Caleb scrubbed the stubble grazing his jaw and sat down next to him. Silent. He was there when Kent was ready to tell him why he was here.
“I screwed up, Caleb,” Kent said. “I screwed up bad.”
“You’re here in one piece,” he said. “Everything else is fixable.”
He grunted and turned to lean against the wooden staircase, moonlight illuminating the sharp lines and strain of his face. “I was thinking about what you said about me not having a dime to my name. You were right. I’m pathetic.”
Caleb turned to rest against the opposite railing. “I never said you were pathetic.”
“You didn’t have to,” he said. “I’m saying it. I’m pathetic.”
“You said you have a bonus coming,” Caleb reminded him. “Use that to start saving, maybe make a safe investment. I can hook you up with the guy who has been managing my money while I was in the Army. I trusted him enough to give him say-so over my money when I wasn’t capable of looking after it myself. It was his smarts, not mine, that put money in my bank account.”
Kent leaned his head on the rail, and covered his face with his hand. “I screwed up, Caleb,” he repeated. “I screwed up so bad.”
“Maybe you better be specific,” Caleb said. “What exactly did you do to screw up?”
He swallowed hard and dropped his hand. “I thought I needed to do something to get things right. One last bet. Get some money in the bank and then walk away. Cut the gambling thing altogether. I had a tip on a sure-thing horse, but I needed to bet big to make this the last time, to make it count.”
Caleb went still. “You used a bookie and lost.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I lost. And now, if I don’t pay up, they’ll pretty much break every bone in my body.”
Caleb knew. He’d seen an Army buddy get devoured by a gambling habit. Even for someone well trained, a half-dozen baseball bats can do a hell of a lot of damage to an unarmed man. He’d survived because he had enough training to get out alive, and the Army had intervened and straightened his ass out. But not before his brake lines had been cut, and he’d crashed into a tree to avoid another car.
“How much?”
Kent’s head fell back against the wall. “I bet my entire bonus, like an advance on the money I knew I had coming. It seemed a perfect plan. I thought I could pay you back and get money in the bank and—”
“How much, Kent,” Caleb said sharply.
“Twenty,” he said, and looked at Caleb. “Twenty thousand.”
Caleb cursed. “Twenty thousand dollars? Are you flipping nuts?”
“Caleb, I thought—”
“Don’t, Kent. Don’t tell me you thought, you planned, you knew. Because you didn’t. You’re right. You screwed up.” He stood up and paced the porch, pacing off anger, before he stopped. “I’ll give you the damn money, but you
are
paying me back.”
“Of course,” Kent said. “I’ll write you a post-dated check for bonus time. I swear, Caleb, my bonus covers this. I swear. I know I screwed up. I know.”
“You’re damn right you’re paying me back every dime, and you know how I know? Because it’s coming with conditions. Like help. And not help you tell me you’re going to get. Help I arrange on my terms.” Caleb ran his hand over his jaw. “I need a week to get the cash, so tell your bookie you’ll have it by next weekend. Then, you need to lay low.”
“I leave for another week out of town on Sunday,” he said. “New York. A long ways from Texas.”
“I suggest you go sooner,” Caleb said. “Get the hell out of town until I get you the money. As in, the first flight out tomorrow.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I have no money for the extra days.”
Caleb cursed again. “That entire thousand I gave you is gone?”
“I tried to win back the money,” he said.
“I’ll meet you at the bank after my jump in the morning to give you something to live on,” Caleb said. “But don’t let me find out you gambled it away.”
Kent held up his hands. “I swear, man. I’m done. I’ve learned my lesson.”
“And every drink is an alcoholic’s last,” Caleb said. “You have a problem, Kent. You aren’t going to get better without help.”
“I’ll get help,” he said. “I’ll do whatever you want.”
“You’re right,” Caleb said. “You will.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out his wallet and handed Kent what cash he had. He couldn’t have Kent stay at his place without Shay flipping out. “Stay in a hotel. I’ll go by your house with you after the bank tomorrow, so you can pack.”
