Chapter 17 #2
I went about the notions of getting the restaurant ready for the lunch rush, all while glancing at my phone every five minutes, checking to see if she’d gotten back to me.
Though I knew better than to expect her to contact me. She’d told me she was alive, that’s all I was going to get. She’d gone somewhere. To keep everyone else safe if indeed the shooting had had something to do with her.
Prideful woman. I shook my head as I put the last of the glasses away.
“Tell me where you are,” I demanded, leaving the message that her voicemail cautioned me against. I walked into the kitchen, surprised and delighted to find my brother there. “Please,” I added before hanging up. Beau looked up and met my eyes as I put the phone in my pocket.
Despite all the things I was battling with right then, it was pretty great seeing Beau back where he belonged. The restaurant had always felt partially empty when he wasn’t in the kitchen. It was the whole reason we’d opened the place, for it to be a family business. I didn’t like running it alone.
“I’m glad you’re back,” I told him genuinely. “Even though you’re a grumpy old bastard, you do bring a sense of cheer to the place.”
Though I didn’t expect Beau to smile back at me, I didn’t expect him to glower either.
“You need to rethink this relationship,” was Beau’s reply, while continuing to chop onions.
He’d somehow finally let us convince him to hire a nanny to look after Clara. She was in her last year of nursing school and had an extensive background check, and managed to somehow survive his grueling interview process.
I’d met her. She was younger than I’d expected. Pretty. Kind. Barely five feet tall yet stood up to my brother. Interesting.
“Excuse me?” I didn’t mask my ire from my tone. It was no mystery who and what he was talking about.
“I heard about what happened.” He ignored the uncharacteristic warning in my tone, even though I knew he heard it. Beau wasn’t going to be scared away by me, not when he had something to say.
I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck. “Of course, you did.”
I’d had enough foresight to call my father earlier that morning, giving him the blandest version of the story I could. Though there wasn’t really a bland way of explaining we were shot at.
My unflappable father took the news as well as a parent hearing their child was shot at might’ve, simply asking, “Your girl, she okay?”
I had smiled at the warmth and concern in my father’s tone, mentally making a note to organize a dinner with them once I’d convinced Calliope to come back. “She’s okay,” I’d told him. “Although I doubt she’d appreciate you calling her a girl.”
“You’re probably right,” my father had chuckled. “But I’ll do it. Because I’m an old man, and she is a girl to me. And I’m sure I’ll find it a little amusing to see Calliope Derrick’s claws.”
I’d shaken my head at the mischief in my father’s tone, a sudden warmth blooming in my chest at the prospect of seeing them at a dinner table together. At threading Calliope into the fabric of my life.
“You didn’t tell me,” my brother boomed, jerking me back into the present.
An accusation.
Either my father told him, or he heard it through the grapevine.
Likely the former, since my brother didn’t make a habit of talking to anyone, therefore, he never knew any of the town gossip.
I loved town gossip, so I knew about Finn and Laurie dancing around each other and her latest boyfriend getting a record number of parking tickets.
“I was planning on it.” It was the truth. “But you’re having some well-deserved respite from bad news, and I didn’t think telling you about something like this was pressing since nothing happened.”
“Calliope was shot. That’s not nothing,” he reminded me harshly.
My teeth gnashed together as I remembered the shot, her cry of pain, her blood on my hands and the bone-chilling fear I’d experienced while thinking that I was going to watch her die.
“I’m well fucking aware Calliope was shot.
” I cracked my stiff neck. “She’s also, thankfully breathing and will recover fully.
” I made a vow to myself that I’d research all the plastic surgeons in the area who could treat her if the wound scarred, thinking of that scar on her eyebrow.
She wouldn’t wear another reminder of pain.
“I’m happy to hear that.” At least my brother sounded sincere. His face softened a fraction, which meant it went from straight up hostile to grumpy, his default. “They have any idea who did it?”
