A Simple Twist of Fate (25 page)

She glanced at Mallory. “You could help me.”

“Not when it looks like Callen’s brain finally jump-started.” She walked up to stand beside Callen. Didn’t reach out or do anything but smile. “Figure it out, big boy?”

“Getting there.”

Sophie’s heartbeat took off on a wild run. Her gaze went back and forth between Callen and Mallory then stayed on the woman Sophie had hoped would become a lasting friend. “Why are you talking to him at all?”

Callen answered her. “You’re in love with Beck.”

No, no, no
. Callen would not do this to her. Not here. Not after all the horrible things he had said to her. “We’re done talking.”

“Sophie.” His voice softened and the hardness left his expression. “Say it.”

Her mind rebelled and the last of her strength seeped out of her. “Why should I tell you anything?”

“Because it changes everything.” From the sudden smile and the relaxed stance, he actually looked like he cared.

She had no idea what changed or why knowing about the jewelry and her aunt made a difference to him when it meant nothing to Beck. She was so confused and turned around that she didn’t know what to do or say. “Like you’d even believe me.”

“That’s a yes,” Mallory said.

But Callen didn’t let up. “Sophie . . .”

“Yes, okay? Yes. I think I do.” The ringing in her head stopped as soon as the words were out. She tasted them, felt them, believed them.

It had been that way from the beginning. She saw Beck and the connection clicked. It happened too fast and without warning, but now she loved him and it was over. She just wanted to crawl off somewhere and cry.

“There you go.” Mallory smacked Callen in the arm. “I’m betting Beck’s big brain got in the way with this big fight.”

Callen nodded. “No doubt.”

Sophie couldn’t listen to one more word. “I’m going home.”

Callen let go of the door. “I’ll let Leah know you’ll see her later.”

Sophie doubted she’d see any of them again.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Beck stomped on the concrete pad under the swing set. He’d been staring at the thing for weeks, trying to figure out where it fit in with all he knew about his grandmother and Charlie. He needed something mindless to focus on. Something that kept his mind off the beautiful brunette who had occupied his thoughts almost from the first day he saw her.

At the sound of crunching grass, Beck looked up and saw Callen walking toward him. Shirt untucked and hair looking like he’d combed it with his fingers. With the dark circles under his eyes, it looked like he hadn’t slept since Mom gave them all the news.

“What are you doing out here?” he asked as he stopped on the edge of the concrete.

Beck ignored the question and the dark clouds rolling in. “When did you get home?”

“Are we just going to exchange questions?”

“Apparently.” Beck laughed for what felt like the first time in forever but sobered just as fast. “Look, Cal—”

He held up a hand. “I can’t talk about it. I can’t even deal with the whole birth-mother thing yet.”

Understandable, but Beck couldn’t let it go. There were things that needed to be said. Things Callen needed to know, starting with what could be the hardest to swallow. “Mom says she’s staying on indefinitely.”

“You mean your mom.”

Beck remembered his mom’s destroyed expression at the mention that she had anything other than three sons. “She’s
our
mom in every way that counts.”

“Still not talking about this.”

Maybe he wasn’t, but one truth nagged at Beck and he wanted the point clear. “Just know that it changes nothing. Between us, I mean.”

Callen’s blank expression didn’t change. “Okay.”

Yeah, Beck still wasn’t satisfied. He and Declan talked this through. They agreed to force Callen on this subject. They needed him to know birth mothers were irrelevant to their support of each other. “Now that you know, do you feel any different about me and Declan?”

The first sign of life showed on Callen’s face when he frowned. “Hell, no.”

“That runs both ways.”

Something close to a smile crossed Callen’s lips. “Good to know.”

Beck wanted to belabor the point. Ask questions, run through it, make it all clear. But he knew Callen needed a lighter touch right now. If he wanted breathing room, Beck would figure out a way to tamp down his instincts and let Callen have it.

Still, one big question remained. Callen being here now might answer it, but Beck wanted something in his life settled, so he sought an answer. “So, you’re not leaving Sweetwater?”

“After sinking money into this big shack? No.” Callen kicked at some of the loose rocks under his feet. “What about you?”

Satisfaction soared through Beck. They’d dodged one more Charlie bombshell. “I have some work to finish up in Nevada but this will be my home base.”

“And Sophie?”

