Chapter Two
CHAPTER TWO
There wasn’t anything in the world that Caleb dreaded more than a woman crying. Just seeing Sophia break down made him feel powerless. He knew exactly why tears were his kryptonite. He could trace it directly back to his childhood.
Back when his mother, Daisy, had left Moose Falls and taken him and his brothers with her, she had cried herself to sleep every night for months. Leaving their father and filing for divorce had been brutal. He winced just thinking about the D word. Even as a little kid he’d known that she had continued to love her husband despite her desire to cut him out of her life. He, Landon, and Xavier had taken turns consoling her. She had smiled through her tears, never really managing to convince them that she was all right. She’d just held on for their sakes.
“Your daughter?” Caleb asked, bringing his thoughts back to the present.
“Yes,” she answered in a small voice. “Lily. She’s four.”
Aww. She was little.
“That’s a pretty name. Is someone watching her for you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, sniffling. “My sister, Patience.”
“So she’s safe?” he asked her.
“Of course,” she said, sounding slightly indignant.
“And your sister isn’t going to leave her, right?” he pressed.
“She would never,” Sophia said staunchly. “She’s the world’s best auntie, bar none.”
Already he could see her calming down.
“So despite the inconvenience of being trapped with yours truly, there isn’t really a problem affecting your daughter, right?”
“Right,” Sophia said, drawing out the word as if she was pondering the matter. “But I’m a single mother, so I always have to think of her before myself.”
“I’m sure the two of you are super close, but remember, this is just a moment in time. Before you know it, you’ll be back home with her, and this will be nothing more than a memory.”
“I don’t like small spaces. They give me a panicky feeling.” Her voice sounded really small. Right before his eyes Sophia appeared to have shrunk down inside herself, reminding him of a scared little kid.
Caleb looked around the attic. “It’s actually pretty spacious. When we were kids, my brothers and I used to hide up here as part of hide-and-seek.”
Sophia shivered. “When I was a kid, my stepfather locked me in our small attic and forgot I was in there. Or so he said.”
Caleb didn’t react at first. He wasn’t sure if she was kidding, although that would be one messed up joke. One look at her face and he knew she spoke the truth.
“Th-that’s awful,” Caleb said, shocked at her admission. No matter how traumatic his childhood had been due to his parents’ divorce, he had never experienced anything like what she’d gone through. He had been well loved and taken care of.
“Sadly, my mother didn’t find me for hours.” She wrinkled her nose. “It was quite traumatic for an eight-year-old, who became afraid of the dark and small spaces as a result.”
Bam! Now his insides were oozing soft, gooey stuff. A few minutes ago he had been certain that this woman was a sharp-tongued ice queen, but now his heart was breaking for the pint-size Sophia. He had the feeling she talked a good game but wasn’t half as tough as she pretended.
Caleb swallowed past the huge lump in his throat. “That would do it,” he said. “Why don’t you try to focus on something other than your past experience? What did you come up here for anyway?”
“An old camera Hattie’s been wanting to give me. It’s around here somewhere. I think she said by the door,” she explained. “I almost forgot about it, what with being locked in and all.”
“Why don’t we poke around a little bit and see if we can find it?” Caleb figured looking for the camera would be a great distraction from her fear of being locked in the attic.
He stood up and began rummaging through some boxes by the door. After a few minutes Sophia joined him. Thankfully, there wasn’t a whole lot of dust up here, and everything seemed to be well organized. He pulled out a few photo albums and tucked them under his arm.
Suddenly, Sophia let out a gasp. “I hit pay dirt. Look at this beauty.”
Her face lit up like sunshine as she took the camera out of its case and held it in her hands. She turned it all around, upside down and sideways, her gaze full of admiration. Her movements were almost sensual as she caressed the camera.
“That definitely looks old-school,” Caleb said, noticing that it was in pristine condition.
Sophia’s eyes were sparkling in a way that made her look even more beautiful than before. He wished he’d been the one to make her glow instead of an old camera in Hattie’s attic.
“It’s a Leica thirty-five-millimeter rangefinder.” She let out a low whistle. “These are hard to find and pretty pricey.” She chewed her lip. “She said it belonged to your grandfather.”
“She must think a lot of you to part with it.” Caleb knew his grandmother had shared a grand love affair with Jack Stone, who had tragically died while mountain climbing. His own father, Red, had witnessed his father’s deadly fall. Being back in Moose Falls had revealed a lot of family secrets he’d never known about. So far, Alaska had been eye opening.