Kent hung his head. “I don’t want Mom and Dad and Shay to find out about this,” he said. “Please.”
“I’m not going to promise that,” Caleb said. “Right now I’m going back to bed. I have an early jump. Meet me at the Hotzone office at nine.” Caleb didn’t wait for an answer. He headed inside, shut the door and leaned against it. Damn it. He should have come home more often. He should have stayed in touch with Kent. Maybe he would have seen this before it became this kind of problem.
“Caleb?” Shay peeked around the corner.
Caleb heard Kent’s truck pulling away, and he motioned her forward. “You’re safe. He’s gone.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking nervous, as if she were afraid of the answer, her hands in front of her, fingers twisting together.
His gaze swept her slender body, which was covered in one of his T-shirts. He liked her in his shirt. He loved her. And damn if he didn’t want to take her back to bed and work off his frustration, but it wasn’t that simple.
He closed the distance between them and took her hand, sitting down on the couch and taking her with him. She curled by his side. “Caleb?”
“Everyone is fine, if that’s what’s worrying you,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Or they will be. Kent is in some trouble.” He went on to detail what had been said between him and Kent.
“I have ten thousand saved,” Shay said. “I don’t have it all, but—”
He squeezed her hand. “I’ve got the money, Shay, and I don’t care about the money. I care about getting Kent right. You’re the expert here. What’s our best move?”
“A family intervention and a treatment center,” she said. “Which hopefully his insurance will cover. It should. I know he has excellent benefits through his company.” She hesitated. “Mom and Dad, me and you have to be strong as a unit. We can’t do anything to risk that right now.”
Tension coiled inside Caleb. “You mean us. You don’t want to tell them about us.”
“Not until we deal with Kent,” she said. “They’re going to be devastated. They may overreact to you and I if we do this now. They may just need an emotional outlet and direct it at our relationship. It’s human, Caleb.” She touched his face. “I don’t want to risk them seeing us as a part of something bad going on. I want them to see this as wonderful. Like I do.”
Caleb took her hand in his, and he was willing to accept her logic…for now. But he had a gut feeling—and his gut feelings never failed him—there would be another reason to stay silent after this one, and another after that. Until Caleb was forced to say
no more.
And the very fact that he knew it would come to that had him questioning what she really felt. She said she loved him, but wasn’t it a given that she would love him on some level? They
were
family. He loved his fellow Aces. They were family, too—brothers. But did she love him the way he loved her? He didn’t know. He didn’t know if she knew, either.
“What are you doing awake?” he asked, his surprise evident in his tone.
Shay knew she had to do something to break the chilly ice forming between them, to ease the tension. Something daring and attention-grabbing. “The bed isn’t the same without you,” she said, and dropped the sheet. “Cancel the jump. Come back to bed with me.”
His gaze skimmed her naked body from the waist up and heat flashed in his gaze, but all too quickly banked. He sat down and tugged the sheet to her shoulders. “That’s the naughty behavior that’ll earn you that spanking.” His voice was soft, playful, no evidence of any of that tension. “You know I have customers waiting.”
“Stay,” she said, “and I’ll give you lots of reasons to spank me.” She grinned. “We both know you have a kinky spanking fantasy. You bring it up too much not to.”
“I have a long list of ‘Shay’ fantasies,” he said. “And it might surprise you to know, they don’t all involve sex. You have your ‘one hundred things to do’ list. I have my ‘one hundred things to do with, or to, Shay’ list. And that’s just in the next few months. After your flying lesson, we’ll go to that Mexican joint you like, catch that movie we wanted to see and then I’ll show you one or two of the more select picks on my list.”
She laughed, her heart feeling lighter already. “I’ll trade you one thing off my list for one thing off your list, each day for a hundred days.”
He wiggled an eyebrow. “That’s a deal I can’t refuse.”
“I’ll go first,” she offered. “Now. You want to know the first item on my to-do list?”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll bite. What’s the first item on your list?”
