Chapter 24 Calder
Calder
My sister wasn’t going to find Colton outside, and she knew that as well as I did. But man, could Colby read a room. Unfortunately for me. It was times like these I wished she had the social aptitude of Creighton, who’d stay in a conversation just to see how insufferable he could get.
“Colby needed my help deciphering the clues to finding Donnie,” Lara said, looking like she expected me to tell her to leave.
“Deciphering? Why? Did he write them in Latin?” I joked, and her only reaction was a blank stare. “Seriously?” I dropped my arm and let my head shake. “Of course he wrote them in Latin.”
Creighton would tell you he’d learned Latin because it was the foundation of many prevalent languages (because he was loath to use the word romance even in this context), but in my mind, Latin appealed to him because it was considered “dead,” and that was how my brother liked to think of himself on the inside. Dry, droll, and dead.
“I’m not sure if they were correct or properly conjugated, but they were definitely in Latin,” Lara said, moving closer, and suddenly, the giant barn started to feel like the size of a matchbox. And just as hot.
“Is that what you told my sister?”
I blew out a slow breath, her words like an invisible undercut to my gut. They say sticks and stones and all that, but this woman’s sharp tongue could break a man. Cut him into a thousand guilty pieces. And knowing what she believed about our past, I didn’t blame her for it.
“Knowing Creighton, I’m sure they were.” I dragged my towel over my face and then hauled on my shirt, feeling her gaze crawl over me like the heat of an ember starving to ignite.
“Well, I’ll leave you to your hunt.” I reached for my water bottle, preparing to walk outside and dump the cold contents over my head.
I’d almost made it to the barn doors when Lara called, “Calder, wait.”
Damn me. And damn my feet for stopping for her. My heart, too.
“I want to apologize for what I said earlier,” Lara started again, regret fused to her voice. “I’m just frustrated and tired and emotional and . . . a lot of things, but that didn’t justify—”
“Stop.” I whipped around. “Don’t apologize for how you feel. Ever.”
“Except I don’t feel that way,” she insisted, wringing her hands and reminding me of how strong her fingers were when they’d pulled me to her; to feel someone need me like that, the way she had, was something so powerful and vulnerable at the same time.
Exactly the reason why I’d avoided anything like it until now.
But Lara Crane was just as unavoidable as the storms that barreled over the plains and bowled down over the mountains. And equally as earth-shaking.
“I know you’re just trying to protect me, and I know, whatever happened back then, you wouldn’t have intentionally hurt my sister. I know how she was. How emotional and . . . difficult she could be. And I know the way she treated you probably wasn’t—”
“Enough,” I cut her off with the kind of rudeness I didn’t even reserve for Creighton. I couldn’t let her keep going—I’d already let myself go too far. Told her things that should’ve stayed in the past. Kissed her . . . touched her . . . when I should’ve kept my hands to myself.
There was more than the truth about her sister that was separating us. I knew I’d ended things honestly and couldn’t regret that. What really kept me from Lara was the way she made me feel, and the memory of what losing Mom had done to Cassius.
I locked my gaze to Lara’s, ignoring every emotion I saw and every instinct of mine to reach for her.
“It’s in the past,” I continued, my voice clear as it trod over the grave of my buried-alive heart.
“Emotions can run high in the middle of a case, especially after what happened last night.” Quickly realizing there were two very different sets of events I’d just left open to interpretation, I added, “Seeing Sarah like that, and thinking about your sister . . . there’s nothing to apologize for. It’s par for the course.”
Said the man who’d spent the last hour and a half beating on Colton’s heavy bag because being a good man was at war with being a better man.
“And is making out with your clients par for the course, too?”
Dammit.
“No, it’s not,” I said through locked teeth, though parts of me wanted to make it par for our course. “That was well outside the bounds of our professional relationship. Professionalism isn’t just a rule. It’s a code. A contract of trust, and one that I . . . muddied.”
Just holding her in the rain had broken every rule she deserved to have kept in place.
“I think both of us were involved in the muddying.”
I couldn’t stop the shudder that hit me, recalling how perfect she’d looked in my lap. How perfect she’d felt grinding on my cock. And how fucking wrong it was to take advantage of her right now.