“I-I can’t believe she would give me something so precious.” Sophia ran her hand lovingly over the camera. “And to be honest, I’m not sure I should accept it.”
“Have you met my grandmother?” he asked with a snort. “She’s not the type who handles hearing the word ‘no’ very well.” It was one of the reasons he and his brothers had relocated to Moose Falls. Hattie had sold them on their inheritance, Yukon Cider, and wanting her dying wishes to be upheld. “When I turned eight, Hattie ordered a snow-making machine for my party. My birthday is in June!”
Sophia began to chuckle. He liked seeing her this way, carefree and light. The graceful slope of her neck made her look even more visually appealing. She was one beautiful and complex woman. He had the feeling that if he scratched her surface, there would be so many more facets to Sophia. But the truth was, he wasn’t looking for a relationship, and he didn’t even know how long he would last in Moose Falls. Four months down and eight more to go in order to comply with the contract they’d signed with their grandmother.
“You’ve got that right,” Sophia said. “Hattie is no joke.”
“If she wants you to have the camera, it’s yours,” Caleb said. “That’s how it works with Hattie. You’re going to have a fight on your hands if you resist.” Caleb chuckled just thinking about Hattie’s feisty nature, and he was grateful she hadn’t lost her lively temperament with her terminal diagnosis. Despite being in renal failure from kidney disease, Hattie was a firecracker.
She shrugged. “I just figured that your dad might want it for sentimental reasons.”
Caleb scoffed. “Doubtful. Red’s not the nostalgic type. Honestly, I wouldn’t know. He was pretty much a ghost in our childhoods.” He let out a brittle laugh. “Not exactly father of the year if you know what I mean.”
“I’m sorry,” Sophia murmured.
“At this point it is what it is,” Caleb said. He wasn’t looking for pity.
Sophia lifted the camera to her lips and placed a kiss on it. “I’m going to treasure it always. I can’t wait to test it out.”
Caleb’s gaze was trained on Sophia’s lush, beautiful lips. It had been a long time since he’d been tempted to kiss a woman. Being burned by Abby and Gillian had done a number on him and his desire to get close to anyone, and this was the longest he’d ever gone without female companionship. He wasn’t here in Moose Falls to establish a romantic connection. Being here was purely a business move to enable him to truly pursue a career in acting. If they sold Yukon Cider, he could use his share to bankroll his life as an aspiring actor in Los Angeles.
He tried to distract himself with something else other than Sophia’s lips, but there was nothing up here but boxes and boxes of stuff. A light floral aroma rose to his nostrils. His chest tightened at the feminine scent that hovered in the air.
Was it getting hot in here or what? Or was it Sophia’s close proximity that was heating up the room? Caleb loosened the top few buttons of his long-sleeved dress shirt, then rolled up the sleeves.
“Wh-what are you doing?” Sophia asked with wide eyes.
Caleb smirked. “Don’t worry. I’m not taking my clothes off.” He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “It’s getting a little stuffy in here, isn’t it? I figured that I might as well get comfortable.” He sat down on one of the sturdy containers.
Sophia nodded. “Of course.” She jerked her head in the direction of the photo albums he’d placed next to him. “What do you have there?”
He picked up one of the albums and opened it. “A few old photo books. I’m hoping to find a few pics of me and my brothers. We don’t have a whole lot of photos from when we lived here.”
It was understandable, he thought. Daisy Stone had picked up and left Moose Falls with her three boys in tow. They had relocated to Arizona, where they’d lived with their maternal grandfather. Clearly, his mother hadn’t had time to sort through pictures on her way out of town. Once she had decided to leave her husband and Moose Falls in her rearview mirror, it had all happened fast and furiously. As an adult, Caleb realized that everything had occurred at such lightning speed that his mother hadn’t been fully prepared for their new life. For Daisy it must have felt like massive grief. She had been forced to mourn the life she’d left behind, all while raising three spirited children.
There was a reason Daisy Stone was his shero.
The very first picture in the album jumped out at Caleb. Staring back at him were his parents on their wedding day. In his entire life he had never seen any of these photos. Not a single one. And now he was seeing Daisy and Red in all their glory. His mother was wearing a romantic long-sleeved wedding gown that swept all the way down to the ground. His dad was also dressed all in white with a pink bow tie and dark sunglasses. Judging by the lack of snow on the ground, it was spring or summer. They both looked effortlessly cool, as if they had stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. They also looked as if they were madly in love with each other. His heart lurched a little bit at the realization.
“What? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” Sophia said, leaning forward so she could get a peek at the book.
