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I would have laughed at that, but there was no humor in Callan's face, so I just tucked my phone back into my bag and tried for a smile. "Okay, I'll do that."
The big gates had swung shut again, and another car was coming up the narrow lane now, sending a small plume of dust up behind it.
"Daddy!" Maddie said, jumping up and down. "Daddy can help."
The car rolled to a halt and Cormac Whitewood stepped out of it. "Why are you all standing out here?" he asked, looking between us. "Hello again, Miss Hall."
"You two have met?" Callan asked, suspicion coloring his words.
"Only briefly," Cormac said, seeming to sense the tension in the air. "In town."
"Hello Cormac," I said, feeling very out of place.
"Would opening the gate help move this situation along at all?" Cormac asked, nodding toward the keypad.
"I was just going," I said. "Just need to get my car." I nodded toward where my little car sat in front of the plantation house.
"Get back in the car, girls," Callan said in a not-too-friendly voice.
"Frosty!" Taylor said, seeing that we were all getting back in, but the snowman remained on the driveway.
"I can handle Frosty," Cormac said, placing the snowman in the passenger side of his own car.
We drove past the gates and stopped again in front of the house. I got out of Callan's car, which had turned very silent and very cold.
"Goodbye," Callan said pointedly, angling his head at my car.
"Bye," I said, lifting a hand to Cormac and the girls. And then I was driving away, wondering if I’d made progress on getting Callan's house nailed down or on something else. Or if maybe I was right back where I started.
Nowhere.
8
Frosty is a Smug Bastard
Callan
It took five trips to carry all the assorted ornaments, decorations, and lights from my car into the house. And once it was all inside, deposited in a non-decorous heap in the center of the parlor beneath the enormous tree, I saw the mess for what it was—an effort to cover ugly and empty with glitter and gauche.
"Shit," I whispered, staring down at it all, rubbing a hand over the back of my neck where the hair was beginning to curl around my collar. I needed a haircut. Hell, I needed a lot more than that.
"I see my girls were very convincing," Cormac said, coming to stand at my side as the little girls began to paw through the bags, pulling out their favorite things. Frosty stood silent just inside the front door, watching the scene with expressionless coal eyes and a one-sided smile. I thought he looked awfully smug for a guy standing naked inside another man's house.
"They were," I agreed. "But they had help." I spit these last words out, earning me a squinty gaze from my brother.
"You didn't have to go along with it," Cormac said, kneeling to help Maddie extricate four stockings from a bag. He handed them to the little girl and turned back to me. "What's your real issue? Something to do with April," he guessed.
I felt tired suddenly, and the ache that shot up my leg with every movement had become a singing pain that wouldn't stop, a constant reminder of what I had once been, and who I would never be again. "She wheedled her way in here. She's got this television crew in town, and I'm supposed to just roll over and do what she wants, let them all in here to film."
I gritted my teeth against both the pain and the memory of the last time the media had dug into my life—a meaty photo-filled spread in one of the popular tabloids had done an exclusive interview with my ex soon after the breakup. She’d given them some of her own photos—photos that showed me angry and broken down, grieving for the loss of my career. The words had been no better, Becky calling me pathetic and sad, painting me as a has-been who couldn't see past my own former fame. That particular piece had resulted in the speedy conclusion of the last two endorsement deals I’d had—ones I’d thought I might hang on to despite the injury. They didn’t want to work with a guy teetering on the brink of depression and alcoholism, and their contract revisions had signaled the true and final end of the life I’d once lived. Becky had left just before the piece had published.
Cormac looked skeptical. "She's just doing her job, right?"
"Her job is to convince people who don't want anyone around to put themselves in a spotlight." I picked up a string of silver bells and stared at it like a slab of raw meat, with disgust. "Pretty shitty, if you ask me."
"Watch it," Cormac said, angling his head at the girls who were practically rolling around in all the shiny new decorations.
"Why are you defending her?" I asked, my voice rising as the fatigue and frustration inside me began to simmer and pop. "She's just one more person who's in it for herself, ready to use anyone she can to claw her way up."
