Fireproof (13 page)

“I thought you could take it,” Terrell ribbed him.

With watering eyes, the driver tucked back in for another long draught from the bottle. He came up for air, whipped his head to the side, and screamed.

“Uh-huh,” Terrell said. “You gotta drink that, bro.”

“Fourteen seconds,” Simmons called out the time.

Wayne's next attempt was shorter than the first two, and he spewed droplets across the table and his own arm. “Ahhhh, it
burns
!” He pounded the table and gasped for air. The bottle was still half full.

Eric was laughing.

Terrell said, “Where the man at now, huh? I thought he said he could take it.”

Wayne guzzled some more, then pounded the table with his palm and yelled through lips doused in dripping red sauce: “
Aahhh.
My mouth's
on fire
!” He dashed toward the bathroom.
“Aahhh!”

Caleb watched his exit with serene calm.

“Cap'n,”Terrell said, “how'd you do that, man? You don't even feel sick?”

“You could do it, too, Terrell”—Caleb held up his empty bottle and grinned—“if you replaced yours with tomato juice.”

The black man guffawed and clasped hands with Eric in victory. Lieutenant Simmons broke into a wide smile and clapped.

“That's classic,” Eric said. “That was awesome.”

“I doubt we'll hear any more of his bragging for a while.”

“Code of silence,” Simmons said. “Nobody tells him for two weeks.”

“Code of silence,” the others agreed.

CHAPTER 18

C
atherine strode through the Staff Only doors of the cancer wing, wearing her glasses and low black pumps beneath a fitted skirt and jacket. If she was going to catch the attention of Dr. Keller, she was no longer going to do it in spikes, thank you. Already her lower back was feeling better than it had in days.

“Dr. Anderson,” she called after a gray-haired man in the hall.

He turned from a wall chart. Nurses passed by.

“Hi.” She touched his arm.“I just wanted to remind you about your interview in ten minutes.” She knew how helpful a gesture could be, and she wasn't above using her female allure to imprint important matters in the minds of the male staff.

“Catherine, thank you,” Dr. Anderson said. “I'll certainly be there.”

“Sure. And congratulations on your cancer research award. You deserve it.”

“I appreciate that.”

Her cell phone rang and she let her hand drop from the doctor's arm. He moved toward the nurses' desk while she answered the call. “This is Catherine.”

“Hey. It's Caleb.”

“Caleb?”

“You know, your husband?”

She wondered why he would be calling her at work. This was abnormal.

“I wanted to call and check on you,” he said.

Catherine's pulse sped up. She thought about an encounter earlier in the day with the doctor—the other, younger doctor. Had she been too obvious in her exchanges with Gavin, too flirtatious? Had word got back to Caleb somehow?

But she'd done nothing wrong.

So as not to raise his suspicions, she tried to mask her rising annoyance. “You wanted to check on me? What for?”

CALEB WAS SEATED by his storage locker in the station,
The
Love Dare
open on his lap and the phone pressed to his ear. He detected a tone of irritation in his wife's voice, but that was no surprise. They never called each other at work, so she had to be wondering what was up.

“Uh, you know,” he said. “Just to see if you needed anything.”

CATHERINE SPUN ON her feet and put all her weight on one hip. This was strange. Something wasn't right, but she couldn't place her finger on it. Caleb sounded almost . . .
nice
. Still, there was a quality to his voice that seemed forced.

“You called to see if I needed anything?”

“Right,” he said. “Yeah, uh, you want me to bring something home for you? Or, uh, or get something from the store in the morning?”

Warm fingers brushed Catherine's elbow and she turned to see Gavin walking by. He was in scrubs, with a blue surgical cap over his head. For some reason, he looked even more handsome at this moment. They made eye contact and she smiled at him.

“Catherine?”

“Listen, Caleb—you've never asked me this before. What's going on?”

“I just wanted to see if you needed anything, that's it.”

“I'm fine.”

“Okay. All right. Well . . . Good-bye.”

