Page 24

Caleb

I jog up the steps to her front door and walk right in. The sounds of hammering and drilling fill the empty rooms. Theo looks up from what he’s doing in the living room. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Is that any way to talk to the boss?” I put my hands on my hips.

It’s been three days since I’ve worked here.

Not that I haven’t been here. No, I’ve been here every single night to make dinner with her and then make out with her in her bed.

Until I drag myself away from her and force myself to go home before I forget about fucking her before we go on our first date.

Every single night I want to kick my own ass about making up the rule.

But I know once I get in there, it’s going to be worth it in so many different ways.

“It is when that boss is supposed to be at a barn, making sure that the roof comes off without killing someone.” He moves the nail gun to the end of the shelf and starts to hit it down all along the shelf.

The hissing from the gun drowns out the stomp of his boots as he finishes assembling the mantel.

“Roof is off,” I confirm to him, “and everyone is in one piece.” I look at the room, seeing that he’s about done with the built-ins that Sierra mentioned that first time.

I contacted my guy on the side and gave him a brief idea of what I wanted with the measurements and a picture of the wall, and he did the rest. I just hope that she is going to like it when she finally sees it, since I’m surprising her with it.

“So you decided to come and visit one of the job sites, or did you come for something else?” he asks, his eyebrows shooting up.

“I’m taking Sierra out,” I tell him, and he chuckles. “This looks good.” I do a chin jerk toward what he’s doing. “Think they’ll be finished by this week?”

“Probably.” He takes a look at his work. “That is what I planned anyway. We’re starting the bedrooms tomorrow, so I hope I timed it properly.”

“Okay, sounds good,” I confirm, looking toward the stairs. “I’ll?—”

“Yeah, yeah, get the fuck out of here. Some of us actually have to work and not just pretend,” he says, chuckling and going back to work.

I go up the stairs two at a time and find her door closed.

I knock once before I open it and stick my head in, seeing her sitting at her desk.

She turns in her white chair toward me, her face filling with a huge smile.

“You really aren’t going to let me go at this alone.” She crosses one leg over the other placing her elbows on the arm rests. Her head tilts to the side and I can’t help but smile.

“I really am not going to let you go there alone,” I confirm to her. “You look beautiful.” I tell her what I was thinking before smiling. “Now, are you ready?”

“Yes.” She gets up, and I see she’s wearing a pair of tight black jeans with a burnt-orange long-sleeved sweater that is tucked in the front but flows at the sides. “I’m ready.”

“Are you forgetting something?” I ask her when she grabs her purse from the bed and walks over to me.

“Should I get a jacket?” she asks, and I smirk. She looks over at the window, then back at me. “It looks like it’s nice outside. Is the sun deceiving?”

“You forgot to kiss me hello,” I tell her, bending my head to the side to kiss her. One hand comes up to cup her jaw and the other wraps around her to bring her closer to me.

I sweep my tongue into her mouth before letting her mouth go. Her eyes flutter open. “Is that a thing now?” she asks, wiping her lip gloss off my lips before I slide my hand off of her waist and into her hand and turn to walk out of her room.

We walk down the steps hand in hand as we pass the living room. “We’re out,” I tell Theo, who just nods at me as I pull her out the door. I walk her over to my truck, opening the door for her.

“Oh, is this what to expect on our date?” she questions me as she gets in the truck. “The whole gentleman thing?”

“I’m always a gentleman,” I remind her.

“Not really,” she retorts and I gasp, putting my hands on my hips, “you made me do all the work yesterday.”

“You jumped on me and straddled me. I thought my dick was going to explode in my pants.” I point at her. “Do you know how painful that was?”

“That wouldn’t happen if you let me take them off.” She reaches for the door handle and slams the door in my face.

I shake my head and look up at the sky before walking around and getting into the truck. “Oh, also, guess who had another match today?” I look over at her. “A second cousin and he’s young, so he probably has email, unlike my fourth cousin whose kids probably did it for her.”

