Brick had already decided to accept the Tornado Alleycats’ invitation to the book club, but when Celeste asked him to take a few photos for her social media efforts during her presentation he was happy to have something to do there. He owned a copy of Celeste’s book, of course. Most everybody in Eternity Springs did. He’d given copies to Annabelle and his mother and all of his aunts for Mother’s Day, and he had flipped through it to check out Sage Rafferty’s illustrations, but he couldn’t say he’d done more than scan it.
A man could take only so much wisdom from a woman before spiders began to crawl up his neck. Even a woman as fabulous as Celeste.
The women in his world had loved Guidelines for Aspiring Angels. Based on the buzz in the room, the women here tonight did, too.
He took a dozen or so photographs when Patsy introduced Celeste. When the applause died down, Celeste handed out giveaway bookmarks for the audience to pass back. She didn’t use a microphone, but when she began to speak her voice carried easily to the back of the room where Brick stood.
“I’m here tonight to talk to you about angels, and the first thing I’ll say is that angels mean different things to each of us depending on our personal spirituality or religious beliefs. Whether you’re a believer or not, I suspect you probably have a mental image of what guardian angels look like. Take the example of the painting by Plockhorst that depicts a guardian angel hovering protectively over two little children approaching an abyss. Do most of you know that work?”
In the gathering of about forty, 90 percent of them nodded.
“Good. Now for tonight’s purpose, I want you to wipe that image right out of your mind. Because you see, the advice in my book doesn’t pertain to guardian angels. I want to talk to you tonight about guiding angels.”
“What’s a guiding angel?” an Alleycat observed. “I’ve never heard the term.”
“Not a what. A who. Guiding angels are those people in your life with good hearts who teach life lessons. They are the people who prove to you that it’s okay to trust—yourself and one another. They are those who show us how to determine our own destinies. They are the persons—male or female—who prod you into action, patiently allow you to make mistakes, and help you pick yourself up again when you fall or fail.”
A thirtysomething woman near the back of the activity hall raised her hand. “You’re talking about everyday people.”
In an unusual moment of self-reflection, Brick thought it sounded like Celeste was talking about his mothers—his birth mother, his adoptive mother, and Annabelle, his stepmother.
Celeste beamed a smile at the Alleycat. “Everyday people who are doing an angel’s work. They are women—and men—who have a single agenda when it comes to their relationships. Anyone know what that agenda is?”
Someone called, “It’s in your book. Page forty-three.”
Celeste laughed and folded her hands atop the lectern. “So it is. And it’s what aspiring angels need to keep in mind as they work toward earning their wings. At the root of every angel’s agenda is love.”
The crowd broke into applause.
Brick reflected on Celeste’s words later after he finished taking pictures and made his evening walk-through of Stardance Ranch. He had an 82 percent occupancy rate tonight—not bad for the middle of the week. He was fully booked on weekends right up until the Fourth of July.
He was one lucky son of a gun. He wouldn’t be where he was now if he hadn’t had a full slate of guiding, guarding, and aspiring angels in his life from the git-go.
“Penny for your thoughts,” came a voice from out of the shadows.
He looked over his shoulder and smiled. “Lili-fair. Is the book club over?”
“No. The second title of the night is a thriller I haven’t read. It sounds like something I might like, though, so I left before spoilers. Besides, I do have a book I started this afternoon and I’m anxious to get back to.”
“Oh yeah? What are you reading?”
“The first of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.”
“Interesting choice.”
“I was inspired.” The wry note in her voice intrigued him, but before he could follow up with a question she continued, “So, what did you think of Celeste’s talk?”
“I guess ‘inspired’ is the word of the night. She does have a way of filtering through all the white noise to get to what really matters, doesn’t she?”
“She does. When she talked about cutting the strings that bind our wings I thought she was talking directly to me.”
“You feeling earthbound, Lili-fair?”
Following a long pause, she said, “It’s been a tough month.”
“Since you’re on radio silence with June and Ward, I figured as much.”
“Don’t forget Wally. I’m not talking to him, either.”
