Breathless Descent

  The delicate lines around Sharon’s too-keen light blue eyes crinkled in scrutiny. In a motherly gesture, she stretched her arm and touched his light brown hair, then his jaw, her brows dipping. “You look tired.” She let out a breath, and concern kicked into a parental lecture. “You and those friends of yours are working too much. I know you want to get that skydiving business of yours off the ground, but you can’t go jumping out of planes with no rest.”

  Caleb figured she didn’t want to hear that as recently as two months earlier, sleep had been a luxury, and skydiving into the bowels of hell in some dangerous country was the norm. Instead he promised, “I’m careful. But I have to work hard and get the Hotzone making a profit if I plan to stay a civilian.” And he did plan to stay a civilian, a vow—silent or not—he would never have thought possible a year before.

  “Plan to stay a civilian,” came a soft, silky voice from behind him.

  Shay.

  “Well,” she continued, “you haven’t bothered to come see me since you got back into town—two months ago.”

  Tension rippled through Caleb’s body in tidal-wave proportions, pulling him under with such force he would have sworn he was drowning in those brief seconds before he turned.

  Caleb brought her into focus. Shay—gorgeous, petite, feisty little Shay, with one towel wrapped around her slender figure, tucked under her arms. With a smaller towel, she dried her light blond hair spun with the color of snow-streaked wheat that accented equally light blue eyes brimming with mischief and challenge.

  “Now, Shay,” Sharon scolded, “don’t be giving Caleb a hard time.” Sharon chuckled and elbowed Caleb. “Better yet. Please. Feel free. Does my heart good to see you three kids together, stirring up harmless trouble.”

  Kids? Kent and Caleb were thirty-one. Shay was a mere three years younger. Hardly kids. And any jest between Shay and him was hardly harmless.

  “Both you women need to behave.” The playful reprimand came compliments of Bob White as he joined them, proudly sporting khaki shorts and a T-shirt that read Forty is the New Thirty. With his blond hair now silvery gray, he remained tall and athletic—an older, wiser version of his son.

  “Cut Caleb some slack,” Bob ordered. “He’s been getting a business started.” He kissed Sharon’s cheek and then raised a hand to Caleb. “Come ’ere, boy! Give the ol’ man a hug.”

  Another bear hug ensued—in a manly kind of way, of course—before Shay asked, “Where’s my hug?”

  Caleb’s gut clenched, thinking of how she felt in his arms…as she had the night of her eighteenth birthday. The night everything had changed. The night he’d forgotten himself and kissed her. And if not for an interruption, he might have done a whole lot more. No. No “might.” He would have. His attraction to Shay was that strong, an attraction that only seemed to age like fine wine—get richer and more irresistible. It was a hard lesson he’d learned on the few visits home that he’d dared while enlisted.

  She was in front of him now, driving him insane with her nearness. “Unless you’re afraid I’ll get you wet?” she taunted softly, her gaze sliding over his jeans and T-shirt, a contrast to everyone else’s swim trunks, shorts and various summer attire. “You aren’t exactly dressed for the pool.” She leveled him with a stare. “You do know the meaning of pool party?”

  He wanted nothing more than to dive into that pool with Shay, with nothing but swimsuits between them. Exactly why he’d dressed to avoid temptation.

  Bracing himself for the impact, he decided to take charge of this unavoidable hug and then make a run for the other side of the pool. Caleb attempted a short, one-armed hug, his beer a great excuse to avoid anything more intimate. “How’ve you been, Shay?” he asked.

  Instantly, her arms wrapped around his neck, preventing his escape. She clung to him, her soft, warm curves melting into him—a friendly embrace to anyone watching, but they both knew it was more. And damn it, it wasn’t enough. He’d longed to hold her again for so very long. He wanted to mold her closer, to inhale her, to absorb her.

  Among all the women a decade of traveling the world delivered to a Special Ops soldier like himself, none of the fast exits had left him with regret. But leaving Shay had, and often he had wondered if she were the reason why no one else had mattered. Because there was no question—she had long ago reached inside him and refused to let go.

  “I missed you, Caleb,” she said softly, near his ear.