Catherine snapped her phone shut. The sensation of Gavin's touch still burned along her elbow as she shook her head and stalked off down the hall.

CALEB SHRUGGED. He'd had only the slightest of hopes that his wife would soften and ask for his assistance, but he'd harbored a greater fear that she would request something beyond his means or his willingness to comply. Thankfully, she'd let him off the hook.

He gazed down at the notebook in his hands. So be it.

“Day Four,” he said. “Done.”

He closed the notebook, tossed it into his locker, and slammed the door shut. He could now get on with the rest of his afternoon.

CATHERINE SLID HER padded planner onto the counter of the nurses' station, where Tasha and Deidra were busy with paper-work and phones. She leaned forward on her elbows and closed her eyes, drawing in a deep breath.

“Hey, Cat,” Tasha said. “How ya doin', girl?”

“Confused.” She slipped off her glasses. “I don't know. My husband's acting weird.”

“What's he doing?”

“Well, in the last few days he has fixed me coffee, bought me these pitiful little flowers, and a few minutes ago called just to”— she lowered her voice in imitation of a man's—“to see if I'm doing okay.”

“Really?” Tasha tucked her chin and gave a skeptical look.

Deidra stepped in, one hand on her hip. “I'll tell you what he's doing. He's trying to butter you up for a divorce.”

“And why would he do that?”

“Oooh,” Deidra said, wagging her pen in the air. “Before my cousin Lawanna got a divorce, her husband started doing the same thing. Started acting all nice and sweet and everything. The next thing we know, he walks away with the house and most of their money. He hasn't even talked to her since.”

An emptiness gnawed at Catherine's stomach. Was she being made a fool of? Was that Caleb's angle here?

Deidra seemed to have no doubt. “Don't you let him deceive you, girl.”

Tasha was in agreement. “Mm-hmm.”

Catherine started to seethe.

SEATED AT THE computer in jeans and a loose pullover, Caleb heard Catherine's Camry pull into the driveway earlier than usual, and his heart jumped into his throat.

Mid-afternoon? She wasn't supposed to be home yet.

He had the shades closed, the room darkened against the sun and any curious neighbors. He double-clicked items in his recent history and hit the Delete key, worried that she might be angered by them, while almost longing to be discovered. He'd rather get this all out in the open, rather deal with the real issue, than act like it didn't exist and that their lack of marital intimacy was of no concern to him.

He was a man, after all. What did she expect?

They hadn't slept in the same bed—let alone the same bedroom—for weeks now. Didn't the Bible even tell husbands and wives not to refrain from their physical union for long periods of time?

Okay, so maybe God wouldn't consider that valid grounds for indulging in Internet sleaze, but Caleb hardly cared at this point.

His wife was in the house now. Coming down the hall.

Tap, tap, tappp
. . . Delete.

The lighting changed as she flicked on a switch; then her keys and purse dropped to the table. He could hear her picking through the day's mail. With his back to her in the desk chair, he cleared his throat and tried to act relaxed.

“You're home early,” he said.

“Did you clear your history?”

“What?”

“Did you wipe the Web sites off so nobody would see where you've been?”

His eyes felt bleary. He kept his mouth shut and his back turned.

“You know, Caleb, you're not fooling anybody.” Catherine's voice was on that edge between steady and about-to-unwind. “I know exactly what you're trying to do, buying me flowers and calling me at work.”

“And what is that?”

“I'm meeting with a lawyer next week, and don't you think for one second I'm buying into this nice-guy routine.”

“What're you talking about?”

“You're not getting one
dime
more than you deserve. When this divorce is final, I'm taking my share.”

He bolted from the chair to confront her. “Is that what you think I'm doing?”

“No.”Catherine slapped down the pile of mail and strode right up to him, eyes blazing. “I
know
that's what you're doing.”

“Yeah? Well, you're wrong. You know, you never assume I would do anything worthy of respect, anything honorable!”

“Honorable?
Honorable?
What were you just looking at, Caleb? What was on that computer screen? Was that
honorable
?”

