by D. L. Roan
Mason rolled his eyes as he sank down on her other side. “You not having a midlife crisis is your midlife crisis,” he scoffed as he toed off his boots.
In dusk’s waning light, Gabby stared at the creek, watching the water ripple over the rocks. Matt was right. In a few short weeks the creek would be a sheet of ice, frozen in time. Only, the water would flow again in the spring. If they didn’t act soon, her chances of having another baby would be over for good. Did she want that part of their life to be over?
“Gabby?”
The warmth of Grey’s palm against her cheek drew her gaze to his. Powerful love, brimming with desire that had never waned through the years, shone in his eyes like a steady fire, a look mimicked in Matt’s and Mason’s eyes as well. She closed the distance between them and pressed her forehead to Grey’s, a deep yearning she’d never expected to feel again swelling to life inside her. She reached for Matt and Mason, pulling them closer. They felt so good, familiar, surrounding her with their love and passion, their breath sweet, their lips soft as she kissed each one.
“Make love to me.”
Chapter Fifteen
The words on the page bounced in a nervous rhythm. Dani stilled her tapping foot, but the fidget moved into her other leg and she barely caught her tablet before it bounced off her knee. She stiffened in the chair at the foot of Cade’s bed she’d occupied for the last hour, straightening her spine, rolling her head from side to side, her efforts regrettably not helping. She should have never had that last cup of coffee.
“How long you been sittin’ there like a cat trapped in the spin cycle?”
Dani snapped her head up, meeting Cade’s drowsy gaze. “Sorry.” She cringed, abandoning her studying nest to sit beside him on the bed. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” she said, taking his hand in hers. It was so cold. Worried, she pressed her palm to his forehead, grimacing when Cade jerked his head away. “I want to see if you’re running a fever.”
“I’m not,” Cade insisted, his voice matching his rough scowl as he sat up. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Let me get it,” she insisted when he reached for the extra pillow. “I’ll raise the bed for you, too.” She positioned the pillow behind his head, then fiddled with the buttons on the new adjustable bed remote.
“That’s good,” he said a few seconds later, settling back against the raised mattress. “Where’s your Papa?”
“Papa Daniel?”
Uncle Cade narrowed his eyes with silent censure for asking the dumb question.
“He went into town to get groceries,” Dani sighed.
Cade dropped his head back against the pillow. “Bullshit.”
“It’s not,” she insisted.
“Ace?” He glared at her. “I’m dying of pancreatic cancer, not a brain tumor,” he said with a conviction that made her chest ache. His weathered eyes narrowed, and she saw a hint of regret in them before he looked away. “Between you, your mother, Breezy, and my sister, this house has been busting at the seams with food I can’t eat. I know damn well we don’t need any groceries. Now, are you going to tell me where my husband is, or do I need to call and interrupt whatever’s he’s doing to escape this nightmare for a few blessed minutes to find out for myself?”
Heat flushed her face. Unable to look him in the eyes, she picked at the jagged edge of a fingernail she’d broken earlier. “Dads took him out to get a drink,” she confessed. In her peripheral vision, she could see his silent nod. “He didn’t want to go, but they made him.”
“Good,” Cade said, then drew in a deep breath, scrubbing his hands through his disheveled hair. “So, how long have you been babysitting me?”
“I’m not babysitting,” Dani insisted, popping up to retrieve her tablet. “I’m studying.”
He watched as she slid back on the bed, pretending to be genuinely curious. Still, she handed him the tablet, hoping to distract them both from the truth. She was there to babysit, or at least she’d known he would see it that way when Papa Daniel’d asked her to stay so he wouldn’t wake from his nap alone in an empty house.
“Natural Resources and Ecology,” he read the course title, then handed her back the tablet. “Sounds right up your alley.”
Dani’s head lulled back with an exhausted sigh. “It’s mind-numbingly boring.”
Cade chuckled. “I guess it would be with all those love hormones rushing around in there,” he said, nudging her arm.
