The Gentrys: Cal

She shook off the images. It didn’t matter. She didn’t even know him. She vowed there would be no fantasies with Cal, sexual or otherwise.

“I…” Cal was almost rendered speechless by the sight of the sleep-tousled, golden-skinned woman in bare feet. The sexy dark-haired angel, standing next to the kitchen sink, cradled his child to her breast.

He could not for the life of him figure out why that vision seemed so erotic. Never once, while he’d been married to the baby’s mother, had he ever felt anything even resembling passion when his wife had held their child—which really hadn’t been too often, come to think of it. And he’d even read that fathers-to-be were sometimes filled with great passion toward their wives when they were expecting—but he’d had good reason not to be.

When his eyes met Bella’s just now, he not only felt more turned on than he could remember, but he also recognized that same inexplicably tender tug deep in his gut that he’d noticed earlier. He didn’t know what that was all about, or why it had hit him so suddenly, but he certainly had no intention of exploring the feeling at the moment. He swallowed hard a couple of times, trying to dislodge the pull from his craw.

“Sorry to startle you, babe.” He tried one of his fail-proof smiles. “I heard Kaydie’s cries and thought maybe you might need help.”

She rolled her eyes. With a look that said, “A lot of good you’d be with your leg slowing you down,” she turned back to the baby.

Cal couldn’t imagine why Bella didn’t react to his smiles the same way other women did. But, so help him, he intended to make it a point to charm his way into her good graces—and maybe a whole lot more. It seemed like kind of a challenge now. But he had to be careful not to rush things and scare her off.

He moved closer while Bella fumbled with a baby bottle and the bottled water. “Here. Let me,” he offered.

She relinquished the bottle and rearranged Kaydie in her arms. “I think the fever is back. But not so bad as before.” She laid her cheek against the baby’s forehead. “Yes, she’s cooler. But there’s something else…”

Three

Cal handed Bella the bottle, but his expression remained alert. “What else?”

She put the bottle’s nipple into Kaydie’s mouth, but the baby didn’t seem to want to take it. “Ah, sí,” Bella said. “It is as I thought. Your daughter has a cold, señor. Her nose is stuffy and she’s having trouble breathing.”

“Is there anything we can do for her?” His eyes had filled with concern.

“I can think of a couple of things that might help,” she explained. “Do you have a humidifier?”

He shook his head. “I don’t exactly know what that is, but I didn’t see anything I couldn’t identify when I unpacked the car. Is it important?”

“I think we can manage another way,” Bella told him. “But first, will you bring her diaper bag to me, please? I saw something in there that may be of use.”

Cal limped toward the front room while she tried to comfort Kaydie. “Shush…shush, niña,” she crooned. “Your daddy might not know what to do with you, but he obviously cares. Some of us have not been so lucky in our lives.”

After Cal returned with the diaper bag, Bella cleaned out the baby’s nose the best she could and then found a small jar full of eucalyptus cream. She rubbed some on the baby’s chest. Then she and Cal dragged the lightweight crib from the small bedroom into the kitchen.

As he placed it where Bella directed, Cal asked, “Tell me again why she has to sleep in the kitchen?”

“She needs warm moist air. Without a humidifier we can boil water on the stove while she sleeps, and she’ll breath easier,” Bella replied.

“But won’t that mean we’ll have to stay with her? It could be dangerous to leave a pot on the stove.”

Bella nearly chuckled at the innocence of the man. “Sí. I will sit with her and make sure all is well. You may go back to sleep without worry.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” Cal fussed. “You are the one who needs rest. I’ll sit up with her. You go on back to bed.”

Ah-ha. The charming gringo did have some unselfish thoughts inside him after all. Bella looked beyond the bare chest and broad shoulders that had so far been the focus of her attention and studied Cal’s demeanor. She came to the decision that he did have the potential to become the friend she desperately needed.

“We will both sit up with her,” she told him. “It is only a few hours before dawn, we could keep each other awake. We may be able to take a nap tomorrow while Kaydie sleeps.”

Cal used one hand to push the two-person kitchen table around so both of them would be facing Kaydie’s fold-away crib. He couldn’t imagine how Bella could remain this alert and wide-awake after everything she’d been through the past few days, but he was grateful for a chance to talk to her.

He still wanted to find a way to get her to like him—at least a little. He was on a mission to keep her here, helping with Kaydie. And maybe even helping him to understand why she affected him the way she did.

Cal pulled out a chair and sat down, watching her settle the baby and then put water on the stove to boil. It took him a minute to notice what she had on.