“I wanted to make love to you no matter where, how or when.” She touched his cheek, traced the strong line of his jaw. “I knew someday I’d finally know what it was like to be with you. And I was right. It was too good to miss.” Sincerity etched her words, softened her tone. “Good enough to want to repeat every day for the rest of my life.”
Caleb went still, his gaze searching her face an instant, before he yanked his shirt off and went down on the bed with her, tugging the sheet away. She laughed. “I thought you had to go to work?”
“Ryan’s helping out this morning,” he said, spreading her legs and settling between them. “He can handle the jump prep. I have better things
to do
.”
Shay laughed again, tightening her arms round his neck. The tension between them was gone and so was next week’s deadline for sharing their secret. They had at least a hundred days of bliss all to themselves.
The furniture was rental, cookie-cutter style, and there wasn’t much else to the place besides a few sports pictures and a family photo on the fireplace mantel from Shay’s college graduation. Caleb had come home for it, and he and Shay had set off fireworks. He’d barely escaped acting on their attraction. It had been his last trip home for years, afterward he’d shut out everyone, Kent included. Caleb couldn’t help but wonder again if he would have seen this coming had he kept in touch.
“I’m ready,” Kent said, looking gaunt and tired, as if he hadn’t eaten or slept for a few days.
“What time’s your flight?”
“Three,” he said.
Caleb nodded and stood up. “I’ll go to the airport and wait with you.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Kent said. “I’ll be okay. They gave me a week to pay and there’s security at the airport.”
Yeah, Caleb knew how that went. His buddy in the Army had been given time, too, and a good beating as a reminder that the hours were ticking by. Caleb suspected Kent was smart enough to know that was a possibility or he wouldn’t have brought up security. “You sitting at the airport with time to find yourself in trouble isn’t a good idea.”
Kent ran his hand over his jaw. “You got me there.”
Caleb motioned to the door. “I’ll follow you,” he said. “But right now, you follow me outside.”
Kent laughed, but without humor. “You don’t have to watch over me like this,” he said. “I do know how to fight, you know. I seem to remember you and I sparring a time or two.”
That was years of training ago, but Caleb didn’t want to throw around his skill, verbally or physically—not unless he meant business. So instead, he said, “My Special Forces buddy with ten years of training wasn’t worried when he ran up a tab with his bookie, either,” he said. “But the four guys with baseball bats whacked some sense into him.”
Kent swallowed hard. “I’ll follow you out.”
Enough said, Caleb gave him a quick incline of his head, and they moved to the parking lot without delay or disturbance. Caleb climbed in his truck to trail Kent and then reached for his phone to call Shay and delay their lunch to an early dinner. Not surprisingly, her voice mail picked up. She was probably in the air for her flying lesson. He tossed the phone on the truck seat in case she called back.
He didn’t know what was going on with her. Maybe she’d thought she wanted him, but it had always really been about the forbidden fruit. The fantasy. Her to-do list that included sex with him, suddenly took on a new meaning, and he pounded the steering wheel in a rare display of frustration.
No, this couldn’t be about sex. She’d told him she loved him, even before he’d told her he loved her. He’d seen it in her eyes, felt it in her touch. But he’d seen something else, too—fear. He had a lot of training and experience spotting fear. She was scared and the sex was a place for her to hide.
She was running from him, he’d realized once he’d left her this morning, once he had enough space to consider what was happening. She wasn’t ready for the commitment that coming out publicly required. Which meant one of two things—he hadn’t convinced her he was here to stay and was fully committed to her, or he hadn’t made her see how much he loved her.
Perhaps if he could figure out what it was that was scaring her… Because if it wasn’t her family, it was him. He ground his teeth. She thought he was going to hurt her, which meant he’d hurt her in the past when he’d shut her out of his life, no matter how good his intentions. He had to prove to her he wouldn’t hurt her again. He had a week before her parents returned for him to undo ten years of damage, or he had a bad feeling Shay was going to use her parents like she was using sex—as a shield, a barrier that he couldn’t get past. He couldn’t let her do that. She meant too much to him.