Along Came Trouble(99)

She couldn’t risk it.

“Someone help me up,” she said. “I want to go to bed.”

Nana snorted. Katie and Ellen ignored her. Jamie started singing another song.

By the time he had his shirt off, Katie had gone pink, Nana had cat-called herself hoarse, Ellen was a little pale, and Carly couldn’t really remember anymore why she was refusing to let him in. That voice of his ate right through her defenses.

It always had. It was the whole entire reason she’d screwed the man in the laundry room to begin with. Well, that and his body. And his smile. And his charm. But mostly it was his voice in her ear. He’d come up behind her while she was giving him a tour of the house, put his hands on her hips, and told her flat out in that voice like warm honey that he wanted to take her to bed, and did she think there was any chance she’d let that come to pass?

It had been bold, brazen, and wildly inappropriate.

She hadn’t hesitated for a second.

But that was her whole problem. Her greatest fault. Impulsive Carly, always leaping before she looked. It got her into heaps of trouble. Impulsive Carly had fallen in love with Jamie Callahan, but impulsive Carly was going to have a baby soon, and she needed to knock that shit off if she wanted to be a good mother. Good mothers did not have sex on the laundry room floor with strange men, and they didn’t place their bets on Jamie Callahan. He was flighty and irresponsible and so, so sexy. He was giving a concert on her front lawn, for her. He was—

“Holy hell, he’s taking off his pants!” Katie said.

“Nah, he’s just unbuttoning them,” Nana clarified. “He’s going to make us wait.”

“The label will have his head on a platter,” Ellen said.

But it was hard to hear them over the cheering of the crowd and the voice in Carly’s heart that told her it didn’t matter what Jamie’s faults were, because she loved him and he loved her. And she needed him now.

“There goes the zipper,” said Katie.

“What do you suppose he’s got on under there?” Nana asked.

Nothing. He had nothing on under there, because Jamie always went commando. And suddenly, she didn’t relish the thought of the rest of the world knowing that fact. Or getting a glimpse of what her lover was packing. Which was not remotely small or pencil-like.

“Let him in,” Carly said.

Three heads turned and gave her three identical blank, astonished looks.

“Let him in the f*cking house before he embarrasses himself.”

Ellen sprinted for the door.





Chapter Twenty-five



The day never ended. Callahan disappeared into Carly’s house. Ellen came out twenty minutes later and walked straight through her own front door. Caleb presided over the shift change, fielded questions, kept order. Katie dropped by with tacos around seven, which he wolfed down standing up.

It got dark after nine, and lights came on in Ellen’s house. A few hours later, they went out. The crowd around the barricades gradually thinned, but it didn’t disappear, and neither did he. He still had work to do.

He did sit down, though, for the first time since late afternoon. Falling heavily into one of Ellen’s cast-iron chairs on the flagstone patio out back, he stared at the fence without seeing it and tried to recharge his depleted brain.

If the universe had been taking requests, he’d have asked for a beer. Ellen in his lap would be nice, too. Ellen and a beer. All he wanted in the world.

He’d thought about her while he stood there watching her brother sing and strip for Carly. Callahan had made an ass of himself, but he’d pulled it off. There was nobility in going after what you wanted when you had to walk over broken glass to get it. Somehow, Jamie had known what it would take to get Carly to give him a shot.

Caleb didn’t know what it was going to take with Ellen. But he knew what he had to do.

So, yeah. A beer would hit the spot.

The security light came on as Ellen’s door opened behind him.

She sat down in the wrought-iron chair next to his, an open bottle of wine in one hand and two empty glasses in the other. His dream girl in shorts and a T-shirt. Ellen with a bottle of wine was almost as good as Ellen with a beer. She didn’t look too much like she wanted to chew him out, either. She actually looked pretty mellow.

“I thought you were asleep,” he said.

“I’ve been keeping tabs on you out the window. You started to slow down about an hour ago, and I thought if I waited long enough, you’d eventually come to rest somewhere. Need a drink?”