serious."
"So am I. I'll go if you go. Otherwise, you're going to want to drop this. Don't even think about picking a fight," she warned him. "I can practically see you trying it out in your head, calculating if you got me mad enough I'd walk. You can't. I won't." For emphasis, she put her hands on his cheeks, squeezed. "You're scared for me. So am I, just like I'm scared for you. It's all part of the package now."
"You could go buy a wedding dress."
"Now that's fighting dirty." But she laughed, kissed him hard. "I've already got some lines on that, thank you very much. Your mother and mine are bonding like Super Glue and... more Super Glue over wedding plans. Everything's under control. We had a bad day, Cal, but we came through it."
He drew her back, breathed her in once more. "I need to take a walk around town. I need to... I need to see it."
"Okay."
"I need to take a walk with Gage and Fox."
"I get it. Go on. Just come back to me."
"Every day," he told her.
WHEN HE GOT THEM OUTSIDE, CAL WALKED THE neighborhood first. The light was soft, easing in on evening. There were the houses he knew, the yards, the sidewalks. He walked by his great-grandmother's house, where his cousin's car sat in the drive, and flowers budded and bloomed along the walk.
There was the house of the girl he'd been crazy about when he'd been sixteen. Where was she now? Columbus? Cleveland? He couldn't quite remember where she'd gone, only that she'd moved away with her family in the fall of the year he'd turned seventeen.
After that Seven, when her father had tried to hang himself from the black walnut tree in their backyard. Cal remembered cutting the man down himself, and having no time for more, tying him to the tree with the hanging rope to hold him until the rage passed.
"You never did score with Melissa Eggart, did you, hot-shot?"
How like Gage to remember and to turn the memory into something normal. "I doubled. Was working my way up to stealing third. Then things got busy."
"Yeah." Gage slid his hands into his pockets. "Things got busy."
"I'm sorry about before. And you were right," he added to Fox. "It's stupid to swipe at each other."
"Forget it," Gage told him. "I've thought about walking plenty of times."
"Thinking and doing got miles between them." They turned, headed toward Main. "I wanted to punch something, and you were handy."
"O'Dell's handier, and he's used to getting punched." When there was no sarcastic rejoinder from Fox, Gage eyed him. He thought of the ways he could handle Fox's mood, and opted for what he did best. Needling him. "Are you having intense human emotions?"
"Oh, suck off."
"There he is." Gage swung an arm over Fox's shoulders.
"Punching you still isn't out of the question."
"If she was pissed at you," Cal said helpfully, "she's not now. Not after your white-charger routine."
"It's not about that. About being pissed, about saving the girl. It's about wanting and needing different things. Look, I'm heading home from here. I didn't shut anything down, lock anything up."
"We'll go with you, check it out."
"No, I got it. I've got some actual work to do. If anything else needs going over tonight, I'll crib off your notes. See you later."
"He's got it bad," Gage commented as they watched Fox head down Main. "Real bad."
"Maybe we should go with him anyway."
"No. We're not what he wants right now."
They turned, walking the opposite way as night crept closer.
Chapter Eighteen
COUNTING ON PAPERWORK TO KEEP HIM BUSY and distracted, Fox settled down in his home office. Flipping his CD player to shuffle for the variety and surprise factors, he prepared to make up for the fractured workday with a couple of hours at his desk.
He drafted some court petitions on an estate case he hoped to wrap up within another ninety days, shifted to fine-tune a letter of response to opposing counsel on a personal injury matter, then moved on to adjusting the language in a partnership agreement.
He loved the law, the curves and angles of it, its flourishes and hard lines. But at the moment, he was forced to admit, the work couldn't light a spark in him. He'd be better off cruising ESPN.
The file he'd put together for Layla still sat on his desk. Because it annoyed him, Fox dropped it in a drawer. Stupid, he thought. Stupid to think he understood her simply because he