  I missed you, too, he thought, fearing the words would sound as those spoken by a man, not a brother. And he was her brother. Brothers were forever. The minute they became more, they were like every other couple—they could crash and burn, lose what they had. And he’d lose more than her. He’d lose the only family he’d known for the past fifteen years.

  He snatched the wet towel she’d draped over his shoulder and tugged it out of her grip, stepped backward and handed it to her. “Thanks for the soggy shoulder, Shay-Shay,” he teased, reminding her of their youthful play and putting their relationship where it was meant to be—laden with sibling jest.

  “Oh, God,” she said, rolling her eyes and wringing the towel in her hands. “Don’t call me that. You know I hate it.”

  Kent chuckled. “You loved it when you were thirteen.”

  “Thirteen,” she repeated, grinding the age through her teeth. “When I played dress-up in Mom’s work clothes.”

  “And transformed yourself into ‘Shay-Shay Va-voom,’” Kent added, needling her.

  “I hate you, Kent,” she said, her teeth still clenched. “Really, really hate you.”

  Kent snorted his approval. “To a brother, that’s the ultimate vow of love. Right, Caleb?”

  “Right,” Caleb agreed. This was going exactly where Caleb had planned. He tipped his beer, but before the bottle made it to his mouth, Shay snatched it, their fingers brushing, electricity darting between them.

  “I’m the youngest,” she said, turning up the bottle. “I get what I want.” The comment, while innocent enough to everyone else, wasn’t innocent at all.

  Caleb took back his beer, the intimacy of sharing with her setting him on edge. “Funny thing about this beer,” he said. “I got it from the kitchen on the way out here. Every time I go into that kitchen, I think about a certain pair of jeans you used to love.”

  Shock slid over her face. “Don’t even go there, Caleb,” she warned fiercely.

  Kent snorted. “Oh, yeah. Those damn jeans.”

  “Don’t you go there either, Kent,” Shay warned. “Or I won’t set you up on that blind date with Anna you’ve been begging for.”

  Bob chuckled. “Then I guess I’ll have to go there for all of us. Why in the world, my little Shay, did you put the jeans in the oven in the first place? Just make me understand. I’ve always wanted to understand.”

  “I’ve answered this question a million times,” she said, her pretty, naturally pink lips pursed in frustration. “I was sixteen when I did that. Sixteen! I’m twenty-eight years old and, I might add, a licensed psychologist who counsels people about the trauma of bad memories. In case you didn’t know, Daddy, this is a bad memory.”

  “The dryer was broken,” Caleb answered, when unnecessary guilt flashed on Bob’s face. No matter how upset Shay acted, she ate up the teasing. And he loved watching her cheeks flush, her eyes light up. “She needed her best jeans for a party.” He’d liked those jeans. Liked them too much, considering she’d been sixteen and he’d been nineteen, about to move into campus housing at the University of Texas. Too old for her. Not that he’d ever be the right age for her. But at the time, he’d been damn glad she wasn’t prancing around in those damn tight jeans anymore, inviting hound-dog teen boys to salivate.

  Shay shot him a scorching look that wiped the smile from his face. He was pretty sure she would have smacked him otherwise.

  Sharon sighed. “Men just don’t understand how important the perfect jeans are to a female,” she said, defending her daughter. “It really was a smart idea, u
sing the oven. It was like a sauna drying room. I think it showed initiative and innovation.”

  Exasperated, Bob’s eyes went wide. “Since when is burning down the kitchen called innovation?”

  “How many experiments do you think Thomas Edison tried that went wrong?” Sharon countered protectively.

  “What was she trying to create?” Bob replied. “The fastest way to destroy her parents’ house?”

  “Maybe if you would have put them on warm, not broil, Shay-Shay,” Kent offered, sipping a beer. “Your va-voom might not have gone ka-boom.” He eyed Caleb. “What do you think, Caleb?”

  “I didn’t put them on broil!” Shay spat, before Caleb could reply, as she shoved her hands on her hips. The towel fell to her waist, and Caleb gulped at the sight of her high, ample breasts, covered by nothing but thin slices of cloth. “I left them on warm when I went to shower. How was I to know they’d go up in flames?” She clutched the towel and waved a hand between Kent and Caleb. “And how is it that every time you two get together, I’m reduced from grown adult to defensive teenager?”

