Long Way Home (12 page)

Her admission also had a good portion of the lunchtime diner crowd silently cheering her on. Knowing Sweetwater and the speed with which gossip flew here, as in most other small towns, Callen guessed she’d be something of a hero by midnight.

He thought that title fit, but he really had no idea what to say. Other than his brothers, people didn’t rush to his defense. But now she had and he didn’t hate the sensation. “Well.”

She turned on him, clearly still on an adrenaline high with a shot of energy pouring through her. “What?”

“That was sexy.”

Her shoulders fell and she gave him one of those twisted-lips looks that let him know she thought he’d lost his mind. “That’s what does it for you? Me yelling?”

“I hate to admit it, but yes.”

She shook her head. Might have said the word
idiot
under her breath. “I will never understand you.”

That made two of them. He wanted to hold on to his anger and confusion and insist they talk about the baby. He might have done at least one of those things if his mind hadn’t blanked on him. “Probably not.”

She frowned. Looked like she wanted to put a hand to his forehead to check for a fever or injuries or something. “I have to leave anyway.”

That was just about the last thing he expected her to say. This woman kept him jumping, and he always lagged a mile or so behind. “And here people tell me I’m the one who has a problem with running.”

“You do.” Grace tugged on the edges of her sweater, bringing them closed and covering her shirt underneath. “I actually need to meet Leah.”

Yeah, he didn’t love that idea. “Why?”

“Stop looking like we’re going to come after you with pitchforks. We do talk about things other than you, you know.”

Once again he couldn’t call up a comeback that made any sense. “Okay.”

“She asked me to come over to the house.”

“My house.” His turf. The one place he could hide and lick his wounds.

“And hers, yes.”

But the more he turned the idea over in his empty head, the better it sounded. “Good.”

“Really?” The skepticism came through in her tone and in the grimace on her lips.

“We can talk there.”

A strange wariness seemed to fall over her. “Why does that sound like a bad thing when you say it?”

“I don’t know, but let’s hope we’re both wrong about our concerns.”

Declan wished he could be anywhere except the middle of the kitchen at Shadow Hill right now. Upstairs, maybe, or hiding in the shed out back. He should have known by the terse call from Leah. She’d said she was on the way home in the middle of the day and he should wait for her. That kind of thing never turned out great for him. He always hoped the message meant they’d be hitting the bed. Usually it meant they needed to talk.

Who knew there would be so much talking.

When she walked in a few minutes ago, Callen came in behind her, took one look at her expression and headed back outside. The lucky bastard.

Declan watched Leah move now. She was a bundle of energy in a gray pantsuit. Last thing in the world he wanted to do was waste time fighting. Not when there was a perfectly good mattress right upstairs.

He waited for a break in the action, for her to wind down and stop stomping around on the hardwood floors. At the moment she was on a second round of “what were you thinking” about his decision to go over to the motel and talk with Grace earlier.

He didn’t regret it. But he was rethinking his choice to tell Leah about it right away.

She took a breath and he dove in. “Are you going to stop yelling anytime soon?”

Her body froze and she spun around. The glare she leveled in his direction could melt a good-sized city into a big puddle of nothing. That told him what he needed to know.

She bit out a response anyway. “No.”

“I’m allowed to protect Callen.” Admittedly, his delivery and timing probably sucked, but so what? Callen mattered, and Declan would not apologize for acting the way a brother should. “He’s not doing okay.”

“Because of Grace?”

The comment made Declan wonder what version of this mess Leah had been watching. Callen got battered by their mother, Charlie, the FBI and now Grace. He fought a constant battle, the type that would drive Declan insane if he sat in the middle of it.

And Declan had a simple bottom line as he stood by the butcher block island with his hands grasping the edge and his knuckles turning white. “I don’t want my brother to get hurt.”

Leah let out a little sigh. The type women did when men finally hit on a reasonable defense of their idiocy. “Honestly, I think he’s been hurt a lot in his life.”

That was kind of the point. “Then he deserves a break.”

She came around the island and met Declan on the side closest to the kitchen sink. With her arms wrapped around his neck and her feet up on tiptoes, she leaned in and balanced her forehead against his cheek. “He has to figure this out on his own, Declan.”

He didn’t let the opportunity pass him by. He captured her mouth in a searing kiss that let her know Callen was officially the last topic worth talking about at the moment.

“Hello.” There was a sharp inhale of breath. “Sorry. I knocked, but no one answered.”

Leah pulled back and turned toward their guest. The smile on Leah’s face did nothing to stop Grace from slowly backing out of the room, toward the front of the house.

