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“I don’t.”
She hesitated. “Are you sure? Because you couldn’t have picked a more isolated place to live.” She looked at him curiously.
He shrugged. “Maybe it’s not for everyone. It’s great for me, though. Nobody around for miles, until you get to the town of Tempest. I don’t go there often. It’s too much like Diablo. Full of well-meaning folk.”
Intuition hit her. “Jonas, you sold your practice. You got a fake fiancée. You’ve bought a property where there’s no one around to bother you.” She gave him a steady stare. “You’re hiding.”
“Hiding?”
She nodded. “It’s your typical pattern. You know what you need to do, but you stick your head in the sand instead.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Jonas said. “It’s a piece of land, Sabrina, not a crystal ball.”
She wrinkled her nose at his retort and decided to ignore it. “Perhaps I’m trying to say that I suspect you still have a lot to figure out in your life, Jonas.”
“I’m doing fine. And when you’re not busy trying to make my life a piece of your investigative reporting, you’ll probably notice that I’m doing very well, thanks.”
“You are.” Sabrina knew she was hitting very close to whatever was really motivating Jonas, or he wouldn’t react so sorely. “But you’d do better if you’d finish what your brothers have started.”
Jonas took a long time to answer. “Maybe,” he said softly, “but I’m not going to.”
Not surprised by his answer, Sabrina turned to look out the window as the dry, almost barren-looking land rushed past. “There’s something bugging you at Rancho Diablo, or you wouldn’t be trying to hole up out here.”
“Nope.”
“You thought I was pregnant by another man,” Sabrina said with some heat, “though I can’t imagine what that says about how you really see me—”
“I see that you’re a little different from other women, Sabrina, which I happen to like. It scares me, but I do like it.”
“When you’re not scared.”
“Nervous is a better word. Some people are afraid to try new foods. I’m not. You’re a different kind of female than what we have on the ranch right now. But I need spice in my life, and you’re the cayenne pepper in my chili.” He ran a palm over Joe’s small head, where he was strapped in his carrier between them. “And this is my tiny jalapeño on top,” he said. “Good for me I’ve got the stomach for all this new fire.”
Sabrina wasn’t about to let Jonas pacify her with what he likely thought were compliments. “You went and found someone—”
“More calm, more sedate,” Jonas supplied helpfully.
Sabrina was outraged. “Chelsea jumped on a plane with you to fake an engagement. How sedate is that?”
He laughed. “Okay.”
“Anyway, don’t get me off the subject. What I’m trying to point out is that you run off when you want to avoid things. Just like you ran off to Ireland.” She glared at him. “How would you have felt if, upon seeing Chelsea, I’d jetted back to D.C.?”
“I’m glad you stayed. I’m hoping to talk you into living at Dark Diablo with me.”
“If you don’t put all your skeletons to rest, they’ll pop back up. Contrary to me being the wild and unsettled one, you wear that badge, Doctor.”
“Not me,” Jonas said. “Surgeons do not have a wild bone in their body.”
“Right,” Sabrina said. “Anyway, that’s what I think.”
He sighed. “I won’t deny all of what you say.”
“Good.” She popped the top off a bottle and began feeding the baby. “It’s very important for little Joe to know that his father is a man of deep character, not given to wayfaring.”
“Wayfaring.” Jonas laughed. “Ha-ha-ha. I don’t think I’ve wayfared in my life.”
“Except to Ireland, and you brought back a pretty fancy souvenir.”
“Okay,” Jonas said again. “So what do you suggest?”
“That you do what you’re meant to do.”
He scratched under his hat, then shook his head. “What if I told you that the questions don’t bother me as much as the answers might?”
“I would probably say the monster in the closet isn’t usually what you think it is once you open the door.”
“Ah-ha!” Jonas wagged a finger. “But sometimes it is.”
“The good part is you’ll be rattling those skeletons for little Joe’s sake, and all your nieces and nephews, as well as your brothers. You want to be a hero for Joe, don’t you?”
Jonas sighed. “I’d like to say not especially, but I don’t think you’d believe me.”
Sabrina smiled. “I probably wouldn’t.”
