by Peggy Jaeger
And just like that the color drained from her face again. Fresh fallen snow had more color than Phil did as she sat across from me.
“What…what about him?”
“You invited him to my party to make Trey jealous.”
“How do you…” she shook her head. “How do you know his name? I never told you who I was seeing.”
“Yeah, you kept his name to yourself. The problem with secrets, Phil, is that eventually they all come out.”
Half dollar coins weren’t as wide as her eyes right then. The tremors in her hands had calmed for a moment only to start up full force again. She clasped them tighter together but it did nothing to mask their quaking.
“Did Trey know about Cade?” I asked. “Did he find out what you were doing?”
“I-I…”
I reached over and laid my hand over hers. “Tell me the truth, Phil. I need to know and you owe it to me as my friend to tell me.”
Her gaze dropped to our hands. I hadn’t grabbed hers, just merely placed mine over hers. In one jagged sweep she yanked them back.
“Yes!” The word exploded from her. I think she shocked herself at letting it out because her freed hands flew to her mouth, pressing so hard the skin on her cheeks blanched. Sheer panic drowned her eyes.
I wasn’t about to let that be the last thing she reluctantly admitted.
Stretching across the small table again, I gripped her wrists and tugged them away from her face. The resistance I met was considerable, but Phillipa hadn’t been doing bicep curls with twenty pounds weights every day for the past three years.
“Did he find out that night, or did he already know when he got to the party?”
“He knew. Before. I – I don’t know…how. He just did.”
I nodded. Trey knowing who Cade was went a long way in adding credence to Cade’s suspicions about being fired.
“Do you know anything about who slipped those drugs in my drink, Phil? If you do, I need to know and you need to tell me.”
“Why…why do you think I know?” Her voice shook as much as the rest of her.
“Call it a gut feeling,” I said, releasing her arms. She pulled them to her chest and folded them across herself.
“I don’t… I can’t… tell you anything. Please. Please just—”
Her gaze shot over my shoulder and if it’s possible her eyes opened even wider. I wasn’t surprised when I turned to find Cade coming toward us.
“What—”
“Hello, Phillipa.” He placed a hand on my shoulder and left it there.
She gaped up at him, then dragged her gaze back to me. “You know him?”
I nodded. “How do you think I found out he was the one you invited to my party?”
Anger ticked at Cade’s jaw and his eyes were narrowed as their attention was focused solely on Phil.
“How?” she asked.
“That isn’t important,” I said. “Did you know that Trey got Cade fired from his job because you were seeing him?”
Her head snapped back. “What are you talking about? Trey did no such thing.”
Quickly, I explained what had happened to Cade.
“It’s not true,” Phil said, but I could tell she wasn’t as sure as she’d been a moment ago. A cool edge of doubt had crept into her tone. Her brows were drawn together and her neck worked furiously, bobbing several times as she swallowed.
“Believe whatever you want,” I said, “but it’s true. Now, I want answers, so I’ll ask again, what do you know about who drugged me? Give me a name, Phil, or tell me something you saw that night. You wouldn’t be as scared as you obviously are if you didn’t know something about what happened. Tell me.”
Once again I reached across the table intent on slipping my hand into hers, but I never made contact. Phil shot upright, the chair falling to the ground behind her, the tinny clang shaking around us.
“Leave me alone,” she yelled as she pushed Cade out of the way. She bolted by him when he stumbled from the hit. “Leave me alone!”
Every eye in the café tracked her as she ran for the doors then sprinted through them, knocking an elderly woman who was entering off balance.
Both Cade and I ran after her, but several patrons had come to the aid of the older woman and blocked us from leaving.
By the time we made our way out to the crowded street she’d disappeared into the morning throng.
Chapter Twenty
“She definitely knows something about that night,” I told Nick over the phone as soon as Cade and I arrived at his apartment. “No one is that scared without a reason.”
“I agree,” Nick said, his voice coming over the speaker of my cell.
I glanced over the kitchen counter at Cade.
“Phil looks like she’s ready to break, Nick. She’s a bundle of nerves and is barely hanging on.”
“Okay, I’ve been thinking about this for a few days. I’m gonna reach out to one of my old buddies who’s still working on the force,” Nick said. “Go over this with him and see if he can pursue it since I can’t, legally.”
“What do you think he’ll do?” Cade asked.
“I don’t know, but if she’s as scared as you two think, she may need some kind of protection.”
“From who? Trey? He’d never hurt her.” My response was automatic.
