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  Made her forgive Callen for leaving her alone when she needed him most . . . not entirely, but a little. She figured that amounted to progress of a sort.

  Now to work on his end.

  ***

  The shovel scraped as Callen plunged the end into the pile of dirt. After more than an hour of lifting and filling, his shoulders burned and sweat gathered on the back of his neck.

  The physical exertion and bright sunshine helped keep his mind blank. Which was exactly how he wanted it. If he let his thoughts wander to a certain redhead at the motel across town he’d be in his car and on his knees. Who the hell knew if he’d ever be able to get up again.

  He would not go to her. Not to drive down that dead-end road again.

  Of course, having three sets of eyes focused on him now made the idea of stepping even one inch outside the Shadow Hill property line sound pretty damn good. While Callen worked, Declan leaned on the shovel he was supposed to be using to help fill in all the holes scattered throughout the side and back yards. Tom was—hell, supervising, maybe? They both wore smirks and failed to lift a damn thing.

  Those two Callen could handle. Leah was the dangerous one. She stood with her hands on her hips, watching each scoop of dirt land.

  When he slowed down for a fraction of a second, she pounced. “So, you have a secret girlfriend?”

  “Jesus, are you kidding me?” Callen let the shovel fall to the ground with a thud as clumps of rock and mud bounced around his feet and his gaze zoomed to his big-mouthed brother.

  Declan had the guts to shrug. “She asked.”

  Right, because he was stupid enough to believe that. One more shrug and Callen might throw off his work gloves and work out some aggression by pounding Declan into the ground. “Out of the blue. I’m supposed to buy that she just piped up with that question?”

  “To be clear, Declan said something like, ‘We came home yesterday to find a woman sitting on the porch.’” Leah waved her hands in the air and mimicked Declan’s low voice. “Then I asked about a hundred more questions.”

  “So did I, but Callen didn’t cough up much in the way of detail for me.” Declan balanced his shovel against the brand-new swing set and kicked a chunk of broken cement from where they’d jackhammered the concrete underneath once they realized it made no sense their grandmother had a brand-new swing set.

  After all her protestations about not knowing where Charlie hid the items he stole and all the investigations into her purchase of Shadow Hill late in life, turned out dear old grandma likely knew all along. The stolen items weren’t in the house buried under piles of books and stacks of paper, as everyone had expected.

  No, Charlie turned out to be more clever than that. The items, at least the jewelry stolen from Sophie’s aunt and jewelry from other victims, sat in a box under the concrete pad poured for the new swing set Grandma Nanette had installed when she was sixty-something.

  A massive digging across the lawn by the brothers had turned up other valuables, all of them remnants of Charlie’s scams. Their baby brother, Beck, joked that Charlie probably buried a stolen car under the front porch. Callen wouldn’t put anything past their idiot of a father. Dead or not, the man caused trouble. They had the Whac-A-Mole-looking yard to prove it.

  Declan stared into the hole closest to him, the one that once held silver tightly wrapped and secured in plastic bags. “Your girlfriend—”

  “Ex.” Since they didn’t seem ready to let the Grace subject drop, Callen figured they may as well get the semantics right.

  “—comes around here, looking ready to rumble, and we’re not supposed to notice.”

  Callen had been with Grace long enough to see her pissed off. Yesterday on the porch didn’t register on her pissed-off scale. Didn’t even come close to the energy vortex that engulfed her when she hit her anger stride.

  He picked up the shovel again. “Her mood was fine.”

  “Man, I have seen a ticked-off woman before and she teetered right on the verge.”

  Nope. Not a conversation he’d get sucked into right now. No fucking way. Everything about Grace needed to stay off the conversation table. They mentioned her, he thought about her and then his carefully constructed wall of rage started to crumble.

  “Let’s go back to the thing where we work so that the house doesn’t fall down around us.” So far today he was the only one shoveling. Hell, if he wanted to do all the work, he’d call Beck home to help.

  Callen loved his baby brother, but he was all but useless in the physical labor department. Not because he couldn’t do the work, but because he used his big lawyer brain to sneak his way out of it.

  For a few seconds the only sound came from the thunk of Callen digging the tip of the shovel into the ground and the rustle of leaves in the tall trees that separated the cleared acres from the miles of uncut property around them. The kicking in his gut eased off and he let his defenses drop, not a lot but enough so he could concentrate on not ramming the shovel into a rock, or worse his foot. They could get back to finding a work rhythm and—

  “Was she hot?” Leah didn’t even let a minute of silence pass before jumping in with the question.

  So much for thinking he’d wrestled back control of the conversation. Callen swore under his breath.

  The impressive string of profanity did nothing to slow Declan down. “Smoking hot.”

  The answer came a bit too fast for Callen’s liking.

  “She’s a redhead,” Declan said as the conversation went round and round.

  “Oh, really?” Leah turned on Callen. Stood right in front of him with an expression that said, You’re busted.

  “Shit.” Callen closed his eyes and counted to ten.

  “That explains all his pent-up rage aimed at me when we first met.” Leah ran her fingers through the tips of her hair. “Misdirected lust for the red hair.”

