Chapter Thirteen #2
“Don’t worry.” Alicia lifted her fingers to her lips and mimicked the twist of a key in a lock and reached for the dogs’ leashes. “I might be right, but I will not rub it in anyone’s face.”
Callum tried to decipher Alicia’s meaning, but he didn’t ask for clarification and followed her out the back door that led out of the kitchen to the backyard patio that wrapped around the side of the house.
Alone with the phone call that weighed heavily on her conscience, Grace pressed the device to her ear. “Hey, Hayden.”
She adored her brother. He was a hero. Her role model. She’d worshipped him as a kid and followed Hayden and Callum everywhere she could. Whatever he was about to say would come from a place of love.
Their connection crackled, coating his voice in static. “Gracie, what the fuck?”
Tough love. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Do you have any idea how scared I was?”
Her brother didn’t get scared. “I—”
“No. You don’t. Dad and Mari hadn’t heard from you. They’re a wreck.”
“I’m sorry, Hayden. I didn’t mean to freak you out.”
“Freaking out? You fucking scared the shit out of me. Do you not get that? Do you not get that you’ve had a huge-ass problem, and you didn’t loop me in?”
Her chin dipped, and once again her eyes burned—but these tears were the guilty kind, very different from the ones brought on by her frustration with Dominic.
“I didn’t know how to explain. I still don’t know how to, to be honest. Did Callum tell you what’s been going on with my phone?
I didn’t know about your missed calls and voicemails. I wasn’t ignoring you.”
He let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah. Yeah, he did. Which is why I’m not yelling.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“Gracie.”
“Okay, okay, I get it. I screwed up. I scared you. I didn’t check in and explain when I should have.” She twisted the black beads on her bracelet. “I didn’t give you details because I was more worried about distracting you.”
“Forget my job.” Static crackled. “You’re my family. My priority, and since I can’t be there, Callum is. You get that?”
“I get that.” She let out an unsteady breath and wiped at the corners of her eyes. She peeked out the living room window. Callum and Alicia walked down the street with both dogs sniffing from spot to spot. “Why is Cal here? Not why is he helping me—but why isn’t he with you?”
“That’s complicated. It’s a conversation you have to have with him.”
Callum mentioned betrayal. Now Hayden was punting the answer. For two guys who always called situations for what they were, they were more avoidant than she’d ever seen them. “Prying answers out of him doesn’t seem to be that easy.”
“The important thing is that he’s with you. Do what he says.”
“Obviously.”
“Obviously. Since I can’t be there, I’m relying on Callum. Can you promise me to do what he says?”
“I’m not going to promise unquestioning allegiance.”
“Grace.”
“Fine, yes, I will listen to Callum.” If Hayden had known what she’d already done with Callum, this would have been an entirely different conversation. “I’ve told him the same thing.”
“Good. All right, I have to go.”
The call disconnected. The connection had sucked, and when the line died, she suddenly missed her family more than usual. Grace sucked in a fortifying breath and used Callum’s phone to call her parents.
Dad picked up on the first ring. “Callum—”
The worry in her father’s voice cut deep. “Hey, Dad. It’s me on Cal’s phone.”
“Oh, God. Gracie—Hey, Mari, Grace is on the phone. Hold on a second.” A moment later, Dad announced, “We’re both here. Wait—is Callum with you? How do you have his phone?”
“He stepped out.” She swallowed hard. “But, yeah. He’s here. Hayden sent him to help me, and, well, he knows everything.”
“Everything?” Mari whispered.
“Yeah.”
“How’d he take it? Is he okay?”
The memory of him with a face full of mace, bent over and cursing, popped into her mind. Explaining that wouldn’t help this conversation along. “I think he was mad. Angry at Hayden, mostly.”
“He thought he’d lost you.” There was a strange softness in Mari’s voice that Grace didn’t understand. “Maybe we should talk to him.”
A knot thickened in her throat. Grace couldn’t explain why Mari’s tone affected her. “I’ll tell him, if he wants, to call you when he gets back.”
Her parents were unnervingly quiet.
“Well,” Grace broke the awkward tension. “Look, I know I fumbled and scared the hell out of everyone. I’m sorry.”
“We just want to know you’re doing okay,” Mari said. “Is everything taken care of, honey?”
She bit her bottom lip and didn’t want to lie. Apparently, she’d done too much of that lately, even if everyone had known she would not have been living a normal life. “It’s more complicated than I expected, but Cal’s helping me work it out.”
“What about Dominic?” Dad demanded. “If he’s giving you trouble, then Callum and I can sort that out.”
“No, Dad. Dominic is…” An unstable lunatic. “…possibly in more legal trouble. I don’t even know if I should have said that. Can we not talk about him right now?”
“Does he know where you are?”
Damn it, she didn’t want to lie to them. “Callum is handling it.”
“That wasn’t a no,” Mari said.
“No, it wasn’t,” Dad agreed.
“Look, I’m safe. I’m with Callum. He won’t leave my side until everything is fixed.”
“What does ‘fixed’ look like, Gracie?” Dad asked.
Callum’s promise of a new life, of a little house with a vegetable garden and friendly neighbors, surfaced front and center in her mind. She didn’t want to get her hopes up and certainly wouldn’t want to do that to her parents. “I’m not sure, to be honest.”
She stared out the window at Alicia and Callum making their way back to the house. “I have to go, but I love you and will let you know if I have any news.”
