The Callahan's: Secret Sins Part 19

"Yeah, well, maybe if you had been here we could have discussed it first," Anna snapped back. "Get your a.s.s over here and share a cup of coffee with me. You can yell at me to my face then."

"Would it do any good?" Amelia questioned her, her tone indicating her certainty that it wouldn't.

"You never know." Anna shrugged, a grin touching her lips.

There was nothing the other girl could say to make Anna change her mind, but she was always willing to let Amelia try.

"Hmm, we'll see." Amelia sighed. "You have the coffee on?"

"It will be," Anna promised.

"Is Archer there? Because it would be d.a.m.ned uncomfortable to try to convince you to leave his a.s.s if he were there listening to me," she stated ruefully.

"Archer won't be home until later this evening," Anna promised. "He and his deputy were heading out to one of the farms on the other side of the County. Something about shotgun weddings and the Middle Ages." She laughed.

She knew better.

Archer had left with the deputy to chase down a lead on Elizabeth Haley and her abandoned car. Archer had warned her to keep that information to herself, though, and give the story of the shotgun wedding instead.

The mountains held a diverse set of men and women who didn't always conform to society's rules, and forced weddings after a daughter became pregnant wasn't unheard of. It was actually fairly regular when those young girls forgot birth control.

They didn't happen to just the younger generation, either. Anna knew for a fact such a marriage had taken place several months before between a widow and her former brother-in-law.

"Get that coffee ready," Amelia ordered. "I'll be there by the time the first cup is ready to pour."

"See you then." Anna disconnected the phone before nibbling at her thumbnail and moving to the coffeepot.

She knew Amelia better than she knew anyone, and there had been a tone to her voice that didn't make sense.

The other woman lived in a small house beside her father, several streets north of the city square. Richardson Street was on the more exclusive side of town. There the larger, nicer homes had been built, but that was basically the only difference between it and the rest of Sweetrock.

Most of the blocks were tree-lined with rows of flowers planted here and there. Maintenance was taken care of by those citizens sentenced to community service for whatever legal infraction they had committed.

Anna hadn't imagined she could love living in town as much as she had loved living on her grandfather's ranch, but she was starting to wonder if she didn't enjoy it more.

For a small town, it wasn't boring.

There was always something going on in the city square in the evenings. Alfredo's, the local gas and convenience store, was open all night, and the owner, Bill Alfredo, or the family member working the night s.h.i.+ft, rarely shut the grill or pizza oven down.

It was quiet, but it wasn't lonely.

A knock at the back door came just as the coffeemaker beeped its readiness. Crossing the room, Anna opened the door, and the minute Amelia stepped inside she threw her arms around her friend with a happy laugh.

"I have missed you so much." Standing back, she gazed at her friend's exhausted features. "What in h.e.l.l have you been doing to wear yourself out, Mel?"

"Chasing shadows," Amelia said as she moved to the wide balcony doors that led out to the shaded, hidden patio in the back. "You know, I've never been in Archer's house. I'd heard about the patio, but I've never seen it."

Everyone had heard about his patio. The very fact that it was so completely private made it newsworthy. Everyone wondered what he was doing out there, especially when wood was burning in the small outdoor fireplace.

"Isn't it beautiful?" Anna tilted her head as she watched the dappled sunlight that slipped past the overhead wisteria and ivy that grew across the huge pergola beams. "It's peaceful as h.e.l.l out there, too. Just listening to the baby birds chirp is enough to put you to sleep. There're several nests in the far side beneath the wisteria and ivy, and they do like to b.i.t.c.h when you're out there."

Amelia turned back to stare around the kitchen as Anna opened the balcony doors.

"I thought we could have our coffee out here." Anna moved to the coffeepot and pulled free one of the trays she'd placed on its side behind it. "Archer and I have our coffee out there before going to work. I love it."

She turned in time to catch the look that crossed Amelia's face.

"Do you disagree with me living with him?" she asked, more curious than upset that her friend disapproved.

"You've lived your life secluded from the world, Anna." Amelia sighed as Anna placed a thermal pot, coffee, cream, and sugar on the tray. "I don't think you should have moved in with anyone if you weren't going to stay with your parents for a while."

Anna tightened her jaw at the slight chastis.e.m.e.nt in Amelia's tone.

"Yeah, well, I didn't have a lot of choice there." She shrugged. "And I'd prefer not to discuss them, Amelia. They may have been the ones to disown me, but I'll be d.a.m.ned if I'll cry over their decision."

"I don't expect you to cry over it forever," Amelia stated as she followed her to the patio. "But I expected you to be a little regretful."

