She smiled, and the two of them headed out to face whatever the day would bring.

  Caleb wasn’t sure what he was getting himself into when he pulled up to the church early. He hated all this damn drama stuff. But no doubt he had to deal with the fact that what was coming was coming, and he couldn’t stop it. And did he really want to? Or was it just up to his brother to live his life the way he wanted to and damn the rest of it?

  As he hopped out, Caleb turned to look at Laysha, already out of the vehicle. He realized he hadn’t really even seen her until just now. He stopped and stared. “I’ve never seen you in a dress,” he said cautiously.

  She looked at him, grinned, and said, “You didn’t even notice this morning.”

  “For that, I’m sorry,” he admitted. “I was hung up on my problems.”

  “That’s all right,” she said. “Today you have good reason to be.” She did a little twirl in front of him. “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s damn sexy,” he said. She wore a bright sundress with big flowers and high heels. Her hair was up and somehow had curls on the side; he didn’t know where the flowers came from, but she had them in her hair, and she looked fresh, sweet, wholesome; everything he always wanted. He shook his head. “How is it I never saw you before?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t notice us myself until it was too late.”

  “Damn.” He reached out an elbow, and she tucked her arm through his and said, “Come on, big guy. Let’s get this over with.”

  “My brother first,” he said with a note of sadness.

  “You were friends a long time before her,” she said quietly. “It’s your choice whether you want to stay friends after this.”

  He looked down at her, but he didn’t even know what to think because part of him was not even sure what was coming. As he walked toward the parking lot’s back entrance, his brother stepped out from the church. Dressed in a black suit, he stood nervously in front of them. He tilted his head. “Caleb. Thanks for coming,” he said. “I understand it took a little persuasion, but I’m happy to see you here.”

  “Well, I’m here,” he said. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “I owe you an apology,” his brother said in a surprise move.

  Caleb just stood and waited.

  “I didn’t know about her trying to pass off my child as yours,” he said. “That I would never have condoned. You know how much I’ve always wanted a family. She didn’t tell me that we were pregnant. At the time, we had a major ripping fight because I didn’t want to settle down. I wanted to travel the world a little bit,” he said. “She didn’t tell me she was pregnant. I didn’t know until I came back, and I heard the rumors that she’d lost the baby. And that you were devastated, and so was she. But it didn’t take much to do the math, and either you were screwing around on me or she had lied to you.”

  “Well, you know which one that was,” he said in a dry tone.

  “I do, and again I’m sorry. She’s not the most upfront person, and she hates confrontation,” he said. “So she took the easy way out, as she was petrified to be a single mom.”

  “And yet, you would have been there whenever you came back.”

  “She figured we were done for good, after the ugly fight we had.”

  “So instead she threw her lot in with me and, of course, hated every minute of it.”

  His brother winced at that. “Well, the trouble was, she was still in love with me, and I was still in love with her. True, she should never have married you, and I can’t apologize enough for that, and I’m not the one to apologize for her faults. That’s her job, but I can tell you that she probably won’t.”

  Caleb snorted at that. “Yeah, that would make more sense.”

  He winced. “And I owe you another apology. She told me that her marriage to you was over, and that you guys were broken up.”

  “Ah, you mean, when you were screwing around on me with my wife while I was stationed overseas,” he said in a hard voice. But his brother faced him bravely and said, “Yes, in all fairness, I didn’t check with her all that close. I was too damn happy that her marriage was over and that she was free again. I was pretty upset when I found out that she’d married you. I hated you for it for the longest time.”

  Caleb stared at him in surprise.

  But Jackson continued, “I know it doesn’t make any sense, when I’m the one who walked away, but it didn’t take me long to realize what a mistake I’d made,” he said. “What I’m trying to do,” he said and took a slow deep breath, “is bury the hatchet and see if we can get on from here.”

  “I get that,” Caleb said. “An awful lot of hurt remains right now. And a lot of it is directed at your wife,” he said. “Or your soon-to-be wife. My ex-wife,” he said. “I’m not sure how that’ll work going forward.”

  “I know,” he said. “You probably don’t want anything to do with us because of her behavior—if nothing else—but also for mine,” he admitted. “We did not do well by you in any way, shape, or form, and, for that, I’m really sorry.”

  Caleb stared at his brother in surprise. Of all the things he’d expected, this was not it. It also showed a ton of maturity coming from his kid brother, who found it easier to walk away from any strife. In that regard, Jackson and Sarah were the same. “Where do you see us going from here?” Caleb asked Jackson.

  “I want what I always wanted. I want you to stand up as my best man,” he said. “But I will understand if you refuse because of Sarah. And I also understand that, from here on, you probably won’t want to spend any time with us because of her. Yet I will tell you that she’s pregnant again and that you’re about to become an uncle.”

  That shock wave just hit him like a ton of bricks too. Caleb and Sarah had always talked about having kids and raising them together.