  Kent grinned. “It’s a gift.”

  She huffed. “I’ve got a gift for you, Kent,” she said. “And her name isn’t Anna.” Her gaze cut back to Caleb. “I know what you just did, and it won’t work. Two can play your game, Caleb Martin. You remember that.”

  She turned on her heel, strutted back to the pool and then let go of the towel. It slid to the pavement, her pert, heart-shaped backside displayed for Caleb’s admiration. Caleb silently groaned. The only game he was going to play was the one called “cold shower.” Correction, by the time this party was over, the game would be called “long cold shower.”

  2

  CALEB HAD BEEN AWAY a long time, but the game of horseshoes as a family had endured. Caleb tipped back a beer as he watched Kent make a toss. There were a good seven or eight guys standing around playing. All family and friends. Some Caleb knew. Some…well, he’d been away a long time.

  Bob let out a loud bark of laughter as Kent’s shot landed about as close to the target as Caleb was to pretending he didn’t know every move Shay made today. Until a few minutes ago, she’d been in the pool, supervising the kids and entertaining them. Sweet, adorable Shay, always generous with her time helping others.

  He hadn’t been surprised on a visit home years before to discover Shay had started volunteering at her college counseling center, or that the work at the center had led to her changing her major from business to psychology. She’d always had a thing for taking in every stray animal in her path. Kind of like her family had been with him. They had done everything in their power to make him feel he was whole again after losing his parents, as if he belonged. The Army had given him a sense of belonging, but not a sense of family…the way the Whites had.

  “Were you aiming for the driveway out front or what, Kent?” Bob asked, and Kent buried his face in his hands, cursing at his truly horrific shot. Kent never handled his beer well. And having been away, Caleb had missed just how true, and entertaining, that fact was. He’d missed a lot of things he’d pretended he didn’t miss, that he thought he could do without.

  Bob’s comment snapped Caleb back to the moment.

  Kent glowered and held his hands to his sides in challenge. “You gonna rag on me, too?”

  “Nah, man,” Caleb said innocently. “I think you know how bad that shot was without me pointing it out.”

  Rick Jensen, Kent’s buddy who’d joined them for the day, added, “You do give new meaning to the saying ‘Just Do It.’” As doctor for the University of Texas baseball team, Rick apparently subscribed to Kent’s habit of Nike phrase dropping.

  “Don’t even go there, Rickster,” Kent said, grabbing his beer from the ground where he’d left it. “We both know you don’t know the meaning of ‘Just Do It,’ or you would have at least asked Shay out by now. We’d all like her to find a nice guy like you to take care of her, rather than some hound dog.”

  Caleb wasn’t sure whose jaw dropped closest to the ground—Rick’s, Bob’s or his own. It was a pretty close race. “Damn it, Kent,” Rick muttered, looking pale despite his tanned skin and blond hair. “Why can’t you ever keep your mouth shut?”

  “Shutting his mouth isn’t something he excels at,” Bob said dryly. “They didn’t even have to smack that boy’s ass when he was born to get him squealing.”

  Shay and her love life shouldn’t matter to Caleb, so why was every nerve he owned standing on end? Hell, he could almost feel the hair on his arms lifting, his skin tingling.

  “You keep waiting for a sign,” Kent continued to Rick, as if his father’s explanation were a license to continue. “There won’t be a sign. Shay’s a traditional kind of woman. She doesn’t flirt. She doesn’t come to you. You go to her. You have to get over these nerves.”

  Rick didn’t look convinced, as he opened his mouth and then shut it.

  Bob studied him and asked, “What seems to be bothering you, son?”

  His question stiffened Caleb’s spine. Bob liked this guy Rick. Hell, Caleb liked Rick. No. Caleb hated Rick.

  “She’s friendly,” Rick said after another moment of hesitation. “But not overly so. I don’t want everyone to feel uncomfortable if I’m around after she’s turned me down.” He laughed. “Or have Kent beat up my ass because I make her mad or something.”

  There it was. Everything Caleb felt. Everything. So completely, so near exactness, that Caleb about fell over. And Rick didn’t call these people family. He had his own. The validation twisted inside him.