“That’s exactly what I feel like,” he said, feeling a bit numb as he turned the pages. “It’s like I’m seeing my parents for the first time. They were young… and together. I don’t have a lot of memories of them being happy together.”
Sophia scooted closer to him, clearly wanting to view the photos. Caleb didn’t mind Sophia’s close proximity. She smelled nice, and her attitude seemed to have settled down in the last few minutes. She was being way less snarky.
“Is that Hattie?” Sophia asked, pointing to a black-and-white photo of an attractive woman. Caleb did a double take.
“Whoa. It is her.” He let out a whistle. “This picture must be more than fifty years old.”
“Hattie was a babe,” Sophia gushed. “And your father was Alaskan eye candy.”
Caleb looked over at her and made a face. “Easy there. Those are my family members you’re talking about.”
Sophia rolled her eyes and reached out to turn the page. She let out a tutting sound. “Oh my goodness, this is adorable.”
The photo was of him and his brothers with their parents. Landon couldn’t have been more than two years old at the time. They were all smiling and happy. For a moment he had the oddest sensation, as if someone had reached into his chest cavity and was squeezing his heart. Because of his parents’ divorce, Caleb had somehow pushed a lot of the good times from his memory. But here was proof right in front of him that they’d experienced joy as a family unit.
Raw emotion threatened to swallow him whole. The photo showcased his family before they were fractured by divorce and their rapid exit from Moose Falls. None of them had known what was coming when they posed for the picture. Even to this day he hated saying the D word out loud.
He cleared his throat. “This is proof that I was always good-looking,” he said in a teasing voice.
“Indeed,” Sophia said, her eyes radiating understanding. Even though he had a habit of making jokes when things got too emotional, he didn’t think that he’d fooled Sophia.
“I get it,” she said. “My parents split up when I was a kid, so I understand. I would probably think I was hallucinating if I came across a photo like this of my family.”
He reached out and ran his hand across the image. “It’s kind of mind-blowing to see these pictures and know that this was my life, even though my memories of all of us together are sort of fuzzy.”
“Yes, but these photos prove that you came from love, and that’s important to know.” She shrugged. “Or at least it was for me. My dad used to always tell me that no matter what went down between my mom and him, they’d once loved each other. And that my sister and I came from that love.”
“That’s nice,” Caleb said, wishing that his own parents had given him that reassurance. But his parents’ divorce had been ugly, and Red hadn’t been present in their lives. There had been a big gaping hole where his father should have been. And it had shaped his life in ways he still was trying to wrap his head around. Being back in Alaska was causing old wounds to reopen.
A grumbling sound emanated from Sophia’s direction.
Caleb turned toward her. “Was that you?”
She nodded. “My stomach is rumbling. I’m starving.” She let out a groan. “Hattie told me to get something to eat, but I decided to venture up here to find the camera first.”
Caleb shook his head. “Never put food on the back burner. That was the motto of the Stone brothers growing up.”
She rubbed her stomach. “I bitterly regret not eating, although the camera is pretty epic.”
“Not to rub it in, but the lobster tails and crab bites are out of this world. Chef’s kiss,” he said, making a gesture by pinching his lips with his fingers and then raising them in the air.
“Thanks for not rubbing it in,” Sophia said, her stomach rumbling even louder. He imagined visions of lobster tails were now dancing in her head and taunting her. “I’ve been meaning to lose weight, but not by being stuck in an attic with no food.”
Caleb’s gaze swung back in her direction. “Lose weight?” His eyes took in her snatched waist and curvy hips. She filled out her dress as if it had been made only for her. The fabric clung to her body in all the right ways. As far as he was concerned, Sophia was flawless.
“You don’t need to lose a single inch,” he told her. “Trust me on that.”
Sophia regarded him with a bewildered expression. She seemed to be speechless for the first time since they’d been up here.
Didn’t she believe him? He would give a million dollars to know what she was thinking at this exact moment. She was choosing to keep her thoughts to herself, which was fine. They’d already shared a few secrets between them. He wondered if Sophia already regretted her candor. There was something about being stuck in this attic that made the space feel like a confessional. He barely knew Sophia, but it didn’t feel like that. Strangely, he felt a connection to her, which was baffling and a bit alarming.
“There’s an old trick I learned to distract myself from being hungry. Want to know what it is?” Caleb asked.
Sophia eyed him with skepticism. “Sure. Why not?”
He reached over and took her hand and folded her fingers into her palm. “Make a fist,” he told her. His hand lay over hers, and although he was only trying to show her a technique, his skin tingled at the contact.
