Emmie had accepted a post at the University of California in San Diego, and he had come back East to help her pack. They had timed the trip to coincide with Aunt Lilly Hale’s family reunion-the summer one, that over one hundred people came to.
He knew about hugging old ladies now-it wasn’t a strange experience anymore. As she pulled away her gray curls brushed the underside of his chin, and his throat tightened around a strange lump.
That
wasn’t unfamiliar at all. It always happened when Aunt Lilly Hale hugged him. Maybe his unconscious was signaling him to pay attention because this time, for the first time in his life, the family he had come to visit was his own.
“I expect you’re a very useful young man,” Lilly Hale twinkled, so obviously sizing him up, it was impossible to take offense.
“Yes ma’am, I am,” he laughed. It had become a private joke between them. “Need some tables set up?”
“Not today, but I’ve been waiting and waiting for you and Emmie to get here. I need the piano moved.”
“Mama,” her daughter, a plump fiftyish woman with a severe gray haircut, overheard the conversation, “We’ve already told you, nothing short of a crane is going to move that piano. We lost the poplar that shaded that wing in that storm in the spring,” she explained to Caleb, “and now the sun comes in. Mama’s worried that the sun isn’t good for the piano. Which it isn’t, but that Victorian monstrosity weighs about a million pounds. Even if it could be shoved to a different place it would leave gouges in the hardwood floor. We’re just going to have to order shutters for that window.”
“I don’t want shutters in there,” Lilly Hale objected. “If we rearrange the furniture we can put the piano on the side where the sun never comes in.”
“But mama, that mahogany love seat alone-”
“Elizabeth.” Lilly Hale silenced her daughter with the one word. “I value your opinion, but I do
not
wish to learn why I can’t. I want to know how I
can.
”
Calling the piano a monstrosity was a trifle harsh, Caleb decided when he studied the problem, but the instrument, true to its Victorian aesthetic (although completely rebuilt on the inside forty years ago) looked like a piano on steroids. By themselves, the fat scroll legs ending in massive claw feet had to weigh two hundred pounds, and the total weight probably topped one thousand. Enough men could lift it, but Lilly Hale probably knew that. Why did she need
him?
Beside him, Lilly Hale folded fleshy arms under matronly breasts. “Did I tell you,” she asked, blue eyes twinkling up at him, “my great-niece has brought her children who don’t seem to relate to anything that doesn’t run off batteries?”
It took rousting most of them out of the pool, and rescinding the “no bathing suits in the house” rule, but shortly Caleb had twenty-two kids, ranging in age from ten to twenty, rimming the piano shoulder-to-shoulder. He showed them how to spread their hands palm up against the undercarriage.
“We’re going to pick it up?” A kid missing twelve-year molars asked, blue eyes round with awe.
“Pick it up and carry it,” Caleb affirmed. “Remember, we only need to raise it three inches. Hands in place? Everybody ready? I’m going to count to three-”
“Wait, wait! I want to do it!” A small figure barreled into the room. Orphan Annie curls of newly re-grown hair sprang around the golden freckled face. Peachy color bloomed in her cheeks, which were filling out again.
“Hey Victoria,” the kids called. “Come on. We’re lifting a piano!”
“First give me a hug,” Caleb forced his voice around a lump the size of an aircraft carrier.
Skinny arms circled his waist in a reassuringly vigorous squeeze, and he inhaled little girl smell. He cupped the curly head. “Victoria, huh?”
She pulled away enough to grin up at him. “That’s what I make everyone call me now.”
“We’re read-d-d-d-y,” one of the kids yelled impatiently.
Caleb promised himself he’d find her later for a good long hug, and let go of her reluctantly. “Move closer together, you guys. Make room for Victoria.”
“Come in.”
Teague Calhoun, his Gulf-blue polo shirt the perfect shade to bring out his eyes and white hair, lounged in Miss Lilly Hale’s desk chair, his expensively manicured fingers relaxed on the polished walnut desktop. He had sent for Caleb to meet him in Miss Lilly Hale’s office. Caleb, non-commissioned officer that he was, knew a power play when he saw one. Every instinct he had put him on guard. Calhoun’s choice of venue and posture were intended to make the statement that Calhoun’s position was secure, while Caleb’s wasn’t.