“You haven’t seen him in a long time, Aurora,” Nick said. “You really don’t know the nature of their relationship and you can’t be certain he’s not involved in this.”
“That’s true, but I just don’t see him wanting to hurt Phil or me, and he had no reason to back then. Trey may be a pain in the ass, but he’s loyal.”
“That may be the only good trait he has,” Nick said. “People change.” The whoosh of air he blew out sailed through the phone. “Okay. Let me go reach out to my guy. I’ll be in touch.”
We rang off and I took my phone off speaker mode.
Cade took out two bottles of water from the refrigerator and gave me one.
I thanked him. He gave me a short nod as he drank. His brows were tugged together and his shoulders were sitting up around his ears, tense and stiff. From the subtle hardening of his jaw I knew something was up.
“That’s a pretty pensive look you’ve got on your face. Care to share?”
It took him a moment to shift his gaze my way. A flat, emotionless glare came my way.
“Okay, not pensive, but angry,” I said putting my bottle down on the counter. “At me?”
He didn’t answer right away, which confirmed what I’d asked.
“Not mad, just surprised.”
“About what?”
He took a long pull from his bottle. The notch at his throat worked, going concave as he drank. Watching it sent a drop of awareness sluice down my spine and took a severe inward swerve to hit me square in my pelvis.
A quick flash of his tongue sliding over my scars shot to the front of my brain and it took everything in me not to shudder with longing.
“You were pretty quick to defend Bookman. It was,” he ticked one of his shoulders, “surprising, considering what he did to me.”
“What we suspect he did to you.”
When his eyes narrowed even more, I added, “Although I believe he did get you fired. We just haven’t been able to prove it.”
His shoulders relaxed a fraction.
“But I’m not wrong about what he feels for Phil. He’d never do anything to hurt her and I can’t see him doing anything to me, either. We’d been friends practically our entire lives.”
“First of all, like the detective says, people change. Bookman may not be the same guy you knew back when. And he couldn’t have been much of a friend since he never came to see you or kept in contact with your parents while you were in the coma. He hasn’t come back into your life since you’ve been awake, either. He’s avoided you just as Phillipa has. That doesn’t exactly sound like a bosom buddy to me.”
He was right.
For the past
five years I’d spent almost every waking hour devoted to getting my life back. My body was now stronger than it had ever been, my mind twice as sharp and filled with much more serious topics than what shoes to wear with which dress. But one thing that had changed and which I couldn’t get back was my so-called social circle had all gone on with their lives, grown, and matured without me.
Standing in Cade’s kitchen that realization finally hit home.
My life was never going to be the way it was pre-coma. I may have changed my name to avoid public scrutiny, but the girl I’d been still clung to the notion I could go on as if nothing had happened to me.
It couldn’t. I needed to accept that.
“Hey, I’m sorry.” Cade came around the counter and gathered me into his arms. “I didn’t mean to make you feel sad. I was just…I don’t know.”
I nuzzled the space between his collarbone and neck.
“It’s okay. I know you’re right. People do change and sometimes not for the better. I just…”
He pulled back and cupped my chin. “What? Tell me.”
“I guess I just wanted everyone, everything, to still be the same as it was before. Phil was my best friend. Trey, although a pain the ass, was someone I could count on if I needed something only a guy could do.”
His left eyebrow quirked. “Such as?”
I shrugged and pressed my cheek against his chest. “Be my dance partner at weddings and events we were all commanded to attend by our socially connected parents. Get an obnoxious, annoying, clingy guy to leave me alone when he was bothering me in a club. Trey was the first one through any door Phil and I went through. He was like our watchdog, and I realize how horrible that makes me sound. Like I was just using him for what he could do for me, but we really did have a lot of fun as kids.”
He rested his chin on top of my head. The steady, solid thrumming of his heart was so soothing, I closed my eyes. “You were a wonderful friend, I can tell, because you’re very forgiving. You forgave me quick enough.”
“Forgiveness is a gift, according to Maeve, that should be doled out often and without incurring interest.”
“I like that.” He held me for a moment, then said, “You miss having your old friends in your life.”
“I think I miss the thought of them and what it used to be like, more.”
Sudden tears stung the backs of my lids.
I must have made some kind of telling noise because Cade pushed me away from him and lifted my chin in his hands.
Swiping at my now wet cheeks he clicked his tongue and said, “Don’t cry, Aurora. I think I can take anything but seeing you cry.”
Tenderly, with as much care as I think I’ve ever been shown, he kissed my eyes, one, then the other, then my temple, lingering for a moment over the pulse he felt there, down to my cheek and finally – finally - my mouth.