Looked like the fun times were over, or at least on hold. Not the first time that happened in this traffic accident of a house. But that didn’t mean Declan had to like the interruption.

“The doorbell is on the fritz,” he said. “And it’s hard to hear anyway when Leah is in full-on angry woman mode.”

“Really? That’s what you say right after you crawled out of the doghouse?” Leah said.

He was pretty sure he’d be able to get out again, or at least he hoped that was true. “In addition to the doorbell, there’s also trouble with the plumbing, the foundation, half the steps on the staircase—”

“She gets the idea.” Leah motioned for Grace to come further inside the kitchen. “Declan, don’t you have something to say to Grace?”

He’d fumble through this somehow. Or he thought he could until he spied Grace. “I . . . what?”

She hid her mouth behind her hand and pretended to cough.

There was no mistaking that reaction, so he had to ask. “Why are you laughing?”

Grace shook her head. “If you could see your face. You look like you want to yell but worry Leah will break you in half if you do.”

Leah joined Grace in looking. Then she frowned. “Declan, say it now.”

“No, it’s okay.” Grace waved off the concern as she stepped closer to Leah. “We’re good.”

Declan liked Grace more with every passing minute. “See?”

“Really, Leah,” Grace said. “He was watching out for his brother. Honestly, I like the idea of someone looking out for Callen.”

Yeah, Declan definitely liked her. “Me, too.”

“Not to state the obvious here, but maybe you can both do it,” Leah suggested. “Working together. A wild idea, I know.”

Not a bad plan—and he guessed Grace could be much more persuasive than he could. “I’m starting to think so.”

“Exactly where is Callen?” Grace peeked around corners. “He had to get here right before me since we were both downtown and my bank pit stop took about three minutes.”

“He’s out there.” Leah nodded her head in the general direction of the back door. “We can chat later. Seems more important that you talk with Callen now. And I’ll keep Declan occupied so you guys can have some privacy outside.”

“Thanks.”

After a small pat on Grace’s shoulder, Leah grabbed Declan’s hand and tugged him toward the stairs.

Not that he was complaining with where her mind went, but . . . “Are we really not watching whatever happens out there?”

Leah glanced around him toward the back door as it closed behind Grace. “‘Some privacy’ means not listening in. We’re still watching.”

Now that was more like it. “For a second there I thought we were going to let Callen fumble through his love life without an audience.”

“Lord, no.” Leah had Declan in the hallway and on the bottom step. “We’re going to go upstairs and watch over this from our bedroom.”

The words were enough to send heat flashing through him. “You know where that will lead, right?”

“I certainly hope so.”

***

Callen didn’t move as Grace let the door bang behind her. He sat on the top step of the back porch, facing the wide expanse of land in front of him. In addition to the main house, there were other buildings. Structures Grace couldn’t identify, but that all looked to be under construction of some sort.

Then there were the holes dug in the ground, some filled in and others not, with piles of dirt in a random pattern all around the open space before the grass met the trees.

She had no idea what that was about. Didn’t know much at all about Shadow Hill other than the brothers had inherited it, and a bunch of debt, when their grandmother died.

She sat down on the step next to him, with her palms balanced on the deck on either side of her thighs, and joined in the staring. “How far back does the property go?”

“Beck is handling some boundary issues, but the space is about twenty acres.” Callen spun the water bottle he’d set between his legs.

“So, all those trees and then way beyond.” She was just talking nonsense now. But the words rolled out and she didn’t fight them. Not until she could figure out the rights ones to say.

“Yep.”

Callen wasn’t exactly helping with the staccato answers. “And what’s with the holes?”

He turned to face her. “Is this what you really want to talk about?”

Apparently the guy didn’t understand the concept of stalling. She blurted out the other topic on her mind. “You’re drinking water.”

He lifted the bottle, as if studying it. “I limit myself to water and coffee these days.”

“I’m happy to hear that.” There were days, right at the beginning of them dating, when he woke up and hit the bottle before his feet touched the floor. He never got falling-down drunk or mean, but he’d keep the alcohol flowing all day. Would go from hard liquor to beer then back again without getting sick.

A friend referred to the ability as being a functional drunk. The tag sounded pretty awful to Grace, but living through it had been worse. He’d fought off headaches with handfuls of aspirin but always dragged his body up and out to work. Some of his construction jobs were dangerous, and she worried every minute he was out of the house and out of sight.

She knew he didn’t drink for the taste or because he liked it. He drank to numb the pain, and when she had begged him to stop, grabbing his arms and pleading for him to pick her over the bottle, he did.

“I stopped drinking while we were together. You know that,” he said in a low steady voice.

