Along Came Trouble: A Loveswept Contemporary Romance (3 page)

His mistake.

“You were going over to Carly’s,” she said. “She can give you something to drink.”

“Carly’s pregnant. She doesn’t have any beer.”

“I thought you wanted water.”

“I wasn’t going to push my luck until I got inside your place.”

Her lips pursed, then flattened back out. She had such a wide, expressive mouth. Not that he was supposed to be noticing, but it was the kind of mouth a guy noticed. The rest of her, too—soft, curvy. Lush. You’d think, looking at her, that she’d be all warm welcome, but then her eyes said,
Piss off, I can take care of myself
.

“You know Carly, then?” she asked.

“Sure, we go way back. Went to school together and everything. She’s thrilled to have my protection from the Huns.”

Ellen looked around. “I don’t see any Huns.”

“You never know when they might turn up.”

“If they do, I’ll call the police. You can stick with Carly. She actually
needs
some protection.”

Damn
. Charm wasn’t working.

Maybe he’d come at her too fast, but the trouble was, they couldn’t afford to go slow. There were already guys on her lawn, and Caleb needed to take measures to get her house locked down and the situation under control as quickly as possible.

Time to adopt a new strategy. No way was he going to call up his guy at Breckenridge and tell him,
Sorry, I can’t do the job. Ellen Callahan won’t let me
.

He’d been hired because her brother thought she and Carly needed security, and given how much attention Camelot had been getting on the news in the past few days, it was a smart move. Caleb had seen quite a few strange cars downtown, and he’d heard the dispatcher on the
police band sending black-and-whites to Burgess Street more than once.

All it would take was one guy getting greedy to scoop the others, and Ellen or Carly might find their homes broken into. Their property threatened—or worse.

Just thinking about it made him testy. Somebody needed to be here watching out for Carly and Ellen. Caleb couldn’t help but wonder why the hell Callahan wasn’t here doing it himself. What kind of man flew off to L.A. and left his sister and his pregnant girlfriend high and dry? No kind of man at all.

He decided not to mention this opinion to Ellen. The fact that she had her twin brother’s name emblazoned on her T-shirt suggested a degree of fondness it would be stupid to tamper with.

“You need me to keep them off your land.” She had the sort of yard that took effort to maintain, and she clearly hadn’t liked seeing her flowers trounced.

“I can do that myself.”

She said it firmly, unwavering. But she watched him.

The fact was, she couldn’t do it herself, and both of them knew it. She’d looked pretty tough going after the photographer with nothing but a cold drink and that scowl on her face, but unless she wanted to start throwing punches, she wasn’t going to be able to keep the newshounds off her grass for more than a few hours at a time.

Not her fault. The story was just too good. A world-famous pop star had taken up with a pregnant nobody in Nowheresville, Ohio, and the public demanded pictures. A decent photo of Jamie Callahan with Carly Short was probably worth half a million bucks.

Like it or not, Ellen Callahan needed him. She’d admitted it herself a few minutes ago, before he’d put her hackles up. Now he had to move slowly, or she’d bite him.

He pitched his voice low and soothing. “You won’t even have to know my agents are here,” Caleb said. “They’ll sit in an SUV at the bottom of the driveway and leave you be, but I’ll have them run patrols around the perimeter now and then. Their presence alone is going to keep the scum away, which means you won’t have to call the police to kick somebody off your lawn two or three times a day.”

“I don’t know. I don’t like—”

He raised his hand, palm out. Another “no” wouldn’t do either of them any favors. “Just think about it, huh? I’m going to go over to Carly’s to not get that beer I was hoping for, and I’ll come back over here later and we can talk it through. I’m sure we can come up with a solution that works for you.”

I’m sure I can find a way to save this job and save my ass, if you’ll just take it easy and let me watch out for you
.

Caleb gave the smile one more shot, but it was a lost cause. Charm wasn’t going to get
him anywhere with Ellen. He had to admire her for that, even if it did put them at cross-purposes.

“I don’t have time to talk to you today.”

“Ten minutes.”

“No. I have work to do, and then my son comes home at six, and I have to get him bathed and into bed, and there won’t—”

He interrupted her again. “What’s his name?”

