Page 13 of Cautious

I’m spinning in the office chair, waiting for Arlo to come back from the diner with burgers for everyone, when two more hot guys walk through the door. These are dressed in smart suits, looking like bodyguards, but not the kind who would take a bullet in their shoulder for their charge. The kind that would catch the bullet in their teeth.

Jesus, there must be something in the water around here.

“Well, hey there, darlin’. You must be the temp covering for June,” a blond who must have been prom king in his former life says to me, flashing a Colgate-white smile. I don’t know why, but I sense there is something forced about it.

“Don’t bother, Banner. This one belongs to Blake,” Arlo says as he walks in behind him and winks at me.

“I don’t belong to anyone,” I grumble.

Nobody pays any attention. It’s become increasingly obvious in the hour I’ve been here that they only hear what they want to.

The guy who came in with the prom king looks at me, then over to Blake, who is talking animatedly with Marcus, before speaking to me softly.

“He’s a good guy.”

“Good guys can still be terrible boyfriends and husbands,” I point out.

He tilts his head, looking at me quizzically. “How so?” he asks. Something about his tone makes me think his comment isn’t as offhanded as he is trying to make it seem.

“Good guys by nature are, well, good. The problem can come when they either can’t say no or can’t find a balance.”

He shakes his head. “Give me an example,” he prompts.

“Okay, well, I have a friend back home who was married to a firefighter. He was a good guy, friendly, and sweet. I mean, he ran into burning buildings for a living. The trouble is, he couldn’t switch it off. He worked crazy hours, just like Bella did as an ER nurse, but he filled his days and nights off with helping others. I’m not talking about helping a friend to move over the weekend. I’m talking about him being the friend everyone called for a favor because he could never say no. He had some kind of hero complex, I think. It meant Bella worked crazy hours on top of raising two sets of twins virtually alone. She was so freaking lonely. But other than me, everyone would tell her that she was one of the lucky ones.”

“Sounds like she was. If he had been a soldier on deployment, she would have seen him less than that,” he tells me.

He’s right, of course; it’s the same thing Bella was told time and time again. But it’s so easy for people to pass judgment when they have no idea what it’s like to walk in the other person’s shoes.

“He missed the birth of his sons, visiting a friend in the same hospital. Then there was the time Bella had to handle four children under the age of three when a tornado rolled through town. Yes, he went to see if others needed help, but he left her alone and terrified with four children. Then he had to seek shelter somewhere else because he couldn’t make it home safely. He forgot to pick up his kids from daycare all the time becausehe was covering last-minute shifts. The list is endless. He was a good guy, but he had no boundaries in place. Bella was a single parent who occasionally had a man sleep on the opposite side of her bed.” I remember all too well the nights she cried on my shoulder, exhausted, feeling emotional and unloved.

“So, she left him,” he summarizes.

“No,” I answer softly, my heart tugging at the memory. “He left her when he was killed in a head-on collision while picking up a friend who had called at 2 am for a lift home from a bar.”

“Damn,” he answers.

“Yep, that about sums it up.” It’s a messed-up story that ended with my friend moving back home to be closer to her parents.

“Callie, food.” I turn when I hear Blake call my name.

He indicates for me to follow, so I make my way over to him and let him lead me down a short hallway to a large break room at the back of the building.

The rest of the guys are gathered around the table littered with bags of food, making small talk. I pause in the doorway, wondering why I don’t feel intimidated being the only woman here. These guys are huge. Just one of them could hurt me if they wanted to, let alone a group of them, but all I feel is safe.

“Here you go,” Blake says, pulling out a chair for me as Arlo leans over and places a box holding a burger and fries in front of me.

“Thank you.”

Blake sits beside me, grabbing his own food as Banner, the dark-haired prom king from before, walks in and sits opposite us.

I take a bite of my burger and moan as the taste hits my tongue. Holy crap, talk about foodgasm. “This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.” I swallow, whispering reverently. I watch with a frown as some of the guys seem to be squirming in their seats.

“So, Callie, what do you do?” Felix, the tall guy at the end of the table with the chocolate-colored hair and piercing blue eyes asks.

“Erm…” I say, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “I’m a product tester,” I answer before popping a salty fry in my mouth.

“A tester? What do you test?” he asks.

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