style="font-size:15px;"> Caleb locked eyes with his son. Took a half step back, as if the air had been kicked from his lungs. But then his initial composure returned. Sort of. If you didn’t count the tightening of his jaw or the way his eyes narrowed with instantaneous rage. He’d just found out the baby she’d told him she’d lost was alive and well and making an airplane out of Legos.
“This is—no.” The man Allie had loved with a sometimes frightening intensity gave her a hard look, then shook his head. “We’re not going to do this now. Not here. In front of…” Those gorgeous, all-too-familiar eyes of his welled with tears. “How could you, Allie?” He pressed the heel of his right hand against one eye, then the other, and cleared his throat. “Your honor, my name is Caleb Logue. I’ll be heading your security team.”
“Oh, Caleb,” she said, fighting past her own wall of tears. “I didn’t mean for this to—”
“As soon as you and your boy are ready to head home, I’ll accompany you.”
“Please, let me…explain.” Too late. He was already out the door.
“Who was that?” her son asked.
Your father.
CALEB COULDN’T BREATHE.
“Dang, Logue,” his old pal from the Seattle office, Owen Richards, said. “You look like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man—only whiter.”
“Thanks.” Caleb brushed past him toward the group of guys still out in the hall, who were feeling up a snack machine.
“Damned thing stole my quarter,” his younger brother, Adam, complained.
“Stow it,” Caleb said. “Everyone ready to rock?”
“Not without my quarter.” Adam gave the machine another thump, then switched tactics by sticking his hand up the lady’s metal skirt. “What bug crawled up your behind?”
What bug? Caleb snorted.
The one that came with finding out the woman he’d thought he loved was a lying, conniving wench who’s still as freakin’ gorgeous as ever and had bore him a damned good-looking son she didn’t even have the decency to tell him existed!
“THANKS FOR THE GRUB,” Adam said.
“You’re welcome.” Allie stood at her black granite kitchen counter, wiping grease splatters from the burgers she’d fried for dinner.
Burgers, boxed macaroni and cheese, and frozen peas.
Her mother would report her to some government agency for cooking such a lackluster meal. But then her mother had been a stay-at-home mom. She also had never received death threats. She had, however, had a policeman husband killed in the line of duty. Meaning that though she wished Allie had told Caleb about his son, she’d always been sympathetic to her daughter’s rationale for keeping Cal’s paternity a closely guarded secret.
Allie’s dad had been shot when she was just twelve. For years, she’d bitterly wished she’d never even known him, rather than to have loved him so fiercely only to lose him in such a useless, tragic way. Wanting to protect her son from suffering the same kind of loss, she’d done Cal a favor by never letting him get attached to his adrenaline-junkie father.
Adam asked, “Got any idea what Caleb’s so PO’d about?”
“None at all.” Allie scrubbed harder, thankful for the fact that while she’d always liked Adam, he’d never been that big on personal observations.
“Got any ice cream?”
“Cookie dough and cotton candy.”
He winced. “Guess those’ll do.”
She shot him a look. “You always this professional?”
“Give me a break. It’s not like I don’t know you. And anyway, Caleb’s loaded for bear. Trust me, ain’t no one gettin’ through him.”
“So he’s out there, then?” she asked, grabbing a bowl and the ice-cream spade on her way to the freezer.
“Yup. Right outside. Along with four other marshals.”
“That’s nice.”
“Nice?” He laughed. “Between them, they’ve got the firepower of a small country. Ain’t nothin’ nice about ’em.”
“Sorry,” she said, licking a sweet smudge of ice cream from her pinkie. “Didn’t mean to insult your arms supply.”
“S’okay.”
She handed him the bowl and a spoon. “So, is um, Caleb going to be inside at all?”
“Outlook doubtful—mmm, this is better than I’d expected. Thanks.”
“Sure. So, is there any time I might talk with him?”
“I guess.”
Was Adam really this dense? Couldn’t he see how much she needed to speak with his brother? While she didn’t for a minute believe she’d done the wrong thing in shielding her son from the certain disaster that was part of Caleb’s job description, she’d always felt wretched about her decision.
If only she could explain. To Caleb. To herself.
“Okay,” she said, hands on her hips, taking a deep breath. Time for a more direct approach. “Might it be possible for you to ask Caleb to come inside right now?”
“I’m eating my ice cream.”
Apparently, yes, Adam was that dense.
“MY BROTHER SAID you wanted to see me.” Caleb found Allie curled in an overstuffed lounge chair, reading court documents by the light of an artsy-fartsy lamp. In a swanky marble, brass and glass fireplace, a gas flame scorched politically correct concrete logs. Call him environmentally challenged, but he’d always been partial to wood. But then wood was a good, honest material. The woman seated before him could be called lots of things. Honest wasn’t one of them.
“Oh,” she said, her voice as flat as her eyes. “Hi.”
Not in the mood for forced pleasantries, he asked, “Our son in bed?”
She swallowed hard, then nodded. “Please, have a seat.”
“I’d rather stand.”
“You off duty?” she politely asked.
“Cut the chitchat, Al. You not only lied about losing my son, you didn’t even have the decency to lie to my face. You took the coward’s way out by doing it in a Dear John.”
“Caleb, if you’d just let me explain.”
“Explain?” He laughed. “Oh, I’ve spent the past nine years of my life mourning the loss of your—our—child and you’re going to explain?” He thumped the red fireplace wall in anger.
“I’m