  Interesting how easily she forgot the real reason. How she had carried a vendetta against the Hanovers from childhood, having gathered piles of information on their lives, and spent the first half of her relationship with Declan lying to him. Her family lost everything due to Charlie, and eventually lost Shadow Hill, which they once owned.

  And if Callen was thinking of picking at that wound, he knew it was time to change the subject. He and Leah had reached a truce, and Declan forgave her. Her loving his brother turned out to be a good enough reason for Callen to tuck the entire matter away and move on. Messing up his budding brotherly relationship with Leah was not worth scoring a point.

  The only answer: changing the conversation. “I really think we—”

  “Grace’s is closer to auburn,” Declan said.

  “I’m jealous.” Leah stared at the strands twisted in her fingers before dropping them again. “Like the name, though.”

  Really, they had hit the saturation level on this topic. Much more and Callen’s already strained temper would blow. “Are you guys done?”

  Declan snorted. “Not likely.”

  “Maybe if you gave us more of the story, we could help.” Tom, quiet until then, gave up any pretense of being disinterested or ready to leave and joined in.

  With her shoulder leaning against Declan’s arm, Leah eyed Callen. “I’m guessing he needs to fix whatever he did to tick this girlfriend off.”

  “Ex.” Callen got the impression he’d have to provide that reminder a lot over the next few days . . . weeks.

  Declan made a tsk-tsking sound. “He left her.”

  Declan’s noise plus the way Leah’s eyes got all wide and her mouth dropped open seemed like couple overkill to Callen. “Now can we be done with this topic?”

  “Nope.” Without missing a step, Declan’s comment rolled right over Callen’s. “Sounded like he snuck off in the dead of night.”

  Come on. “Let’s not get dramatic.”

  “Oh, Calle
n. No. You didn’t.” Leah shook her head and kept right on doing it. Also mumbled something about men being idiots. “Please tell me you’re better with women than that.”

  Declan curled an arm around her. “Apparently not.”

  The low whistle came next. This one from Tom. “Damn, you’re lucky she didn’t kill you.”

  Clearly the man had missed the shovel in Callen’s hand. . . and the name on the signature line of his paycheck for the work at the house. “What do you know about women?”

  “Do you really want me to answer that?” Tom wiped a hand over his mouth as he asked the question.

  “No, he doesn’t, and stay away from my mom.” Declan wasn’t joking now. He had a clenched-teeth thing going on.

  Callen approved of the change.

  She was only in her mid-fifties. She’d married Charlie young and never tried again. Said his actions knocked the romance right out of her. But the way she looked at Tom—and the way they laughed over memories from when he was a teen and she was a young mother in her early twenties—made Callen twitchy.

  She might not be his biological mother, but that didn’t mean he wanted men hanging all over her. Callen liked Tom, but he’d kill him and bury the body in the woods if he hurt her.

  Still torn by his feelings and reeling from the disclosures about Sylvia Jenkins, a woman he didn’t even know but who had given birth to him, only to be abandoned in a psychiatric hospital by Charlie, Callen went with the easiest solution—backing his brother up. “Yeah, what Declan said.”

  Tom’s eyes narrowed. “Wait, are you admitting she’s your mom, too?”

  Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of comment Callen wanted to avoid. One of many, actually. Grace . . . the circumstances of his birth . . . he wanted it all on conversation lockdown. “Don’t start.”

  Declan blew out a long labored breath. “He’s not ready.”

  “I’m beginning to think he has a problem with women in general.” Leah started ticking off the count on her fingers. “Me, his mom, Sophie. Mallory.”

  Callen wrote the list off to circumstance. He did not have a problem with women. He had a problem with all the family lies eating away at him.

  Leah had battled through similar emotional disasters. Her father held Charlie responsible for Leah’s mom’s suicide. Charlie’s hustle and the way he led Leah’s mother on during their affair likely did play a role in the terrible choices she made. So did Marc Baron being Charlie’s first willing criminal accomplice, a role he tried to deny when insisting Leah dump Declan out of loyalty to the Baron family name.

  Still, despite their initial struggles and fights, Callen did consider Leah an ally. “I thought you’d understand.”

  Her gray eyes softened, and the amusement fled her expression. “About dysfunctional families? Yeah, you have more than your share of nonsense, but you’re not alone. We all have things we have to overcome, but we can overcome them.”

  “You’re not even talking to your dad right now.”

  When Declan started to say something, Leah put a hand on his arm. The simple touch stopped him, and she faced Callen down. “Are you really comparing my dad to your mom? Are you saying what my father did by lying to me for all those years and pretending he was innocent of Charlie’s schemes while stoking my hatred for your family is comparable to your mom protecting you?”

  “No.” The answer was never. Callen had issues with Kim, the woman he’d always thought of as his mother and the woman who raised him until he was ten, but he didn’t doubt that she loved him.

  He didn’t have to think that one over, but he did shoot a glance at Tom. As far as Callen knew, only Leah hadn’t shared the truth with anyone but the brothers about the role Leah’s dad played in the scam that bankrupted the town and many of the people in it.

  “He knows. So does Mom. Leah told them,” Declan said. “But I think you proved your point.”

