Along Came Trouble: A Loveswept Contemporary Romance (4 page)

“Whatever you say.”

“I’m eminently likable.”

“You know who really seemed to like you?” she asked. “Carly. Maybe you ought to give her a call.”

Jamie’s sunny expression dimmed. “Fair warning, if you’re going to make me talk about Carly again, we’ll be talking about your love life, too.”

“I don’t have a love life.”

“Exactly.”

Ellen ignored the jab, as well as the way the words
love life
had catapulted Caleb Clark’s face into her brain again. That smirk. Those happy brown eyes. “See, the key difference between your love life and mine is that
you’re
making a big mistake, which makes yours worth discussing—”

“There’s nothing new to discuss.”

“—whereas I’ve mastered the art of
not
making mistakes.”

“You haven’t mastered anything. You’re just refusing to play the game at all.”

“Who’s refusing? It’s not as if men are lining up to worship me.” She stacked a neat pile of tiny T-shirts in the basket and moved on to the towels.

The truth was, she didn’t have room in her life for a man—didn’t have room in her life for a
life
, really. On the days when Maureen took care of Henry, Ellen took care of her clients. The rest of the week, she had to mother and clean, cook and organize, fitting her income-producing activities in at the margins.

“If they were beating down your door with bouquets, you’d still give them the boot. You’re totally closed off, Ellen. All work and no play.”

“I play with Henry. And quit trying to distract me by taking the offensive. You have something good going with Carly. You should be here trying to fix it.”

He huffed an exhale, a resigned sound. “You know she told me to take a hike.”

“So? She probably didn’t mean it. Carly is impetuous. That’s one of the reasons you love her.”

“Nobody said anything about love.”

“I did. I’m saying it.”

“It was a fling. Now it’s over.”

Ellen didn’t believe him. She’d never had a meaningless fling, but she’d been watching Jamie have them since puberty, and she knew what they looked like. His affair with Carly was different. He didn’t see it, but that was only because he was kind of an idiot.

“I don’t buy that.”

“You should. Carly doesn’t love me. She thought I was cute, and now she thinks I’m a hassle. But if you’re seeing love everywhere you look, maybe you’ve got more romance left in you than I thought.”

“No, don’t worry, I had my romance gland removed.”

More like assassinated. Marriage to an adulterous alcoholic poet would do that to you. On
the plus side, it turned out to be full of useful life lessons. Downsides of Codependency 101. By the time Ellen had filed for divorce, she’d been more than ready to try her hand at self-reliance. Her life was finally hers, and that was the way she liked it.

“I want you to be happy,” she said. “You deserve it.”

Jamie looked at her with the earnest intensity he usually reserved for head shots and turned the statement around. “What about what
you
deserve?”

“I’m all right.”

He made a derisive noise, half laugh, half exhale. “When did you last do something self-indulgent? Like, say, get a massage?”

In fact, she planned to be self-indulgent today. A red envelope containing the best movie Bogart and Bacall had ever made was gathering dust on top of her DVD player. Ellen had promised herself that if she got through all her client e-mails and returned her calls, she could sit in her bedroom in the dark and eat Nutter Butters dipped in a big glass of milk while she watched elegant people snipe at each other.

Just the thought of ducking her responsibilities made her feel like tap dancing. It would be her first treat in … God, she didn’t even want to think about it. It made her go all martyr mommy, and then even she got bored with herself.

But she knew better than to tell Jamie about her plan. He wouldn’t understand that knocking off work after six or seven hours counted as spoiling herself rotten.

“Normal people don’t get massages. That’s a rich-people thing.”

“Okay,” Jamie countered, “when did you last kick back on the couch for an hour with a beer and a good book?”

“I do that every night.” This was true only if you substituted the word
wine
for
beer
and the word
contract
for
book
.

“Bullshit. All you do is play with Henry and rescue artists from their mistakes and mow the lawn and cook. It makes me tired just being around you. You’re going to burn out soon, and then I’ll have to pay to have you sent to one of those really cushy spas where you can get facials and sleep in late and drink smoothies all day long.”