Dani swallowed back her instinctual denial.
“How’d dress shopping go” he asked sleepily. “Did you find one?”
Dani’s shoulders drooped in defeat as she thought about the endless number of dresses she’d tried on since their trip to Billings. Her mom must have dragged her to every bridal shop within three hundred miles of Falcon Ridge.
“No,” she said with a regretful groan. “But Mom ordered one online she thinks I might like. I’m not holding my breath, though.”
She tucked her hair behind her ears, hesitant to complain. She was grateful for everything her mom was doing, but... “I know she wants everything to be perfect. I just...I don’t think I can take one more episode of Say Yes to the Dress.”
Cade tipped his head, his brows pinched together. “I thought every woman dreamed of wearing ‘the perfect dress’ on their wedding day.”
Dani scoffed. “All I dream about lately are these tests.” If she didn’t get her diploma before her wedding day, she didn’t know how she would be able to look her dads in the eyes.
Her uncle chuckled. “You remind me of myself when I was studying for my first foreign assignment: greener than grass but determined to prove my mettle.”
Intrigue drew Dani forward. “What was it?” she asked with excitement when he didn’t continue. “Your first assignment?”
Cade cut her a sideways glance, hesitating before he continued. “I’m not supposed to talk about that stuff, but I guess it doesn’t matter much now.” He stared up at the ceiling, memories swirling in his eyes. “I had to infiltrate a local street gang in Munich. I didn’t know a lick of German, and the agency wasn’t much help. Hell, the only reason my boss gave me the assignment in the first place was because he thought I’d get myself killed.” Dani drew in a sharp breath at the revelation, and he cut his gaze back to her. “My boss and I didn’t get along well,” he said with a mischievous grin.
Dani laughed. “I guess not.”
“In his defense, I was a cocky little bastard back then. But,” he continued, looking up at the ceiling again, “I studied my ass off in the little bit of time they gave me. Books, tapes, I even lived on the streets with a German hobo I stumbled across coming out of a gas station one night.”
Dani’s mouth dropped open. “You lived on the streets with a homeless guy?”
“Yep.” Cade chuckled. “Several times, actually. Don’t believe what you see in the movies. Spy work’s not all fancy cars and luxury hotels. Though, the gadgets are pretty nifty, until you figure out the government’s always a generation behind the bad guys.”
“So, what happened?” she prodded. “Did you do it? Did you learn German?” She’d never heard him speak anything other than English.
“Meh.” Cade smiled as he tapped his finger against his temple. “Thanks to my photographic memory, I learned enough not to get myself killed, though I wouldn’t stake my life on remembering any of it now.”
“Did you join the gang?”
“I did,” Cade confirmed with a prideful grin, his eyes alight with the memory. “I’ll never forget the look on my handler’s face when I showed up for the debriefing, half dressed and high as a kite.”
“What?” Dani laughed. “You were high?” She knew he’d smoked pot since his cancer diagnosis, but she’d never imagined him using drugs before that.
Cade lifted his head, his smile reflected in his eyes. “Don’t tell Daniel, but those Germans really knew how to throw a party.”
Dani snorted, a sound that quickly turned into a side-splitting
laugh when Cade made a lewd hand gesture that expressed he’d gotten more than high.
She laughed until she couldn’t breathe. That was one of the things she loved about Cade the most. He was always real with her. She drew in a refreshing breath. “Oh my God,” she said with a lingering giggle as she wiped the tears from her eyes. “I’m going to miss your stories.” The words slipped out before she could choke them back, icy regret stealing her joy as Cade’s smile faded. Dammit. She sucked at this whole hiding her feelings thing. “Uncle Cade, I’m so sorr—”
“Don’t,” he snapped. “I’m the one who should be apologizing,” he insisted when she shook her head. “I shouldn’t have been such a hard-ass about all this.” His gaze dropped to his lap, then darted over to the window. “Your Gran was right. I was wrong to ask everyone to pretend this isn’t happening.”
