Along Came Trouble(78)

“I decided to keep a low profile. If the vultures knew I was coming here, they’d be all over this place, but since I managed to sneak in through the back, no one knows where I am.”

“You filed a flight plan, though,” Caleb said, thinking, Bad. Really bad. Jamie must have cancelled a big arena show at the last minute, dodged the press, and flown incognito to Ohio. He’d just made himself three hundred times more interesting. And Caleb’s job three hundred times harder.

“Yeah, they’ll find me eventually. I thought I’d give the yokels a chance to beef up security on Carly and Ellen before they do.”

“You could’ve given the yokels a chance to do that before you got here. Now they’ll have to scramble. And anyway, it’s reckless for you to go around unprotected.”

Jamie bristled. “Who are you to call me reckless?”

“I’m the yokels,” Caleb said evenly. “I own Camelot Security.”

“You’re the guy Breckenridge hired? Ellen’s bodyguard?”

“Ellen doesn’t have a bodyguard. But yeah, I’m in charge of her security. And yours, now that you’re here.”

“Not doing much of a job of it, are you, if I can walk in without alerting a single person?”

“I saw you coming,” Caleb said reasonably, though the remark had put him on the defensive. “You set off the lights, and if the door had been locked for the night, you’d have been out there on the porch long enough to catch my team’s attention.” He hoped.

“Where’s the alarm system? Carly and Ellen should have guards at their doors. Guys with Dobermans. Jesus, what kind of fly-by-night operation are you running here?”

Okay, now Jamie was starting to tick him off. “I had an alarm system put up at Carly’s place. Your sister refused one. My teams make regular patrols around the perimeter. Short of erecting a fence, there’s not much more I can do.”

With Jamie here, he might have to get that fence up after all. Maybe get the Camelot Police Department to establish a roadblock down by the stop sign. Wouldn’t Ellen love that?

“You could put men on the doors,” Jamie insisted.

“You have met Carly, right? And you know your sister. What are the odds of that working out?”

Callahan looked at the floor for a few beats, and when he raised his head, a reluctant smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. Caleb caught his first glimpse of Jamie’s fabled charisma. The guy was movie-star handsome, and he had a gleaming Hollywood smile. “Zilch. Ellen would kick them off the property, and Carly would invite them in to play poker and eat weird sandwiches.”

“Welcome to my life.”

Jamie leaned one hip on the counter and studied him, friendlier now. “So you and Ellen, huh?”

Caleb braced his hands behind him and forced his muscles to relax, unsure how best to approach this situation. “Yeah.”

“You like her?”

“Yeah.”

How articulate. Ellen’s brother was going to think he was a caveman.

Jamie nodded, and then he apparently decided Caleb was all right, because he said, “That’s good. She deserves a little fun.”

Caleb wanted to correct him. He didn’t want Callahan thinking all he was after from Ellen was a good time. He didn’t want anybody thinking that. But just then, Ellen appeared from down the hall, and he lost his train of thought. She’d combed her wet hair and put on ratty track pants and her purple T-shirt. She had a big, glorious, open-hearted smile on her face that lit him up from across the room. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to take her in his arms and swing her around in a circle and tell her he was falling hard for her.

But it was probably a good thing he didn’t, because it turned out she wasn’t smiling at him.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, crossing the room to throw her arms around Jamie.

“I got your message.” He gave Ellen a quick squeeze, then asked, “Have you seen Carly?”

Ellen nodded, grabbing Jamie’s hat off his head and tossing it on the table. “I went over this afternoon. She seems fine. Prickly as a cactus, though.”

That made Caleb smile. No one noticed. Ellen had given all her attention to Jamie, who’d fixed his own attention out the window at the dark shape of Carly’s house.

Scrubbing his hand over the two-day stubble on his chin, Jamie asked, “Did she . . . Does she mention me?”