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  for the life of her understand how he’d gotten up there. “Are you injured?”

  “No.”

  She drew a deep breath. “Okay, good. Now what the hell?”

  “I drew something in the sand for someone and left them a note to come see, but then I wasn’t sure if it looked right so I climbed up here to check. And now I’m stuck.”

  “Stuck,” she repeated.

  “As in I can’t get down.”

  She took another deep breath. “You free-climbed up the rocks sixty feet to see if your picture was any good…” She whirled around and stared at the rocky sand, and realized she was indeed standing in the middle of a…heart. “Aw.”

  “No,” he said. “No aw. It’s not straight.”

  “Where is she?” Callie asked.

  “I texted her and told her not to come, that I couldn’t get out of work.”

  “So you lied,” she said. “Because…?”

  “The heart’s crooked.”

  Being a teenager had been the most difficult time of her life. Stood to reason that Troy was feeling the same. “And now you’re stuck,” she said.

  He sighed.

  “I’ll call your dad. He’ll know what to do—”

  “No!” he said urgently. “You can’t call him. I’m supposed to be working on a research paper for English. I sneaked out.”

  She stared up at him.

  “I know,” he said. “You can yell at me later.”

  “Troy, I have no climbing skills. I can create a website and I can worry a lot. Those are my two skills.”

  “You have more skills than that,” he said. “You make my dad happy. That’s a real talent.”

  “Let’s call him,” she said softly.

  “I’ll get in trouble.”

  “But you’ll be alive.”

  No answer.

  “Troy. It’ll be okay.”

  “We’re finally sorta getting along,” Troy said. “What if he sends me back to my mom’s?”

  There was such naked pain in the question that it stabbed right through Callie’s heart. “Oh, honey, don’t you get it yet? He’d never do that. He’d never walk away from you. He’s not like that.” Even as she said the words, she realized she really believed them.

  Tanner didn’t walk away.

  Not from his son.

  And not from her…

  She could trust him, she knew this to her very soul. Which of course made him more dangerous than ever because she could fall. She could really fall for him, and he would catch her. “Let me call him,” she said quietly into the phone. “He’ll know what to do.”

  Troy didn’t say anything, and she could feel his fear and hesitation through the phone. “Trust me,” she said. “I’m going to disconnect. Hang tight—literally. I’m not going to move from this spot and I’ll call you right back.” She hit END, then sucked in a breath and called Tanner.

  He arrived in three minutes, in navy running pants with a white stripe down the outline of each long leg, a skin-tight long-sleeved dry-fit tee and a backward baseball cap as he jogged across the beach toward her. “You okay?” he asked immediately, reaching for her.

  Damn, he was a good man. “I am, yes,” she said. “Listen, I was hoping you could make me a promise.”

  “Anything.”

  She gaped at him. Anything? Anything? And he’d answered so quickly too. But she’d have to marvel over that later because Troy was waiting. In fact, he was still on her cell phone listening to every word. “I want you to promise not to get mad.”

  Tanner studied her for a beat. “Have you ever seen me lose my temper?”

  “Yes. When you lost your very last senior football game by one touchdown. You trashed the locker room and got taken to the police station where your mother promised the sheriff that she’d punish you far worse than he ever could just so he’d let you go into her custody.”

  He stared at her. “Let me rephrase. Have you seen me lose my temper lately? Say in the last decade?”

  “A little bit, at the bar that night you told Sam and Cole to butt out.”

  “That wasn’t me losing my temper. That was me telling my two nosy-ass friends to butt out.”

  Okay, yeah. And in truth, Callie couldn’t really imagine him completely losing it. This Tanner, the man who’d been a SEAL and on the oil rigs, wasn’t a loose cannon. He was careful, pragmatic, tough, and absolutely stoic. He was also hardheaded and opinionated, but he was right, she hadn’t seen him lose his temper in a long time.

  Giving up on waiting on her, he scanned their surroundings and she knew the exact moment he found Troy because he went still. “Give me your phone,” he said to Callie without taking his gaze off his son.

  “Um—”

  He simply took it out of her hand and held it up to his ear. “Talk to me.”

  She had no idea what Troy said, but Tanner whipped around and eyed the crooked heart. She wasn’t sure but she thought maybe the very corners of his mouth quirked slightly.

  “Hold tight,” he said into the phone, then handed it back to Callie.

  “We need ropes, right?” she asked worriedly. “Maybe call search and rescue? Or I can call Matt Bowers—he’s an old friend. He’s a forest ranger now, but he’s also a rock climber. He’d help.”

  “I know Matt, but I don’t need him.” And with that, Tanner strode across the rocky terrain, got to the cliff, and started climbing.

  Callie sucked in a breath and held it, watching Tanner shimmy up the rocks toward his son, his movements sure and strong despite his leg injury.

  When he reached Troy, there was some discussion and then they both began a descent. Tanner went first, remaining within touching distance of his son, clearly dictating his every move.

  When father and son finally hit the beach, Callie let out a long shaky breath and hugged Troy hard.

  He went still as stone for a beat and then awkwardly patted her back.

  “I told you it would be okay,” she whispered in his ear.

  “I’m probably grounded for life,” he whispered back.

  “Not life,” Tanner, said and cupped the nape of Troy’s neck, giving him an affectionate but none-too-gentle shove toward the way they’d come. “Just your foreseeable future. But hey, look on the bright side, you’ve got a dark purple room to sit in.”

  Troy sighed.

  Tanner pointed to his truck and Troy got in.

  Tanner walked past the vehicle and opened Callie’s driver-side door for her, waiting until she sat before crouching down and looking into her face.

  “Are you mad?” she asked worriedly.

  He ran a finger along her temple. “My son got into trouble and he called you for help. I’m not mad. I’m fucking grateful. Now I have to go have a very long, very detailed discussion with my knuckle-headed son.”

  “You can’t get mad at him,” she said. “I promised him that you wouldn’t.”

  “Not a smart promise, babe.”

  “Tanner, I’m serious.”

  “Me too,” he said. “He screwed up. There’s got to be consequences for that.”

  “You can’t,” she said. “You said you weren’t mad.”

  “At you. I’m not mad at you.”

  “Tanner—”

  “Callie, he’s getting a D in English and he was supposed to be working on a research paper to help his grade. Instead he sneaked out of the house,” he said with calm steel. “He put himself and nearly a teenage girl at risk. I have to deal with that.”

  “And in doing so, you’re making me go back on my word.”

  “You shouldn’t have promised him anything that had to do with him and me.”

  She heard him, heard the logic and accepted that he was right, but it didn’t make it any easier for her to take. Nor did the fact that she had no idea why she was so fired up about this. Maybe because she could still see the fear on Troy’s face, and how desperately he’d wanted to keep this screwup from his father. “He kept it from you not because he