“If you sent me to a spa, you’d have to come out here and live with Henry.”

“I could handle Henry for a few weeks.”

“Please. The two of you would sit around in your underpants watching cartoons all day, and you’d feed him candy and juice boxes until he puked.”

“Ouch.” Jamie grinned, and she smiled back at him. Her wonderful, adorable, irresponsible brother. The biggest fan she’d ever had.

“Seriously, though, you need to take it easy,” he said. “I worry about you there all alone. If you guys aren’t going to move out here and live with me—”

“We’re not.”

“—then you need to at least hire a housekeeper or a nanny or something. I’ll pay for it if you’ll get off your high horse and let me. Just take a night off now and then. Find yourself a boyfriend who will squire you around to all the finest dining establishments Camelot has to offer.”

For the second time in two minutes, she saw Caleb’s face in her head. Posttraumatic shock, no doubt. Adrenaline had imprinted him on her brain.

Except that dumping tea on the photographer hadn’t been traumatic, it had been pleasurable. And so had talking to Caleb, right up until she found out he intended to turn her life upside down in the guise of keeping her safe.

“There’s only the two dining establishments.”

Jamie’s lip curled, but it was jokey disdain. Her adopted hometown had grown on both of them since she’d moved here six years ago. Back when Camelot College had hired Richard to teach creative writing, the village had seemed too slow and isolated to Ellen, accustomed as she’d been to Chicago. When Maureen had been so charmed by the town that she’d decided to relocate and spend her retirement closer to Richard, the decision had astonished Ellen. Why would anyone voluntarily give up Michigan Avenue for the cornfields of central Ohio?

But Ohio had charmed Ellen when she wasn’t paying attention. Something about the quiet, and about the way she noticed every seasonal change in the trees and the plants instead of the presence or absence of sewage smells.

The roots of small-town life had twined around her feet gradually, until one morning in the bleary early months of Henry’s life, she’d woken up and looked out her bedroom window and thought,
I’m never going to leave
. And then astonished herself by smiling.

“All I’m saying is you should give yourself a break,” Jamie said. “Do something fun.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re pigheaded.”

“No, that’s you.”

He closed his hands around an imaginary neck and throttled her. She stuck out her tongue.

Last towel folded, she transferred the pile to the basket and stood, picking up her iPad. “I’m going to work now. Some of us have real jobs.”

“I have a real job,” he protested. “I have to rehearse with the dancers this morning, and then I’m flying somewhere for a thing.”

“A thing?”

“I don’t know. A couple appearances, an interview, whatever. And then two shows this weekend. I’m very busy, very important.”

“Yeah, yeah. You keep telling yourself that,
Tiger Beat
.”

Chapter Four

Caleb watched his mother extract a Mento from the package in her purse and frown at it before offering it to his nephew Jacob, who popped it in his mouth with a “Thanks, Grandma!” and ran off to tell his brothers.

“It’s really nothing,” she said to Caleb. “I don’t want you to worry about it.”

Dinner long since over, they lingered in his front hallway, conferring at a volume that was quiet only in comparison to the racket the rest of the family was making.

“Why don’t you just tell me what happened and let me decide?” He asked this question in a tone that mostly concealed his intense frustration with her. A small victory. Small victories were the only kind he ever scored in this ongoing passive-aggressive campaign she was waging to drive him up the fucking wall.

Six months he’d been back in Camelot, and still he and Mom did this polite dance nearly every time he saw her.
Let me help you
, he’d say.
Let me take a look at that bill from the insurance company. Let me see that pile of work orders Dad hasn’t been able to deal with
.

And she’d say,
Oh, you’re too busy. Really, there’s nothing to help with. Have a seat, let me fix you something to eat
.

The whole apartment complex could fall down around her ears, and she’d still insist there wasn’t a thing Caleb could do to help out. Which might be okay if she didn’t also, regularly and at great length, declare what a mess everything was, and how badly used she felt since his father’s stroke.
It’s too much
, she’d say. And then shove him away with both hands when he tried to take some of the burden off her shoulders.

