Long Way Home (4 page)

Callen approved of the change.

She was only in her mid-fifties. She’d married Charlie young and never tried again. Said his actions knocked the romance right out of her. But the way she looked at Tom—and the way they laughed over memories from when he was a teen and she was a young mother in her early twenties—made Callen twitchy.

She might not be his biological mother, but that didn’t mean he wanted men hanging all over her. Callen liked Tom, but he’d kill him and bury the body in the woods if he hurt her.

Still torn by his feelings and reeling from the disclosures about Sylvia Jenkins, a woman he didn’t even know but who had given birth to him, only to be abandoned in a psychiatric hospital by Charlie, Callen went with the easiest solution—backing his brother up. “Yeah, what Declan said.”

Tom’s eyes narrowed. “Wait, are you admitting she’s your mom, too?”

Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of comment Callen wanted to avoid. One of many, actually. Grace . . . the circumstances of his birth . . . he wanted it all on conversation lockdown. “Don’t start.”

Declan blew out a long labored breath. “He’s not ready.”

“I’m beginning to think he has a problem with women in general.” Leah started ticking off the count on her fingers. “Me, his mom, Sophie. Mallory.”

Callen wrote the list off to circumstance. He did not have a problem with women. He had a problem with all the family lies eating away at him.

Leah had battled through similar emotional disasters. Her father held Charlie responsible for Leah’s mom’s suicide. Charlie’s hustle and the way he led Leah’s mother on during their affair likely did play a role in the terrible choices she made. So did Marc Baron being Charlie’s first willing criminal accomplice, a role he tried to deny when insisting Leah dump Declan out of loyalty to the Baron family name.

Still, despite their initial struggles and fights, Callen did consider Leah an ally. “I thought you’d understand.”

Her gray eyes softened, and the amusement fled her expression. “About dysfunctional families? Yeah, you have more than your share of nonsense, but you’re not alone. We all have things we have to overcome, but we
can
overcome them.”

“You’re not even talking to your dad right now.”

When Declan started to say something, Leah put a hand on his arm. The simple touch stopped him, and she faced Callen down. “Are you really comparing my dad to your mom? Are you saying what my father did by lying to me for all those years and pretending he was innocent of Charlie’s schemes while stoking my hatred for your family is comparable to your mom protecting you?”

“No.” The answer was
never
. Callen had issues with Kim, the woman he’d always thought of as his mother and the woman who raised him until he was ten, but he didn’t doubt that she loved him.

He didn’t have to think that one over, but he did shoot a glance at Tom. As far as Callen knew, only Leah hadn’t shared the truth with anyone but the brothers about the role Leah’s dad played in the scam that bankrupted the town and many of the people in it.

“He knows. So does Mom. Leah told them,” Declan said. “But I think you proved your point.”

Tom cleared his throat. “I’m not an expert in this sort of dysfunction, but it definitely sounds like you have a female issue.”

The smart-ass comment broke the winding tension, and Callen was grateful. Not grateful enough to let that slide, however. “
You’re
a female issue. Now get back to work.”

Declan shook his head. “Cranky bastard.”

Trying to make a point, Callen held his shovel out to Tom. “All of you. Work.”

The older man stared at the tool, but didn’t grab it. “So then you’re not going to tell us more about Grace?”

“No.”

“Anyone want to take bets on how long it is before he heads over to the Severn Motel to find her?” Leah actually rubbed her hands together as she talked.

Callen started to wonder if, with all this yapping, they’d get the yard holes filled in before the first snowfall. “Never.”

“You did say she was smoking hot.” Tom had the nerve to look skeptical as he said it.

“Since she lived with Callen here, I also have to guess she’s blind and has the tolerance level of a saint,” Declan said.

Leah reached for Callen’s arm and grabbed on to his rolled-up plaid sleeve. “Wait a second. You guys actually lived together?”

No way was he answering that.

Declan did it for him. “For months.”

Tom’s whistle echoed through the trees a second time. “Damn.”

“Do we know if he held off from going over and seeing this Grace person last night at the motel?” Leah asked as she looked from one man to the other, skipping right over Callen.

He
was standing right there. “I didn’t go.”

“He’ll go over tonight.”

“Yeah, Tom’s right.” Declan pointed at Callen’s face. “You can tell he’s already thinking about it. Wondering about her and why she’s in town.”

Callen was ten seconds away from swinging the shovel.

“Tonight.” Leah declared with a slice of her hand through the air. “No contest.”

