“Oh, God, so are mine,” Shay said, her heart in her throat. “And my purse. You have to hide them. Hide anything that looks like me.”
He stood there, naked, hands on his hips, and stared at her. “I thought we were done hiding.”
“We are,” she said. When the time was right. When she was sure nothing would go wrong. She had to try to make him understand. How could he not understand? “Having Kent find me in your bed when he’s obviously here for some abnormal reason isn’t likely to make him accept us as a couple, Caleb. We have to tell everyone the right way.” A bad thought hit her. “What if he knows? What if he’s here to confront you? What if he’s going to pick a fight? What if—”
He cut her off. “He doesn’t know, Shay.” He shook his head. “Before I go see what he wants, let’s be clear. You actually want to hide in the bedroom while I talk to your brother?”
“Yes,” she said. “I have to.”
He stared at her for a few hard seconds, during which more knocking ensued, and then said, “Whatever, Shay,” and turned away, heading, in all his naked glory, toward the living room.
Oh, yeah. The happy bubble had definitely burst. He was unreasonable and mad.
***
CALEB STALKED TO the living room and shoved on his pants. He snatched up Shay’s things and shoved them under a kitchen counter. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to tell her brother about them now. It was the something he saw in her eyes that was upsetting him. The panic. The certainty that she was nowhere near ready to come clean with the family about their relationship.
Again stalking, he headed to the door and yanked it open, to find Kent sitting on the front steps, his back to the door. Caleb flipped on the light and stepped outside, into the muggy night air. Kent didn’t turn around, and that spoke volumes. He was having trouble facing Caleb.
Caleb scrubbed the stubble grazing his jaw and sat down next to him. Silent. He was there when Kent was ready to tell him why he was here.
“I screwed up, Caleb,” Kent said. “I screwed up bad.”
“You’re here in one piece,” he said. “Everything else is fixable.”
He grunted and turned to lean against the wooden staircase, moonlight illuminating the sharp lines and strain of his face. “I was thinking about what you said about me not having a dime to my name. You were right. I’m pathetic.”
Caleb turned to rest against the opposite railing. “I never said you were pathetic.”
“You didn’t have to,” he said. “I’m saying it. I’m pathetic.”
“You said you have a bonus coming,” Caleb reminded him. “Use that to start saving, maybe make a safe investment. I can hook you up with the guy who has been managing my money while I was in the Army. I trusted him enough to give him say-so over my money when I wasn’t capable of looking after it myself. It was his smarts, not mine, that put money in my bank account.”
Kent leaned his head on the rail, and covered his face with his hand. “I screwed up, Caleb,” he repeated. “I screwed up so bad.”
“Maybe you better be specific,” Caleb said. “What exactly did you do to screw up?”
He swallowed hard and dropped his hand. “I thought I needed to do something to get things right. One last bet. Get some money in the bank and then walk away. Cut the gambling thing altogether. I had a tip on a sure-thing horse, but I needed to bet big to make this the last time, to make it count.”
Caleb went still. “You used a bookie and lost.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I lost. And now, if I don’t pay up, they’ll pretty much break every bone in my body.”
Caleb knew. He’d seen an Army buddy get devoured by a gambling habit. Even for someone well trained, a half-dozen baseball bats can do a hell of a lot of damage to an unarmed man. He’d survived because he had enough training to get out alive, and the Army had intervened and straightened his ass out. But not before his brake lines had been cut, and he’d crashed into a tree to avoid another car.
“How much?”
Kent’s head fell back against the wall. “I bet my entire bonus, like an advance on the money I knew I had coming. It seemed a perfect plan. I thought I could pay you back and get money in the bank and—”
“How much, Kent,” Caleb said sharply.
“Twenty,” he said, and looked at Caleb. “Twenty thousand.”
Caleb cursed. “Twenty thousand dollars? Are you flipping nuts?”
“Caleb, I thought—”
“Don’t, Kent. Don’t tell me you thought, you planned, you knew. Because you didn’t. You’re right. You screwed up.” He stood up and paced the porch, pacing off anger, before he stopped. “I’ll give you the damn money, but you are paying me back.”