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The day never ended. Callahan disappeared into Carly’s house. Ellen came out twenty minutes later and walked straight through her own front door. Caleb presided over the shift change, fielded questions, kept order. Katie dropped by with tacos around seven, which he wolfed down standing up.
It got dark after nine, and lights came on in Ellen’s house. A few hours later, they went out. The crowd around the barricades gradually thinned, but it didn’t disappear, and neither did he. He still had work to do.
He did sit down, though, for the first time since late afternoon. Falling heavily into one of Ellen’s cast-iron chairs on the flagstone patio out back, he stared at the fence without seeing it and tried to recharge his depleted brain.
If the universe had been taking requests, he’d have asked for a beer. Ellen in his lap would be nice, too. Ellen and a beer. All he wanted in the world.
He’d thought about her while he stood there watching her brother sing and strip for Carly. Callahan had made an ass of himself, but he’d pulled it off. There was nobility in going after what you wanted when you had to walk over broken glass to get it. Somehow, Jamie had known what it would take to get Carly to give him a shot.
Caleb didn’t know what it was going to take with Ellen. But he knew what he had to do.
So, yeah. A beer would hit the spot.
The security light came on as Ellen’s door opened behind him.
She sat down in the wrought-iron chair next to his, an open bottle of wine in one hand and two empty glasses in the other. His dream girl in shorts and a T-shirt. Ellen with a bottle of wine was almost as good as Ellen with a beer. She didn’t look too much like she wanted to chew him out, either. She actually looked pretty mellow.
“I thought you were asleep,” he said.
“I’ve been keeping tabs on you out the window. You started to slow down about an hour ago, and I thought if I waited long enough, you’d eventually come to rest somewhere. Need a drink?”
“I’m still on duty.”
She reached over and pried his phone out of his hand. After fiddling with it for a while, she got it turned off. “I’m clocking you out.” She set it on the ground, poured a glass of wine, and handed it over.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. No way could he leave his phone off all night, but he could give it half an hour or so. Long enough to drink a glass of wine and see what he could do about fixing the mess he’d made.
“Thanks.” Their fingers met briefly when he accepted the glass, and he had to remind himself not to extend the contact. Not to slide his hand up her arm and pull her close.
The light shut off, plunging them into darkness. Fireflies lit erratic paths in the air. He’d missed fireflies. The army had sent him all over the world, but nowhere else seemed to have fireflies except Fort Leonard Wood, where he’d gone for MP school. At eighteen, the sight of lightning bugs in Missouri had made him homesick.
“Can I ask you a question?” he said.
“I don’t owe you any answers right now.” She sounded amused.
He could probably have her owing him an answer inside of ten minutes, but that wasn’t where he wanted to go with this encounter. Katie was right—he had to ease up on the physical stuff if he expected Ellen to take him seriously.
“Can I ask anyway?”
She must have run her finger around the rim of her glass, because it made a low, melodic sound. “Yes.”
“Did Richard kiss you this afternoon?”
“What?”
“Did he kiss you? He looked like he was going to.”
“He looked like he was going to strangle me.”
“Before that. When he was over here.”
She turned toward him, but it was too dark to read her expression. He heard her take a drink, and then there was a long pause. “No,” she said. “He didn’t kiss me. Why, were you jealous?”
“No comment.”
She smiled then, a flash of white teeth. “How unpleasant for you.”
It had been. The jealousy had dissolved when he overheard her attack Richard at Maureen’s, but the situation still didn’t sit right with him. Ellen’s ex wanted something from her, and whatever it was, Caleb wasn’t positive it was over.