“Why are you still wearing those same clothes?” He grinned at her.

She looked down at her ripped jeans and dirty long-sleeved shirt. “Oh. I don’t have any other clothes with me. I didn’t exactly get a chance to pack before I hid in that truck. I’ll wash these out tomorrow.”

“I know you took a shower before we went to bed…so…you put your dirty clothes back on?” He shook his head. “You can’t sleep in jeans,” he declared.

“When one is tired enough,” she replied as she headed toward her chair, “one can sleep in whatever they happen to be wearing…or in nothing at all for that matter.”

Oh, man. He certainly wished she hadn’t said that. The image of her lying naked on his cool cotton sheets, waiting for him grabbed him in the gut. How could he be charming when he couldn’t even think anymore?

He huffed out a pent-up breath and bit down on the inside of his cheek, trying to make the visions disappear and his errant body behave so he could speak. “I can lend you some T-shirts and sweats to sleep in,” he finally managed.

She shook her head. “Oh, I could not—”

“Sure you can. It’s no problem for me.”

“I suppose that might be better than wearing these old clothes until I can purchase new ones.” She gestured to the holes in her pants.

Cal needed to get her talking about something else. Something that would take his mind off the softness of her skin or the silkiness of her thick, dark hair. And off the picture now forming in his head of her in a thigh-topping T-shirt with nothing underneath.

Fortunately, Bella found a good topic—him.

“You said you just arrived here last night,” she began as she settled into a chair. “Why have you come to this place, Cal? What business brings you so far away from the main ranch?”

He tapped his injured leg. “A car accident.” He smiled wryly. “Which is damn funny considering that I race stock cars for a living.”

“What is so funny?”

“I wasn’t racing at the time,” he muttered as he rearranged his body in a more comfortable position at the table. “You’ve really never heard of me, honey?” he drawled smoothly. He scrutinized her face, waiting for some kind of reaction.

Surely she’d been putting him on. Everybody knew what had happened to racing giant Cal Gentry.

Her eyebrows rose, but she sat quietly.

“It was in all the papers.”

“I don’t read newspapers much.” Bella shifted in her seat the same way he had. “It’s hard to get delivery in places with no roads.” She’d said it with a straight face, but her eyes danced with mischievous lights.

Cal could scarcely believe it. She’d made a joke. He’d been convinced that, as erotic as he might find her, she was all commitment and deadly serious. His efforts to charm Bella might just turn out to be fun after all.

His blood began to stir again, liquefying his brain. He fought the sexual urges. But he was sure she would want him as much as he wanted her—sooner or later. He’d never met a woman yet that he couldn’t charm into his bed. It was just a matter of time.

“Well, if you’d read any newspapers or magazines, you’d know that I had a reputation as the most expert driver on the circuit. The lucky one who’d never caused a crash.” He laughed at the memory of his own foolish pride and stood.

It had suddenly occurred to him that he wanted to see what it would take to shake Bella’s composure. He’d had some extremely sensual ideas involving that very thing earlier. But at this moment he just wanted to see her taken aback some—without scaring her off in the process. Underneath her calm exterior lay a hot-blooded woman, and Cal wanted a small preview of what awaited him.

“But that was before I smashed the family minivan into a truck,” he continued with a drawl. “A crazy crash on a public freeway managed to put me into the hospital and to kill Kaydie’s mother…my wife.” He turned away to go and retrieve something for Bella to wear, but added over his shoulder, “You’ve hooked up with a murderer, sweetheart. How’s that for stepping out of a hot spot and into a fire?”

Bella sat poised in silence. Cal thought she was hot as ice. But a cold flame burned intensely in her eyes.

She showed no reaction to his words, amazing Cal enough to stop him where he stood. Hadn’t she heard him? He was positive there were fiery passions just below the surface of her serene outer shell. He’d seen the signs of it before in her eyes and had been more than a little intrigued.

But he guessed it didn’t take her long to figure out that he’d been testing her. “I see,” she calmly said. “That is a shame.”

The words were spoken in such a deadpan way that Cal grew irritated at her serene demeanor, even knowing that she was deliberately teasing him in return for his obnoxious behavior. “Doesn’t it bother you that you’re sitting in the same house with a murderer?” he probed.

Bella let herself smile at the odd gringo. “I am not totally ignorant of U.S. laws, señor. I went to nursing school in Houston. If you were truly at fault, you would be facing charges somewhere.” He was quite the examiner, this injured race-car driver, but she knew she could hold up under his scrutiny. “I’m not some silly young girl who will believe everything you tell me and then fall all over one of your smiles.”