Dani took his hands into hers, bringing them to her lips. “It’s okay,” she said, the words squeaking out through the tight, aching knot in her throat, repeating the untrue words over and over in her head, as if doing so would somehow make them true. It’s okay. It’s okay. The pain in her throat spread. She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to breathe, but the pressure in her chest kept growing.
Cade withdrew his hand and she peered up at him. Her effort to stop the sob clawing to get out was crushed when the tears in his eyes fell in streams down his cheeks.
No! She violently shook her head in helpless denial. He never cried. Ever. The aching knot in her throat broke free, but another one took its place, choking her from the inside out.
“Come here, Ace.” He opened his arms and she wilted against him, her tears soaking his shirt.
Neither of them spoke. There were no words left to be said that their tears weren’t already saying. Desperate to go back in time, to be a little girl again riding on his strong shoulders, or just to hear him laugh like he used to before he got sick, she crawled up into the bed beside him and wept.
The room had darkened with the setting sun when he gave her a gentle shake. “You fall asleep on me?”
Dani pushed up and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “No,” she sniffled, and pulled a tissue from the box beside his bed, handing one to him, too.
“I’m sorry,” she sniffled again, reaching for another tissue.
“That’s enough of the apologies,” he insisted before he switched on the bedside lamp. Her eyes swollen and burning, she blinked against the sudden bright light that flooded the room. “Now,” he said with a huff, shuffling to straighten in the bed. “Is there anything else you want to say to me?” he asked, his voice back to its normal snappy timbre.
Dani shook her head.
“You sure?” he pushed. “Now’s your chance.”
No, she started to say, but something stopped her. It wasn’t a statement, really, but more of a morbid question she had no right to ask.
“Spit it out, Ace.”
She bit the side of her cheek, sighing when he dipped his head and glared up at her.
The words raced to the tip of her tongue. She forced them back, but her worry drew them closer to the edge. “Are you scared?” she finally asked.
“Of death, you mean?” He shook his head when she gave him a jerky nod. “Death isn’t the end, Ace,” he said with conviction. “It’s the dying part that sucks.”
She wanted to ask him how he knew, why he was so confident it wasn’t the end, but she didn’t, giving him a jerky nod instead. Even if he was wrong, she’d rather believe he was right.
“Don’t worry about those tests.” He nudged her arm, handing her tablet back. “You’ll ace whatever they give you. You always do.”
“I hope you’re right.” She shrugged, clearing the residual tears from her throat.
“Now, tell me about this house your cowboy’s building you,” Cade insisted, closing the door on their shared moment of grief.
Dani grimaced. “They told you, huh?”
“There are no secrets in this family.”
Dani snorted. Yeah, mostly because of him and his all-seeing eyes.
“What?” Cade asked. “You don’t like the house?”
“No! I love it.” The pictures Clay’d showed her were unbelievable. “It’s…amazing.”
“Then, why the sour face?”
She shrugged. “I guess I just thought it was a dream, you know? Not something he’d actually do.”
“Isn’t that life’s ultimate goal?” Cade asked. “To achieve your dreams?”
Dani conceded the point with a nod, but she still felt uncertain. “I don’t know.” She pushed her hip further onto the bed and folded her legs beneath her. The problem wasn’t the house, although the idea of having her own home was intimidating and so much different than she’d pictured her life a few months ago.
“You’re not getting cold feet, are you?”
“No,” she insisted. “It’s nothing like that.” She searched for the right words to describe the gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach. A feeling that grew bigger the closer she got to their wedding date. “I feel like I’m abandoning my family,” she finally said. “I mean, it’s not an I’m-never-going-to-see-them-again feeling, but more like...I don’t know. Clay’s family is…different.”
“Different how?”
“They’re just…different than our family,”
Cade laughed. “Ace, there isn’t a family on earth like ours.”
“I know, and that’s what scares me,” she admitted. “I mean, Clay’s dad is great, and funny, like you. And his brothers are…a lot like mine, except for Jackson.” She rolled her eyes. “But that’s a whole other story.”
