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“I could take a look for you.”
She stiffened like an outraged cat. “No, thanks.”
“That bad, is it?”
“Yes, and as I said, it’s got nothing to do with you.” She met his gaze. “Weren’t you just telling me I had to learn to cope on my own?”
He opened his mouth to argue because, hell, he was kind of enjoying seeing her all riled up, and then thought better of it. He held up his hands in a placatory gesture. “Backing off.”
“Thank you.” She walked over to the stove to get him some coffee. She was wearing jeans today and a pink sweater with some kind of lacy collar. Her hair was in pigtails that should’ve made her look about six, but somehow made her look hot.
Caleb blinked as his gaze fell to the nicely rounded curves of her ass. She was his best friend’s annoying little sister. He wasn’t planning on being anywhere near Quincy for the rest of his life, and he wasn’t generally into super-positive people who kept smiling through their worries. Okay, so he might tend to go too hard the other way, and only see the problems, but he’d been raised by a man who never saw the good in anything, and that had kind of stuck.
He took his phone out of his pocket and thumbed through the numbers. There was no reply from his father, but there were six messages from his team, which he pretended he hadn’t seen. He’d told them not to bother him unless it was an emergency, but they seemed incapable of functioning without him being around. Once that would’ve made him feel needed, but now it was something of an irritant, and it was all his own fault.
His phone rang and he answered it without thinking.
“Hey, Caleb. I sent you the three options we’re considering. Which one do you want us to try first?”
He let out a breath. “Vin. I’m on vacation. How about you solve that for yourselves?”
There was a long silence. “But what if we choose wrong and you get mad?”
“I won’t.”
“But you like to be involved in every single decision.”
There was a rising note of panic in Vin’s voice.
“And maybe I need to learn to be more hands-off so that I can enjoy my leave,” Caleb said. “I picked you guys and I trust you, okay? If the first option doesn’t work, go on to the second, wash and repeat, and send me a report when you’re done.”
There was an even longer pause—so long in fact that Caleb began to wonder if his deputy had passed out.
“Vin? Are you still there?”
“Yeah, I’m just . . . trying to assimilate this new information.”
Caleb winced. “As I said, I trust you, okay? And don’t work right through the holidays. Make sure everyone on the team takes time off.”
“Okay.” Vin paused. “Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”
Caleb frowned. “I’m good, thanks.”
“Then I’ll get back to work and try not to bother you again.”
“Thanks.” Mindful of the incoming storm, Caleb plugged his phone into the socket to recharge and turned to find Lucy studying him intently.
“I guess I’m something of a control freak.” He shrugged. “I guess.” She handed him the freshly brewed coffee.
“I’m trying not to be that person anymore.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to accept help, isn’t it?” She sighed and looked back at the table. “Maybe I should learn that lesson myself and ask you to take a look at the books.”
* * *
At first, Lucy wasn’t sure what woke her up, but she sat up in bed and reached for the lamp switch. Nothing happened and she fumbled with it again, clicking it back and forth uselessly in increasing panic. Outside the wind was howling like a banshee and buffeting the walls of the house like a living thing.
She got out of bed and ran toward the door, bumping her knee against the end of her bed, and the rocking chair, before she reached her goal. The only light came from the blink of the smoke detector in the ceiling. She hammered on Caleb’s door and went in without waiting for an answer.
