Intimate Enemy

“What’s up?” Russ asked absently, phone braced between his ear and shoulder while he examined the framing around a third-floor door.

“The price of gas. The price of a good time.”

“You’ve been talking to Mitch.” Those were their older brother’s stock answers to the question. “How is he?”

“Anxious for this kid to be born.”

“Jessica still turning on a dime?”

“If she’s not puking, she’s bitching. Mitch is pretty much afraid to be around her. Seems like the morning sickness and the hormones are all his fault.”

“The joys of impending fatherhood,” Russ said dryly. The segment of trim was nearly five feet long and looked in good enough shape to survive the prying experience, once he got the nails loosened. “Hang on,” he muttered, then sorted through the tools on the worktable until he found a hammer, a screwdriver and pry bars of varying sizes.

“Jeez, you can’t even stop for two minutes for a phone call?” Robbie complained.

See? Russ had known this call wasn’t going to be the exception. “Some of us work for a living.”

“Yeah, but you overdo it. I bet you haven’t even taken a break for lunch, have you?”

Russ glanced at his watch. It was nearly two. “Not yet. And I bet you have. A couple of hours. With a pretty woman.”

“It was a working lunch, and it didn’t come close to two hours. But you’re right about the woman. She’s gorgeous.”

Hearing about the women in his brothers’ lives was about as close to a relationship as Russ got these days. Considering that Rick and Mitch were both married, that left only Robbie for any real variety. Good thing he didn’t limit himself to a type. “Who is this living, breathing goddess?”

“Jamie.”

Robbie said more—he always did—but Russ quit listening. His gut clenched, and his jaw tightened until he felt real pain. Jamie Munroe was the one sore point between him and his brother. Robbie thought she was the perfect woman, and Russ wouldn’t piss on her if she was on fire. He’d spent a lot of time wishing she would disappear off the face of the earth.

But she’d made herself at home in his hometown and showed no signs of leaving, so he’d learned to ignore her. It worked pretty well until he caught a glimpse of her on the sidewalk or going into the courthouse or browsing through the fruit at the farmer’s market. When he wasn’t prepared to see her, it was always a surprise. Recognition, an instant of normalcy, remembering old friends, law school, getting married. Then came the scorn.

Pry bar resting two inches under the molding, Russ realized Robbie was waiting for him to say something. His fingers throbbed from holding the tool so tightly, never a good sign when working with two-hundred-year-old wood, so he set it aside. Holding the phone in one hand, he tilted his head the other way to rub the ache in his neck. “What’d you say?”

“I said even you can’t argue the fact that she’s pretty.”

Jamie? Pretty? Brown hair, light gold skin, a few freckles, blue eyes. Yeah, he supposed she was pretty, if a man liked the backstabbing viper type.

“Of course I can argue,” he replied. “Don’t forget, I’ve seen her with her fangs and cape.”

“Aw, come on, bubba. It’s been three years. Quit holding a grudge because the better lawyer won.”

Correction: There was more than one sore point between them. Robbie thought the divorce was something Russ should have put behind him the day it was over. He thought Russ should acknowledge that he’d been an idiot to represent himself, that Jamie was better and get on with life.

Hell, he knew she was a better lawyer than him. He’d gone through school with the knowledge that he wasn’t ever going to practice; once he’d taken and passed the bar, that was the end of it for him. She damn well should be better.

And he knew he’d been an idiot to represent himself, law degree or no. Robbie had wanted to take over, had all but bounced in the air, shouting, “Let me, let me!” And his brother wouldn’t have let anything get in the way of getting the best deal for his client. Melinda might have been his sister-in-law and Jamie his best friend, but he would have trampled them both into the dirt to win.

Russ’s marriage had been the most important thing in his life. Facing a divorce had been bad enough. Finding out about Melinda’s affairs, her scorn for him and her lies had been damn near unbearable. Add to that, Jamie, once his own friend, allowing—encouraging?—Melinda’s deceit…He’d gone from love for one and friendship with the other to despising them both.

He was over the divorce. He’d gotten on with his life. But he wasn’t the forgive-and-forget type. His motto was: live and learn, and never give ’em a chance to screw you twice.

“Did you call for a reason?” he asked testily. “Because I’ve got about four more hours of work before I get out of here, and shooting the breeze with you isn’t getting it done.”