Talk about an off-limits subject. Beck couldn’t even let his mind wander in her direction without being flooded with memories and doubts and a twinge of guilt he couldn’t push out. But the last thing he had the energy for was another “you’ll find someone else” lecture from Callen. “You’ve made your position clear.”

“Yeah, about that.” Callen made a hissing sound as he inhaled a deep breath of air through clenched teeth. “What if I was wrong?”

“What?”

“You never told me about the jewelry and her aunt. Not like you to leave out the big important facts. If I had known I wouldn’t have been talking about getting rid of boxes and this might not have snowballed into a huge thing.”

The boxes . . . Beck remembered that being part of Sophie’s excuse. He didn’t know which ones or why she’d been talking about them, but now Callen threw them up as an excuse, too.

Beck didn’t think the hollow feeling in his stomach could get worse, but it did. “How do you know now?”

“I talked to her.”

“When?”

“I really wanted to hate her, you know.”

Not that Callen bothered to hide it. It was one of those things that poked at Beck the whole time he fought off his attraction for Sophie then finally gave in to it. “Sounded like you got there yesterday.”

“Nah, that’s the problem. Just when I thought I turned a corner and could write her off, I remember how she looked at you. Now I’m seeing you kick around here. You look like hell, by the way.”

That was nothing compared to how he felt. Food didn’t interest him. Neither did sleep. He’d spent the morning fighting the urge to drive over to her house and run through it all one more time. He had to remind himself how she’d promised one thing but given him another. His brain kept reinforcing her betrayal but his heart ignored it.

“I’ll be fine.” But he knew he wouldn’t.

“Only if you figure out how to get out of your own way.” Callen shook his head. “You know I used to think your problem stemmed from some weird naïve thing you had going on about our dear dad. Like, you actually believed the whole never-proven-guilty crap you spewed.”

Beck had no idea where the conversation was headed now, but he didn’t like this direction any better. “It’s not crap.”

“You refused to just use the hard words and nail Charlie as the loser he was, like Declan and I do.” Callen leaned against the swing set pole. “You rambled on about evidence and other bullshit.”

“I see you’re still not clear on how the legal system works. Maybe there’s a kid show we could watch that explains it in little words.”

“This isn’t about your big legal brain and all that arguing you like to do.” Callen’s intense stare drilled into Beck. “This is about you and your need to fix everything.”

He kept hearing the words and each time the criticism grew. “People need to stop saying that.”

“Sophie say it?”

Beck pushed her image out of his head for the hundredth time since yesterday. “Your point is?”

“You’re careful with your words because you want to diffuse the anger people have. You deal with all the paperwork and the lawyers and put your body between us and Charlie’s nonsense because you want to fix it for us. Make it livable.”

“I just want it handled.” Someone had to do it and he could, so he did.

“It is what it is, Beck. Dad was a piece of shit. He did shitty things and hurt people. There is no way for you to fix that.”

The stark words rammed against Beck. He balked, wanting to insist he could work it all out and give them a clean slate. That’s what he’d tried to do his entire life. Every time he made inroads, some new blow would land and the cycle would start again.

“Is it so wrong to want to clean it all up and move on?” he asked.

“That’s just it. We’ll never be clean from Charlie. Even now his actions come back to wallop us.” Callen glanced at the house. “Believe me, I know.”

That guilt came flinging back. Beck struggled with his mother’s news and losing Sophie. He walked the property trying to find answers and keep everything together. He made a mental pro/con list about what going to Sophie would cost him. But he knew his birth mother, and that put him one step ahead of Callen right now.

“You want things to be perfect and clean, but life isn’t like that, Beck.”

It was a lesson he wanted to avoid but kept having dropped in his lap. “I’m well aware.”

“But you think you can scrub it and get it there. You can’t. Dad will always be a shit. Sophie will always struggle with loyalty to an aunt who should have known better than to get near Charlie. But the things Sophie did are really about wanting the family she lost. You can give her that.”

Beck refused to let that thought take hold. He’d started to believe it, then he walked into Callen’s bedroom. “You’re defending her now?”

“I think we were looking for her to be underhanded because that’s how people are with us. We expected her to have a deeper motive and be out to punish us. But, really, it looks like she just did something dumb and had the bad luck to hit on the one thing that raises our defenses.” When Beck started to talk, Callen held up a hand to stop him. “She needs to apologize for whatever thought put that envelope in her hand, and the two of you need to work it out. But, man, none of this is a reason to lose her.”