Caleb didn’t like being summoned, and he didn’t like the subtle disrespect Calhoun showed to Miss Lilly Hale by appropriating her desk. When Calhoun didn’t suggest Caleb sit down, Caleb took advantage of the omission by leaning nonchalantly against the wall beside the long window, thus putting his own face in shadow. “Yes, sir?” he inquired politely.
“I wanted to talk to you”-Calhoun squinted, trying to see Caleb’s face-“where we could come to some understandings in private.” Belatedly, the senator realized his mistake and waved at the room’s other chair. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
Caleb shook his head, grinning inwardly.
One point to me.
“I’m fine. What exactly do ‘we’ need to understand?”
Calhoun stood up-ah, that was better, his body language now acknowledged they were equals.
Two points to me.
Calhoun squeezed around the desk until he could see Caleb’s face. “Charlotte and I consulted a geneticist. He studied the DNA of Vicky’s bone marrow donor.”
“Victoria’s.”
Calhoun’s jaw tightened. He clearly wasn’t used to anyone correcting him, but wise enough to pick his battles, he nodded shortly. “Victoria’s. Don’t you want to know what the geneticist said?”
Caleb felt his face harden. “Why would I?”
“Because he told me, that there is a ninety-nine percent probability that the donor is my son. The donor was you, wasn’t it?”
A tap sounded on the door. Almost immediately it opened, and Emmie’s head appeared. “Caleb? Sorry to bother you. I need someone to hold my hand. Can you come?”
Caleb laughed aloud at the wide-eyed innocent look and rather vague tone. She was being protective of him again. It did something to his heart every single time. Protective females were often likened to she-bears, but Emmie didn’t do things the way anyone else did- including bears. She had apparently learned he was closeted with Calhoun and was determined not to let him face the moment alone.
He outstretched his arm in invitation. “Why don’t you join us? I can hold your hand here. Mr. Calhoun tells me Victoria’s donor is his son, isn’t that interesting?”
“Interesting,” Emmie agreed, letting him tuck her against his side.
“He also wants to know if
I’m
Victoria’s donor.” What a politician the man was! With DNA evidence in his hands, he refused to commit himself. He had neither claimed he was Caleb’s father, nor that Caleb was his son. Only that the “donor” was his son. He didn’t want to know who his son was. He was only trying to get Caleb to tell him how much damage control was needed.
Emmie, of course, recognized the implications instantly. She squeezed his waist to tell him she understood what this confrontation with Calhoun meant to him and that she would wait for his lead. Knowing she had his back, suddenly, he was no longer tense-in fact, the situation was a little funny. He thought he would enjoy watching Calhoun sweat for a while.
He’d already prepared an explanation in case anyone ever noticed the resemblance between him and Victoria. He put on his country-boy persona and turned to Calhoun. “Well now, Senator, they didn’t tell me who my marrow went to, and I didn’t ask. Still and all, you and me, we come from the same isolated area. I wouldn’t be a-tall surprised to learn we were kinfolk.” He widened his smile as if he’d just made a discovery. “I expect just about everybody in Rose Hill has the same DNA.”
The senator flicked a glance at Emmie, then back at Caleb. “Do you know who your father was?”
Caleb chuckled in reluctant admiration. He had to hand it to the senator. He was starting to sweat, but he still wasn’t admitting anything. Caleb tightened the screws. “Yes, sir. Sure do.”
This was the moment he’d thought about many times. He had Calhoun exactly where he wanted him. He could destroy Calhoun in the media, especially if he told not just who he was, but exactly how his mother died. It was an option he’d refused in the past because coming out would put other SEALs in danger. No longer. At Emmie’s urging he’d been seeing a counselor. He had accepted that his days of operating were over. He was of more use in other areas now. He was free to make Calhoun pay and pay. At the very least, he could make Calhoun lose sleep for a long time, wondering when, or if, Caleb would drop his bombshell. Funny how none of that mattered anymore.
“Was it me?”
Little as Calhoun wanted him to be his son, Caleb wanted even less to have Calhoun for a father. There was only one answer because there was only one thing he wanted from Calhoun now. Do-Lord looked Calhoun straight in the eye. And lied. “No, sir.”
