For some reason, I waited until he’d done this, watching his profile rather than opening my door.
He felt my gaze, looked at me, his face softened and he gave me one nod before he unbuckled his seatbelt and turned to his door.
I unbuckled too and turned to mine.
Once I got out and shut it, I looked to Cal to see he’d pushed away from the SUV and was heading our way.
But he got a look at me not through the windshield and his tall body came to an abrupt stop.
Then his handsome face got scary.
I just barely made it to the hood of Deke’s truck when Deke was at my side, and before I knew it, he had a hand curled around my neck. His wrist was at the back, his fingers around the side pulling me close to him so I had no choice but to move toward Cal with my side brushing Deke’s and do it lifting a hand and hooking my thumb in his back belt loop.
It was a strange hold that communicated protection and, oddly (though I might be reading it wrong, that wrong being hopefully) possession.
Cal took us in as we made our way to him and Deke stopped us a few feet away.
“You’re Callahan,” Deke stated and Cal tore his angry gaze from my throat and gave it to Deke.
“You’re Hightower,” he returned.
“Yup.”
Cal looked him up and down, clearly after having seen my face, he hadn’t taken in the fullness of all that was Deke (just to say, I didn’t look much at myself when I was in Deke’s bathroom—I saw it was not pretty in such a way that I wasn’t quite ready to go there just yet with any type of close inspection).
He did take Deke in right then and I knew his eyesight wasn’t failing when I saw the pissed-off tense line of his body relax a smidge.
Cal turned his attention to me. “You doin’ okay, Jus?”
“Got a lot of good folks looking after me, Cal,” I replied.
He nodded, glancing at Deke before looking at me.
He then looked back to Deke. “You wanna let her go, man, so I can give her a hug?”
This was Cal’s wife’s doing. I knew this because he put in Dad’s security in Dad and Dana’s house prior to finding that wife and back then, although not rude or an asshole, he was about as huggable as Charles Manson.
When he did Lacey’s house in the Hollywood hills, well after he’d settled into life with his new wife, he was an entirely different man. Still slightly taciturn, the rest was a shock. He was far more mellow and he liberally demonstrated he had a wicked sense of humor. He talked on the phone frequently with his woman and the family he collected when he got her (she was a widowed mom) and the one the two of them were making (something they enjoyed doing because as far as I knew, they had five kids, two hers before Cal, five hers and Cal’s with Cal’s seed making three of those).
It was a beautiful thing to see, how the love of an unmistakably good woman (though I’d never met her, still, the miracle she wrought was proof of that in my eyes) could change a man. Make him so visibly happy, even folks who barely knew him saw the blessings he’d received because he wore them almost like badges of honor.
Another of life’s bounties, seeing that for Cal.
As I thought all this, I realized that the answer to Cal’s question was a negative because Deke didn’t let me go.
It was then I noticed Cal make a slight movement, shifting his left hand, but doing it so the wide gold band on it was easy to see.
Only then did Deke let me go.
Uh…
Okay.
Now what was that?
I had no intention to ask or any chance.
Cal came forward and pulled me in his arms, giving me a careful hug.
He also didn’t let me go immediately.
He kept me close as he said, “Gonna get you safe, Justice. No way this shit’s gonna happen again. Yeah?”
I gave his trim waist a hug. “Yeah, Cal. Thanks.”
He finally removed his arms, I dropped mine, but he didn’t remove himself until after he wrapped one hand around my right biceps and gave me a reassuring squeeze.
Then he looked to Deke. “Let’s get to work.”
“Let you in and you can take a look around,” Deke replied. “Know Max gave you the plans and sent you some pictures but figure you need to get the lay of the land. You do that, I gotta take Jussy to her room. You’re gonna have to give us a few minutes, brother. After that, she’s gonna be with us, not out of either of our sight, not even in her bedroom. You with me?”
Cal studied Deke a beat before he nodded.
Deke looked down at me. “You with me?”
Me not hanging out in the room where I got strangled without Deke there with me?
I was totally with him.
“I’m with you.”
That was when Deke nodded, took hold of me again, this time with his arm around my shoulders, and he turned us to the house.
And that was when all thought of Deke’s chest, his stomach, ass, legs, cutoff fleece shorts, gentle morning mood and Cal’s miraculous change due to the love of a good woman went out of my head as I stared at my front door.
My house was beautiful on the outside. All those windows. All that stone. That arched doorway. The flagstone walk that led from the graveled drive to the front door set in wide but lazy and meandering, curving here and there randomly. The old pines and aspen undisturbed around the front, the selection of the ones left standing so perfect I would not need a lot of landscaping. All of this making it seem like the house had been there forever. Like it grew up among those trees, not as it was, having been carved into them.