"Of what?" Anna snapped. "Have you considered the fact that I don't even know who they are anymore? They're the family I visit twice a year, that's it. And it's their fault, not mine."

She wasn't nine any longer. They could have trusted her with the truth. Regardless of what they thought, she wouldn't have betrayed their confidence, even with a friend as close as Amelia.

Setting the tray on a small bistro table in the corner nearest the doors, Anna took her seat on a padded chair and poured them both a cup of the steaming liquid as Amelia took her seat across from her.

"Anna, you don't really feel that way." Amelia watched her with a heavy gaze as Anna spooned creamer and sugar into her cup as she knew her friend liked it.

"Yes, I do, Mel." She breathed out heavily before fixing her own and sipping at it. "I've spent my life begging, crying, threatening-" She shook her head at the memories of the many and varied ways she'd attempted to convince them to let her go home. "I was sick of begging a long time ago."

"Dad said you actually graduated college a year early?" Amelia obviously approved of the coffee, as she held the cup while speaking and sipped from it again.

"Business courses aren't rocket science," she informed her, amused. "What else did I have to do but study? h.e.l.l, Amelia, until moving here with Archer, I didn't even remember how to make friends."

And that was the truth. She'd forgotten how to have friends.

"You didn't make friends at college?" Amelia asked, surprised.

Anna shook her head. "I made acquaintances. There's a difference."

And there was. They weren't friends that she would keep up with, visit on vacations, or exchange Christmas cards with.

"But why, Anna?" Amelia shook her head, confused. "I know you had no intentions of living anywhere but your family's ranch, but that has nothing to do with friends. Why not make friends?"

"Because I didn't want to lose touch with someone else I cared about," Anna admitted. "I felt I had lost my family, and in some ways, you changed so much that I had lost you as well. I didn't want to lose anyone else."

Amelia looked away for long moments. "I've been busy," she finally said softly.

"I know that." Anna nodded. "And I was so far away it wasn't as though we could stop for lunch once a month. It wasn't either of our faults, but I just didn't want to make more friends that I might never see again. If you remember, they were trying to s.h.i.+p me off to France, and I didn't know if I was strong enough to stand up to them."

"You sure as h.e.l.l stood up to them." Amelia breathed in roughly. "It's just terrifying to me, the cost you could be paying, Anna. Women who a.s.sociate themselves with Callahans end up dead. And by G.o.d, I don't want to have to attend your funeral. It's well known that Archer is their most dedicated friend. As his lover, you'll be seen as a.s.sociated through Archer. That makes you as much a target as any lover. It's time you leave."

CHAPTER 12.

She was tired of being told to leave the one place on earth she wanted to be. She was starting to see exactly how her cousins felt now.

"Their lovers end up dead," she reminded her friend. "I'm not a lover, I'm a cousin and an employee. And Crowe doesn't even acknowledge the fact that I'm a cousin."

"Katy Winslow was not one of their lovers," Amelia argued, leaning forward. Her expression became fierce as the coffee cup clattered to the top of the table. "My G.o.d, Anna, women die in this f.u.c.king County, and the thought of losing you to that b.a.s.t.a.r.d just p.i.s.ses me the f.u.c.k off more than it does that women have died here, period, over this idiocy."

"Katy was connected to them somehow. She had to have been," Anna argued as she placed her cup more carefully on the table.

"Which makes it even worse," Amelia snapped, rubbing her hands over her face wearily. Lowering her arms Amelia gripped the sides of the table with a white-knuckled hold. "Crowe Callahan should have never hired you. h.e.l.l, he should have never come back to this County, period. The minute he and his cousins crossed the County line the bloodshed began again. And no, I don't like it one d.a.m.ned bit."

"Then they should have just thrown away everything their parents left them?" Anna frowned back at her, confused. "Amelia, don't you think that's a rather harsh stance to take?"

"It was money. Possessions," Amelia argued. "It wasn't worth the death that's followed them."

"So they should just give up, forget about their homes, their roots, and what's rightfully theirs because someone doesn't want them here and doesn't want them to have what their parents dreamed of giving them?"

She'd never imagined Amelia could be so hard, so judgmental. Sitting back in her chair she stared at the woman she thought she knew.

"I can't believe you feel that way," she said quietly. "I thought you cared for Crowe-"

"When I was a teenager." Amelia's eyes narrowed as anger sparked in the gray depths. "I'm not a teenager."

"And you're not the person you were the last time we visited, either," Anna said carefully, wondering what the h.e.l.l was going on with her friend. "Or the woman you were when I first met you. That woman would have never believed Crowe and his cousins had no right to their homes."