He scrunched up his forehead and frowned. “Well, it’s true the police didn’t charge me…but I was at fault just the same.” Cal looked frustrated and tired. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go get you those sweats to wear. I’ll be right back.”

She had seen by the barely hidden anguish in his eyes that he did feel guilt for something. When he came back carrying the clothes, she decided to ask more about it—even if it just seemed like she was being nosy.

“Please tell me what happened,” she asked, and at the same time took the bundle from his arms.

Cal sat back down and propped his elbow on the table, while rubbing the other hand across his forehead. “Well, since I brought it up, I guess I at least owe you an explanation. I was driving Jasmine…my wife…and Kaydie back from a doctor’s appointment.”

He hesitated, watching her closely as she carefully set the clothes down on the table. “At that exact moment, the Fort Worth police were chasing a bank robbery suspect on the same interstate highway. I never noticed the lights or heard the sirens, but suddenly a speeding pickup swerved into our lane from behind.

“I turned the wheel the minute I caught sight of the truck in the right-hand mirror but it was too little and too late. The truck rammed directly into our passenger door with enough force to lift the van off the ground and push it across the median and into the oncoming lanes.”

Bella was struck by the pain in his voice and the pictures of terror that his words had conjured in her mind. “I’m so sorry. But this was certainly no fault of yours.”

He shook his head. “I’m a professional driver, for God’s sake. I should’ve heard the sirens. If I’d had just a few seconds’ warning, I could’ve taken some evasive action that might have saved lives.”

She could hear and see his torment as he berated himself for failing to do the impossible. “How many were hurt in this incident?”

Cal hung his head. “My…wife…and the driver of the suspect’s truck were killed instantly. An innocent motorist coming toward us from the other direction and I ended up in the hospital,” he told her. “It could have been much worse, I suppose.”

“And Kaydie? What happened to your daughter?”

“She wasn’t injured at all.” He looked over to the baby’s sleeping form and blinked once. “I had insisted on keeping her behind me in the car and in a specially made cocoon-type infant seat. Jasmine used to complain about how much time it took to strap her in before we could go anywhere. And she was always griping about how she couldn’t reach Kaydie if she started crying.”

“So your actions did save your child’s life. I think you should commend yourself for being careful rather than chiding yourself for your misfortune.”

Cal jerked up from the table and limped to the side of his daughter’s crib. “You don’t understand.”

Yes, Bella believed there was something more behind his guilt that she didn’t understand. Something more he’d left unsaid. But she wasn’t going to push him for answers that he obviously didn’t want to give. Maybe he couldn’t even admit them to himself.

She stood, moving closer to his side. “Why do you race cars, Cal?” Perhaps if she changed the subject he could put his troubles aside for a while.

He glanced at her, and she saw the clouds of hurt and self-hate slowly disappear as they lifted from his eyes. “It’s an adrenaline addiction, I guess,” he said with a shrug.

“Hmm. It sounds a little superficial to me. Sort of a rich man’s game. Is that all you want from life?”

“I don’t think of it as a game, and I don’t believe it’s about the money or the fans…although both are nice benefits. Racers like living on the edge, taking risks and feeling alive. I guess that description fits me to a T.”

She glanced down at the sleeping baby’s face and saw peace—exactly the opposite from what the father’s words had described. Then she gazed at Cal, who had turned to look at his daughter. She was happy to see the love for his child radiating across his face, making him seem more appealing than ever.

As he’d spoken of his racing profession, he’d certainly given off high-voltage and combustible animal magnetism. Now as he looked at Kaydie, she found that his charm had finally managed to turn her insides into melted ice cream. His loving response to his child was breaking down her defenses.

Bella surprised herself by also noticing the warm electric currents arcing from his bare skin and zinging through her flesh, straight to her spine. She’d believed she’d stopped feeling these kinds of lustful things many years ago.

But she had to admit that she was definitely noticing them with this man. All her carefully constructed walls seemed about to crumble around her. Was it possible that she did still shelter a hope deep in her heart that someone somewhere would love her one day? Or was this simply an urgent erotic need, unlike any she’d ever known before?

“Maybe that description fits me, as well,” she told him as she ordered her body back under her control. “I take my own kind of risks to do my job on the border.” She didn’t mention that taking risks was no big deal for someone like her who had no family and no love to care whether she stayed safe or not.

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