Tina Leonard - A Callahan Wedding

“Nervous is a better word. Some people are afraid to try new foods. I’m not. You’re a different kind of female than what we have on the ranch right now. But I need spice in my life, and you’re the cayenne pepper in my chili.” He ran a palm over Joe’s small head, where he was strapped in his carrier between them. “And this is my tiny jalapeño on top,” he said. “Good for me I’ve got the stomach for all this new fire.”

Sabrina wasn’t about to let Jonas pacify her with what he likely thought were compliments. “You went and found someone—”

“More calm, more sedate,” Jonas supplied helpfully.

Sabrina was outraged. “Chelsea jumped on a plane with you to fake an engagement. How sedate is that?”

He laughed. “Okay.”

“Anyway, don’t get me off the subject. What I’m trying to point out is that you run off when you want to avoid things. Just like you ran off to Ireland.” She glared at him. “How would you have felt if, upon seeing Chelsea, I’d jetted back to D.C.?”

“I’m glad you stayed. I’m hoping to talk you into living at Dark Diablo with me.”

“If you don’t put all your skeletons to rest, they’ll pop back up. Contrary to me being the wild and unsettled one, you wear that badge, Doctor.”

“Not me,” Jonas said. “Surgeons do not have a wild bone in their body.”

“Right,” Sabrina said. “Anyway, that’s what I think.”

He sighed. “I won’t deny all of what you say.”

“Good.” She popped the top off a bottle and began feeding the baby. “It’s very important for little Joe to know that his father is a man of deep character, not given to wayfaring.”

“Wayfaring.” Jonas laughed. “Ha-ha-ha. I don’t think I’ve wayfared in my life.”

“Except to Ireland, and you brought back a pretty fancy souvenir.”

“Okay,” Jonas said again. “So what do you suggest?”

“That you do what you’re meant to do.”

He scratched under his hat, then shook his head. “What if I told you that the questions don’t bother me as much as the answers might?”

“I would probably say the monster in the closet isn’t usually what you think it is once you open the door.”

“Ah-ha!” Jonas wagged a finger. “But sometimes it is.”

“The good part is you’ll be rattling those skeletons for little Joe’s sake, and all your nieces and nephews, as well as your brothers. You want to be a hero for Joe, don’t you?”

Jonas sighed. “I’d like to say not especially, but I don’t think you’d believe me.”

Sabrina smiled. “I probably wouldn’t.”

He glanced at her. “Would you be willing to be my shotgun rider if I start opening those doors?”

Sabrina looked into his navy eyes. “I’ll ride shotgun.”

“And then you’ll marry me.”

She blinked. “Was that a proposal or a typical Callahan pronouncement? I always thought if you ever asked, it would be a lot more romantic.”

“Have I not asked you before? Because I have about a thousand times in my mind.”

“You see, Joe,” Sabrina said to the baby, who was contentedly sucking on his bottle and watching her face, “your father just delivered a half-baked proposal because he was afraid I might say no. Your dad protects himself.”

“Not true,” Jonas said. “I assume that a woman wants to marry the father of her child.”

“I might marry you,” Sabrina said, “but with a proposal like that, you can be certain you won’t make it back into my bed.”

“Oh,” he said. “I better up my game.”

“All of it, Doctor,” Sabrina stated. “I hope you can.”

“We’ll see,” Jonas said.

* * *

“SO, BASICALLY,” JONAS told Sam that night, “Sabrina hated Dark Diablo and didn’t accept my proposal. My big moment and I came up zeroes.”

“Not surprising,” his brother mused. “You did kind of half bake the thing. Sabrina’s right about that.”

“Yeah.” Jonas sat in the library drinking a whiskey with Sam, wondering how he’d ended up like this.

“The problem,” Sam said, “is that you always underestimated Sabrina. She’s way too good for you, for one thing.”

“This is true,” Jonas admitted. “She says I have to amp up my game, and I’m not sure how much amp I’ve got.”

“You want her, don’t you?”

“Hell, yes.” Jonas stared at the whiskey in his glass as if it held answers. “But she’s not a gentle and shy dove like your wife.”

Sam hooted. “Seton is not gentle and shy. She’s more like fireworks in my sky, trust me. Let’s do a further checklist. Judge Julie is a smokin’ pistol set to fire. Jackie was a nurse and keeps order like a general. Darla is a businesswoman, and there are days when I can hear the grocer grinding his teeth from the deals she makes him give her. Aberdeen may be a preacher, but she’s got a soul of iron, don’t let that sweet face kid you. Where are the retiring wallflowers in this family?”

“This is different,” Jonas said.

“Only because it’s happening to you this time, you big wienie,” Sam shot back. “Believe me, we all suffered when we fell in love, though we mostly suffered because of our egos. You’re just going to make more noise about it, I’m afraid. We’ll have to resort to earplugs.”

Jonas snorted. “Sabrina says I have to find myself first. She says I run away from what I don’t want to deal with.”

Sam snickered. “Guess she didn’t have to be clairvoyant to know that.”

Jonas looked at his youngest brother. “It’s not true.”

“Of course it’s true. Every word. Did she set a goal for you, a dragon for you to conquer, in this quest for yourself?”

Jonas thought about it. “She says that until I’ve figured out the answers in our family, I likely won’t be ready to make a good husband and life partner. Sabrina says that I’ve been avoiding my responsibility for years, and that it probably all goes back to the fact that I was the oldest. She says her hunch is that our parents leaving affected me the most. It’s all a bunch of psychological nonsense, but I’m humoring her. It’s best to let women think they’re figuring us men out, you know.”

Sam sighed. “That is not a good attitude to take.”

Jonas was satisfied with his non-emotional approach to his chosen lady. “How would Sabrina know what I need to do to make myself into a good life partner?”

“Well, you ran off and got engaged to a woman you didn’t love because the woman you did love was pregnant with your child. Call me crazy, but you may have some issues to iron out, bro.”

He scowled. “Even if I did—and I’m not saying I have any issues at all—I wouldn’t know where to start.”

Sam raised his glass. “We did the spadework for you. All you have to do is put it all together.”

Jonas stared at him. “Not that easy, when you consider that it’s taken all five of you to get this far.”

“Well,” Sam said, easing back into the leather chair more comfortably, “if it’s true what Seton discovered, and our parents are still alive, you have to find out where they are. And why they went away. They had to have left us for some real good reason.”

“They went into witness protection because they’re hiding from a cartel they turned over to the various authorities involved. You can’t find someone in witness protection, no matter how much you might want to.”

“Yeah.” Sam scratched his chin. “But someone knows something.”

Jonas shook his head. “That could only be Fiona—and she would absolutely never tell—only Chief Running Bear might know.”

Sam nodded. “Bingo.”

“But so what if we did find our parents? If they wanted us to locate them, they would have given us a signal, a clue.” Jonas wasn’t sure this particular holy grail had a desirable outcome. “The bad guys, whoever they are, might find our parents, too, then. I don’t think it’s worth taking a risk.”