“What did he do? Give you a bad stock tip? Run a boyfriend out of town? Kick your dog?”
“I don’t have a dog,” she replied with a definite whine in her voice. She shoved her hands into the back pant pockets of her jeans and lifted her face toward the sky. “I’m rethinking my positions.”
He waited a beat. “Horizontal or vertical?”
“Well now, that’s an interesting way to put it.” As she spoke, the moon moved from behind a cloud and a silvery light illuminated her face. Once again, she reminded Brick of a siren in the night. “Did you stay for the question and answer session?”
“No. I left right after Sage talked about the illustrations.”
“Someone asked Celeste about expectations. She spoke to how important expectations are to achieving your dreams, but also acknowledged the burden they present.”
“Your parents always had sky-high expectations of you and your brother. It wasn’t a bad thing, though. Look at how much you’ve achieved.”
Brick didn’t miss the sour look that crossed her face. “You gonna tell me what’s eating at you, Liliana?”
“No, I don’t think I will. Oklahoma and the things that happened there are in my rearview mirror. I’m not looking backward, not more than a little glance now and again, anyway. I came to Colorado to sharpen my scissors and slice those strings and jettison the ballast of my family’s … of my own … expectations. I needed a few days to adjust to my new reality, but enough is enough. It’s time for me to quick stalling and act.”
What’s she gonna do, go skinny-dipping in a mountain lake?
Brick felt a little frisson of unease. She sounded just a bit too brittle for his peace of mind. “What’s wrong with Oklahoma? What’s wrong with our hometown? People are friendly. They’re good, salt-of-the-earth sorts. Except for the tornadoes that blow through way too often, it’s a great place to live.”
“You don’t live there. You went away to college and never came back.”
“I visit.” Once. He’d gone home once, when Tiffany married her banker. “I just never moved back. But I had a whole new family to get to know.” And an ex-lover to forget. Was that what this was about? “Did you have a bad breakup, Liliana?”
“Depends what sort of breakup you’re talking about.” Her soft laughter held a bitter note. “I haven’t been in a relationship for a while. All work and no play and all of that.”
She removed her hands from her pockets and squared her shoulders. “I’m done with that. I’m done letting negativity and resentment rule my days. I’m through with the ugliness of office politics. I’m through being a hamster running on a wheel in pursuit of … whatever hamsters pursue. Nothing that truly matters, that’s for sure.”
“You sound bitter.”
“I am bitter. For too long I’ve spent all my energy positioning myself to take advantage of opportunities that I was told I wanted. I totally ignored my own instincts, my own wishes and desires. It took a bomb going off to get my attention.”
A bomb? “What kind of bomb?”
She plowed right ahead as if he hadn’t spoken. “I’ve learned my lesson and heard the message. Life is a gift too precious to waste. Time is a resource too valuable to squander. Celeste said that sometimes all an aspiring angel really needs to fly is to take a running start. Well, tonight I’m putting on my running shoes.”
She turned to him then and, despite the fact that her face was cast in shadows, he recognized the intensity of her focus.
“I don’t have to be anchored to or by my past. You’re the perfect example for me. You’re not Mark Christopher anymore. You’re Brick Callahan. If you can change your name, I can darn sure learn to fly.”
Then she did something he never would have expected from Liliana Howe. She grabbed hold of his shirt just below the neckline and pulled his face down to hers. Just before her lips took his in a sizzling kiss, she demanded, “Show me how.”
* * *
Lili drifted off to sleep that night right with the world. She’d all but knocked Mark Christopher’s feet—no, Brick Callahan’s feet—right out from under him. She’d kissed him senseless, then sashayed back to her fifth wheel as if she were Queen of the Campground.
Only maybe she didn’t sashay. Maybe the kiss had snapped enough of those strings binding her wings that she had flown to her trailer on a breeze of self-confidence. Stranger things had happened. Maybe not to her. Not before now, anyway.
But hey, she was a changed woman. She was a Tornado Alleycat. She’d heard Celeste Blessing’s advice and acted upon it in a big fat check-it-off-your-bucket-list manner.
