be feeling a bit weary yourself.”

“I stopped at my apartment and took a nap before coming over here, so I'm not doing too badly,” Kinsey said.

Livi had gone straight from the airport to her gynecologist and then home, too. But napping hadn't been possible. Being told by her doctor that she was definitely pregnant hadn't made for a restful homecoming.

“You're sure you aren't coming down with something?” Kinsey persisted.

I'm coming down with something, all right—a baby in seven months
.

And between now and then she would have to face her family with the news and let them know how it had happened.

She had no idea how she was ever going to do that.

And then there was Callan.

She didn't know what she was going to do about him, either.

But of course she couldn't say any of that, so she shook her head and said to the nurse, “I'm just tired.”

Tired and spent from the hours she'd passed alternately crying and staring into space until it finally, genuinely sank in—she was going to have a baby.

Without Patrick.

But it was still a baby.

Her
baby.

Something she'd wanted once upon a time; something she'd grieved losing the possibility of, along with grieving Patrick. But something that she would now get to have.

Livi wasn't happy. But she'd reached some sort of acceptance and had begun to feel a tiny ember of something that, given time, might turn into excitement.

As long as she didn't think about Callan.

Which was remarkably difficult when there was also some part of herself she didn't recognize that
kept
thinking about him. And not only in terms of the baby.

She kept thinking about talking to him the night before and how, like in Hawaii, time had flown by and she'd been in no hurry to have it end. She kept remembering so many tiny details of the way he looked, and how she'd gotten lost in studying them. She even kept hearing the sound of his deep voice in her head and feeling some kind of strange ripple every time she did.

Livi realized belatedly that Kinsey was still talking to her.

“Your family is big, isn't it? I mean, if what I've read in newspapers and magazines is true,” she was saying.

“It is big—and getting bigger and bigger,” Livi answered as they moved some furniture around.

“There's your grandmother, right?” Kinsey continued. “And ten kids who came from just her two sons?”

“You really have read about us,” Livi said with a laugh. Under other conditions the nurse's questions might have seemed nosy. But in the little while since they'd met, Livi had come to like Kinsey, who she guessed to be near her age. So this just seemed more like the beginning of a friendship. Besides, Livi had grown up in the public eye as a Camden and was used to people knowing about her family.

She confirmed that yes, all ten of the Camden grandchildren had come from only two sons, Mitchum and Howard.

“And which of them was your father?”

“Mitchum.”

Since it seemed as if Kinsey was making friendly overtures, Livi thought she should, too, so she said, “What about your family? Big? Small?”

“My mom just died.”

“I'm so sorry,” Livi murmured.

“Thanks,” Kinsey responded, before going on. “I've lived in Denver since leaving home for college, but Mom was the reason I was in Northbridge. My three brothers and I grew up there—on a farm about the size of the Tellers' place, and not far away—with Mom and our adopted father.”

“Were your parents divorced?”

Kinsey didn't answer that immediately. For some reason she hesitated, then said, “No. Our father died when Mom was pregnant with me. She married Hugh Madison when I was two. He died a year ago. Mom stayed on the farm, but she didn't do well after that. I quit my job in Denver to take care of her when she started to really fail.”

“How about your brothers? Did they help, too?”

“They're marines—all three of them overseas in Afghanistan. They couldn't get here. One of them—Declan—was injured the same day Mom died.”

“Ohh...is he all right?”

“He'll survive, but he was pretty badly hurt. He's had two surgeries at the naval hospital there, but now he's being transferred to a hospital in Germany for a third operation that might include amputating his leg. Our oldest brother, Conor, is a doctor, and he's with Declan. Conor can't treat him because he's family, but he's overseeing things. So neither of them could get back for Mom's funeral. Declan's twin, Liam, was on a special mission and couldn't be reached at all. He didn't know Mom had died or that Declan had been hurt until a few days ago. So I've been on my own with...well, everything.”

Kinsey sounded as if she'd faced her own overwhelming situation. Sympathizing, Livi was inclined to say she was sorry again, but wasn't sure it was called for.

So instead she said, “You went back to Northbridge to take care of you mother and her affairs, but ended up working with the Tellers?”

“Maeve fell the day after my mom's funeral. The doctor in Northbridge put Callan in touch with me to take care of her. It was a good fit because I could start there, and then come back here when they made the move.”

But that seemed to be as much as Kinsey wanted to say about herself, because she returned to asking Livi about her family—her siblings and cousins, her grandmother and especially her father.

And since it kept the conversation away from her current troubles, Livi just let that happen and answered Kinsey's questions.