landline was for internet and to give pesky telemarketers someplace to call.
“A sexy sounding guy, said his name was Caleb and that he’d get a hold of you later.”
Missing a step, Maya stumbled over her bare feet, her precious Jimmy Choos flying into the wall. She reached out to keep herself from following and took a mandatory deep breath to try and gather her thoughts.
By any standard, Maya had had an unconventional upbringing. Motherless by a year old, she’d never been a sweet little girl in the traditional sense. Instead, she’d learned the art of the three-card monte before she’d learned to read. By four, she’d learned to call up crocodile tears on command, the first time to keep her father from being arrested. She had amassed enough through computer hacking to pay her own tuition to Yale before she’d graduated high school.
So it was rare for her to be shocked.
“Caleb called?” she repeated faintly.
“You okay?” Tiffany asked, swinging her feet off the couch, concern clear on her face. “What’s wrong? Is he an ex-boyfriend? A bad guy? Should I call Mark?”
That made Maya smile. Mark was Tiffany’s fiancé—a bespeckled orthodontist who bowled on weekends—and she definitely saw him through the eyes of love. The idea of his sweet self coming up against the likes of six-foot-two, muscle-bound Caleb Black, the baddest of the bad Black boys, was a little funny.
Scary funny, but still enough to make her want to giggle.
“No,” she said, gathering her scattered composure. “No, that’s okay. Caleb isn’t any kind of threat.”
At least, not unless he mistakenly suspected her of suddenly having a yen to deal drugs. Her big brother was a badass DEA agent, usually so far undercover he probably didn’t even remember her existence. So why was he calling her? And on the house phone? The house, like the phone and everything else she had here in California, was under the name of Maya DeLongue. So how had he tracked her down?
And why? Panic shot through her, making her heart race and her ears ring. Worried sick, her mind spun from one horrible scenario to the next. In the half-dozen times she’d heard from her brother since she’d left home seven years previous, he’d always called her cell. Why would he call the house?
Was he hurt? Had something happened to Dad? To their brother, Gabriel?
“Did he say when he’d be calling back?” she asked, trying not to sound like she was going to cry. Her dad was indestructible. Superman. He had to be okay. He just had to.
“No,” Tiffany said, pushing a strand of toast-brown hair off her worry-creased forehead.
“Caller ID?”
“Unknown caller.”
Maya cursed softly. Tiffany’s frown deepened and she started chewing on her thumbnail. “I’m sorry. Should I have pushed him for more information? I didn’t want to give him your cell number, you know, just in case he was a crazy or something.”
That made her laugh. Caleb, crazy? Oh, yeah, definitely. Maya took a deep breath and shoved both hands through her heavy curls. This was ridiculous. She was overreacting. Christmas was in two weeks. He was probably just calling to wish her a happy holiday, or to see if she’d heard any news of their father.
Everyone was okay.
They had to be.
Because while she might have cut her family so far out of her life that she denied their very existence, didn’t use their name and hadn’t seen any of them in six years, they were still the most important thing in her entire world.
And, she vowed, if everybody was okay, she was going to kick Caleb’s ass for giving her such a scare.
2
MAYA SHOT STRAIGHT UP OFF her pillow, her vision obscured by a tangle of hair as she tried to figure out what had woke her.
The chirping phone answered her question.
“Hello?” she asked in a sleep-roughened tone. She’d gone to bed in the wee hours after midnight, then tossed and turned while worrying until almost five. She squinted through the dim light, noting that it was now eight. Yuck.
“Morning, Maya. How was the party?”
Her smile spread so big she was sure her ears were creasing. He sounded good. Calm, happy even. Not the tone of a man about to share bad news.
“Caleb, you brat. How’d you find me?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Maya rolled her eyes. “The house isn’t in my name. Shouldn’t that slow your kind down a little?”
“That’s child’s play for my kind.”
“So what’s the deal? You lost my cell number and needed to prove you’re not a child?”
“What? A big brother can’t call his little sister on Christmas?”
“Christmas isn’t for two weeks, you called last night and I had my yearly call from you back in July. Seriously, what’s going on?”
Not that Maya cared. She adored her big brother, so any reason to hear from him, barring injury or bad news, was good by her.
Almost giddy with delight, she plumped one of her half-dozen pillows behind her and pulled the silk sheet high over her Garfield T-shirt. These days Caleb was her only connection with her family. And he made that connection very rarely. So this was a treat to be savored.
Their middle brother, Gabriel, was like a ghost. He flitted in and out at will to remind them that he existed, but was rarely heard from and even more rarely seen. Unlike Caleb, who flitted because he was undercover DEA, nobody knew what Gabriel did. But his disdain for law enforcement was so deeply entrenched, Maya knew he wasn’t undercover anything. Unless it was under some woman’s covers, she thought with a grin.
Their father, on the other hand, was easy to find. Ensconced in Black Oak, California, he ruled the little town at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains like a benevolent despot. He had no place in the town government, he ran a custom motorcycle shop instead of a bank or big business and he had a hazy history other than being a descendant of the town’s founder. But he was still the man in charge, and everyone in Black Oak knew it.
Dynamic, charming and ruthless, Tobias Black was a force to be reckoned with.
Her smile faded, a little tug of pain aching in her chest.
As she settled back in preparation for the big news, Dottie, the cat who’d adopted her eight months before, jumped up on the bed. She curled around a couple times, making the down comforter puff before she settled on Maya’s stomach with a purring sort of sigh.
“What’s the big deal that inspired a holiday phone call?” Maya prodded as she rubbed the cat’s chin. The adorable black-and-white face lifted for better scratching access.
“I’m back in Black Oak,” Caleb told her.
Maya’s smile dropped away and her fingers stilled. Her stomach jumped before taking a slow, swirling dive down to her bare toes. The room tilted and her brain scrambled. Was this some kind of code? Was Caleb being held prisoner by a drug-crazed lunatic and this was his goodbye call? Was there a hint in his words that she was supposed to use to save him?
“Quit hyperventilating,” he chided, as if he were reading her mind. “I’m here by choice. Well, now I am. I came back as a favor to a friend and sort of got hooked.”
She wanted to ask if he’d seen their father. But she knew he had. Nobody came through town without Tobias knowing, and he wouldn’t let Caleb come and go without a confrontation.
She wanted to ask how Dad was. How he looked and if he’d aged. Was he still pining after that horrible bitch, Greta? Or had he finally accepted the idiocy of