Along Came Trouble(17)

A hundred and twenty miles a day. Ellen took her work seriously. “Long commute.”

“It got a little old, yeah.” She made a face. “Not so great for my marriage, either. But then Henry came along, and I had to figure out something else. Now they kind of let me do my own thing. They take a big chunk out of the hours I bill to cover overhead and association fees and malpractice insurance, all that good stuff.”

“And you get to stay here in Camelot.”

She sipped her wine and settled more deeply into her chair, staring down the slope of her front lawn to the trees that bordered her property. “Yeah. I have to show up in the office for a week every quarter or so, and I still do some negotiations in Columbus or even every now and then out in L.A. or New York, but for the most part, I get to work from home.”

The contentment in her voice mingled with the wine he swallowed and put a warm glow in his veins. “You like it here.”

“Here is great.”

Caleb rolled the bowl of his wine glass back and forth between his palms and admired her tidy little slice of the good life. In his peripheral vision, he could see the ball of her foot on the deck chair, so he admired her red toenails, too.

Sexy woman, sexy toes. Sexy convictions.

Ellen was a crusader. She protected the weak and the foolish for a living. No wonder she didn’t want to be protected herself. A woman like that wouldn’t relish the thought of admitting vulnerability.

He thought of how she’d looked, marching across her lawn to dump tea on the photographer this morning. Gutsy. She’d make a hell of a soldier.

They had more in common than he’d guessed.

“Good for you,” he said. “Fighting the good fight.”

“I thought so.” She polished off her wine and poured herself another glass. “Although now Jamie keeps sending me divas to rescue. Plus, the money really sucks.”

“Being evil always pays better.”

“Yeah.” She smiled at him, and for the first time there was nothing held back. No edge. This was Ellen with her defenses down—bright, warm, and inviting.

Caleb hadn’t been prepared for the smile, but even if he had, he wasn’t sure he could have done a damn thing about the way it affected him.

Too easily, he could imagine those lips kiss-swollen and soft. The silky, tangled mess of her hair spread over his pillow, and the contrast of her pale skin against his dark sheets. The hot, slick welcome of her body.

Rein it in, Clark.

He set his glass on the ground and interlaced his fingers behind his head, going for casual. It was time to get down to business. “So, Ellen,” he said, glancing over her shoulder to where the security light was mounted below the soffit. “You have a replacement bulb for that light?”



Ellen did a mental double-take.

At least, she hoped it was only mental. If Caleb had seen evidence on her face of the psychic slap he’d just delivered, she’d be monumentally embarrassed. But there was no way for him to know that she’d been lost in thoughts of how nicely the sleeves of his white dress shirt pulled tight across his biceps, was there? It would be her little secret.

“For the floodlight?” she asked.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Yeah, I have one inside.”

“Mind if I replace it?”

His innocent question sent her thoughts down a twisty path. She’d tried to change the bulb herself once, but it had turned out to be a little too high to reach even from the top rung of the ladder, and a lot too tippy.

Caleb would be able to reach. He could help.

It drove her crazy, having that bulb out. Sometimes she felt as though the stupid thing were mocking her, public evidence of her inability to handle her own household maintenance.

But the relief she felt at the idea of having Caleb take care of it made her antsy. She had to be on her guard against that feeling, to remain wary of reassigning agency from herself to a man. Be sufficient. That was the lesson of her relationship with Richard, the conclusion she’d drawn from the first twenty-seven years of her life.

“Ellen?”

Caleb was staring at her, his brows drawn together. He’d asked her if he could change her light bulb, and she was sitting here pondering it as if the fate of the world rested in her hands.

“No,” she said.

“Is that no, you don’t mind, or—”

Abruptly, she stood. “I’ll get the bulb.”