“I worried that . . . it doesn’t matter.” But it was the nightmare scenario. That he’d raced right back downhill, only this time he wouldn’t put the brakes on.

After he’d left she’d feared looking for him and finding him passed out somewhere. A body could only take so much, and he punished his with hard living for a long time.

“That I would dive into a bottle once we broke up?”

“I’m not sure that’s how I’d describe what happened to us, but yes.”

He’d insisted he could stop, and he surprised her when he actually did. Not that it had been easy. Those detoxing days had stretched on and on, and the nurse who lived next to them helped. He went in and out of the outpatient services at the hospital and took the prescribed drugs to lessen the effects of the comedown.

And there were so many. Shaky hands and insomnia. His temper flared and he got sick, throwing up for what felt like days at a time. But he worked his way through it, and the days that were so rough at first got easier. But she wasn’t in his head and didn’t know how much he craved the alcohol even now.

He nodded as he twirled the water bottle in his hand. “I thought about it.”

“Drinking again?”

“But I didn’t.” He exhaled. “I figured Beck and Declan deserved more from me than that.”

Callen always did that. Pointed to the others in his life worth living for, but never put his own name on that list. “
You
deserve better.”

“Right.” He stared at the nearest pile of dirt.

She didn’t push, because he still wasn’t ready. She loved him and found him worthy, and for now that would have to be enough to get both of them through this. “You still attending meetings?”

“Once a week I make the long roundtrip.”

Unless something had changed, she knew he’d never been big on the program aspects of recovery. “Does your family know?”

“Nope.” He glanced at her again. “Yes, I know that’s not how you heard it operates. Not being all that mainstream religious, and not particularly good at following a bunch of rules, I tried this alternate thing called Smart . . . well, the name doesn’t matter. Point is it’s not perfect but it works for me.”

She didn’t care about the name or what rules he followed so long as he kept the bottle away from his mouth. Truth was the news she was about to hand him might push him in that direction again. “Well, I’m proud of you.”

“I did it for you.”

“You did it to be healthy.”

He thumped the bottle against the deck, and the hollow sound echoed through the quiet wooded area. “Not at first.”

She sat there and inhaled the fresh air. The crispness suited her. Heat gave her that sticky clothes-are-too-tight squirminess. The cool breeze combated the kick up in body temperature she’d experienced since week two of pregnancy.

Soon this total battle with her body would end. Reading all the books about expecting made her head pound. She’d stopped paging through them so she could hold on to the I-got-this fantasy running through her head.

The quiet continued, and the sound of the woods filled in the empty space. Rustling leaves and the creaking of wood from one of the buildings. The hypnotic sounds promised calm and relaxation even though she felt neither.

He blew out a long breath. “It happened after you had the flu, right?”

“What?” Her head snapped back, and then she followed his gaze to her stomach, where her hand rubbed over her shirt. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.”

She almost smiled. Of course he knew. The fear and worry she expected in broaching the subject never came. Quite the opposite. His matter-of-fact delivery warmed her. Comforted her as much as the oversized top she pulled close around her body. The opening line made it possible for her to sit there without shifting around and searching her mind for the right words.

From the way he studied her, she guessed he’d been turning the news over in his mind, dissecting and analyzing. He wasn’t shouting or blaming. He just sat there, almost deadly still with an unreadable expression. Not angry, not happy . . . not anything obvious in the lines of his face or curve of his lips.

She couldn’t read his mood at all, but some of the pieces came together in her head. “That’s why you were upset when you got home last night.”

There was a strange squeaking noise as he squeezed the water bottle too tight and the sides crumpled in. “
Stunned
might be a more appropriate word.”

“Horrified?” She wouldn’t be angry if he said yes. She’d struggled with the news and had raced to the store for a third pregnancy test before she believed her usually regular body had a reason for running off schedule.

“I’m not sure what I feel, but not that. At least I don’t think so.”

“That’s where I started. Did a lot of why-me thinking and whining.” She also got all spun up about suing the birth control maker. “All rational thought abandoned me back then.”

“Really?” He sounded amused by the idea.

None of this rolled out the way she expected. She thought she’d tell him and he’d lose it. Instead, they went back and forth as if they were talking about where to go get a burger. It was surreal but also touched off a wave of relief. It flooded through her, wiping out some of the churning anxiety that had her head spinning before today.

“You thought you’re the only one who got hit with a buttload of dread at the idea of being a parent?” He looked like he might say yes to her question, so she explained. “Difference is, I’ve had fourteen weeks to get used to the idea, though I still wake up every morning convinced that stupid stick was all part of a weird dream.”

“Fourteen weeks.” He wiped a hand over his face. “Damn. Definitely when you had the flu.”