Birthright

job takes me away, and brings me back.”
    “Takes you away, to a point,” she agreed. “You wouldn’t have to come back. Oh, a visit now and again, as family members do. But you also come back for them, for yourself. I like that about you. I like a lot of things about you. Why don’t you take a break from all this tonight. Come over. I’ll fix you a home-cooked meal.”
    He didn’t know if he’d ever seen a prettier woman. At least not one so perfectly put together. Or one who managed to have a soothing way about her even as she pushed a man into a corner.
    “I’m not planning to stay. You need to know that.”
    “I was offering to grill some chicken, not clean out a closet so you could move in.”
    “I want to sleep with you.”
    Since he looked almost angry when he said it, Lana lifted her eyebrows. “Well, that’s not on tonight’s menu. Itmay very well be on it sometime in the near future. But I’m still not cleaning out a closet.”
    “I tend to screw up relationships, which is why I stopped getting in them.”
    “I’ll let you know when you’re screwing this one up.” She stepped toward him, brushed her lips lightly over his. “Grilled chicken, Doug. Sex, unfortunately, can’t be for dessert as I have Ty to consider. But I might be seduced into heating up the peach cobbler I have in the freezer. It’s Suzanne’s Kitchen,” she added with a smile. “And always a hit in our house.”
    It was going to get complicated, he thought. It was bound to get complicated. The woman, the child, the buttons each of them pushed in him. But he wasn’t ready to walk away from it. Not yet.
    “I’ve always had a thing for my mother’s peach cobbler. What time’s dinner?”
    J ay was staring at the pot of geraniums on the porch when Callie brought Suzanne out. His gaze went to Suzanne’s face first, Callie noted. The way a man might look at a barometer to prepare for expected climatic conditions.
    “I was just coming back up.”
    “Were you?” Suzanne said coolly.
    “I needed a moment to clear my head. Suzanne.” He reached out to touch her arm, but she moved back in a gesture as clear as a slap.
    “We’ll talk later,” she said, in that same icy tone. “I’d think you’d have something to say to your daughter.”
    “I don’t know what to say, or what to do.”
    “So you walk away.” Deliberately, Suzanne turned, pressed her lips to Callie’s cheek. “Welcome home. I love you. I’m going to wait in the car for Doug.”
    “I’ll never make it up to her,” he said softly. “Or you.”
    “You don’t have anything to make up to me.”
    He turned to her then, though he kept a foot between them, kept his hands at his sides. “You’re beautiful. It’s theonly thing I can think of to say to you. You’re beautiful. You look like your mother.”
    He started down the steps just as Doug came out the door.
    “You’re going to be in the middle of that.” Callie nodded toward the car as Jay strode toward it.
    “I’ve been in the middle of that all my life. Look, I wasn’t going to ask anything, but will you go by sometime and see my grandfather? The bookstore on Main.”
    She massaged her temples. “Yeah. Okay.”
    “Thanks. See you around.”
    “Doug.” She walked down a step as he reached the sidewalk. “Maybe we can have a beer sometime. We can give that being friends a try, and you can fill me in on Cullen family dynamics. I don’t know where to step around them.”
    He gave a short laugh. “Join the club. Family dynamics? We’d better get a keg.”
    She watched him get in the car, and got a reflection of those dynamics from the positions the family took. Doug at the wheel, Suzanne riding shotgun and Jay in the back.
    Where would they have put her? she wondered. She started toward her own car, then spotted Jake leaning on the hood.
    It put a hitch in her stride, and though she recovered quickly she was sure he’d noticed. He rarely missed anything. Deliberately, she took out her sunglasses, put them on as she walked up to him.
    “What are you doing here?”
    “Happened to be in the neighborhood.”
    She rocked back on her heels. “Where’s your ride?”
    “Back at the dig. Sonya dropped me off. Great pins on that girl. They go all the way up to her clavicle.” He offered a broad grin.
    “Her legs, and the rest of her, are twenty.”
    “Twenty-one. And Dig’s already staked his claim, so my hopes there are dashed.”
    Callie took out her keys, jingled them.