When Summer Comes (Whiskey Creek #3)(38)
Author: Brenda Novak

“Vanilla, huh?” She grinned as she heard his tread behind her but didn’t look back. She was too busy pulling the bread from the oven. “Smells good on you.”

“If I wanted to get clean, perfumed soap seemed to be my only choice.”

“You could’ve asked me for something else.” She set the pan on top of the stove.

“It’s okay. It’s not like a flowery scent. Why can’t a guy smell like homemade cookies?”

She could tell he was teasing. “At least you’re comfortable with your masculinity.”

“It seems pointless to be any other way. So…what do you think?”

After closing the oven with her foot, she turned to see that he was wearing his new shirt. She thought it was perfect. But she didn’t want to act too pleased. “It fits. Do you like it?”

“I do. But it’s too hot to wear tonight.”

They were experiencing higher temperatures than normal, even for summer. She had the windows open and a fan whirring in the living room, like her grandparents had always done in the warmer months. “It’ll keep.”

Rifle approached Levi, tail wagging. Her dog craved his attention as much as she did, she thought wryly.

“Hey, boy.” Levi crouched to acknowledge him. “Do I smell like Callie?”

“Maybe that’s why he likes you.”

“He liked me before.”

When he began to strip off the shirt, Callie paused to stare.

He raised his eyebrows when he noticed, and she shrugged. “Doesn’t hurt to look,” she said with a laugh, but then she made herself turn back to the counter and start dishing up the food.

By the time she faced him again, he was wearing the clean T-shirt he’d brought in with him and was sitting in his usual place.

“I’m starved,” he said.

The longer she was home, the better she felt. He seemed relaxed and content, too—far more relaxed and content than he’d been when he’d awakened here last Tuesday.

“You get much done today?” she asked.

“Nearly finished the roof. That old wood was more deteriorated than I realized. I had to remove a huge section of it.”

“I’ll pay you for the extra hours.”

“There’s no need for that. I’m satisfied with our trade. I just wanted to let you know why it’s going to take longer than I expected.”

For a change, Callie was hungry. Sitting across from him, she ate instead of just watching.

“Finally,” he said.

“What?”

He motioned to her plate. “That’s the first time I’ve seen you eat.”

“Glad I could make you happy.”

“I’m easy to please.”

She thought maybe they’d fall into the silence that had marked their earlier meals, but tonight he wanted to talk. He avoided certain subjects—or perhaps she just imagined he was avoiding them because she was sensitive about asking certain questions—but he seemed willing enough to share details about the places he’d visited since returning from Afghanistan. He’d been to almost every state, appreciated something about all of them. But he was particularly enamored with southern Utah.

“Have you ever been there?” he asked.

“No. What’s so great about it?”

“There’s Zion National Park, Arches National Park, Moab and the surrounding area, which they call Canyonlands.”

“I’ve been to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. We went on a long driving vacation the summer I was fourteen.”

“I like the Grand Canyon. But I already knew it would be spectacular. Southern Utah came as a surprise.”

“Did you get to do much traveling as a kid?”

“Not really.”

“You grew up in Seattle, right? Is that where your folks are?”

She knew this was a personal question, the kind she recognized as more or less off-limits. But Callie couldn’t resist. He’d helped her the entire night she’d been sick—even slept in her bed—yet she didn’t know the most basic facts about his life or background.

His hesitation made her self-conscious about having asked, but then he answered, “I don’t know where my mother is.”

“Because…”

“She took my baby sister and got out while she could.”

The food in Callie’s mouth sat there, suddenly tasteless. She took a drink of water so she could swallow it. “How old were you?”

“Ten.”

“How old was she?”

“Ellen? Or my mother?”

“Both, I guess.”

“Ellen was four. My mother must’ve been about…my age,” he said as if he was slightly surprised to make that connection.

“And you are…”

“Twenty-seven.”

Five years younger than she was, like she’d guessed. “She had you when she was seventeen?”

“Yes. My father was eighteen. They married right out of high school, when I was one.”

“But the marriage didn’t work.”

He chuckled bitterly. “No.”

She moved some of the celery from her salad around on her plate. “Why didn’t your mother take you when she left?”

A muscle flexed in his cheek. “Because she knew my father would hunt her down and kill her if she did.”

Callie set her fork to the side of her plate. She hoped he didn’t mean “kill” in its literal sense, but she got the impression he did. “Was he violent?”

“He could get physical. He was also controlling.” He shook his head. “Impossible to live with.”

“How did she get away with taking his daughter?”

Levi stopped eating, too. He seemed to be looking at his past life like something he’d buried long ago and just unearthed, something he hadn’t particularly treasured but about which he felt a mild curiosity. “He wasn’t all that excited about having a girl.”

“You meant more to him?”

“Only because I’d already shown an aptitude for martial arts.”

“Why would he care so much about that?”

“He’d always wanted to be a champion, a recognized force in the industry. But an old injury kept him from going very far in competition. So he decided to make his mark a different way. He opened his own dojo and started to train others, was determined to turn out some of the world’s best fighters.”

“And you were one of them.”

“I was winning and providing him with the championships he needed, yes.” His smile took on a bitter slant. “He was never prouder than when I took home another trophy. We barely had enough for groceries, yet he spent thousands having special cases built at the dojo just so he could display them.”