Not that she had a bucket list. Yet. She needed to take care of that. First thing tomorrow. Tonight she’d drift off thinking about something she’d dreamed about for years. His lips. The taste of him. And hadn’t his arms just instinctively wrapped around her and held her tight against him? All that muscle. The physical work he did had made him hard as a … Lili giggled softly … Brick.
Take that, Tiffany.
It was Lili’s last conscious thought before drifting off to sleep.
Unfortunately, she awoke the following morning to a phone call from her mother, which not only changed the atmosphere but also managed to retie a string or two around Lili’s feet. Derek had just received yet another Top-Doc award. Her mother had been asked by Mrs. Richie why Liliana had left the firm.
One step forward and two kicks in the butt back.
In the space of one short conversation, the self-confidence in Lili’s manner disappeared and her mood turned heavy, still, and oppressive. The quiet before the storm. What she’d known all her life as tornado weather.
It made her just a little bit crazy.
Three minutes after ending the phone call with her mother, she went online and booked the skydiving trip that three of the more adventuresome Alleycats had scheduled for that afternoon.
Maybe it hadn’t been at the top of her yet-to-be written bucket list, but if she intended to fully embrace her independence she needed to think outside the box. Jumping in tandem with a professional was safe enough. Lili knew that.
But when it came time for Lili to jump out of a perfectly good airplane, she chickened out.
On the way back to Stardance Ranch, she told herself that if she had wanted to skydive bad enough, she’d have gone through with it. The problem in this case wasn’t cowardice, but lack of desire. She needed to figure out what she really wanted from this summer of discovery. She needed to define her own goals, dreams, and desires.
That’s why she spent that evening working on her bucket lists. Plural. She created one for her summer in Colorado and one for her life. The two lists had a limited amount of overlap, and it was with a certain amount of glee that she marked off an item on her Colorado list: Kiss Brick Callahan.
After serious debate, she decided that she had not met the qualifications to mark off a somewhat similar item on her life list: Kiss Mark Christopher.
Might as well space these things out.
Over the next week, she marked six items off her Colorado list and two off her life list. She went zip lining and rock climbing and fly-fishing. She lounged in a hammock on a sunny afternoon and binge read a classic historical romance author.
She turned off her phone and disconnected from the Internet for twenty-four hours straight. Cutting strings meant cutting all sorts of strings.
She enjoyed that so much that she wanted to do it for a second twenty-four hours. Guilt stopped her. What if there was a family emergency of some sort? A real emergency? She’d never forgive herself if her family truly needed to contact her and couldn’t.
She solved the problem by having all of her calls forwarded to an answering service to whom she gave strict, emergency-only instructions and the number of the burner phone she purchased in town. Then she went offline and out of touch again and enjoyed the experience immensely.
Liliana didn’t see much of Brick that week. The fact that most of the other Alleycats mentioned seeing him from time to time caused her to surmise that he was avoiding her. When she first realized it, she experienced a twinge of hurt, but after a bit of consideration she decided to be amused. And encouraged.
She’d surprised him. She’d acted out of character and shocked his socks off. Good for her, the reinvented Liliana Howe. When Saturday arrived, she decided that the time had come to work on another item on her list.
Romance.
So at the regular Alleycat morning gathering at the campground’s activity center where members met and arranged plans for the day, she spoke up. “I intend to go out on the town in Eternity Springs tonight. Would anyone care to join me?”
“Sure,” Sharon Cross said. “You know me; I’m always up for partying.”
That much was true. Sharon was definitely the party girl in the club. After three of her besties expressed a desire to join in the fun, Sharon added, “Where are you thinking of going?”
“I’m open to suggestions. Murphy’s Pub in town has a great patio. I saw a sign saying they have live music on the weekends.”
Sharon nodded. “That would work. There is also a place called the Bear Cave. I’m told it’s a dive, frequented by locals mostly, but a new owner is trying to clean it up and the jukebox has a great playlist. A place like that can be a lot of fun as long as you go in a group. Depends on what you’re in the mood for.”
“I want to dance,” Lili declared. She hadn’t gone out dancing since college. The last time she’d danced at all was last fall at a friend’s wedding.