“Fingers crossed,” I tell her. Another thing we’ve done in the last two days is try to eliminate all of John’s twelve kids. Checking all the census records and then the marriage certificates is definitely cool. She also caved and hired a genealogist to see if they could help her.

We pull up at the sheriff’s station and I get out, round the truck, and see her slam the truck door. “You okay?” I ask her as I see her shake both of her hands as if she’s trying to fling something away from them.

“Yes or no. I don’t know” ”—she takes a deep breath, wiping her hands on the front of her jeans—“let’s just go in there and get this thing over with.”

“Or we leave and we can pretend that this never happened?” I give her a chance to turn around but she just shakes her head, so I slip my hand in hers and she doesn’t take it out, so I bring it to my lips before I open the glass door with my free hand, holding it open at the top as she walks in.

We walk to the desk in the middle of the room with doors on both sides of the receptionist. “Hi,” Sierra greets her cheerfully and I hold her hand tighter in mine. “I was wondering if there was someone I could talk to about a case from twenty-five years ago.”

“I can maybe get someone for you.” The receptionist turns to grab the phone in her hand, leaving it dangling. “Do you know what type of a case?”

“It would have been the abandoned child who was left at the fire station.” I see something in her eyes click and then she quickly hides it, nodding at us and looking away.

“Sheriff Hadley,” she says into the phone, “there is someone here about a Jane Doe case from twenty-five years ago.” She looks back up at Sierra and me. Sierra looks down at her feet and I rub her thumb with mine. “He’ll be right out,” she tells us.

A couple of seconds later the sheriff comes out, wearing brown jeans and a white buttoned shirt, his gun holstered at his side. A cream-colored cowboy hat on his head, his beady eyes trained on us. “How can I help you two?” His voice is gruff and nothing about him screams helping the community.

“My name is Sierra,” she starts, letting go of my hand and extending it to the sheriff, who looks at her hand for a second before taking it, and already I don’t like him.

“I’d like to ask you about this case,” she says, opening her purse and taking out the newspaper clipping and handing it to him.

He grabs it from her and reads it before looking back up at her.

“That’s me and I was wondering if there was a case file I could read. ”

“There isn’t,” he declares, handing her back the paper and he’s about to turn around and head back to his office.

“How do you know if there is no case file?” I ask him, and his eyes go to mine. “You know every single case file you’ve ever had?" I watch him just look at her. “How isn’t there a case file?” I ask him confused, “A child was left in a box.”

“I remember this case exactly. The child was left unharmed in a box.” His beady eyes stare into mine.

“Unharmed because they heard her crying, but it was cold.” You can see he doesn’t like to be spoken back to.

“Look”—he sighs and then his voice goes low and tight—“we did what we needed to do, which was take you to the hospital for a wellness check, and then called Child Protective Services. There was no need to do an investigation.”

“So no one asked the hospitals if someone had given birth to a child and then just dumped their child off?”

“For all we know, you could have been birthed at home and then they discarded you there.” His tone is tight.

“She wasn’t discarded,” I cut in and his eyebrows rise. “So basically, unless she died, you weren’t doing an investigation.” I nod and grab Sierra’s hand. “Well, this answers your questions. Thank you for nothing.” I turn and nod to the receptionist and then walk out with her behind me.

“This is why I didn’t want you to come with me.” She pulls her hand from mine.

“And why is that?”

“Because you went all protective on me and I didn’t need it.” She shakes her head and places the article in her bag.

“You’re damn fucking right I was going to go all protective on you. That guy was a fucking idiot and he wasn’t going to answer one fucking question you had.”

“You don’t know that,” she says softly.

“Baby,” I placate, pulling her in my arms, “he wasn’t going to answer any question that you had.”

“He didn’t even try to look for who left me.

” She lays her head on my chest, wrapping her arms around my waist. “It’s like no one fucking cared.

” Her voice quivers with emotion. “Well, I guess no one did care.” I hear her sniffle and close my eyes, knowing if I knew who her parents were, I would probably punch the shit out of her father.