“Henry.”

“What time does Hank go to bed?”

“Henry,” she repeated. Nowhere close to smiling. “Seven thirty.”

“I’ll stop by here at seven forty-five. In the meantime, I’m going to get a team on your driveway so you can work without worrying about strangers with cameras messing up your flowers. Which are very nice, by the way.”

That last bit of flattery did the trick—she finally smiled. Almost. At least, she stopped scowling. She looked good when she wasn’t scowling.

But then she said, “I don’t need a bodyguard.”

What was it, the third time she’d told him that? At least this time she didn’t sound quite so much like she’d gladly put him through a wood chipper.

“Good thing I’m not a bodyguard.”

Her eyebrows drew together. “I don’t want a car in my driveway. Put one car in the cul-de-sac if you have to. It can do double duty, and I won’t have to look at it all day. And no patrols. I don’t need strange men peering in my windows.”

A car in the cul-de-sac wouldn’t be enough by a long shot. It was a starting point, though. He could build on it.

At the moment, he didn’t have any leverage to use on her. If she honestly didn’t want his help, he couldn’t force her to take it. He needed to get to know her better so he could figure out what was going to work, and he couldn’t do that while she was standing shoeless in her yard, her heart still pumping fight-or-flight chemicals through her bloodstream, her mind on the work he was keeping her from doing.

“All right.” He started walking backward, careful not to step on any of her plants. “I’ll see you tonight, Ellen Callahan.”

“I don’t want to see you tonight,” she said. “We have nothing to talk about.”

“Maybe I’ll just drop by for that beer you owe me.”

“I only have wine.”

“I like wine.”

“Uninvited guests are the bane of my existence.”

But her mouth softened when she said it, and she held his gaze for a few beats.

“Seven forty-five.” He gave her a little salute and spun on his heel, already thinking about what he was going to ask Carly about her. Maybe they were friends. Carly was friends with everybody.

He would figure out how to fix this. He had to, because failure was not an option.

Chapter Three

“What were you
thinking
?”

On the digital screen of Ellen’s iPad, Jamie yawned and wiped one hand over his face. It was only six a.m. in L.A. She’d woken him up—a petty victory. In exchange for siccing Caleb Clark on her, he deserved whatever transcontinental forms of punishment she could inflict.

“What was I thinking about what?” he asked.

“The bodyguard. You know how I feel about security.”

Jamie frowned, and then his face disappeared, and she got random, jerky views of wall, ceiling, and a blurry blue blob that was probably his comforter. He came back into view, headboard behind him. Sitting up now. “I know how you feel about everything.”

“So what made you think this was a good idea?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe all those visits you got from the cops already this week? Come on, Ellen. You and Henry obviously need some kind of protection, and so does Carly. I had my guy at Breckenridge call up the Mount Pleasant Police Department, and they told him they don’t even have the resources to put a car on your house. I do.”

“Did you consider
asking
me first?”

Ellen walked to the window and checked the yard. Empty. She had to admit, it was a relief to see it that way.

“If I’d asked you, you’d have shot me down, right?”

“Of course.”

Jamie ran a hand through his curly blond hair, taming the sleep-mussed mess into something approaching his usual style. Even minimally groomed, he had the sort of masculine beauty millions of screaming fans went crazy for.

Growing up, she’d often wished for Jamie’s golden curls instead of her own flyaway white-blonde hair, his blue eyes to replace her hazel ones. She’d thought that if she were more beautiful, more talented, their mother might have given her an equal share of attention. Instead, Mom had raised her to watch out for her brother, to make sure he never got too tired or stressed out. She and her mother had specialized in spoiling Jamie, focusing all their collective energy on the more talented twin.

Ellen had always loved Jamie too much to hold the maternal favoritism against him. Only one person in a thousand got to be as gorgeous as her brother, and nobody got to choose their parents.

“I thought you might be more receptive to a stranger,” he said. “But I didn’t hire him, Breckenridge did. My head security guy suggested it would be a good idea to put some guys on you and Carly until this thing blows over. Apparently they don’t have their own people in the Midwest, so they contracted it out. Could you please stop pacing around? You’re making me motion-sick.”