“There’s a nice dance floor at Murphy’s, but I’m told it stays packed this time of year,” Patsy observed. “It’s a tourist-friendly spot. You might have better luck at a honky-tonk.”
Honky-tonk. The term gave Lili a little shiver of excitement. Honky-tonks were common in Oklahoma. Common and a little trashy and not anything she’d ever been brave enough to try before. In the spirit of reinventing herself, Lili stood tall. “I vote for the Bear Cave.”
The other Alleycats shared a look and a shrug. “Bear Cave it is,” Sharon said. “Want to do dinner in town first? We could grab a burger at Murphy’s, listen to the music a bit, then head out honky-tonkin’ after that.”
“Sounds perfect.”
“In that case, ladies, unpack your party shoes. It’s gonna be a hot time in the cold mountains tonight.”
* * *
Brick sauntered into Murphy’s on Saturday night with a smile on his face and his mouth watering for one of their half-pound burgers with fixings and fries. He was hungry because he’d managed to miss lunch. He was smiling because he was going to dinner with his siblings.
Mom and Pop had always taught the children who lived with them—the two they’d officially adopted and the dozen or so foster kids who’d been in and out of the house—to consider themselves to be brothers and sisters. They’d been a family and that had meant a lot to the children who called the Christopher house home.
It still meant something to Brick today. His dad and Annabelle had given him brothers and sisters, and he loved the little guys dearly. But he was twenty years older than Tanner and Emma and Will. Courtney and Joshua and the others who’d shared the Christopher home were Brick’s age. To one extent or another, they’d shared his childhood. Those were strong ties not easily broken.
When he’d answered Courtney’s knock on his office door this afternoon, he’d experienced a wave of remembrance and familiarity that had warmed his heart.
Brick regretted that in the wake of the personal earthquake that had occurred when Mark Callahan walked into his life he’d failed to tend to his Christopher family ties as much as he should have for a while. He didn’t beat himself up over it. The Christophers had been totally supportive of him. His actions and reactions had been understandable for someone who had grown up with absolutely no idea of his genetic history at the time when he was making that giant leap to adulthood.
With an avalanche of new family upon his world, he’d spent his free time becoming a Callahan, and yet a part of him always would remain a Christopher. He arrived at Murphy’s Pub tonight an Oklahoma boy with the siblings he’d walked to school with and whose beds he’d short-sheeted on more than one occasion.
“This is a happening place,” Courtney said. For the first time since her arrival, the accompanying smile actually reached her eyes.
Courtney Gibson wore her hair in a short, spiky style, dyed red with purple tips. Big gold hoops hung from her ears. Her brown eyes looked tired, and the shadows beneath them were darker than Brick cared to see. She was thin. Too thin. She’d lost probably thirty pounds since he’d seen her last. Twenty of those were too much. She definitely needed one of Murphy’s cheeseburgers tonight.
Brick hoped he was seeing the aftereffects of the breakup, not an illness. “You feeling all right, Cort?”
“I’m fine. Just tired from the drive.” Her gaze swept around the pub and then her smile widened. “There’s Joshua! Whoa, his hair is longer than mine. What happened to Mr. Preppy?”
“He’s embraced his inner mountain man.”
Courtney called, “Josh!”
Josh Tarkington sat at the bar with a glass of water in front of him. At the sound of his name, he straightened. The ends of his black hair brushed shoulders almost as wide as Brick’s as he turned around. His mouth spread in a huge smile and his gray eyes lit with pleasure. “Courtney! I couldn’t believe it when Brick told me you were coming for a visit.”
“Brick?”
Josh smirked. “His new name. Fits him, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. It seriously does.”
“Hey,” Brick protested. “No ganging up on Big Brother allowed.”
The two younger siblings locked gazes and snorted. Then Josh opened his arms wide. “Hello, stranger. If you’re not a sight for sore eyes. C’mere and give me a hug.”
Courtney went into Josh’s arms and Brick heard her softly laugh, but when she pulled away from her brother’s embrace Brick saw tears in her eyes.
Well, hell.