Calhoun had the grace not to look relieved. Instead, he took on the expression of benevolent concern that made him beloved by the voters. “Being a donor for someone, whether or not you were Vic-Victoria’s, was a brave and generous act. I like to see good deeds rewarded. I have some pull in a few places.” The senator smiled at his little self-deprecation. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“There is.” Caleb squeezed Emmie’s waist. She hadn’t moved a muscle, but she was vibrating with such intense joy, he expected her to start humming any second. When he’d cut Calhoun loose,
he
was the one who was freed, and she had felt it. “I want Victoria to be my little sister. The way I see it-if I
was
her donor-
my
marrow is making her blood’s red cells. Even if we weren’t blood kin before, we sure are now.”
Calhoun looked surprised for a moment, but canny manipulator that he was, he calculated the cost-benefit ratio to himself. Caleb’s explanation of their kinship would work, if anyone questioned Caleb’s sudden inclusion in the senator’s life. He gave a genial chuckle and reached out to shake Caleb’s hand. “Son,” he boomed, “we’d be pleased to consider you an honorary member of the family.”
Caleb closed the office door behind the departing Calhoun (noting with a certain satisfaction that in the end,
he
was the one who held the territory). He leaned against the door and opened his arms for Emmie.
“Just a second.” She extracted an old-fashioned key from a pocket in her skirt, inserted it in the huge old keyhole, and turned it. There was no click.
“You know”-Caleb crossed his arms over his chest and looked down to watch the proceedings-“the morning of Jax and Pickett’s wedding, I thought you were pulling me in here for a quickie. Is it too much to hope that’s what you have in mind now?”
Emmie jiggled the key, feeling for where it struck the lock’s tumblers. She snorted and rolled her eyes. “You can take the man out of the jockeys, but you can’t take the jock out of the man.”
Caleb laughed. “Taking the man out of the jockeys works for me. Specially if we can get the girl out of the… Hanes Her Way?”
“Victoria’s Secret.”
“A thong? Oh hell, don’t tell me. You’ve got on a thong under there!”
“Well, I do, and if you behave”-she aimed a sultry smile over her shoulder-“maybe I’ll show it too you-later!” The bolt at last slid into place with a solid clunk. She straightened and gripped his upper arms, digging into the warm, solid flesh with her fingertips, since her hands didn’t go even halfway around his biceps.
She steered him-he
let
her steer him and they both knew it-until his legs bumped the big desk. “Sit. Somebody is going to come looking for us in a minute though, and we need to talk.”
“The four scariest words in the English language.” He opened his legs and pulled her between them. “How ‘bout we make out instead?”
“Caleb, be serious a minute. You just got as complete a rejection as possible. I’ll never feel sorry for myself again because my parents’ work took them away from me. How do you feel?”
“Okay.”
Emmie frowned at him.
“Good.”
Good Lord,
this
was the man’s idea of sharing his feelings.
“Sort of light. You know, it’s strange. I had decided if he didn’t know I was his son, I wasn’t going to tell him.”
“Except we both think he did know. Fairchild did anyway. Fairchild knew your grandfather when he was a young man-he guessed who you were as soon as he saw you. After that, he tried to keep you as far away from the Calhouns as he could-including offering me inducements to dump you.”
“Where is Fairchild, these days? Charlotte called me every few days with an update on Victoria’s condition, but she never said anything about him.”
“Charlotte relates only on a need-to-know basis, but Wilmington gossip says she kicked him out of her house. And don’t change the subject. We’re talking about how you feel. Will you be okay if Teague never acknowledges you’re his son?”
His expression changed. His mobile lips moved in a sweet smile she’d never seen before. His eyes widened and softened in a look of awe. “You’re protecting me again, aren’t you?”
Emmie bit her lip and nodded. “I love you.”
Caleb pulled her into his arms with a sound between a groan and a laugh. “Okay, little she-bear.” He rocked her in his arms. “Okay. There was a moment when I realized I was free to destroy him or torture him for the rest of his life. It was like the Lords of Karma said, ‘You dreamed of this a long time. Are you sure you want to let it go?’”
“Yes, you were locked in a struggle for power when I came in. What made the difference?”