I shook my head. I had just gotten off the phone with Finn, who had told me that the tire tracks had been matched to an older model car, which would actually help narrow it down, but it would take a while.
“Curious, though, considering you’d be hard-pressed to find someone in this country you’d consider an enemy,” Beau continued chopping. “Yet I have a hunch Calliope has a list as long as a CVS receipt.”
My eye twitched, feeling both protective and pissed at my brother. “I’m not sure I like your insinuation, brother.”
He stopped chopping to stare at me with a cold gaze.
“I’m not insinuating anything. I’m saying it outright.
I don’t pretend to know what Calliope did before she came here, but it’s common knowledge she was working on Wall Street and making a fuck-load of money.
Those things don’t happen, especially when you’re a woman, without pissing some powerful people off. ”
My brother echoed the thoughts I’d been having and more.
“And again, I don’t pretend to know her well, but Calliope Derrick doesn’t seem like a small-town woman.” He narrowed his eyes. “Not one by choice, at least. It stands to reason, why is she here? What is she running from?”
Again, he verbalized questions I didn’t have the answers to. Ones that I’d been ruminating on but ones I’d never force the answers from Calliope.
“You know anything about that?” Beau pressed, not having my patience.
“No.” I looked directly into my brother’s eyes. “I’m not demanding things of her that she’s not ready to give me.”
“Yeah, well, noble of you.” He shook his head.
“But it’s looking like that nobility will get you killed.
I’m not burying my brother. I’m not burying another member of my family.
And as much as I like her, I’m not going to let Calliope drag you into a shitstorm.
” His tone was matter-of-fact. As if he had any kind of fucking say.
“She’s not dragging me anywhere.” I threw up my arms. “I’m going willingly.
And I will go into any fucking storm so she’s not standing there alone.
I understand that you’re saying this out of a misplaced attempt to protect me, but I’ll caution you against talking ill of my woman again.
” I placed my hands on the counter, leaning forward.
“And if you attempt to go behind my back, try to warn Calliope off, our relationship is done.”
Beau blinked at the threat I’d never imagined uttering to my brother. It physically pained me to say those words. He wasn’t just my brother, he was my best friend. I’d do anything for him. But I was also willing to do everything for Calliope.
Beau’s gray eyes were a storm of emotion, fluctuating between anger and disappointment and acceptance. “I won’t.” He nodded curtly. “But you need to think about the conversation we’re having, one similar to the one you had with me about Naomi. I ignored you then too.”
It was a slap, him bringing Naomi into the conversation, as if her and Calliope were even remotely similar.
“And you got Clara out of that.” I was unable to go into more detail, I was that angry.
“I did,” he conceded. “And I’d do it all over again.” Again, something I knew to be true. We’d all go through anything and everything to have Clara in our lives.
“Calliope is nothing like Naomi,” I added.
“She isn’t,” Beau agreed. “She’s a good person. But that doesn’t mean she isn’t involved in bad shit. Doesn’t mean that the wreckage won’t be fucking horrific.”
He said it like it was a harbinger of doom.
“You’re a pragmatist.” I waved him off. “You don’t believe in anyone or anything predicting the future.”
Part of this was my brother’s nature, yet part of it was the nature of the beast when you had a sick child. You didn’t want to predict the future.
My brother looked me square in the eye, somber yet also almost appearing apologetic.
“You don’t need to be a fucking psychic to see that Calliope Derrick is a woman who will ruin lives.
I’m hoping it’s just her own. Not because I don’t wish her to have a good life, but because I don’t think she’s capable of being satisfied with that. ”
“I’ll prove you wrong.” I felt as if he’d hit me square in the chest, but I stayed strong, holding his gaze. “Because I’ll give her a good fucking life.”
I made the vow as if it was in my power to make. Even as the words came from my mouth, I knew they were a lie.
As much as I wanted to give Calliope a good life, a great one, she was the one who would decide whether she was worthy of that. And though I knew she was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I knew she didn’t believe that.