Noting the tears, Josh frowned. “What’s this, Courtney?”
“Nothing. Never mind. I’m just … I’ve missed you guys.”
“Missed you, too, honey. Let’s go sit down and you can tell us what you’ve been up to. I reserved a table for us out on the patio.”
“I’ll put in our order. Burgers and beer all around?”
“Iced tea for me,” Josh said.
The owner of Murphy’s Pub, Shannon Garrett, was working tonight, and Brick visited with her while she saw to their drink order. “Lookin’ good, tonight, Mrs. Garrett.”
“Thank you, Mr. Callahan.”
“How’s our birthday girl doing?”
Shannon lit up like the sun. “Brianna is fabulous. You have to see the photos Chase gave us. Best first birthday portraits ever.”
“The man is talented with a camera—and kids. Word around town is that this summer’s session at the Rocking L is going well.”
“Lori says Chase is a happy man.” She set the second mug of beer and the tea on a tray.
“It’s nice to see,” Brick observed.
Shannon set a numbered order marker beside the drinks, and he carried the tray out to the patio. Josh was telling Courtney a story about his first encounter with a moose not long after his arrival at Stardance Ranch. Brick passed out the drinks and they spent the time until their meal arrived discussing their past and avoiding all mention of current situations. Brick figured he’d get a good meal in Courtney first, then they could find somewhere more quiet and talk.
He sipped his beer and listened with a faint smile on his lips as his brother and sister traded quips over the memory of a water gun battle that had lasted an entire summer.
It was nice to see a smile on his brother’s face, too. While Josh and Brick had never been particularly close, Brick cared about him. Josh’d had a helluva time the last few years, a run of bad luck like Brick had seldom seen. He’d been glad to be able to help Josh.
They were a lot alike, actually. Proud, competitive, only a few months apart in age. Stubborn. Josh hadn’t accepted Brick’s help after the first tornado. Or the second. He wouldn’t have this last time, either, but Brick had caught him at a low point with his offer.
It had worked out well for Brick, too. Josh was an organizational wonder and a mechanical whiz. When he’d come to work for Brick shortly after the beginning of the year, he’d taken over the detail work Brick despised and freed him to focus on building and bringing his dream to life.
He tuned into the conversation. Courtney was saying, “… job in a bookkeeping service. Decent work. Not exciting or anything, but it was steady and paid well. Then I had a blowout and wrecked my car. Hurt my back. Missed a lot of work and ended up losing my job.”
“What a lousy break,” Joshua said. “How long ago was the accident?”
“About a year ago.”
“Are you better?” Brick asked. “All healed up?”
“For the most part, yeah. My back is better, anyway. I’m working again. My heart…” She shrugged. “Some guys don’t do well with illness.”
“Prick,” Josh declared.
“Tell us his name and we’ll go beat him up for you.”
“My heroes.” Courtney’s smile went a little wistful and she said, “No. As much as the idea appeals, I know I’m better off putting that all behind me. It’s just so…” Her voice caught. A sheen of tears filled her eyes.
Seated beside her, Brick put his arm around her and pulled her close for a hug. Courtney dipped her head onto his shoulder at the same time Murphy’s front door opened and a half-dozen happy, chatting women swept onto the patio.
Liliana wore a fitted yellow polka-dot sundress and strappy heels better suited for the sidewalks of Beverly Hills than those of Eternity Springs. Wow. Brick thought she looked like a million bucks.
She met his gaze, noted the position of his arm and Courtney’s head, and turned away. Across from him, Josh slowly lowered his drink to the table. “Looks like the Alleycats have arrived.”
“Who are they?” Courtney asked.
“Camping club. Staying at Stardance for the summer. Excuse me. I think I’ll go be hospitable and say hi.”
Josh was up on his feet and sauntering toward Lili before Brick managed to end his hug with Courtney. Something ugly stirred in his gut as he watched his brother switch to charmer mode and chat up the campers. Josh was a friendly enough guy as a rule, but no way would he have bolted to say hello to campers if all six of the women were fifty and above.
He was hitting on Liliana.
And Brick didn’t like it one little bit.