It all lined up and made sense. The part that continued to slam Beck was the promise. Maybe Callen didn’t know about the jewelry but Beck had and they’d reached an agreement. Having one more person say one thing and do something else made him feel as if he were drowning. “She lied to me.”

Callen shook his head. “She got spun up and made a bad decision.”

Could it really be so simple? She insisted it was but Beck saw only a lifetime of lies. “Since when do you speak for her?”

“Since I saw her at Mallory’s store and heard her out. But, really, it wasn’t what she said. It was how she looked. I saw the same look in Declan when he thought he lost Leah. You can’t fake that that kind of pain.”

The word sliced through Beck. It described how he felt, all raw and turned inside out. “I think we know people can. Charlie made a career out of fooling people.”

“She’s not Charlie. You’re not. I’m not. But she’s definitely not.” Callen put a hand on Beck’s shoulder. “Remember how Declan crawled to get Leah back? I’m thinking it’s your turn.”

Beck had toyed with that option all morning. Then he looked at his mother’s drawn expression across the kitchen table and thought about the lies she accepted and where they took her life, and he vowed not to get sucked in. “And next time Sophie makes me a promise and ducks out on it? What do I do then?”

“What you would do if I did that? What if I made a promise and messed up?”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“It really is,” Callen said. “And I’m betting you’d forgive me. You’d get pissed and get over it. Why should the woman you love get less?”

Beck didn’t have to think about the answer. His trust and love for his brother were unconditional. It all sounded so simple. So easy, and he was the one making it hard.

His knees buckled as the reality of every way he messed up slammed into him. He balanced his back against the swing set to stay upright. “Shit.”

“See, this is what happens when you overthink things. You fuck up.”

Beck bent over with his hands on his thighs as he tried to draw enough air into his lungs to breathe. “The things I said to her.”

The entire conversation with Sophie flashed through his head. This time he focused on her answers and how he cut her off. He saw the hurt in her eyes, the same pain he’d blocked out as the rage took off inside him. He concentrated so hard on what her being in Cal’s room meant to him that he ignored why it meant something to her.

She defended her family like he did his. He tried to imagine what he would do to protect the people he loved. Leah tried to do that with the envelope. His mother tried to do that by keeping information hidden for years. Everyone but Charlie stepped up to save others.

Beck realized he’d finally found a woman who cared about him for him. Who didn’t see Charlie’s son or a potential con man every time she looked at him. Someone who craved a family bond as much as he did.

He had everything and he pushed it away.

Damn it, he did fuck up. Him, not her.

“You can’t unsay the garbage, believe me I’ve tried to think of a way to do that, but you can stop being a dick.” Callen slapped Beck’s back again. A little harder this time. “Maybe a gesture will help. I say we divide and conquer this house, searching for these damn jewels. The sooner those are out of the way, the sooner the two of you can figure out where you go next.”

Beck’s mind cleared, but only a little. “They’re not in the house.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so either, but Sophie needs the show of support. She needs to know we plan to take her in here.”

Now even Callen wanted to help. Wanted to include her in every part of their lives.

The thought gave Beck hope. “Since when?”

“Since you lost your damn mind over her. I say her name and you get that lost puppy look. Really, dude. It’s sad. You’re in love with this woman and it only took you a month to get there.”

Beck didn’t know much about women. His actions over the last twenty-four hours proved that. But he guessed Sophie should be the first one he told his true feelings to, so he skipped right over the love thing. “My point was the jewelry isn’t inside the house. I think it’s here.”

Callen glanced around. “Want to narrow the ‘here’ down for me?”

“Freshly poured concrete under a falling down swing set?” Beck straightened and stomped his foot on the pad again. “Our grandmother spends money on a concrete pad rather than paying the mortgage? She goes for that option rather than fixing the swing set or just knocking it down? Seems like a good place to hide things, don’t you think?”

Understanding flooded Callen’s face. “That brain of yours does come in handy.”

“That’s not the muscle I plan to use.”

“What now?”

Beck started toward the tool shed. “I’m busting this fucker up.”

“You’re going to do hard labor?” Callen opened the shed’s door and gestured for Beck to go in first. “Now this I want to see.”