Ellen propped the tablet against her salt-and-pepper shakers and sat down at the kitchen table. “Better?”

“Much. You were all nose hair from that angle.”

“Gee, thanks.”

She pulled a basket of laundry closer, spilled the warm contents onto the table, and started picking out and matching Henry’s socks.

Really, she ought to have called on her cell. Then she could have berated Jamie hands-free while she picked up the toy cars off the floor and unloaded the dishwasher. She and her brother had fallen into the habit of doing the video-chat thing for Henry’s sake. He wasn’t quite old enough yet to know what to make of the phone, but he loved to talk to his uncle on-screen.

“So I’m guessing a guy showed up, and you sent him packing?” Jamie asked.

Was that the best way to summarize the morning’s events? It left out Weasel Face, the assault-by-tea, Caleb’s arrival, Caleb’s smile, Caleb’s biceps … “More or less. There was another photographer out there.”

His eyebrows drew together. “Sorry, Ellen.”

“Not your fault.”

It was, but she had a hard time holding the press against Jamie for more than a couple of minutes at a time. He’d only ever wanted to sing. The rest of this had come to him accidentally, all part of the celebrity package.

Plus, he couldn’t help it that somebody local had sold a cell-phone shot of him and Carly to the tabloids. He’d been far more upset about that than Ellen had. After the picture hit the Internet, he’d picked a pointless fight with Carly that ended in their breakup and his retreat to California. A few hours after his plane lifted off, the first photographer had landed on Ellen’s lawn.

“Anyway,” she said, “this security guy showed up and ran off the photographer, and he talked me into letting him put a car out on the cul-de-sac. So you got your wish.”

“Good. I thought for sure you’d fire him on the spot.”

I tried that
. But it hadn’t worked, and she still wasn’t quite sure why. The
whoa
thing had distracted her. That, and the appeal of not having to worry about keeping one eye out the window at all times. “I still could.”

“Don’t, okay? It’s bad enough that I can’t be there. I feel better knowing somebody’s
watching out for you guys and Carly.”

“I’m not letting him within ten feet of my house.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Just work with him as much as you can stand to. And be nice, huh? It’s not his fault you’re insanely touchy about that house.”

“I’m not—”

Jamie raised an eyebrow, and she gave it up without even finishing the sentence. She
was
insanely touchy about her house. But it wasn’t as though she hadn’t earned the right to be.

This house was the prize she’d rescued from the wreckage of her marriage. It was where she’d learned independence, where she raised her son, and she refused to cower behind her own doors, locked down for fear of a few lowlifes with cameras. She couldn’t stand the idea of bodyguards and alarm codes, gates and barricades messing with her peace. Not when it had taken her so long to find it.

“ ‘Insane’ is a strong word,” she said. “And I’m almost always nice.”

“You’re always nice to me and Henry, but you’re basically a bitch for a living.”

“That’s different. That’s
professional
bitchiness, and I get paid good money for it.” Entertainment law rewarded bitchiness, especially when you were an advocate for artists who lacked any real power over the giant corporations that exploited them.

“Speaking of which, when are you going to look at that contract I sent you?”

“Soon. Henry woke up early, and I didn’t get through it this morning.”

“Where is he?”

“With his grandma.”

She finished up with the socks and began folding Henry’s T-shirts. There were no shorts or pants in the basket, because on Monday he’d flat-out refused to wear pants, and by this morning pantslessness had become the new reality. She’d put him in Maureen’s car wearing a tank top, a diaper, and a pair of sandals. As far as she knew, there were no obscenity laws governing what two-year-olds wore.

Jamie rubbed his face. “It’s only Wednesday, isn’t it? She’s early.”

Maureen usually had Henry from Thursday afternoon through Saturday morning, a sort of substitute custody, since her son wasn’t allowed to co-parent. “Yeah, but she offered to take him to the zoo in Columbus today. She said it was ‘because of all the stress.’ I’m pretty sure that’s code for ‘because of what your brother did.’ ”

“No way. Maureen likes me.”