“You have my word it won’t happen again.” It couldn’t. For a million and one reasons, the most important one being survival. Mine.
I could account for a hundred different scenarios.
Plan for a dozen different kinds of danger or injuries.
But this . . . her . . . the havoc she’d wreak if I only had a taste .
. . I didn’t know what was worse: having her and having her leave, or having her the way my parents had had each other and knowing it could be lost.
“And if I want it to?”
“Don’t,” I ground out.
Colby chose that moment to return, sliding the door wide open behind me and propping her hip on the edge. “Looks like another storm is rolling through.”
The record should show that her statement came before she’d taken a good look at Lara and me.
“Yeah, you both should head back to the house.” I extended my arm as though waiting for the two of them to do just that. “Cassius probably has dinner ready.”
The mention of food spurred my sister and her grumbling stomach into action. As she strode by me, her head swiveled so she could keep her intrigued stare anchored in my direction.
“Yeah. We’ll get out of your hair.” She linked her arm with Lara, who’d managed to wipe the anger from her expression but not the flush from her face.
I watched the two of them leave. Waited.
Convinced myself I was going to have dinner in the Airstream.
Alone. And I did good on that resolution, making it back to my RV and through a refreshingly cold shower without reneging.
I fixed a basic turkey sub and took a seat at the table without second-guessing my decision.
But when I pulled over my crossword puzzle, all I saw was the word Philtrum, and then the woman whose lips had given me the answer.
Cursing the crossword, cursing myself, and cursing my damn dick, I wrapped up the sub to eat another day, threw on my jacket, and jogged through the light rain down to the house.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Colby teased, her smile wide as I entered the dining room behind Cyclops.
I grunted, raking my eyes around the table until they found Lara.
For the size of my family, dinner was functioning at half capacity.
Cassius sat in his seat at the head, Colby and Lara on one side of him, and Creighton on the other.
Aside from Lara, this was the typical attendance to an evening meal.
If Creed was around, which wasn’t often, he joined—not that he said much.
Colton came in spurts but preferred to spend his time with the horses and taking out his aggression inside the barn; Lara took his place at the table tonight.
And Callum . . . forget it. At least, that was my opinion, but Cassius set a place for him regardless.
He set a place for all of us, regardless.
“I could smell the barbecue all the way up the hill,” I lied and drew out the chair next to Creighton, who chuffed at my lie.
If I were anyone else, he would’ve called me out on it, but me, Cassius, and Creed were the only ones regularly spared from his rancor.
Probably because we were the only ones he wouldn’t get a rise out of.
I took a second glance at his right arm, noticing a tattoo I swore wasn’t there last week. Coffee-making was my hobby, and tattooing himself was Creighton’s. He was covered in them, though always somehow found room for more.
“Barbecue chicken and sweet potato bowls.” Colby handed me the fixings, one after another, to make my own.
Sweet potatoes were grown in the garden.
Barbecue sauce was Dad’s secret recipe. And chicken came free-range from another ranch a few miles down the road.
Years ago, Cassius had bought chickens for this purpose, but as soon as Colby had named them all, there was no way in hell she was going to let them become dinner.
Creighton leaned over as soon as my plate was filled and murmured loud enough for everyone to hear, “If it were up to me, we could’ve been having duck.”
Colby’s expression flatlined and she gave him the finger.
Cassius made a sound halfway between a sigh and a chuckle and redirected the conversation. “So, Lara, how do you like Phoenix?”
Pain lanced my chest, and I shoved a bite of food in my mouth. I didn’t want to think about her going back to Arizona, but I should. Better to get the ache over with now.
“It’s . . . nice.”
“Nice?” Colby prodded, scooting back as Cyclops jumped into her lap. Cassius sent the cat a glare but said nothing. “Have you been to the Grand Canyon? I don’t think it’s too far . . .”
“It’s about five-ish hours, so not too far, but I haven’t gone.
Most of my coworkers have and rave about it, I just .
. .” Her head angled and her smile tightened.
“Lately, my version of a day trip is going up the elevator to the ortho floor at the hospital. I haven’t really explored much at all, which is embarrassing, but I work a lot. Too much, probably.”
“What made you want to move down to the heat?” Cassius’s bias for his home for the last four decades was making a strong showing.