The Ruthless Caleb Wilde

“Where’s yours?” she said with wide-eyed innocence. Then she picked up a potato and popped it, whole, into her mouth.

“Good?” Caleb asked.

“No,” she said. “But I’ll make the sacrifice. I’ll eat it all, to save you from food poisoning.”

He laughed, leaned over and kissed her.

They ate every morsel, opened another bottle of the not-really-Champagne.

Then Caleb wheeled the cart into the dining room and they settled on the floor in front of the flower-filled fireplace, the last of the fizzy non-wine in their glasses, and leaned back against a big stack of black-and-white pillows.

Caleb drew Sage into the curve of his arm.

She sighed. Then she said, in a deadly serious tone, “Okay, Caleb Wilde, the time has come.”

His heart thudded. Was she going to say she’d changed her mind about marrying him?

“I want to know everything about you.” She looked at him. “For starters,” she said with a smile on her lips, “have you always been a knight?”

He laughed. “Trust me, sweetheart. I’ve never been that.”

Her smile faded; her expression turned serious.

“I do trust you,” she said softly. “And I never thought I’d say that to any man.”

Caleb kissed her temple. “Want to tell me about it?”

She hesitated. And then she knew that she did, that this was part of what made everything between them special.

That they could be honest and open with each other.

So she sat up straight, scrunched around until she was sitting, cross-legged, facing him.

“I grew up in Indiana,” she said, “in a little town in the middle of nowhere.”

Just the two of them, she said, she and her mother. And, she said, without any embarrassment or apology, the same direct way she’d said it before, they’d been poor.

It hurt him, to think of her as a kid without the things he’d pretty much taken for granted, but what hurt most was when he realized, as she talked, that her childhood, her teen years, her life in that little town in the middle of nowhere, had been defined more by her mother’s bitterness, by the absence of a father, than by poverty.

His own mother had died when he and his brothers were very small but he had warm memories of the woman who’d become their stepmother. And though none of them could ever pretend their relationship with their father had been warm or traditionally loving, at least they’d had a father.

She told him how she’d come to New York with two hundred dollars she’d saved from working at the local diner when she was in high school. How she’d found a flat she’d shared with five other girls.

“Picture it, six women, all fighting for the bathroom,” she said, making light of what he knew must have been a tough couple of years.

“Then,” she said, “I got a part in a Sandra Bullock movie. I was supposed to just sit near her in a restaurant scene but I ended up with a line to speak.”

“And you were great.”

“Of course,” she said archly. They both smiled. “Seriously, I guess I was okay because I got a few more parts and then my agent snagged me a TV ad.” She fluttered her lashes. “I was a talking box of corn flakes.”

He laughed, took her hand, kissed each finger and said he’d never look at corn flakes the same way again.

“I met David right after that.” Her tone softened. “He was wonderful. Funny. Caring. Smart. He became the big brother I’d never had. Everybody liked him—except for his father. Once David came out, Caldwell disowned him. He wouldn’t even take his calls.”

Caleb reached for her and drew her into his lap.

“I’m sorry for what I did that night. To David, you know? I shouldn’t have—”