Their phone call ended, and she continued to stare out the window. Argos and Toto contentedly walked along as Alicia and Callum chatted. If Grace had been forced to predict the future, she never would have guessed those two would have met, nor would she have imagined Callum kissing her. Twice.
They entered the back door and unclipped the dogs in the kitchen. They trotted off as Alicia and Callum washed their hands.
“Who’s ready for tacos?” Alicia asked, drying her hands. “I’ll drive myself. I have to run errands after we eat, and then I’m having drinks with friends. Callum, you drive Grace.”
Callum crooked an eyebrow as Alicia ambled out of the kitchen, her purse in hand. “She likes to give orders, doesn’t she?”
“I like to organize,” Alicia called from the living room right before the front door shut.
They were all alone again, and now the house didn’t seem to hold enough oxygen. “I’ll grab my bag.”
She got two steps in before he stepped close behind her and wrapped an arm around her waist, belting her to his hard body. Every nerve in her jumped to life, and Grace was acutely aware of how warm and solid his muscles were.
His hot breath teased against her ear. “You looked scared of me when I walked back into the kitchen.”
The scent of his cinnamon gum and the warmth of his words twisted her insides. Maybe she was scared. A lifetime knowing each other, and suddenly now it was different. “I’m not scared of you, Callum.”
His lips brushed against her ear, and fireworks sparkled up her spine. “I’m in a hell of a predicament right now. I’m supposed to be heading for dinner, but the only thing I want to eat is…”
“Callum.” She shivered.
He squeezed her closer. His lips drifted against her neck. “But I’m not doing anything if you look that wary around me. Are we on the same page?”
She nodded, breathless and squirming, wishing he would pull them into bed and do what he almost said, but she was completely terrified that he’d even thought it.
His powerful hands turned her around and held her still with a possessive squeeze.
Looking up would only catapult her farther into this alternative reality where Callum Hale was actively pursuing her.
She’d gone her entire life wondering what it would feel like to have his attention.
Her best guess had been wrong. This couldn’t be a tenth of his focus, and it was melting her into pieces.
“Grace.”
She tipped her head back and met his smoldering gaze. “You caught me off guard.”
He rolled his bottom lip into his mouth, staring at her as if it were her lip he wanted to suck. “I messed up before. I didn’t say what needed to be said. I didn’t do what needed to be done, and it fucked me over.”
“I—What?” That didn’t make sense.
“I should have told you.” His lips quirked. “Or at the very least, kissed you years ago. Everything would have been different.”
She tried to understand—then everything came crashing down. “You think we would have got together? Stayed together?” She blinked, trying to read his expression. Be together, even now?
“I would have chased you,” he said. “You would have pretended to put up a fight. But we both know, if we’d admitted what was staring us in the face, if we’d gotten together, it would have been explosive. And that would have been it for both of us.”
“I wouldn’t have put up a fight,” she whispered.
She thought she saw him flinch at the history they could have had and missed.
Callum backed up, pulling her along until he dropped onto the chair next to the kitchen table. His hands moved to her hips and lifted her up and onto his lap, straddling her over his thick bulge.
Unconsciously, she rocked her hips—then caught herself. A fiery blush burned her cheeks.
“Explosive,” he growled against her neck.
A tornado of need spiraled in her core. Grace wrapped her arms around him.
“There you go,” he whispered.
The uneven cadence of her breaths seesawed. He teased her closer. She shifted against the hard length of his erection, watching his reaction, needing more of him.
He exhaled a heavy breath that stoked her confidence, flaming her arousal. “You absolutely know what to do when we’re together.”
Grace kissed him.
Callum groaned against her lips. “Fuck, baby.”
Her heart hammered. His hands clamped on her hips, rocking her against his cock.
She swept her tongue over his lips, and their kiss ignited like she’d lit fireworks.
Starved for him, she couldn’t be close enough.
His kiss was desperate, as if he hadn’t touched a woman in years, and his hunger poured over her.
Arousal pooled between her legs. Her nipples beaded, tight and wanting. Adrenaline burned over her skin. He’d stolen her resistance and melted her restraint.
The rough skin of his palms smoothed under her shirt and up the bare skin of her back and down again, gliding over her sides, rocking her against him again.
Her phone blared.
His hands froze.
Their breaths raced, and she needed him to touch her more than she could understand.
It kept ringing.
She opened her eyes and met his.
“Fuck,” he finally let out, snatching Grace back to reality.
She couldn’t form words. Achy, heady need clouded every thought, but still she realized they couldn’t do this right now.
The phone finally stopped ringing, but her text message chimed.
His lips quirked. “Fifty bucks says that’s Alicia wondering where we are. I bet she’d leave us be if—”
“No.” Grace inched back. “I’m not standing my friend up for tacos just because you’re—” She gestured. “You.”
“Me?” His grin hitched. “You’re the reason we haven’t left the house.” He gripped her hips and rocked her again. “Distracting me.”
Laughing, she rolled her eyes and pushed away.
Callum yanked her back into place. “You good?”
“Yes.”
He cupped her chin and turned her face until she met his intense scrutiny. “Are we good?”
The warmth flooding through her was very different from the heat that had her willing to make out with Callum in Alicia’s kitchen. She wasn’t used to the gentle care that she heard in his voice. Not from Callum or any man. “We are.”
Callum lifted her off his lap as though she weighed nothing and set her on her feet. “Let’s go before we get in trouble with Alicia.”