His mother delayed her reply, surveying the open-plan living room with a pinched, disapproving expression. Dad leaned against the wall by the kitchen, tugging on his U.S. Army ball cap and spinning out some story about the annual Fourth of July fireworks that he’d already told twice tonight. Caleb’s younger sister, Katie, offered him a wan smile as she leaned against the wall beside him, arms crossed, listening.

The boys, Clark, Anthony, and Jacob, chased their barking golden retriever puppy in circles around the dining room table as Caleb’s older sister, Amber, laughed at something her husband, Tony, said and squirmed away as he tried to pull her into his lap.

You wouldn’t know from looking at his mother’s face how much she loved this gang of monkeys, but she did. Her heart was in the right place. If she remained above the fray, withholding and continually finding fault, it was only because she’d been raised that way. Her
own mother was Lebanese, and all the women on Mom’s side of the family expressed affection through criticism and an obsession with appearances. Spotless floors and a neatly pressed shirt for the school dance said,
I love you
. Mom rarely did.

Nothing about her had changed since he was a kid. He knew it wasn’t fair of him to hold the way she was against her, but he couldn’t seem to help it. He was responsible for this boisterous, problem-plagued crew now—or at least, he was trying to be. She made it hard as hell for him to do the job he’d moved home to do.

“Well, it’s your father, of course,” she admitted, casting a baleful look in his direction. “He’s made a mess of things again.”

Caleb bristled, same as he always did when she started in on Dad. “What happened?”

“He took the master key out of the drawer when I wasn’t paying attention. By the time I found him, he’d left an open can of paint in one unit and done something to the plumbing in 4C that I’m going to have to call Kevin in to fix.”

Kevin was a local handyman and one of Mom’s favorite feints in the conversational swordplay she kept dragging Caleb into. He couldn’t understand it. She knew he wanted to help. She knew his father had taught him to do any sort of work that needed to be done at the apartments his parents owned. And yet she persisted in pretending she was planning to pay Kevin money she couldn’t afford for work her own son was perfectly willing and able to do free of charge. Every time, she made him pry the information out of her.

It was both insulting and exhausting, but all very polite. Which was his mother to a T.

At times like this, he missed the simplicity of the chain of command. It would improve matters a lot if he could just hand Mom her orders and be done with it.

Given the way things had been going, she was far more likely to be handing
him
orders. But even that would be an improvement over the current situation.

“You don’t need to call Kevin. I’ll take care of it tomorrow.”

“I couldn’t ask you to do that. Maybe Tony can spare a few minutes.”

Tony and Amber had their hands full with three young boys and a construction business that had been struggling since the housing market took a dive. “Tony’s got a lot to do already. I can come by—”

“Please, don’t worry about it. I’ll give Kevin a call tomorrow.”

Katie piped up from down the hall. “Let him help, Ma. I swear, you’re going to drive Caleb crazy.”

“Well, he’s
busy
,” she chided. “He has to focus on his business. June over at the Parish House was telling me last week how many new businesses fail, especially when the owners don’t have the skills or the experience they need—”

“Holy cow, Mom, lay off,” Katie said. “Caleb’s not going to fail. Camelot Security’s
doing fine. He can take an hour off tomorrow to do some plumbing, and I’ll make sure the office doesn’t implode while he’s out.”

Caleb threw Katie a tight smile, grateful she was loyal, if not honest. She made a shooing motion behind their parents’ backs.
Get them out of here
.

He opened the door and told his mother, “I’ll take care of it.”

“All right,” she said, as if she were doing him a favor. She tucked her purse under her arm. “Come by early, though. The tenant needs his shower working.” Glaring at her husband, she asked, “Are you ready yet, Derek? It’s time for us to go.”

Caleb’s father smiled his crooked smile, unperturbed. “I guess I am.”

Eventually, with Katie’s help, Caleb got them all out of the house, though not before his mother had remarked that the lawn needed mowing and the trim could use a coat of paint.

“We are never doing that again,” he said as he pushed the door closed.