  “For the record,” Kent said, “my sister’s a lady, but she don’t take no junk. She’ll beat your ass if you screw up. She doesn’t need me to do it. But you have to actually ask her out to ever get the chance for anyone to beat your ass.”

  “And I so want that opportunity,” Rick quipped back sardonically. “You aren’t helping.”

  A sound of frustration slid from Kent’s lips, and he motioned to Caleb for help. “Tell ’em, Caleb. Tell Rick if he wants Shay, he has to go after her.” He motioned toward the tables of food set up on the opposite side of the yard where Shay stood.

  Thankfully, she’d covered her swimsuit with a crocheted shirt of some sort that touched her knees, which at least allowed Caleb to look at her without getting an instant hard-on. Man, he was pathetic.

  “Do it. Now. Today. Ask her out,” Kent insisted.

  Suddenly, Kent’s words from moments before radiated through Caleb, like a light being slowly turned from dim to bright. She doesn’t come to you. Shay didn’t approach men. Kent was right. But she had approached him. In the past. And even today, she’d openly flirted, hugged him, held on to him, molding those sweet curves against his body, intentionally teasing him. Maybe that meant she really wanted him. Or maybe it meant she had an evil side he didn’t recognize—that she enjoyed taunting him, knowing he’d never dare act on his desire. Believing her capable of such a thing would make it easy to walk away, easy to turn away. But deep down, he knew there was no evil to Shay. He knew they shared a bond, a friendship and attraction.

  “…like the present. Right, Caleb?”

  “Right what?”

  “There’s no time like the present,” Kent repeated and made a fist. “Just do it, Rick.”

  Caleb inhaled a discreet breath and lifted his beer. “No time like the present. If you are going to do it, do it.” Right here, right now, where Caleb could kick Rick’s Doctor-Do-Gooder, nice-guy ass if he stepped out of line. Which he wouldn’t. He was, after all, a nice guy, but Caleb could hope.

  A flickering memory played in his mind. Of Shay pushing to her toes and pressing those soft lips to his. Of her tentative, inexperienced little tongue caressing his. He all but moaned.

  “You heard the man,” Kent said, waving at Rick. “Just do it, man.”

  Rick drew a breath and handed Caleb his beer. “Save that for me. I might be needing it.”

  Rick could kiss Caleb’s ass if he thought he was g
etting his beer back. He wasn’t giving Rick anything. Well, nothing but the woman he wanted and couldn’t have. No. Rick was not getting his beer.

  SHAY STOOD AT the food tables snacking on a plate of cucumbers and ranch dressing, a comfort food since she was a small child. She didn’t dare look over at the horseshoe area again. She’d seen enough there to know she didn’t need to see any more. Her plan to kiss Caleb again was hereby over. Watching him interact with Kent and her father, along with the rest of their family and friends, had been a reality check. Every second he was here, Caleb relaxed more, fell into the old traditions and inside jokes.

  He belonged here, yet he’d stayed away. And she knew why. Because of her. Because she’d kissed him and made him feel uncomfortable. Because he didn’t believe they could share an attraction and a family. Which meant her plan to kiss him again, while tempting and all too appealing, was selfish. Wrong.

  “Hi, Shay.”

  Shay jumped and somehow managed to turn the paper plate over and onto Rick’s shirt. In the process, one of the cucumber slices flew in the air and landed on his head. She’d just turned one of Kent’s work friends into a kitchen sink.

  “Oh, my God! Rick. I’m so sorry!” Cringing, she grabbed the cucumber from his head and flung it away, then tossed the paper plate into a trash can. Ranch dip clung to his shirt. “I can’t believe I just did that. I was thinking about… I…I’m sorry.” Shay grabbed several napkins and offered them to him.

  “It’s okay,” he said, smiling as he wiped the mess on the front of him. “Though it kind of blows the cool-guy image I was going for.”

  She laughed and said, “You can always judge a guy’s coolness by how he handles a plate of cucumbers and ranch dip spilled on his shirt. And considering you don’t seem mad at me, you passed with absolute coolness.”

  He drew a breath. “Then I’m hoping this is a cool enough moment to ask you out to dinner and a movie.”

  “A…a…?” Yowza, she had not seen that coming. She’d never really had a conversation with him. “Dinner and a movie? I…I don’t know what to say.”