Cade pushed up straighter in the bed. “Have they said or done something to make you suspect something’s off?”
“No! Not at all,” she insisted.
“It’s important to trust your gut, Ace.”
“I know. It’s not that. It’s me.” The whole thing was beginning to sound ridiculous. Maybe she was getting cold feet. “It’s just, I know where I stand here. I know what’s important to my family. No matter what happens, I’d do anything for them, and they’d do the same for me. And now I’m about to leave to be a part of a family I don’t really know. I know Clay, and I trust him completely, but…”
“You feel like you’re about to jump out of a perfectly sound airplane without a parachute?”
“Yes!” That was exactly it! “And it’s crazy, because every time I think of Clay, I want to jump anyway.”
Cade relaxed, his lips turned up into a weak, knowing grin. “That’s not crazy, Ace. It’s how you know it’s true love,” he said, dismissing her uneasiness. “Rest assured. The Sterlings have their issues like any family, but they’re good people.”
Dani’s mouth fell open in shock. “Oh my God! You checked up on them, didn’t you?”
“Of course, I did,” he admitted without an ounce of shame. “Trust me,” he insisted when she rolled her eyes. “Give it time and you’ll see. You’ll come to love them as much as you love your own family.”
Though she didn’t see how, she didn’t argue, returning his smile. “I still can’t believe Clay sold his mom’s plane to pay for the house.” She’d been so shocked when he’d told her, she hadn’t known what to say then, but the more she thought about it, the more uneasy she felt.
Cade raised a brow. “He did?”
Dani frowned. “I wish he hadn’t.”
“Why not?” he asked. “Nothing wrong with a man wanting to do what’s best for the ones he loves.”
“I know, but he loved that plane.” What if he regrets it later? “It’s the only thing his mom left him when she died.”
Cade reached for her hand and held it up between them, fingering her engagement ring. “She gave him this, didn’t she?”
Dani studied his mom’s engagement ring, conceding his point with a hesitant nod.
“And he gave it to you,” Cade continued. “That says a lot, not only about him, but his family, too.”
Dani
pressed her lips together, biting back her insecurity. He was right. She was worrying for nothing.
“He go back to Texas?” he asked, releasing her hand.
“Yeah.” She sighed regretfully. “He has a big turbine install coming up on a ranch in New Mexico, and his brothers are taking him on some kind of hiking excursion or camping trip or something, before the wedding.”
Cade narrowed his eyes. “And you believe that?”
“Yes.” Dani gave his hand a playful nudge. That she did believe. “It’s some kind of right-of-passage thing his brother, Beau, suggested. Something the natives did.” The skeptical look on Cade’s face made her laugh. “I believe him,” she insisted, pushing from the bed. “Now, how about some soup? You think you can hold down some of Gran’s homemade chicken noodle?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Some broth?” Dani pushed, remembering the worry in Papa Daniel’s voice when he’d told her hadn’t eaten breakfast or lunch.
“Fine,” Cade conceded. “But first, help me out of this damn bed so I can take a leak.”
Chapter Sixteen
Clay steered his truck off the dirt path in front of Beau’s cabin, one of what was once a dozen two-room bunkhouses built by their grandfather for the ranch hands. Unlike their family guesthouse, it lacked most modern comforts, sans the solar panels he’d installed a few years back to give Beau enough power to run a few lights. His brother thrived on a primitive lifestyle, but thinking about taking a cold shower with water pumped from a nearby pond made Clay cringe. Which reminded him...
“Did you pick out the tile for the bathrooms yet?” he asked Dani, cradling his phone against his shoulder as he backed his truck up next to Beau’s. It’d only been a few days since he’d left Falcon Ridge, a few days too long, and the memory of their stolen moments in the shower the last morning they were together made every muscle in his body tighten. He couldn’t wait to get her beneath the waterfall showerhead he’d purchased for their master bathroom.