“Man, you need to get laid. You’re getting pissier every day. I did call for a reason. Mom’s been trying to get hold of you, but she keeps getting your voice mail. Rick and Amanda are coming over Saturday, and she wants you there for dinner. Seven o’clock, no grubby work clothes, and if you want to bring a date, she wouldn’t object.”

“Yeah, Saturday at seven. I’ll be there.” Before Robbie could say anything else, Russ hung up.

If he wanted to bring a date…He hadn’t been out on a date in more than six years, since he’d married Melinda, and hadn’t had sex in about three years, since she’d thrown him out. His brothers could understand his not dating—they’d all gotten screwed over at some point—but no sex…Hell, even his mother would wonder about that.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested. It was the intimacy he didn’t want, and he’d forgotten how to separate the two. He’d once known—in high school, in college and law school. He’d always had a girlfriend or two, and while the sex had been fun, it had never really meant anything.

Finding out that sex meant nothing to the wife he’d loved had somehow made it mean too much to him. Was that twisted or what?

Frustrated, he walked to one of the arched windows that faced west in what had been the third-floor ballroom of River’s Edge, a classic Greek Revival plantation home. It had once reigned over eight thousand acres until a long-gone Calloway had decided it was the perfect place to build his legacy. He’d bought the property, torn down everything except the house itself and made it his home while building the town around it. He’d decreed that no building between the house and the river could be higher than two stories to preserve the view from the third floor. Russ could see the Gullah River, a hundred yards wide at this point, as well as a dozen or more of his projects, old and new.

He’d always wanted to go into construction, even though Calloway men were lawyers whether they practiced or not. Rick had been the first to break tradition, getting his degree in criminal justice instead. Russ hadn’t followed his lead, but had gone to the University of Georgia School of Law like a good Calloway son. It would make the family happy, he’d figured, and with his entire life ahead of him, a few years in law school couldn’t hurt, right?

Yeah, right. He’d met Jamie there, which had led to meeting Melinda. The bloodsucker and the bitch.

Speak of the devil, or, at least, one of them…Jamie came out of her office across the street. Her hair was pulled back and clipped up in kind of a mess on the back of her head. She wore a red-and-white print dress that didn’t reach her knees, with a sweater that was more for looks than warmth, and she carried a briefcase and a bottle of water. Huge dark glasses covered her eyes, but he could tell she never looked toward the house before she slid behind the wheel of her characterfree black convertible.

He watched her back out from the space in front of her office, then drive off to the south. If he had any luck, she would keep driving south until she wound up somewhere deep in the Gulf of Mexico. But at the end of the block, she turned, jogged over to River Road, then headed north.

“Staring out the window doesn’t get the work done.”

He turned to find J. D. Stinson standing at the top of what had once been elegant stairs. They’d been chopped up along with the rest of the house sometime in the fifties, turning the place into cheap apartment rentals.

J.D. was a relative, too; his mother was Russ’s father’s youngest sister. He was an assistant vice president at Fidelity and oversaw all of Russ’s construction loans. Nothing like keeping it in the family.

“I always finish ahead of schedule and under budget,” Russ said mildly.

“And you usually have bonuses for doing so written into your contract.”

Russ shrugged. He had a reputation for doing good work at a fair price. If people were willing to pay him extra for doing it quickly, as well, why not? “What are you doing out of the office and on the site on a warm day like today?”

It was a family joke that J.D. had gone into banking not because his father was president and it was expected of him, but because it meant an air-conditioned job wearing nice clothes. Casual for him was khakis and a polo shirt. He owned more suits than all the undertakers in the county combined, and the only thing he thought worth sweating over was his girlfriend of the month.

“I had some business to take care of across the street.”

Russ resisted the urge to shift his gaze to the whitewashedbrick building that housed Jamie’s office.

“What business do you have with Satan?”

J.D. scowled. “You know, if I was half as ticked off with Jamie as you are—”

“I’m not ticked off at Jamie. I don’t like her. Under the circumstances, you shouldn’t be dealing with her, either.” Russ wasn’t talking about his divorce, though family loyalty, with the exception of Robbie, should count for something. No, having won a damn fine settlement against one Calloway, Jamie was after another, representing J.D.’s wife, Laurie, in their split.

“I’m not dealing with her. That’s why I waited until I knew she would be gone to come over this way.”