"Not at the price this County is paying." Amelia slapped her hand on the top of the table, rattling the dishes and shocking Anna with her response. "Go to France, Anna. Go to France, go to California or New York, but get the h.e.l.l out of Corbin County before you die, too."

Anna rose from her chair slowly. Moving with deliberate control she collected the cups, thermos, sugar, and creamer, and placed them on the tray before carrying them into the kitchen.

Amelia's chair sc.r.a.ped across the stonework of the patio and Anna could feel her following her.

Setting the tray on the counter, she turned to the other woman.

"Anna, listen to me-"

"I want you to leave, Amelia." Anna gripped the counter behind her with desperate fingers, terrified of the anger rising inside her now.

Amelia's eyes narrowed, hiding a response Anna felt she would have preferred to see.

"Anna..."

"Leave before I say something I'll regret."

Amelia crossed her arms over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, c.o.c.ked her hip, and braced one leg to the side. It was her cla.s.sic confrontation stance.

"I'm not going to lose your friends.h.i.+p because of those d.a.m.ned Callahans," she bit out.

"It's probably already too late to worry about that," Anna a.s.sured her, breathing in carefully through her nose, promising herself she wasn't going to lose her temper.

"Because I think they're wrong to come back here? To set up shop and home and pretend as though women aren't dying around them?" Amelia cried out. "G.o.d, Anna, do you see how wrong that is?"

"What I see as wrong is the fact that you should decide they should have to give up everything that should have been theirs, every dream they ever had, because some b.a.s.t.a.r.d doesn't want them here," Anna all but screamed at her.

There went her temper.

Red blazed through her senses as the building rage began to explode.

"What I see as wrong, Amelia, is the fact that you feel that way, when you above all people know what they've lost. You have no right." She pointed her finger at the other woman furiously. "You have no right, Amelia-"

"It's my friends dying..."

"And it's their lovers," Anna yelled. "It's their friends, the women they would die for. Do you think leaving would stop it? They left, and that b.a.s.t.a.r.d found the lovers they tried to keep hidden. Do you honestly believe anything will stop that son of a b.i.t.c.h, short of f.u.c.king killing him, to make him stop torturing those men? And, by G.o.d, he sure as h.e.l.l has no right to force me from Corbin County, or from my G.o.dd.a.m.ned family, and if you can't see that, then no, Amelia, I have no use for you as a friend because you're not the person I thought you were to begin with."

"And what kind of person did you think I was?" A tear fell from Amelia's eye. "The kind of person that would wake up one morning to the news they've found your body, raped and tortured, naked and lifeless, and actually survive it?" Her breathing hitched as more tears fell. "No, Anna, I'm not the person you thought I was, then."

"No, Amelia, I thought you were the type of person that would at least understand why I came home, why I want family that I don't have to beg to be around, and why I want to be with the man I've loved since I was a teenager," she argued fiercely.

"You haven't lived enough to even know what love is."

"Leave, Amelia," Anna yelled. Stalking to the door, she threw it open furiously, not even surprised at the sight of Archer and Crowe as they stared back in surprise from the doorstep. "Get the f.u.c.k out, and don't bother worrying. You didn't worry while I was stuck in those d.a.m.ned schools after you left, nor did you bother to f.u.c.king come around me unless I defied my family and returned home. And obviously the only reason you did was to convince me to leave, because that was usually the only reason I did go back. So just get the h.e.l.l out."

Everyone was staring at her as though she had grown two heads and was spitting venom rather than fury.

Turning on her heel she all but ran from the door and raced up the stairs, only barely aware of Oscar slinking from the kitchen and running up with her. He cleared the door into the bedroom only seconds before she gripped it and slammed it closed.

And there, without bothering to run to the bed, she leaned against the wall and slowly slid to the floor, tears finally falling, the sobs finally tearing from her.

The one person she thought would understand was, she was only now realizing, the one who had always convinced her to leave. And she was beginning to wonder, had she been a friend, or merely an instrument her family used to keep her from Corbin County and from her cousin?

And that raised the same question she couldn't stop asking.

Why?

Archer moved slowly into the kitchen, ignoring Amelia for a moment as she turned, obviously crying and attempting to get a hold of herself.

"What the h.e.l.l happened here?" He turned to her after hearing Crowe come through the door behind him.

Crowe stood to the side of the door, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression dark and foreboding as he glared at the top of Amelia's head.

"Can I borrow your study, Archer?" Crowe asked, never moving his gaze from the young woman.