Since they were giving voice to his greatest worry, Callen dug in on denial. “Happy to see you have faith in my control.”

“One thing I’ve learned about you, Callen, is you’re not dumb.” She rammed a finger into his chest, thumping him as she emphasized each word.

He rubbed the now-sore spot from where her fingernail poked into his shirt and scraped his skin. “Thanks. I think.”

Leah sighed as if the weight of the entire female race rested on her slim shoulders. “Which means you have to be smart enough to know that letting a woman’s anger fester, making her wait, is only going to make it worse for you.”

“Maybe she’s the one who owes me an apology.” That’s sure as hell the way Callen saw the fallout. Not that words would be enough. Grace had tried that, and he hadn’t bought it.

He couldn’t believe anything she said right now. Being Walker Reeves’ partner, the very guy who had hunted Callen across three states and made his life miserable, colored everything. Reeves made it his job to go in and talk to Callen’s bosses until he lost jobs and even an apartment thanks to manufactured stories about being a criminal like his dad.

So to find out the woman he’d been sleeping with, been thinking about as more than . . . well, it sucked. Sent his brain spinning, until Callen had decided to come to Shadow Hill and check the place out. That was three months ago.

“Maybe she is at fault for whatever happened to make you leave.” Leah didn’t sound convinced.

“That’s what I said.” Callen warmed to the subject. The argument was one he nurtured and used as the excuse for being alone when some days all he wanted was to climb into bed with her.

“Could be it’s all on your ex.” Leah smiled.

Now Leah got it. “Right.”

“But I doubt it.”

Yeah, he was afraid of that.

The pounding on the door started right as Grace entered into Round Two of her internal debate about what to do for dinner. She had leftover salad from her lunch run but neither the stomach nor the will to eat it. And really, once a day of mountains of green stuff was enough. She wasn’t looking for a nutrition medal here.

She’d barely unfolded her legs and made it from the desk chair by the window and around the corner of the bed before the knocking started again. Without checking the peephole or calling out she knew who stood there. Maybe that’s why she didn’t rush. The chances of this being a welcome-to-town visit were slim.

Callen didn’t have a secret knock, but he could make rapping on a door sound like a demand. And then there was the fact only he and Declan knew where she was staying.

After tugging her oversized chambray shirt down and over her butt and going up on tiptoes for a quick peek into the hall, she put a hand on the doorknob. A few deep inhales and a mental count from ten to psyche herself up for the looming showdown, and she opened the door.

The outfit of black leggings and long-sleeve shirt dipping to her upper thighs didn’t exactly say
dressed to impress
, but she was all about comfort these days. The vomiting had stopped when she hit the thirteen-week mark, just as the books promised, but the disappearing waistline called for elastic.

The quick glance at the flat line of his mouth and the tension pulling at its corners told her all she needed to know. Also made her wish she held a shield. Anything to fend off the verbal blow she sensed heading her way.

She stepped back and gestured for him to come inside. “Do you want to—”

“Why are you really here?” He didn’t move out of the doorway. Just stood there in his faded jeans with the bottom edge of his long-sleeve tee hanging loose against those slim hips.

Callen did casual better than any other guy on the planet. From the beginning she’d loved watching him walk. Confident and a little cocky, the way he held his body and moved had her mesmerized.

Even now, with the anger pulsing off him, she couldn’t look away. Couldn’t downplay her feelings either. “For you.”

This time when she gestured him inside, he moved. Two steps and he crossed the threshold. Another few and he walked past the small love seat in the room’s cozy-bordering-on-claustrophobic living room area by the door. He got close to the bed with its stacks of pillows and the crumpled blue throw at the bottom and turned around to face her again.

“That sounds good. Kind of hot, actually, which could be your game.” He stopped to rub the back of his neck. “But I want a real answer.”

“You were done with me, but I wasn’t done with you.” Not even close. Even with the trembling moving through her and the mix of dread and excitement shaking her bones, she knew he was the one.

“Uh . . . okay.”

But that doesn’t mean she’d made her point. “Still hot, or did I slip into creepy?”

“You lied to me.”

She closed the door and leaned her back against it. Even with the thick socks she wore, a chill continued to move through her.

Curling her toes under, she stopped looking at the floor and his feet. Her gaze traveled over him and ended with his lightly tanned face and the dark scruff around his chin.

Time for more honesty.
“I did. I absolutely lied. By omission—but that doesn’t make it better.”

If possible, his frown deepened. “Okay, what the hell are you doing?”