  “I know that’ll bring up a lot of other emotions and hard feelings,” Jackson said. “I don’t know how to make it right, so if you’ve got any suggestions, please let me know.” And, with that, he fell silent. He just stared at Caleb, not knowing what to say. Jackson turned toward Laysha.

  Chapter 11

  If they could just get out of this without an explosion, Laysha would be happy. By the time the wedding ceremony was over, she saw that Caleb, although still stiff, had warmed up slightly to his brother—yet held himself apart, not being, in any way, agreeable to Sarah. As the paperwork was finished, Caleb stood and stiffly shook hands with both of them, which was probably as much as he was capable of doing right now, and immediately looked at Laysha with a head nod toward the door. She bounded to her feet, congratulated the couple, giving them both a hug, and then said, “As promised, we have to leave.”

  Jackson beamed. “Thank you.”

  Caleb nodded and said, “Take care of yourself.” And he half dragged Laysha out the doorway. As soon as she got outside, she said, “Well, you almost made it through the whole event without being ignorant.”

  He snorted. “Hell, I deserve a medal. I wanted to smack her to the ground.”

  “But you didn’t, and I’m really proud of you.”

  He looked at her, grinned, and said, “I did good, didn’t I?”

  She laughed. “And that sounds like a two-year-old,” she said, “but yes. You did good.”

  He motioned at the truck. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Well, we can either finish your floors or we can get back on the trail of the dog.”

  “Regardless we have to change clothes. If we’re driving to find Beowulf,” she said, “I want to bring all my dogs with me.”

  He considered that and then said, “Well, why don’t we go home, put another coat on the floor—if it’s ready. It’s not been twenty-four hours yet, so we’ll have to check it. Then we’ll take everybody on a road trip.”

  “That works for me,” she said.

  As soon as he pulled out of the parking lot, she looked back to see the married couple, standing on the front steps of the church, talking with a few of the other guests, their arms wrapped around each other.

  “At least they look happy,” she said. She thought back to the stunned look on Sarah’s face when she’d seen her first husband standing at the altar. “I don’t think Sarah thought you would show up.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t,” he said. “But, whether I like it or not, she’s family again.”

  “Not to mention you will be in her wedding photos.” With that, Laysha reached over, patted his knee, and said, “She is family, indeed. However, remember that family is what you’re born into, but friends are the ones you choose.”

  He laughed, grabbed her fingers with his free hand, and held them flat on his thigh. “Well, I know one friend I choose.”

  “That’s the thing,” she said in the meditative voice. “We’ve always been able to talk, always been able to communicate.”

  “Yet you never once told me that you wanted to spend any private time with me,” he said, shooting her a look.

  “Didn’t know it myself,” she quipped. “Neither did you for me.”

  “No, and I’m still trying to figure out why the hell we missed all those cues,” he murmured.

  “Most likely,” she said, “because we were so busy living life in every other way.”

  “Maybe,” he murmured. As they drove back home again, almost halfway there, he asked, “Where to from here then?”

  “Well, let’s first solve whatever shooter issue we’ve got going on,” she said. “And it’d be nice to get the damn floors done upstairs so I can get back into my bedroom.”

  He snickered at that. “Hey, you’re the one who started this project.”

  “Don’t remind me,” she said. “There’s never a good time to refinish floors while you currently live in the place.”

  “No. Usually the best time is before you move in,” he said.

  “Well, that didn’t happen,” she said, “so this was second best.”

  “You mean, waiting till I showed up,” he said drily.

  “Absolutely. Then I didn’t have to do it all alone,” she said with a cheeky grin.

  He laughed. “Tell me what other plans you have for the place.”

  She filled him in on the gist of it, knowing that some of the plans would take years to get off the ground, and, maybe by then, she wouldn’t care about them, but it was fun to talk about. “What about you?” she asked. “Have you thought about buying a place?”

  “No, I haven’t,” he said. “That whole recovery thing sidelined me for future plans, and, when I did see that I was slowly regaining my normal health, I wasn’t sure what to do in any aspect. Still not in some ways. I don’t have a job. Not exactly sure what to do about a career.”

  “Well, you do have a job,” she said gently. “It might not be a career job right now, but it is something.”

  He looked over at her and frowned.

  She said, “Beowulf.”

  “Well, there’s no payment for that,” he admitted. “It’s purely voluntary.”

  “And I love that even more,” she said warmly.

  He shook his head. “Only you would. Most people think it’s a waste of my time.”

  “Hell no,” she said forcibly. “Those dogs deserve everything we can give them. If that means freeing them from an ugly situation and giving them a better one, then that’s what should be done.”

  “See? I knew I liked you.”

  She burst out laughing. As they drove up the long driveway to her place, she looked around. “How would we ever tell if there was a visitor?” she asked.

  “If they are any good, it’s pretty hard,” he said. “Honestly, if you don’t have any security system and motion sensors and video tracking, I don’t know how you would. Particularly when there are no tracks to show any new presence around.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” she said, “but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do about it.”

  “We’ll solve the problem,” he said.

