The Ruthless Caleb Wilde

“Oh, it happened.”

“Look, this just isn’t a good day for—”

“There haven’t been any. Good days, that is. Not with you. Not in a while.”

“Are you done?”

“Why’d you call me? You sounded, I don’t know, happy. Then, all of a sudden, you sounded—not so happy.”

“Good thing you went into finance,” Caleb said coldly, “because you do a lot better with numbers than words.”

“No more games, man. Something happened and we want to know what it was.”

“Is that a royal we or are you a committee of one?”

“That’s what I am. A committee of one. I’m here for me. Jacob. Addison. That scary-as-hell dragon who guards your kingdom.”

“You have too much time on your hands.” Caleb went to his desk, straightened a stack of papers that didn’t need straightening, eyed the manila envelope and shoved it toward his brother. “You all do, this client included. Your imaginations are working themselves into the ground.”

“Did you go to see a doctor?”

Caleb looked up.

“What?”

“Some kind of specialist? Was that the reason you went east?”

Oh, hell. Caleb rubbed his forehead. “Travis. Listen—”

“Goddammit, how come that just hit me? The phone call. The way you’ve acted ever since …” Travis let out a long, suddenly shaky breath. “Are you sick? Sweet Jesus, if you’re—if you’re battling a disease and you haven’t told us …”

“Ah, man.” Caleb sank down in the chair behind his desk. “No,” he said in a low voice. “It’s nothing like that. And I’m sorry if …” He looked up, saw the worry in Travis’s eyes and hated himself for having put it there. “I’m fine, Trav. I swear it. I’m just—I’m just …”

“Just what?”

Caleb stared at his brother. Then he sighed. Maybe if he talked about it, he’d get the whole ugly mess out of his system.

“Sit down,” he said gruffly. “And I’ll tell you.”

And he did.

It didn’t take very long. How could it, when the facts were so simple?

He omitted nothing.

He said he had gone to a woman’s rescue and offered to see her home. It turned out she lived in a bad neighborhood—there’d been an incident in the entryway of her building that could have turned nasty and after that, he’d been reluctant to leave her alone, particularly after what she’d gone through earlier.

Travis kept nodding his head. Well, why wouldn’t he? It was all logical …

“I bunked on the couch in the living room,” Caleb said.

So much for logic.

“And?”

“And, she woke up and I did, too, and—and—”

“You ended up sleeping with her.”