Facing It (10 page)

The Calvert clan descended in full force on the matriarchal home for Lenora’s and Ruthie’s returns. Chris had been exposed to them in bits and pieces on multiple occasions, but he supposed this was pretty much what it was like to be caught up in the rush of a small tsunami—loud, overwhelming, constantly moving.

They made him nervous. Hell, he was an only late-life child raised by a crotchety older man thrust unwillingly into the role of single parent in his early fifties. The touchy-feely, lovey-dovey stuff displayed in Lenora Calvert’s home was beyond his experience.

He leaned against the wall by the kitchen door. For the most part, the children were all outdoors, shrieking and laughing as they played on the back lawn. The adults had gathered around Lenora’s huge kitchen table. Ainsley dozed on Ruthie’s lap, and Tori clung to Ruthie’s hand. Chris didn’t think she’d stopped touching her sister since Ruthie had stepped from his Jeep earlier and Tori had run lightly down the steps to embrace her, silent tears trickling down both women’s faces.

There’d been more weeping as Ruthie went into her mother’s arms and Lenora Calvert, pale but moving under her own steam, had held her daughter close to her heart, rocking her from side to side and whispering into Ruthie’s ear.

Once there’d been hugs and kisses all around and a general catching up, Lenora’s sons had begun attempting to convince her to stay somewhere other than her home.

“Mama, please.” His voice patient, Tick tried again. He leaned forward, one hand curved around his coffee cup, tapping the index finger of his other on the tabletop. “Cait and I have room, Del and Barb have room—”

“Lamar.” Lenora shook her head, the white bandage at her hairline snowy against her hair. “The discussion is closed and that’s final.”

Frustration flashed over Tick’s face and Chris hid a grin in a low cough behind his cupped hand. He’d followed enough of Tick’s orders over the years to enjoy watching the guy’s mom put him in his place.

Lenora reached over to pat Ruthie’s knee. “We will be just fine.”

A long-suffering look passed between Tick and his brothers. Chris could almost see Tick swallowing a reminder that his mother had recently been everything but “just fine”. Tick lifted his hand and waved at his brothers, an eyebrow lifted in inquiry. “I guess we can take turns over here?”

Chris cleared his throat. “I can stay, if you need me to.”

The words were out before he’d even thought them through. All eyes swung to him, and he tried not to cringe. Damn, but they were a crew. He caught Tick’s gaze and shrugged. “I’m not on the schedule at the department until next week anyway, right?”

Tick nodded. “Right.”

“I’m not going to drive all the way back to the coast. No problem for me to be here until…well, until.” Hell, did they have to stare at him? Except for Ruthie, who seemed intent on pleating the hem of Ainsley’s dress between her fingers. He looked at Lenora. “If that’s all right with you, ma’am.”

A slow, sweet smile curved her mouth. “I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

Over the next hour or so, the crowd dwindled as Ruthie’s brothers Chuck and Del took their wives and children home. While Ruthie remained in the kitchen with her mother and sister, Chris unloaded the Jeep with Tick’s help.

“I appreciate this, Chris,” Tick said as they returned downstairs after depositing the last of the bags in the bedrooms Ruthie and the children would use. “I know you didn’t have to offer.”

“Yeah, well, she’s had a raw deal and your mom didn’t deserve all this crap either.”

A familiar female voice drifted from the kitchen, the words indistinct. Chris frowned. “Is that Autry Reed?”

“Yeah. She’s agreed to represent Ruthie’s interests. Figured it made sense, her being in family law now but having the criminal-law background.”

“Makes a lot of sense.”

Tick tilted his head toward the door. “I’m going to round up Cait and Lee and take off. Beecham called earlier. He and Settles are coming back down to talk with Ruthie tomorrow. They’ll be here tonight and we’re going to meet with them over dinner.” He slapped Chris on the back. “Thanks again.”

Chris nodded. Other than the quiet conversation going on in the kitchen, the big old house lay still and quiet. He rubbed the slight pounding at his temples. Ruthie Chason and her children were not his responsibility. Nor was Lenora Calvert. He must have been temporarily insane, offering to stay here like this.