  Tom cleared his throat. “I’m not an expert in this sort of dysfunction, but it definitely sounds like you have a female issue.”

  The smart-ass comment broke the winding tension, and Callen was grateful. Not grateful enough to let that slide, however. “You’re a female issue. Now get back to work.”

  Declan shook his head. “Cranky bastard.”

  Trying to make a point, Callen held his shovel out to Tom. “All of you. Work.”

  The older man stared at the tool, but didn’t grab it. “So then you’re not going to tell us more about Grace?”

  “No.”

  “Anyone want to take bets on how long it is before he heads over to the Severn Motel to find her?” Leah actually rubbed her hands together as she talked.

  Callen started to wonder if, with all this yapping, they’d get the yard holes filled in before the first snowfall. “Never.”

  “You did say she was smoking hot.” Tom had the nerve to look skeptical as he said it.

  “Since she lived with Callen here, I also have to guess she’s blind and has the tolerance level of a saint,” Declan said.

  Leah reached for Callen’s arm and grabbed on to his rolled-up plaid sleeve. “Wait a second. You guys actually lived together?”

  No way was he answering that.

  Declan did it for him. “For months.”

  Tom’s whistle echoed through the trees a second time. “Damn.”

  “Do we know if he held off from going over and seeing this Grace person last night at the motel?” Leah asked as she looked from one man to the other, skipping right over Callen.

  He was standing right there. “I didn’t go.”

  “He’ll go over tonight.”

  “Yeah, Tom’s right.” Declan pointed at Callen’s face. “You can tell he’s already thinking about it. Wondering about her and why she’s in town.”

  Callen was ten seconds away from swinging the shovel.

  “Tonight.” Leah declared with a slice of her hand through the air. “No contest.”

  Since they were giving voice to his greatest worry, Callen dug in on denial. “Happy to see you have faith in my control.”

  “One thing I’ve learned about you, Callen, is you’re not dumb.” She rammed a finger into his chest, thumping him as she emphasized each word.

  He rubbed the now-sore spot from where her fingernail poked into his shirt and scraped his skin. “Thanks. I think.”

  Leah sighed as if the weight of the entire female race rested on her slim shoulders. “Which means you have to be smart enough to know that letting a woman’s anger fester, making her wait, is only going to make it worse for you.”

  “Maybe she’s the one who owes me an apology.” That’s sure as hell the way Callen saw the fallout. Not that words would be enough. Grace had tried that, and he hadn’t bought it.

  He couldn’t believe anything she said right now. Being Walker Reeves’ partner, the very guy who had hunted Callen across three states and made his life miserable, colored everything. Reeves made it his job to go in and talk to Callen’s bosses until he lost jobs and even an apartment thanks to manufactured stories about being a criminal like his dad.

  So to find out the woman he’d been sleeping with, been thinking about as more than . . . well, it sucked. Sent his brain spinning, until Callen had decided to come to Shadow Hill and check the place out. That was three months ago.

  “Maybe she is at fault for whatever happened to make you leave.” Leah didn’t sound convinced.

  “That’s what I said.” Callen warmed to the subject. The argument was one he nurtured and used as the excuse for being alone when some days all he wanted was to climb into bed with her.

  “Could be it’s all on your ex.” Leah smiled.

  Now Leah got it. “Right.”

  “But I doubt it.”

  Yeah, he was afraid of that.

  Chapter Four

  The pounding on the door started
right as Grace entered into Round Two of her internal debate about what to do for dinner. She had leftover salad from her lunch run but neither the stomach nor the will to eat it. And really, once a day of mountains of green stuff was enough. She wasn’t looking for a nutrition medal here.

  She’d barely unfolded her legs and made it from the desk chair by the window and around the corner of the bed before the knocking started again. Without checking the peephole or calling out she knew who stood there. Maybe that’s why she didn’t rush. The chances of this being a welcome-to-town visit were slim.

  Callen didn’t have a secret knock, but he could make rapping on a door sound like a demand. And then there was the fact only he and Declan knew where she was staying.

  After tugging her oversized chambray shirt down and over her butt and going up on tiptoes for a quick peek into the hall, she put a hand on the doorknob. A few deep inhales and a mental count from ten to psyche herself up for the looming showdown, and she opened the door.

  The outfit of black leggings and long-sleeve shirt dipping to her upper thighs didn’t exactly say dressed to impress, but she was all about comfort these days. The vomiting had stopped when she hit the thirteen-week mark, just as the books promised, but the disappearing waistline called for elastic.

  The quick glance at the flat line of his mouth and the tension pulling at its corners told her all she needed to know. Also made her wish she held a shield. Anything to fend off the verbal blow she sensed heading her way.

  She stepped back and gestured for him to come inside. “Do you want to—”

  “Why are you really here?” He didn’t move out of the doorway. Just stood there in his faded jeans with the bottom edge of his long-sleeve tee hanging loose against those slim hips.

  Callen did casual better than any other guy on the planet. From the beginning she’d loved watching him walk. Confident and a little cocky, the way he held his body and moved had her mesmerized.

  Even now, with the anger pulsing off him, she couldn’t look away. Couldn’t downplay her feelings either. “For you.”