“Baby, you’re killing me,” I admit to her. “I don’t know why they did it, but I have to believe that it was for a reason.”

“Is being an asshole a reason?” She pulls away and looks up at me. I see her eyelashes wet with tears.

“I don’t like to see you cry,” I tell her, bringing my hand up to her cheek. “In fact, I’m going to say it’s my least favorite thing in the whole world.”

“Can you please stop saying all the right things?” She rolls her eyes and brings her forefinger up to her eye and uses it to wipe away the tear. “Then it makes me feel bad when I have to tell you things that will hurt your feelings.”

I can’t help but snort out a little laugh. “Good to know.” I kiss her lips. “Now, let me get some food in you, and then I’ll take you back home.”

“Okay,” she agrees softly as we walk over to the bakery and have lunch outside, sitting at the picnic table.

“Have you thought about hiring a private investigator?” I ask her when I take a bite of my donut.

“Not really.”

“Why don’t you reach out to one and see what they say?” She shrugs.

“I guess there is no harm in doing that,” she concedes. “How does one look for a private investigator?”

I shake my head. “I have no fucking idea,” I answer, making her throw her head back and laugh.

“That’s the second sexiest thing that you do with your mouth,” I tell her, and she stops laughing and smiles. “Actually, not really. It might be the fourth.”

“The fourth?” She leans her elbows on the table. “What are the first three?”

“Well, the first sexiest thing you do with your mouth has to be when you moan out my name.” She looks down at the table, shaking her head. “The second sexiest thing you do with that mouth is kiss.”

“Okay, what’s the third?”

I look around to make sure that it’s just her and me. “The third sexiest thing you are going to do with your mouth is swallow my cock.” Her cheeks turn a tint of pink. “Actually, that might be scratched up to number one.” I close my eyes. “Fuck, I’m hard thinking about it.”

“Caleb,” she hisses and looks around, “you are not.”

“Want to come over to this side and check?” I wink at her, and she rolls her eyes. “I can’t fucking wait for our date.”

“Who says we’re going to have sex on our first date?”

I lean into her. “Technically, it’s like our sixth date by then.”

“How do you count that?”

“One was when I cooked you dinner on Sunday. Two was when I came over on Monday and we had dinner again, cooked by me. Yesterday, I brought burgers over.”

“But you didn’t cook for me.”

“Still a date, I brought food. Tonight, we’ll be having dinner, so that’s four.”

“I get it, I can count, but Friday, I’m busy.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really, I’m getting ready for the date, so I have to do certain things.”

“You do those things on Saturday morning. I’m not giving up a make-out session so you can shave your legs.”

“Caleb, it’s more than my legs.” She laughs.

I lick my lips. “Oh yeah, tell me what other parts you plan on shaving.”

“I will not.”

“Can I guess?” I whisper. “Does it start with a p and end with a y?”

“Nope.”

I glare at her. “Liar.” I point my finger at her. “Okay, we can leave now, my cock has gone down.” I stand, and she laughs again.

“I didn’t know we were waiting for it to deflate.”

“Can we not talk about my cock and the word deflate in the same sentence?”

“We don’t have to talk about your cock at all.” She crushes her shoulder into my arm, and I hang my hand around her neck. “You’re the one always talking about it.”

“That’s because you keep dreaming about it.” She laughs as she slaps her hand on my stomach.

“Tonight, can we make out without our T-shirts on?”

“No.” I shake my head and stop when we get to my truck.

“What? Why?” she asks when I open the door. “It’s just skin.”

“My cock also has skin, and if you take your top off, all I’ll want to do is fuck your tits while I pinch those nipples.” My eyes go to her shirt, then up again. “Bet I can make you come just from playing with them.”

“Don’t make fucking promises you can’t keep, Caleb,” she snaps angrily.

“You better not make any plans for Saturday night until Monday morning because you’ll be naked the whole fucking time.” I shut the door, her shocked face looking out the window. “The whole time!” I shout.