The sharp whack of his voice tore through her. She leaned over, tempted to turn the volume up on the television and drown out his skepticism, but snapped it off instead.

“What?” She crossed her arms, then uncrossed them. Unsure what to do with her hands, she grabbed on to the edge of her shirt. “I thought you wanted the truth.”

“You’re admitting you set me up?”

He just never stopped with this accusation. He’d been beating this drum since that night he came home all fired up and yelling about how she’d betrayed him. “I’m admitting I went out of the way to meet you because Walker was obsessed with you.”

“Still is.”

She ignored that because she could only deal with one mess at a time. “You came up to me in the bar—”

Callen’s hands went to his hips, and his intense gaze never wavered. “The bar where I always hung out. Where you stalked me, knowing I’d see you, with the way you look, and sit down next to you.”

Because of the compliment buried in there, she’d swallow that accusation, too, but she was reaching the end of her tolerance at warp speed. “We talked.” For hours, but she decided not to remind him of that. “I gave you my phone number, and the next night—”

“Yeah, I get it.” He dropped his arms to his sides. “It’s seared on my brain. Used to be a great memory, but now I see it as the first step in what you hoped would be my demise.”

Not like him to be so dramatic, but that’s the version of Callen that greeted her now, and she played a role in stoking his extreme paranoia, so she had to deal with it. “It’s still a good memory. Maybe I should tell you the version I remember?”

“I know what happened. Physically, with us.”

So did she. Every minute. She’d gone back to his place. He drove her home the next morning and never left. He moved in, they hung out, doing everything people forging a life together do. “When I was with you, Walker was the last thing on my mind.”

“But you reported back to him.”

That was one sin she would not accept. “I did not. Us, the two of us after the initial meeting, that had nothing to do with Walker.”

“No, no.” Callen held up a finger, then balled his hand into a fist. “You don’t get to do that.”

She knew he wasn’t threatening or attacking. The anger inside him burned bright enough for her to see it. Feel it. He clenched his hand as a way of holding back the sensations coursing through him. She’d seen it before, on the rare occasions when he talked about his father.

Charlie Hanover.

For a dead man, he sure as hell messed everything up.

“You don’t get to pretend the deception magically ended once we started fucking. That somehow the timing means what you did doesn’t matter.” Tense energy continued to roll off him and bounce around the room. “I know you want to absolve yourself from guilt, but that’s not happening.”

“Is that what you think?” Her head pushed back from the whip of his fury.

“Yes.”

“God, Callen. I am well aware what keeping things from you cost me. You walked out.” She choked on the words. Desperate not to lose it, she stopped and stared at the ceiling, forcing her mind to focus on the moment and not on the pain that had rubbed her raw over the last few weeks. Somehow she lowered her head and looked at him again. “You left, and I didn’t know where you were or how to find you. That tore me apart.”

“You should have asked Walker.”

The words hit her like a fist to the stomach. Since she guessed that was the hope, she grabbed on to the doorknob to keep from doubling over.

Already emotionally bleeding, or at least feeling like she was, she dove in. If Callen intended to break her, she would hand him every last inch. “Walker wasn’t talking to me, because I had the nerve to fall in love with you.”

Callen shook his head as he stalked toward her, as if he could walk through her to the door. “I can’t do this.”

“Listen to me.” She lifted a hand to touch his face.

“No.” He jerked away as if he couldn’t stand the contact. His arm went around her to the door, but his hand slipped off the knob. “Do you understand what the last three months have been like for me?”

God, she did. She’d spent so many hours sitting on the floor, battling conflicting bouts of numbness and pounding sadness. “Yes.”

“You lied to me. Just decided I didn’t get to hear the important information that impacted my life.” He stepped back. The words tumbled out of him as if he were pacing and talking to himself instead of having a conversation with her. “Of course, why should you be any different? The woman I thought was my mother lied to me, too. Apparently that’s a thing with the women in my life.”

Thought was his mother?
“What does that mean?” Grace tried to get him to look at her. Ducked when he ducked. Moved when he did.

He finally looked up again. “I’m supposed to believe you don’t know?”

The shock and despair in his green eyes stole her breath. “I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

“Grace, enough. No more lies.”

She sensed he leveled a new accusation in her direction. Something important. Something big. “You seem to think I sat in a room plotting with Walker the whole time.”

Callen treated her to a firm nod. “Basically.”