He brimmed with anger. He wanted to throw hurtful barbs back at her, words that would tear her down and make himself feel bigger than her.

He kept his lips clamped shut.

“Who do you think you're fooling?” she pressed on. “Do you know why your sweet little gestures mean nothing to me? It's because
that's
the kind of man you've become.” She jabbed a finger at the computer. “When you're alone, that's what you default to, and there is
nothing
honorable about it.”

Caleb watched her march away. He chose the opposite direction and stalked out the back door to the porch, both arms wrapped over his head. He was ready to explode. With clenched fists, he turned and saw his aluminum baseball bat leaned up against the house.

He took hold of the bat, flexed his fingers around the handle, then swung with all his might.

The green trash can tumbled onto its side with a dull thump.

He hit it again.

And again.

The blows rained down until it was obvious he could inflict no more damage, at which point he heaved the worthless bat into the backyard with a loud grunt. She had no idea of the torture she was putting him through. Still simmering with fury, guilt, and self-righteous despair, he searched for something else to destroy.

Then he realized, once more, he was being watched.

Perfect. Just perfect.

Standing at his grill on the neighboring back patio,Mr. Rudolph stared unblinkingly at Caleb. His spindly form was decked out in a flower-print Hawaiian shirt, and he clutched a wire brush in his hand.

Caleb collected his breath. “Mr. Rudolph.”

The elderly man's dry voice bridged the distance. “Caleb.”

Embarrassed, Caleb pried the phone from his pocket and headed for the cab of his Sierra pickup, chased there by the sounds of the bristles of Mr. Rudolph's brush grating against iron.

JOHN HOLT WAS in his easy chair, reading the newspaper,when the phone rang. He'd just returned from a men's prayer luncheon and was still dressed in slacks and a long-sleeved shirt. He reached for the phone on the end table.

“Hello?”

There was no preamble, just a harried voice. “It's not working, Dad.”

“What's not working?”

“This whole ‘love dare' thing. It is not working.”

John folded the paper and set it aside. “Tell me what's going on.”

“I have been doing everything that it says to do, and she has completely rejected all of it.”

“Caleb, this process takes forty days, not four.”

“What is the point of driving down a dead-end road, when you know it's not going anywhere?”

“You don't know that yet. Caleb, you're not a quitter, and something tells me you're doing just enough to get by.”

Silence from the other end.

“Am I right, son?”

There was a long exhalation of air. Caleb said, “I
feel
nothing.”

“I understand, but this is not based on feelings. It's a decision. You can't give up yet. Keep taking it a day at a time.”

Another sigh. “Yes, sir.”

“I love you, son.”

“You too, Dad.”

John heard the line disconnect. He wished he could be there with his only child, but there were other ways to fight such battles. He sat forward, arms crossed over his knees, wondering why he hadn't lifted up his son's marriage for consideration at the earlier prayer luncheon. There was no need for gossip or hearsay, but there was a definite call for unified petition before God's throne.

Cheryl entered from the kitchen and sat facing John from the other chair. “How is he?” she asked.

“We've gotta start praying for him more.”

“That's all I've been doing for the past few days.”

John reached for his wife's hands. “Then let's do it together.”

CHAPTER 19

C
atherine was seated across from her mother, looking into those soft eyes and that speechless mouth that was filled with so much wisdom. Framed photos on the end table showed Catherine as a little girl, and she thought back to the dreams she'd had at that age.

Dreams of a prince. And a fairy-tale romance.

Of course, that was not reality.

What had happened, though, to the love she and Caleb once shared? Once he had won her hand, he acted like he'd been let off the hook. Didn't he realize that marrying her just meant he was the one who'd gotten the job? Why would he think there was no more work involved?

“I don't know what to do, Mama.”

Joy Campbell nodded for her daughter to go on.

“I know you always told me to hang on during the hard times,” Catherine said, “but it's just . . .” Her lower lip began to tremble and her voice caught. She pushed a strand of hair back from her face and tried to find the strength to continue.