Along Came Trouble (Camelot 2)

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He was a warm body. A very warm body. And try as she might to pretend otherwise, there was nothing anonymous about lying here pressed against him, talking in her bedroom with the dark pressing against the windows. He was Caleb. She liked him. She wanted to know all there was to know about him. Where was the harm in it?

“Do you do that often? Help them out?”

“Yeah, when they let me. My dad used to do all the work, but he had a stroke. He has trouble now with his memory, and he sometimes messes up the jobs. That’s the main reason why I left the service, actually. To be here for them.”

She stopped herself from asking him another question. What it had been like to leave the army behind. Whether he missed it. If he ever thought about going back. She knew where the line was supposed to be—the line that separated meaningless fling from Way to go, genius, you fell for your bodyguard—and she didn’t intend to cross it.

He settled his hand on her hip, where it radiated heat across her entire midsection. Awareness began building again, low and tingling, and she wiggled closer to him, throwing her thigh over his. Not exactly initiating another round, but hanging out her shingle, anyway, to announce she wasn’t altogether opposed to the idea.

“Next question,” Caleb announced. “Did you ever want what your brother has?”

“Are all your questions going to be about my brother?”

Caleb slid his hand to her butt and kneaded gently, encouraging her to scoot her hips a little farther over his. She could feel him growing stiff against her belly, and the tingling became an ache.

“I’m not asking about your brother, babe. I’m asking about you.”

Had she wanted to be famous? Had she wanted the attention, the adoration, the money, the fans? No, she hadn’t. And yes, of course she had.

“I tried out for Brigadoon once,” she said. “At my high school. I saw the auditions were running and I filled out the form on a whim, walked onto the stage, and sang ‘Amazing Grace’ for the teachers who were doing the casting. I got the lead.”

He lifted her hips as if she weighed nothing, placed her squarely on top of him, and made a contented noise as he settled both hands over her butt. “Nice.”

She didn’t know whether he meant the audition or her butt. “Thank you. So I told Jamie, and he said it was awesome, and then I went home and told my mother. And that was the end of that.”

“Because …”

“Don’t think I don’t notice the way you keep getting me to talk without wasting your questions.” She kissed his scratchy chin. “Because my mother hauled out Jamie’s rehearsal and performance schedule and explained at length why it would be impossible for us to compromise his commitments so I could be in this play, and how egotistical I was to even think of auditioning when it was so important for our family to support Jamie’s talent. It took her about an hour to convince me I was a horrible, selfish person.”

She didn’t regret never having become a star. She regretted that her mother hadn’t believed in her enough to encourage her to try.

Caleb cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. Rolling her onto her back, he said, “That sucks. I’d have liked to see you do a Scottish accent. I bet you would’ve been awesome.” And then he kissed her again, and she decided he was probably not even human, he was so great.

My Alien Lover. Fantasy Man from Beyond.

Caleb sat up, reaching toward the side table for a condom, and she ran her thumb over the scar on his hip. “What’s this from?”

“Shrapnel. A vehicle-borne IED. I was guarding the convoy, riding maybe four or five trucks back from where it happened.”

She saw the dusty, heat-blasted road with the trucks rolling over it. Saw Caleb in uniform, carrying a gun. Saw the explosion rip his world apart.

He could have been killed. That time, and probably plenty of others.

It wasn’t a thought she wanted to dwell on. “Was it dangerous?”

The lamest sort of question. What she meant was, Tell me what it’s like to be you. What kind of man are you?

“Yes.”

She met his eyes, and she knew just how foolish it made her, wanting to know. And how much more foolish that she felt so sure that whatever he told her, she’d like him better for it. She’d just keep liking him better and better until she was in way over her head.

“Does your mother know? About the scar?”

Caleb gave her a bemused smile before answering. “Nope. My sister Katie does, though.”

“Did she cry?”