He had every right to play the victim card, but the fact that he kept throwing it down and not listening made her crazed. Anxiety built in her gut until she thought she’d scream. Reining in all the frustration buzzing in her head took a second, but she managed it.

“I wanted to know the man who was driving my partner insane.” Callen opened his mouth, and she had to fight to keep from putting a hand over his lips. She rushed her words instead. “And do not ask me again if he was only my partner.”

“It’s a logical question, under the circumstances.”

Score one for Callen.

If he wanted to drive her to the edge, he’d found the perfect way. This was a sensitive subject, and the jabs questioning her fidelity could make the other news she had to tell him a complete nightmare.

Gritting her teeth, she called on her last reserves of calm. “Walker is a friend. A good friend. You were the only one I was sleeping with, the one I loved and—”

“Stop saying that.” This time Callen put up a hand as if to knock away her words.

She refused to back down. Not on this. “At first I didn’t tell you about my relationship with Walker because I didn’t expect to fall for you. Then I couldn’t figure out how to say it.”

“You didn’t even try.”

“I knew about your trust issues.” It was a delicate and small way to say such a massive, all-encompassing thing.

Callen’s eyes bulged. “Gee, I wonder why I had those?”

She leaned the back of her head against the door. “I messed up. I will say it a thousand times if you want. I will get on my knees, tell your brothers, put it on the Internet. However you need me to say it, I will. I made a mistake.”

“A pretty fucking huge one.” The words were harsh, but much of the anger had seeped out of his tone.

“Yes.”

“Fine. We agree on something. Lucky for us.” He reached for the door again, but his palm flattened against it instead, right by her shoulder.

She wanted to touch him, was dying to touch him, but she held off. “Answer this. If I had told you who I was that next morning, after we met and made love and spent the night all over each other, what would you have done?”

“Left.” His elbow bent and he dipped in closer. “But don’t act like that proves something. If you had confided in me, I would have been able to make an informed decision.”

She could smell the soap on his skin. “To leave.”

“And I would have gone before we moved in together. Before I . . . got attached.”

She grabbed on to the way he stumbled over the words, hoping it meant something for this usually-so-sure man to fumble. “You make me sound like a favorite pillow.”

“Don’t turn me into the bad guy in this.”

“I’m trying to get you understand.”

“What?”

When it looked like he was going to push off from the door and move away again, she wrapped her fingers around his arm. She would have slipped them around his neck and held on but she knew he wasn’t ready. He had to make the move. “I have been trying since the night you confronted me to make you listen. You dropped the bomb about us being over and left. We never talked, and you refused to communicate.”

He lifted his head and stared at her. “You’re missing the point, Grace. You had to be confronted. You didn’t tell me on your own. I found out who you really were, what you did for a living, because I saw you with Walker. You had no choice but to confess then.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” She leaned in until their foreheads touched. At least some part of her made contact. “I am sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”

Callen shook his head, and his hair rustled against hers. “You have to leave.”

The bumpy turn in topic had her reeling. “The motel?”

With a loud exhale, he broke the bond and put some air between them. “The state.”

“No, Callen.” She tightened her hand on his arm. “That’s not going to happen.”

“I don’t want you here.” Nothing in his tone suggested that was true.

Taking the risk, this time she skimmed her fingertips over his chin, loving the roughness of the stubble against her sensitive skin. “Or is the problem that you’re afraid to have me close by?”

“I’ve never lied about wanting you. Even now I . . . fuck me. I knew this would happen.” He took her hand and flipped it over, placing a soft kiss in the dead center of her palm. “I do want you.”

Some of the iciness inside her melted. “Callen—”

“It’s the only fucking thing we’ve ever gotten right. The bedroom. There we communicated fine. Problem was it only happened there.”

“That’s not true.” She wouldn’t let it be true. What they had went beyond the physical. Maybe it started there, but it grew into something. Something that would now bind them forever.

Her thoughts brought her full circle. She came to town for a reason. “We need to talk. There are things I need to tell you.”

“Forget talking.”

Before she could blink, his palms covered her cheeks and his mouth covered hers. Hot and deep, he kissed her. His mouth slanted over hers and the force of his will pounded into her. She could feel the desperation and anger, the loneliness and the last bits of those pent-up feelings he claimed not to have for her.

This was no subtle peck. This amounted to a claiming, a reminder of what they once were. Long and lingering, he kissed her until she forgot all the bad times and a giddy lightness filled her head. When he finally pulled back, she felt dizzy, like she could put her head on his shoulder and stay there forever.