He glanced at her. “Would you be willing to be my shotgun rider if I start opening those doors?”
Sabrina looked into his navy eyes. “I’ll ride shotgun.”
“And then you’ll marry me.”
She blinked. “Was that a proposal or a typical Callahan pronouncement? I always thought if you ever asked, it would be a lot more romantic.”
“Have I not asked you before? Because I have about a thousand times in my mind.”
“You see, Joe,” Sabrina said to the baby, who was contentedly sucking on his bottle and watching her face, “your father just delivered a half-baked proposal because he was afraid I might say no. Your dad protects himself.”
“Not true,” Jonas said. “I assume that a woman wants to marry the father of her child.”
“I might marry you,” Sabrina said, “but with a proposal like that, you can be certain you won’t make it back into my bed.”
“Oh,” he said. “I better up my game.”
“All of it, Doctor,” Sabrina stated. “I hope you can.”
“We’ll see,” Jonas said.
* * *
“SO, BASICALLY,” JONAS told Sam that night, “Sabrina hated Dark Diablo and didn’t accept my proposal. My big moment and I came up zeroes.”
“Not surprising,” his brother mused. “You did kind of half bake the thing. Sabrina’s right about that.”
“Yeah.” Jonas sat in the library drinking a whiskey with Sam, wondering how he’d ended up like this.
“The problem,” Sam said, “is that you always underestimated Sabrina. She’s way too good for you, for one thing.”
“This is true,” Jonas admitted. “She says I have to amp up my game, and I’m not sure how much amp I’ve got.”
“You want her, don’t you?”
“Hell, yes.” Jonas stared at the whiskey in his glass as if it held answers. “But she’s not a gentle and shy dove like your wife.”
Sam hooted. “Seton is not gentle and shy. She’s more like fireworks in my sky, trust me. Let’s do a further checklist. Judge Julie is a smokin’ pistol set to fire. Jackie was a nurse and keeps order like a general. Darla is a businesswoman, and there are days when I can hear the grocer grinding his teeth from the deals she makes him give her. Aberdeen may be a preacher, but she’s got a soul of iron, don’t let that sweet face kid you. Where are the retiring wallflowers in this family?”
“This is different,” Jonas said.
“Only because it’s happening to you this time, you big wienie,” Sam shot back. “Believe me, we all suffered when we fell in love, though we mostly suffered because of our egos. You’re just going to make more noise about it, I’m afraid. We’ll have to resort to earplugs.”
Jonas snorted. “Sabrina says I have to find myself first. She says I run away from what I don’t want to deal with.”
Sam snickered. “Guess she didn’t have to be clairvoyant to know that.”
Jonas looked at his youngest brother. “It’s not true.”
“Of course it’s true. Every word. Did she set a goal for you, a dragon for you to conquer, in this quest for yourself?”
Jonas thought about it. “She says that until I’ve figured out the answers in our family, I likely won’t be ready to make a good husband and life partner. Sabrina says that I’ve been avoiding my responsibility for years, and that it probably all goes back to the fact that I was the oldest. She says her hunch is that our parents leaving affected me the most. It’s all a bunch of psychological nonsense, but I’m humoring her. It’s best to let women think they’re figuring us men out, you know.”
Sam sighed. “That is not a good attitude to take.”
Jonas was satisfied with his non-emotional approach to his chosen lady. “How would Sabrina know what I need to do to make myself into a good life partner?”
“Well, you ran off and got engaged to a woman you didn’t love because the woman you did love was pregnant with your child. Call me crazy, but you may have some issues to iron out, bro.”
He scowled. “Even if I did—and I’m not saying I have any issues at all—I wouldn’t know where to start.”
Sam raised his glass. “We did the spadework for you. All you have to do is put it all together.”
Jonas stared at him. “Not that easy, when you consider that it’s taken all five of you to get this far.”
“Well,” Sam said, easing back into the leather chair more comfortably, “if it’s true what Seton discovered, and our parents are still alive, you have to find out where they are. And why they went away. They had to have left us for some real good reason.”
“They went into witness protection because they’re hiding from a cartel they turned over to the various authorities involved. You can’t find someone in witness protection, no matter how much you might want to.”