What the hell had he let himself in for?

Ruthie placed the last of the soup bowls in the dishwasher and swung it closed. She wrung out the dishrag and paused, soaking in the sweetness of her mother’s voice from the living room. With the children around, very little persuasion had been necessary to convince Mama to rest on the couch and read to them from the
Big Book of Children’s Bible Stories
. If Ruthie wasn’t mistaken, they were halfway through Noah and the flood.

Footsteps full of quiet authority sounded behind her. “Ainsley’s passed out.”

She smiled at Chris’s words and attacked the spotless countertop with the damp rag. “Reading aloud does it every time. Camille will nod off next.”

From the corner of her eye, she glimpsed him rest his shoulder against the jamb. “What about John Robert?”

She rubbed at a nonexistent stain on the grout. “He won’t miss a word. He loves books too much to fall asleep during one.”

“I could see that. He was all over the bookshelf in there earlier, pulling out ones he hadn’t read yet.”

She could only imagine. “That’s my boy.”

“Do you read?”

The question was aimless, nothing but friendly small talk, but it slammed into her regardless. “Not anymore. Stephen doesn’t—”

“I’m sorry.” Chris cut her off. His voice reeked of discomfort. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay.” She slapped the rag into the sink and scrubbed. “That’s over.”

“That’s right. It’s over.” Certainty rang in his words, as if he believed. “You can read whatever you want to, do whatever you want to, and he can’t—” His cell phone jangled to life. She glanced over her shoulder to find him peering at the display. He grimaced. “Excuse me.”

He lifted it to his ear. “Parker. Yeah. What do you want?”

A laughing male voice was audible even to her, although the words were jumbled and indistinguishable. Chris rubbed a finger over his temple. “Yeah, I’m back already. No, I can’t meet you in the morning. Because. Damn it, Troy Lee, I know you have a life that doesn’t involve me, so go…ah, Jesus, you didn’t just say that. Shut up, would you?”

Her neck hot, Ruthie turned back to the sink. His boyfriend, maybe? Someone who would mind his staying here. Her shoulders slumped. The last thing she wanted was to make trouble for him, even if having him here made her feel safe for the first time in forever.

“Good night, Troy Lee.” His voice ringing with finality, Chris smacked the phone closed. He laughed and pressed the thin rectangle to his forehead. “God help me.”

Ruthie folded the dishcloth across the sink divider and turned to him. “You don’t have to stay. I don’t want us to interfere with—”

“Please don’t start that.” He returned the phone to his belt and leaned on the counter, one foot propped over the other. “So what are you going to read first?”

Sweet complicity unfolded between them and a desire to laugh from sheer joy burbled in her. “I don’t know. What do you suggest?”

His eyes widened, a hint of deer-in-the-headlights in them. “I’m not sure we’d have the same reading taste, Ruthie.”

“Oh, come on, Chris Parker, what was the last great book you read?”

“A training manual on drug interdiction.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. Before that I read a couple of biographies and I’m waiting on Tick to finish
Friday Night Lights
so I can read his copy. What did you read”—discomfort twisted his face—“before?”

“I loved du Maurier and Agatha Christie. Maybe Mama’s got some of my old ones around here.”

“Sounds like John Robert won’t be the only one raiding the bookshelf.”

“I guess not.” She dropped her gaze from the intensity of his.

He cleared his throat. “Well, I’m going to hit the shower. If you need help with the kids, just holler.”

“I’ll be fine.” She folded her hands around the edge of the countertop, trying to dodge the images of him in the shower. “But thank you. Goodnight, Chris.”

He straightened, his gaze falling away from hers. “Goodnight.”

It had been one long hell of a day, and Jennifer needed a drink.

Maybe four.

Maybe the whole damn bottle.

Maybe what she needed to do was fuck Harrell Beecham until he came to his goddamn senses.

The absolute last thing she needed was to have to play nice over dinner with Beecham’s friends Calvert and Falconetti, with their happy little marriage and their happy little secret-code-word friendship with her partner.

