“I’ll never send him away,” Tanner said with such utter conviction that it brought tears to Callie’s eyes. Great, and now she was envious of a father/son relationship. “Please move,” she said, and when he did, she shut her door and drove off.
Callie was awoken yet again, this time to a knock at her door.
Becca, she thought. For breakfast. Damn, she’d overslept. No wonder, since it’d taken her hours to fall asleep after she’d gotten home.
At the thought of what had happened the night before, she sighed. She’d overstepped a line and tried to tell Tanner how to parent. She, who had no idea how.
What had she been thinking?
And even then, Tanner had followed her home to make sure she’d gotten there okay. Well, that or he was making sure she wasn’t going to his house to yell at him some more. In either case, she’d seen him pull into the warehouse lot and wait until she’d let herself in.
A good guy to the end.
And it was the end. She’d let herself get in too deep. It was time to swim for shore and call it a day.
The knock came again.
She cracked a lid open. Muted, gray daylight poured in the windows. Rain slashed against the glass, drumming against the roof noisily.
A storm had rolled in.
And there went the third knock. “Coming!” she called out, and rubbed her eyes as she ran to the door. “I’m sorry,” she said as she pulled it open, shivering at the chill that hit her. “I’m going to need a few minutes to—”
But she broke off because it wasn’t Becca.
Nope.
Not even close.
It was the last person on earth she’d expected to see.
Okay, maybe not the last person. That honor certainly would’ve gone to Perfect Eric and his Perfect Wife with her freakishly straight white teeth…
Instead, it was Tanner, clearly having just come in from the rain, his clothes plastered to him, looking hotter and more awake than any man should look, holding—oh God, how was she supposed to resist this—coffees and a bag that smelled even more delicious than he did.
Chapter 21
Tanner had done a lot of crazy shit in his lifetime, often taking his life in his hands while he was at it: playing football without a healthy respect for the danger of the sport, going into the navy and then into Special Forces from there—talk about a not-guaranteed happy ending. And it hadn’t gotten any better on the rigs.
So yeah, he’d say he was pretty good at danger, at adrenaline rushes, at living in the moment—knowing the next moment might never come.
What he wasn’t so good at was doubt. He’d long ago learned to squelch that emotion deep and ignore it, pretending it didn’t exist.
And yet a lifetime of lessons of doing just that flew out of the window as he stood there drenched from the pounding rain in Callie’s doorway, never having felt less sure of himself.
He couldn’t even bank on her opening the door.
But then she did. Hair wild, not a lick of makeup, wearing…well, he wasn’t sure what that was. Either really, really big sweats or a potato sack.
And it didn’t matter.
She looked beautiful.
Her first expression was a flash of things. Relief. Happiness. A welcome heat.
But all that was quickly buried behind an expression of calm indifference.
He didn’t even try to reason with her. He stepped into her, forcing her back a step if she wanted to avoid a collision.
Which clearly she did. Whether it was because he was wetter than the ocean or because she was still mad at him remained to be seen.
He took the liberty of shutting and bolting the door and handed her a coffee.
“Tanner—”
“Drink,” he said firmly.
He waited until she’d taken a few sips, until her eyes cleared and focused, and then he braced for the real battle. “About last night,” he said.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said stiffly.
“Tough shit.”
She set down her coffee and went hands on hips. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” He took her hand and led her to the couch, deciding that her passiveness was more due to the fact that she’d not yet fully absorbed the caffeine than actual submissiveness.
He gave her a gentle shove, and she plopped backward onto the cushions and sputtered.
Before she could bounce up again, he sat at her side and faced her, planting a hand on the couch at either side of her hips.
Caging her in.
“You’re all wet and cold,” she complained.
“If that was what was bothering you, you’d not have let me in,” he said.
“I didn’t let you in, you just helped yourself.”
“You could’ve stopped me.”