The Ruthless Caleb Wilde

CHAPTER NINE

WHAT did women want?

Men had been asking that question for centuries.

Caleb had debated it for most of his thirty-two years, with his brothers, in college dorms, in Marine barracks, over beers with his fellow spooks at the hush-hush camp tucked into the Virginia mountains where he’d prepped for life at The Agency.

He’d never come up with an answer.

Nobody had.

Travis had summed it up.

“Babes don’t know what they want,” he’d said. “If you’re tender, you’re a wuss. If you’re tough, you’re insensitive. You’re never smart enough but you sure as hell can be dumb enough, in which case you’re a lost cause.”

Thirty thousand feet above flyover country, Caleb grimaced into his tumbler of Scotch.

That’s what he was. A lost cause.

“Damn right,” he muttered, and he raised his glass and took a long, warming swallow.

This time yesterday, he’d been an attorney representing a client.

Now he was … What?

A m

an on a tightrope. All he could do was put one foot in front of the other and not look down.

Maybe he really should have listened to that old adage about lawyers being fools if they represented themselves.

Except …

He took another drink.

Except, this wasn’t a legal thing. Not yet, anyway, unless Sage decided she wanted to try and move him out of the picture.

“Fat chance she has of accomplishing that,” he muttered.

He’d put a child in her womb. That gave him certain rights. He was not Thomas Caldwell, demanding access to a kid that wasn’t his. He wasn’t trying to take her baby from her, he just wanted to assume his role as its father.

What kind of woman would tell a man he couldn’t do that?

“Mr. Wilde?”

Caleb looked up. The cabin attendant smiled politely.

“Captain wanted me to tell you there’s weather moving into Dallas. Things might get a little rough in a couple of hours.”

Things were already rough, Caleb thought, but not in the way she meant.

“Right,” he said. “Thanks.”

“Can I get you anything? A sandwich, perhaps?”

What, he thought, and spoil the buzz he hoped would accompany this, his second shot of whisky?

“Thank you,” he said politely. “I’m fine.”