Barbara Benedict - Solution - Marriage

Startled and uneasy, he’d pulled back. Despite all his careful planning and good intentions, he’d never bargained on that—how, even after ten long years apart, something hot and demanding could still spark between them.

He didn’t need to see the fear and accusation in Callie’s expression to know how this could mess up his agenda. Sobered, he moved away from her, going with Mr. Fry to finish the paperwork. From now on he had to keep his distance, had to keep things simple, to stir up the minimum fuss and heartache. Clearly, if he hoped to achieve his goal, kissing Callie couldn’t figure into the equation.

Yet as they finished up the details and left the courthouse, he couldn’t seem to take his gaze from her mouth. She tastes like peaches, he now remembered, so sweet and fresh and ready for plucking. And just as it had been ten years ago, he found himself wanting more.

Not that it seemed likely she’d ever again let him near enough to try. Sitting on her side of the BMW, huddled against the door as she clutched the handle, his new wife looked ready to bolt at the slightest provocation. It bothered him that she seemed so afraid of him. It bothered him a lot.

“You don’t have to hug the door because of one little kiss,” he said, noticing how her entire posture stiffened at the mere sound of his voice. “You didn’t feel anything, did you?”

“Of course not.”

Of course not. “So what’s the big deal? I wasn’t putting any moves on you, Cal. The kiss was expected. Didn’t you hear those ladies giggling? If I hadn’t made it look good, they’d have gone home disappointed and who knows what stories they would spread? Don’t worry, I won’t be forcing my attentions on you. I promised to be a monk and I will.”

She didn’t say anything, just nodded, keeping her gaze trained on the road ahead.

Luke hid his impatience with a sigh. “Listen, Callie, I know we have our past, and it’s not easy to get over it, but—”

“I’m not thinking about the past,” she blurted out, panic ringing loud and clear in her words. “I’m more concerned with the future. You rushed me through this so fast, my mind’s in a blur. Here we are heading home, and I haven’t the slightest idea where or what that home will be. Shouldn’t we discuss how we mean to go about conducting day-to-day life? Really, Luke, don’t you think this is all just the slightest bit insane?”

Her voice cracked a little on that last. If she gripped the door handle any tighter, her bone-white knuckles would turn to silver steel.

In his opinion the only insanity was the way she was acting, as if she were the only one with a right to anger. “I said I’d take care of you, and I will.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about,” she went on. “I have a son, remember? Robbie will be coming home from day camp soon, and I’m gonna greet him with the news that I went and married a stranger. And if that’s not enough to rock his sense of security, I have to admit that I haven’t the slightest idea where we and this stranger are going to eat, drink or sleep.”

“The ‘stranger’ has an apartment over on Elm Street,” Luke told her angrily. “Contrary to popular opinion, I’m not completely irresponsible. Granted, my place is a bit sparse on furnishings—needs a woman’s touch maybe—but it will do until I can find us a house.”

“I thought you were going to get me my farmhouse back.”

She put the words out there like an accusation. And perhaps she was justified in this, since he’d momentarily forgotten his promise, but he was no less angry at her for pointing it out. “Until we get the farmhouse, then,” he said through gritted teeth.

“No.”

Startled by her adamant tone, he glanced over at her. She’d relinquished the grip on the handle and now clasped her arms across her chest instead. “No, what?”

“No bachelor apartment,” she said with a steely edge to her tone. “Robbie and I have a place over on Park Street. The two bedrooms may be small and a far cry from what you’re used to, but my boy has already lost one home. I’m not going to make him give up another. The only disruption he’s going to face is our move back to the farmhouse.”

“Okay. But if there are only two bedrooms, where the heck am I supposed to sleep?”

“The couch. You said yourself you have a lot of business trips planned. You’ll be out of town as much as you’re in it for the next few months.”

Maybe he shouldn’t have confided his plans to sell his restaurant in New York and open a new one in New Orleans. “Fine,” he told her, not really caring where they stayed. “The couch it is, then. You do intend to allow me a pillow?”

She ignored his sarcasm. “You’re headed the wrong way for my apartment,” she said, gesturing ahead. “You need to take the next right.”

When he drove past the street she’d suggested, she turned to face him with a huff. “Are you ignoring me?”

“Not at all. We’ll go to your apartment,” he told her with forced patience. “After we’re done talking to Ben.”

“No!”

Who was this woman? The Callie he remembered had been soft and pliable, more than delighted to go along with all of his suggestions. This more recent version couldn’t be more rigid, more combative and ready to fight him at every excuse. “That’s the whole purpose of this exercise, isn’t it?” he asked, not bothering to hide his exasperation. “Throwing the fait accompli in his face?”

“I meant not yet.” She softened her tone. “Robbie will be coming home soon, expecting me to be there. He’s going to be confused enough by the situation. He’ll need time to adjust before we subject him to anything more. I certainly don’t want him coping with any nonsense from Ben Parker.”

She said the words firmly, but Luke could hear the plea behind them. He turned to glance at her, unsettled to find her studying him. He’d forgotten how deeply that gaze of hers could probe, how it could wriggle all the way in to stir up his conscience. How could he object? was her obvious message. All she wanted was to protect her son.

A perfectly laudable objective. As long as the one she was protecting him from wasn’t himself, the boy’s rightful father.

She didn’t know—nor was he going to tell her just yet—about his little heart-to-heart with her ex-husband.

To say that Luke had been at loose ends that day was an understatement. Having been cut from the team, he’d learned how shallow and temporary his lifestyle in New York had been, how quickly he could lose so much more than a mere job. In what seemed like overnight, he’d gone from superstar to pariah, condemned by the media who once called him their darling, deserted by people he’d thought were friends. Going to New Orleans to lick his wounds, he’d plopped down on a bar stool planning to drown his sorrows. Trust Reb Jenkins to show up at his darkest moment.

Reb had heard all about Luke’s meteoric fall from grace. The media hadn’t been kind, and anybody who even casually followed sports knew the story, but Reb, who hung on to their boyhood rivalry the way old women cling to the family album, had savored the tale more than most.

“Maybe you got the scholarship and life in the big leagues,” he’d gloated, his whiskey-soaked voice slurring over the words, “but look where it got you.”

It was then that Luke learned how Callie had married him so soon after Luke left town. Two shots later and increasingly belligerent, Reb began to gripe about his marriage, how and when it had all gone sour. “A bun in the oven,” Reb had grumbled more to his shot glass than to anyone in the room. “Do the arithmetic, and it’s as clear as air someone got there before me.”

I am that someone, Luke had realized instantly. Even without doing the arithmetic, he knew Callie, knew she hadn’t been with anyone else.