  “Once you find the dog, you’re leaving though, aren’t you?”

  He looked at her in surprise and then shrugged. “Are you sending me away? I thought we were past that.”

  “And I thought you had to go home, and we would see how the long-distance thing worked.”

  “Hell with that,” he said. “I have no intention of doing a long-distance relationship.”

  “So,” she asked, “have you made any plans yet?”

  “Sure haven’t,” he said with a big cheeky grin. “But you could probably talk me into anything.”

  She smiled, and, as they pulled up outside the house, he shut off the truck, and they could hear the dogs all inside. “You should put a front fence around here,” he said, “and a doggy door, so they at least can come out to the front yard when they want to.”

  “It’s on the list,” she said, as she hopped out. She looked down at her dress and said, “At least I got to wear this for a couple hours.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I can’t wait to get out of this monkey suit.”

  “Well, we’re not refinishing floors in these outfits,” she murmured.

  “Nope, we aren’t, but, at the same time,” he said, “I’m just glad to have that behind me.” As he walked up the front steps, his phone buzzed. He looked down and laughed. “My boss just asked if I made it through the wedding.”

  “Tell him you did and with flying colors,” she said with a smile. She walked in and greeted the dogs, trying to keep them from jumping up on her dress, but, as soon as one did, it seemed they all threw out their good manners and jumped. Eventually she got free, and she kicked off her heels, raced upstairs, checking out the floor. She went down the hallway on her bare feet. It looked pretty decent but felt a little tacky in some spots. She quickly changed into her jeans and a T-shirt and, putting socks on, she walked back across the floor. As she came downstairs, he came out of his bedroom. “The floors aren’t done,” she murmured.

  He nodded.

  “We need to give it another six or so hours. Sounds like road-trip time to me.”

  “I’m good with that,” he said. “Let’s see what you’ve got in the fridge. We have to do some grocery shopping at some point.”

  She checked out the fridge and realized it would be sandwiches again. But that was okay because she loved sandwiches. By the time she had them made, he had the dogs fed and coffee made. They sat down with their sandwiches and a cup of coffee, and she asked, “Do you have a game plan for the dog?”

  “Yep,” he said.

  “Oh, what’s that?”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  Not long afterward, they quickly got ready to go, all the dogs in tow—this time not leaving Fancy behind—as they headed out toward his big rental truck.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, as he did something to her front door.

  “I set it up to see if anybody goes in while we’re gone,” he said quietly.

  She stared at him, looked back at the door. “And how did you do that?”

  “Setting a hair in the doorjamb, and, when somebody opens the door, the hair falls. It’s basically hard for them to see at the time, but it’s easy for me to see if it’s still there when I get back.”

  “Did you do it on the back door too?”

  “I did,” he said, “when you went to the bathroom, before leaving.”

  “Wow,” she murmured, “I didn’t know.”

  “And that makes it a nice and easy thing to do,” he said.

  She nodded, and they loaded up in his truck and headed out toward the area where the asshole’s property was. “Are we going back inside that empty house?” she asked nervously.

  “No,” he said. “However, I want to go back up and around from this side to see just how far the dead-body house is from the asshole’s property.”

  “The drug dealer?”

  “If that’s what he is, yes,” he said.

  “Are we walking it?”

  “That was the plan,” he said. He looked down at her footwear and nodded. “Those are okay to walk in, aren’t they?”

  She stared at her hiking boots. “Yeah,” she said. “I wasn’t exactly sure where and what we were doing.”

  “Good thinking,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “I was just more or less grabbing at straws to figure it out.”

  “Well, rough terrain tends to be the name of the game here,” he said, “so we’ll see.” He pulled into the property where the body had been, and he saw no sign of police activity or that anybody had been here recently.

  “Do you need to go back inside?” she asked, as she got out with all the dogs milling around her feet.

  “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m not sure if that dead body has anything to do with my War Dog or not, but, at the moment, I want to take a walk toward the asshole’s property.”

  “Is it close?”

  He looked at her with a smile and said, “Very.”

  She stared at him in surprise. “Oh, wow,” and then she turned to look at the hills. “It’s just the other side of there, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but, because so much of this land is undeveloped acreage, we don’t have easy access.”

  “So this rental property could have been involved in whatever is going on at that property where your War Dog may be,” she said, slowly figuring out how all this might be connected.

  “Well, that’s one theory I’m operating on.”

  “I like it,” she said, “and it’s sensible.”

  “Well, I don’t know how sensible,” he said, “but it’s certainly doable, given the locations are roughly adjacent.”

  “Perfect,” she said, and they headed out behind the house. She turned to look back and said, “It’s creepy.”

  “It is,” he murmured. “And we might have to go there afterward.” He glanced at her. “But I don’t want to upset you.”

  “I’m stronger material than that,” she said quietly. “If that’ll help solve this, then that’s what we need to do.”

  He grinned, reached out a hand, and snagged hers in his. “I like somebody who’s up for a challenge,” he murmured.