“Jen?” He rapped on the connecting door between their rooms.

Jennifer jammed her feet into her shoes and stalked over to swing her door open. “What?”

He blinked, obviously taken aback. “I was just seeing if you were ready to go.”

She narrowed her eyes in her harshest glare. “Don’t talk to me.”

A puff of surprised laughter emerged from his lips. “What?”

“You heard me.” Spinning away, she dug in her suitcase for her earrings. “I’m pissed off at you. Don’t talk to me.”

“You’re not wearing that, are you?”

She glared at his shirt and tie. Mr. Bureau Dress Code Poster Boy, all buttoned up, clean shaven, his close-trimmed auburn waves neatly combed.

“Yes, I’m wearing this. We’re not technically working tonight.” She swept a hand up and down to indicate her black skirt and aqua halter top. “What’s the problem?”

“Don’t you think the back of that top is a little revealing?”

Considering she’d bought the thing because the chain detail on the back was cute and revealing? Yeah, it was a tad on the side that belonged to visual teasing. She tapped one foot while threading her earrings through her pierced ears. “It’s fine. Besides, your buddy Calvert obviously has eyes only for one woman and that’s not me. Nobody else is going to be looking.”

“I’ll be looking,” he muttered.

“You don’t count.”

“Damn it, Jennifer.” The words emerged as a veritable growl. “Don’t do this.”

She propped a hand on one hip. “Don’t do what?”

“Don’t be this way.”

“I warned you. Told you not to talk to me. You started it.”

“Jen. You’re being a bitch.”

Fully dressed, she crossed to stand before him, tilting her head back slightly to meet his blue gaze, gleaming with frustration. She tapped his chest with one finger, hard. “How do you want me to be, partner?”

“I want you to be yourself.”

“This is me.”

“No, it’s not. I don’t know what’s—”

“What’s the matter, Beecham?” She turned away with a halfhearted shrug. “Afraid I’ll embarrass you with your friends if I’m not the perfect little FBI agent? You know, I’m a real person. I have a real life and a
personality
separate from the goddamn Bureau.”

“Yeah, whatever.” He rolled his eyes and threw up his hands in a gesture of defeat. “Let’s go. Maybe you’ll get beyond the maturity level of a twelve-year-old before we get there.”

She snatched up her clutch, big enough to carry her creds, and tossed her badge folder in, gracing him with a withering look while she did so. He gazed back at her, steadily, as though dealing with a recalcitrant child. Her skin buzzed with annoyance under that expression.

“Oh fuck you, Beech.”

One second she was adjusting her thigh holster, the next her back was against the wall, wrists pinned by her head, and she stared into blue eyes ablaze with fury. Her stomach turned over, a visceral reaction to the tension crackling between them. Feminine satisfaction curled through her.

She’d finally succeeded in ruffling cool, calm Special Agent Harrell S. Beecham.

“Jen.” A deep, shaky breath heaved his chest and he rested his forehead on the wall next to her, releasing her hands as he did so. “Enough.”

He was too close, close enough to touch, but too far away, somewhere she’d never be able to reach him. She could rattle that control of his, but she couldn’t break it.

She levered her hands between them to flatten against his chest and ease him away. “Let’s go.”

“Jennifer.” His voice held a quiet plea she didn’t quite understand. Didn’t matter anyway, did it? More and more, it seemed she was fighting a battle she couldn’t win.

She didn’t look at him, focusing at her thigh, on the holster she could adjust by touch alone. Once she felt more together, she straightened to meet his shuttered gaze head on. “I’ll behave myself, okay? I promise.”

A harsh sigh rumbled through him. “Jen…”

“Just…” She waved in terse dismissal. Too bad it wasn’t a magic wand. She wanted this night over and done. “Let’s
go
.”

The silence stayed wrapped around them during the ten-minute drive. Jennifer stared out at the rural countryside, shrouded in the shadows of early nighttime. Her chest quivered with uneven breaths. With shaking fingers, she smoothed the hem of her skirt. She was going to have to ask Weston to assign her a new partner for real. She simply couldn’t work with Beecham anymore.