“Yeah.” Sam scratched his chin. “But someone knows something.”
Jonas shook his head. “That could only be Fiona—and she would absolutely never tell—only Chief Running Bear might know.”
Sam nodded. “Bingo.”
“But so what if we did find our parents? If they wanted us to locate them, they would have given us a signal, a clue.” Jonas wasn’t sure this particular holy grail had a desirable outcome. “The bad guys, whoever they are, might find our parents, too, then. I don’t think it’s worth taking a risk.”
“You make several good points. Did I tell you, by the way, that Sheriff Cartwright had to release the guy he’d arrested? The one who was living in the canyons, and who rigged Seton’s laptop?”
“No,” Jonas said slowly. “Why did they release him?”
“He got bail from someone. A cash bond. And there wasn’t enough to hold him on.”
Jonas remembered how much trouble the rat had managed to cause over the years for their family. He’d bided his time, waiting for Jeremiah and Molly Callahan to contact the children they’d left behind. “It’s not safe to find them, Sam. We could lead danger right to their door.”
“I think you may be right.” Sam looked at his boots, then crooked a brow at his brother. “So you’ll just have to tell Sabrina you’re probably never going to find yourself.”
“Maybe.” Jonas thought it was a real possibility, anyway. He didn’t have the fire in his belly to know more than he did. Were they really alive?
Maybe finding out more about myself isn’t what I need to quit avoiding the big issues. I’m a surgeon, for God’s sake. I made life-changing, lifesaving decisions, every day of my life. What the hell am I afraid of?
It was simple enough. He was afraid of being abandoned, left behind once again. What had happened to drive his parents away?
As a child, he’d figured he must have done something bad. Something horrible, to make his parents leave and go away forever. God wouldn’t take parents away from a boy who was good.
It had been years before Jonas had understood he had done nothing wrong, that death had come unnaturally early to his parents. The learning process of grief and abandonment might have even stirred his desire to be a saver of lives.
But the habit of backing away from emotional moments stayed with him. He didn’t want to disappoint anyone, hurt anyone, because he or she might leave.
So much easier just to avoid the big issues.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do about Sabrina,” he said. “She doesn’t think I’ve got the ability to stick with it for the long haul.”
“She has a right to be a little antsy,” Sam said. “You pretty much shocked the entire town when you brought Chelsea home. And now what are you going to do with her?”
“Nothing. She seems happy working at the library and doing her own thing. She’s making lots of friends. I told her I’d send her back to Ireland anytime she wanted to go, on my nickel, but she said she’s having a blast.” Jonas shrugged. “She and Sabrina seem to get along, too. So I guess I just don’t think about her much.”
“You realize that, out of all of us, you made the biggest boneheaded error of courtship? Bringing another woman home,” Sam said, disgusted. “I didn’t dare even look at another woman when I was trying to catch Seton. I was too afraid she’d head back to Washington. I’m kind of surprised Sabrina hasn’t, actually.”
Jonas sat straight up. “She wouldn’t.”
“She might.” His brother shrugged. “She still keeps an apartment there, and you’re the world’s slowest Romeo. She may get impatient with you. I would.” He drank his whiskey and closed his eyes with sheer contentment. “I think she’s spotted you a couple of forgiveness points because everyone recognizes you’re a little impaired in the love arena, but I wouldn’t push my luck.”
Jonas felt himself go pale. Sabrina was a traveler, and fiercely independent. She did have a job in D.C., but she was on maternity leave.
He had to make like a retrofitted Romeo—fast.
“Anyway,” Sam continued, “Sabrina’s right. You do have a pattern. You would never have bought Dark Diablo if you weren’t looking to get away from all of us. It’s called shirking your responsibilities. How did Sabrina know you’d never change?”
Jonas gawked at his brother, wondering when having a dream had become shirking his responsibilities. “You know, I’m not the bad guy you paint me as.”
“Nothing bad about being terminally uncommitted and unable to participate in a family.” He shrugged. “We got used to it after you went off to college, then med school, then Dallas. But as far as a woman goes, Sabrina in particular, does she have any reason to expect much from you?”