“A fist?” she asked, knitting her brows together. “That’s supposed to make me forget about lobster?”
“I know it might sound strange, but it’s all about focusing your energy elsewhere,” he explained. “If you clench your fist, your mind focuses on that and not on your hunger.” He still had his hand over hers. She looked up at him, and for a few moments they were gazing into each other’s eyes. All of a sudden, the vibe between them was intimate. He saw the look of recognition pass over Sophia’s face. She felt it too.
“Okay, maybe we should try to bang and shout again.” She took a quick look at her watch and stood up. “I’m guessing we’ve been up here for roughly thirty-five minutes with no sign of rescue in sight.”
She walked over to the door and tugged at the knob before she began to pound on it while screaming at the top of her lungs. He had to give it to her. She had some serious lung power. Sophia reminded him of one of the scream queens from classic horror films. He stifled the urge to burst out laughing at the sight of her pounding and yelling. Something told him she wouldn’t appreciate the fact that he found the situation amusing. He wasn’t insensitive to her fears, but all in all, he knew they would be fine. His brothers and Hattie would definitely be looking for him. And since Sophia was the official photographer for the evening, her absence would also be noticed.
“Let me know when you’re tired. I can take a turn,” he suggested, sitting back on the crate and leaning against the wall. A few seconds later he felt a burning sensation across his chest. He reached down into his shirt and scratched. The feeling spread to his legs, and he began to vigorously scratch. Heat suffused the back of his neck. A fiery sensation was creeping across his body.
What the hell was going on?
“What’s wrong with you?” Sophia asked, looking at him with wide eyes. “You’re acting like you’ve got ants in your pants.”
He looked down at his chest, quickly noticing red welts on his skin that were spreading by the second. And itchy as hell.
“I have no idea, but I’m itching like never before in my life.” Unable to stop himself, he dug his nails into his skin and scratched. The more he thought about not scratching, the fiercer the urge became.
Sophia left her post at the door to rush over to him. “Let me look,” she said, scrutinizing his chest.
By this time his body felt like it was on fire. On impulse he ripped his shirt off and threw it to the floor, breaking his earlier promise not to take his clothes off.
“Oh, no,” Sophia said, clamping a hand over her mouth.
“What?” he asked, trying not to panic at the situation. “Tell me!”
“I think you’re having an allergic reaction to something. You have lots of… welts all over you. It looks really bad.” Sophia’s expression was a mix of disgust and pity. He wasn’t sure which was worse.
Ugh. Good thing he wasn’t trying to impress the most gorgeous woman in Moose Falls. If she was going to see his six-pack abs, Caleb didn’t want it to be at a time like this when he was covered with strange red bumps. This could be a sign from the universe to steer clear of Sophia.
Caleb didn’t have any known allergies, and he’d never experienced anything quite like this. His mind was racing to figure out what was going on.
Suddenly, Sophia pointed to something behind him. “What are those creepy-crawly things over there?”
Caleb turned to look, immediately spotting the nasty-looking creatures slithering around.
“Those are carpenter ants,” he said, leaning over to get a better look. “I think they’re coming from the wall I was leaning against.”
“Eww, that’s so gross,” Sophia said in a raised voice.
“Seriously?” Caleb asked. “Where’s the compassion? I’m the victim here.”
“I’m sorry. I know that’s not comforting at a time like this,” she said in a meek voice that sounded nothing like her own. “Did they bite you?”
“Well, they certainly weren’t blowing kisses,” he muttered.
Sophia’s lips twitched, and he sensed that she was doing her very best to stop herself from bursting into laughter. Maybe if his body wasn’t on fire, he might find the situation humorous as well. He let out a groan. Feeling itchy was the worst sensation in the world.
“I’m sorry, maybe you should turn around. I’ve got to scratch my legs and I need to take these off.” He undid his belt and shucked his pants off. Thankfully, he was wearing a pair of boxers. Sometimes he just went au naturel.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, give me at least a little warning,” Sophia said, covering her eyes with her hand.
Just then the door opened with a slight commotion. His brothers were standing on the landing, along with Jacques. All of their mouths were hanging open at the sight of him and Sophia. He was pretty sure that his lack of clothing wasn’t helping matters.
A feminine voice rang out from behind them. “Caleb Stone. Why aren’t you wearing any clothes?”
His jaw dropped almost to the floor.
“Mom,” Caleb said in a surprised voice as Daisy Stone’s beautiful face came into view.