CHAPTER ONE
WHENHEFIRSTOPENED his eyes, Cal Whittier had no idea what time it was. Squinting against the light from his bedroom window, he focused on the ceiling above him.
Memory came back in bits and pieces. Piling on top of him, weighting him down to the bed.
He’d had dinner with Joy the night before. Their standing Thursday night date. He and the petite banker had been dating for four months—longer than usual for Cal. He liked Joy.
But then he’d liked all of the women he’d dated. One thing he’d never had a shortage of was women.
He and Joy had each had a glass of wine at the restaurant—a steak place, he thought. He could remember ordering his medium-rare. They’d had patio seating. Joy had commented about the misters—an outdoor staple during Tennessee summers—making her hair frizzy.
She’d ordered a salad. And they’d decided to try the house wine.
He’d overindulged.
Cal was careful about his drinking. He had a nightly ritual. A glass of whiskey before bed to help him sleep. And if that didn’t work—if he was still up writing—he allowed himself another. But he never got drunk. And he almost always drank alone.
Last night he’d broken both self-imposed rules. After dinner, he’d consumed most of a new bottle of wine back at Joy’s place—and done it in front of her.
Like a bad movie, the reasons for his rudeness replayed with what seemed like sarcastic clarity in his mind’s eye.
Thursday had not been a good day from the start.
A promising student had appeared in his office the morning before, just weeks before her end-of-the-summer graduation, to tell him she was dropping out of school to join her boyfriend’s band. He’d been Courtney’s undergraduate adviser all four years of her college career. He’d had her in several of his classes, as well. She was carrying a perfect grade average. Dr. Caleb Whittier, Wallace University’s youngest English professor and department chair, was all for love and togetherness—as long as it didn’t involve him—but to throw away a lifetime of work, a more secure future, because of a new relationship?
And then his father had called to tell him that he’d canceled his fishing trip that weekend. It had taken Cal months to get the old man to agree to go—a thousand nonrefundable bucks to hold his spot for the seniors’ adventure holiday and to reserve a private room at his father’s behest—and the old man didn’t go.
He’d rushed home to load the car with the things he’d helped his dad pack the day before, determined to get the old man from the home they shared to the center where Frank would be loaded into a van and whisked away for the time of his life—only to discover that he’d have had to restrain his dad and then haul his ass out of bed, dress him and physically carry him to the Durango to get him out of their neighborhood.
The man might need Cal to prepare his food to get him to eat, but he was not in any way weak or disabled. He could still take Cal if
