Callie's Christmas Wish. Merline Lovelace
Callie might have felt sorry for Rose’s father if his vicious emails hadn’t disrupted her life for the past three months. She’d have to pick up the pieces and get on with it, she realized. But first...
“Thank you.” Reaching across the counter, she laid a hand over Joe’s. “I appreciate all you’ve done for me. More than I can ever say. I hated involving you in the mess, but...”
“Hated me butting in, you mean.”
“Well, yes. At first.” She had to smile. “After all, we barely knew each other.”
“A situation I’ve been trying to remedy.”
He had. He most definitely had. Just remembering the hard press of his mouth on hers the evening before his sudden trip to Australia brought a wash of heat from the neck of her sweater. The heat surged even higher when Joe turned his hand, enfolded hers and brushed his thumb over her wrist in slow, easy strokes.
Callie didn’t dare glance at her friend. Dawn wasn’t the least bit hesitant to dish out advice or offer opinions. She and Kate had both already suggested—several times!—that strong, silent, super-macho Joe Russo had a serious case of the hots for the quiet, seemingly demure member of their trio.
Thankfully Dawn refrained from commenting on either Joe’s thumb movements or the heat now spreading across Callie’s cheeks. Instead she invented a quick excuse to depart the scene.
“I’d better go make sure Tommy isn’t trying to test those aerodynamic principles in the den. Give a shout when you’re ready to, uh, take the action outside.”
The door to the den swished shut behind her, and a sudden silence descended. Callie was the first to break it. Her hand still in Joe’s, she tried to ignore the skitter of nerves his stroke was generating and smiled up at him.
“I meant what I just said, Joe. I’m really, really grateful. And so relieved it’s finally over.”
“Me, too. It’s been keeping me awake at night.”
“I’ve lost sleep, too,” she admitted. “I can’t ever repay you for the man-hours you and your people put into the investigation.”
“If it gets the shadows out of your eyes, I’ll consider the debt paid.”
His gaze locked on hers. “Your eyes are the damnedest color,” he said after a small pause. “Not purple, not lavender. Sort of halfway between the two. First thing I noticed about you.”
Well, Callie thought with an inner grimace, it wouldn’t have been her ebullient personality or luscious curves. Dawn had the corner on those. And any stray male glances the flamboyant redhead didn’t instantly capture, Kate’s lustrous, sun-streaked blond hair and mile-long legs would.
“Thanks,” she said for lack of a better response.
“I tried to find the right way to describe the color when I gave my folks your vitals,” he said with a rueful grimace. “Couldn’t bring myself to go with hyacinth or heliotrope. Their jaws would’ve smacked their chests.”
Callie’s own jaw almost took a trip south. These were the most words she’d heard Joe string together in one sitting. They were also the most surprising.
“So what did you go with?”
“Pansy.”
Her nose wrinkled. “Lovely.”
“Yeah, they are.”
His hand tightened and tugged her closer. His other hand came up to slide under her hair. His palm felt warm on her nape, the skin hard and ridged in spots. She’d once read that expert marksmen fired thousands of rounds weekly to maintain their skills and developed shooter’s calluses as a result.
Okay. She’d read that just a few weeks ago. When she was trying to weave a more complete picture of Joe Russo from the scant threads of his past that he’d shared with her. She was thinking of the still-gaping holes in that picture when he reclaimed her attention with a gruff admission.
“Those damned emails weren’t the only thing keeping me awake.”
He lowered his head but didn’t swoop in and catch her by surprise, as he had the night before his abrupt departure for Australia. He gave her plenty of time to pull away, to ease out of his loose grip. So much time she was the one who leaned into the kiss.
That was all the encouragement he needed. With a low grunt, he pushed off his stool. She came off hers eagerly. The hand still wrapped around her nape moved up. He tipped her head back for a better angle and used his other arm to fit her against him. She strained even closer while his mouth worked hard, hungry magic on hers.
Within moments, Callie was aching for more. She wanted him out of his shirt. Out of his worsted-wool slacks and his Italian leather boots and...
“Caaal-lee.”
She jerked her back and looked over her shoulder to find Tommy glaring at them with equal parts indignation and accusation. His pup wedged through the door with him and yipped, as if wanting to add his two cents to whatever was going on.
“Mom said you guys were still talking. But you’re not. You’re kissing ’n’ stuff.”
They hadn’t actually gotten to the “stuff” part, but Callie was thinking about it. Thinking hard. So was Joe, judging by the wicked tilt to his mouth.
“Yeah,” he admitted, “we are.”
Scowling, Tommy planted his fists on his hips. “When are you gonna be done?”
Joe slanted Callie a wry look. “How about we finish our...discussion...later? Somewhere private. Inaccessible to kids and dogs.”
“Deal.”
“All right, kid. Get your jacket and your boomerang and we’ll go outside.”
When Joe stepped outside, he welcomed the clean, sharp bite of a DC winter. December was midsummer in Australia. During his flying visit, Sydney had been sweltering through usually high temperatures. As a result he enjoyed the brisk chill almost as much as he did Tommy the Terrible’s determination to get his boomerang to fly.
Before making the first attempt, though, the boy fingered the fine-grained wood surface and gravely explained its aerodynamic principles to Joe. “See, this is a nonballistic missile.”
“That so?”
“Uh-huh. It’s different from ballistic missiles. They’re, like, spears ’n’ arrows ’n’ bullets ’n’ stuff. When you throw them or shoot them from a gun, they fly up in an arc till gravity pulls them down.”
Which was about as cogent a distillation of ballistics as Joe had ever heard. He hid a grin as he thought of the hours he’d spent on the range as a raw recruit learning to calculate distance, velocity and trajectory.
“But a boomerang’s different,” Tommy continued, his face a study in fierce concentration as he fingered the intricate designs inlaid in the wood. “It’s got this curved shape ’n’ wide surface ’n’ the top is conver...convey...”
“Convex?”
“Yeah, convex. Anyway, Dad says if you throw it right, it’ll defy gravity as long as it has enough speed ’n’ the rotation will bring it right back to you.”
“Sounds like you’ve got the theory down. Want to put in practice?”
“Yes!”
Thankfully, Joe’s Aussie contact had directed him to an indigenous arts and crafts store with a very accommodating owner. The man had hooked a Closed sign in his shop window and taken his customer to the soccer field just a half block from his store. It took patient coaching and several