By the time his lips whispered against mine I’d stopped crying. In all honesty, I’d stopped breathing. The touch of his fabulous mouth was everything I’d remembered it being…and so much more.
In the brief moment it took me to think about deepening the kiss and capturing his tongue with my own, he’d already claimed it.
I clung to him, never wanting to let go. His strong hands swiped down my back to cup my ass and lift me up against him. His erection pulsed and grew as I rubbed myself against it. A low, feral moan exploded from him as he tore his mouth from mine, bent, and lifted me in his arms as if I weighed no more than a dream.
In his bedroom our clothes were quickly dispatched and this time, naked, my scars blazingly on display, I wasn’t nervous or worried what he would think. As his hands ran up and down my body it was as if those imperfections weren’t even there. When he whispered I was beautiful I believed him. As he trailed his tongue over every inch of me and told me I felt perfect, I knew—to him – I was. And when he took my nipple between his teeth, biting down just enough for me to feel the pull all the way to my core, and told me I tasted like Heaven, I didn’t think of arguing.
Perched between my legs, his hands everywhere and his face above me, he growled, “I want to be inside you, right now, Aurora, pounding into you and making you scream as you come.”
Sounded good to me.
It was only when he dropped his forehead against mine and I felt his hot breath wave over my face as he laughed that I realized I’d said it aloud.
“God, I adore you.” He shifted downward. His tongue flicked against my hip, his hand palmed my mound. I arched my back and lifted my ass.
Bless the man, he knew just what I wanted without my ever needing to say a word.
While his tongue dragged along the length of me, which was already drenched and throbbing, my mind shut down and I allowed myself to just feel, just experience every sensation cascading through me from his touch.
The afternoon sun pouring through the windows chased the shadows in the room, and in my mind, away. Time stopped around us. Nothing mattered but being here, right now, with this man as he made love to me as if born to the task.
I lost count of how many orgasms he brought me to using his fingers and tongue. When he finally made good on his promise to pound inside me and make me come one more time, I’d already screamed his name innumerable times.
With one final thrust that reached all the way to my soul, he cried out my own name and fell over the edge of reason with me.
As our breathing calmed Cade gathered me in his arms and kissed my forehead.
“Stay. Please.”
There was no place else I wanted to be.
~ ~ ~ ~
“I hear bells.”
“I’m good but I’m not that good,” Cade mumbled into my ear.
“It’s my phone.”
I slid out of his arms and stumbled, naked, into the kitchen where I’d dropped my purse. Morning sunlight shattered the room from the floor-to-ceiling windows, forcing me to shade my eyes while I hunted for my bag.
Detective Ramon’s number shot across my screen.
“Nick?”
“Aurora. There’s been a development.”
“What’s happened?”
“Phillipa Doubletree was taken to the hospital early this morning. She overdosed.”
“Oh, my God. Where is she? How is she?”
“Park Side Hospital. I’m getting this second hand from the buddy I called yesterday. Her area’s in his precinct. The call came in about four hours ago. He thought I should know so he reached out. And for how she’s doing, I don’t know, but my guy said it didn’t look good. They don’t know what she took or how much.”
Cade ambled into the room, yawning, carrying a robe and wearing his boxers. His hair was in chaos and a tawny, stubble darkened his cheeks and jaw.
He helped me into the robe and I mouthed Nick when he thrust his chin at my phone.
“I don’t have anything more, but I figured you’d want to know.”
“Yes, and thank you for calling. I’m going to head over as soon as I get dressed.”
“You won’t be able to see her or get any info because you’re not family, Aurora.”
“That’s okay. I need to be there. I’ll talk to you later if I find out anything.”
Cade was busy setting up the coffee maker when I disconnected.
“What’s up?” he asked through another yawn.
“Phil overdosed,” I told him.
The sexy slumberous look left his face in a heartbeat to be replaced with shock.
“What happened?”
I relayed what Nick had told me.
Cade pulled me into his arms when my voice broke.
“Did we cause this?” I pushed back and stared up at him as tears waterfalled down my cheeks. “Did she try to kill herself because we pushed her so hard?”
“Don’t even think that. You don’t know she tried to take her life. It may just be an accidental overdose.” He clutched my upper arms and yanked me back to him. “Nothing we did or said caused this. You saw her. You know what a bundle of ner
ves she was even before you confronted her. And you said yourself her behavior seemed odd the first time you two spoke. She might have been on something for all you know. Don’t torture yourself about this Aurora. It’s not your fault.”
It felt it like, though. Deep down it felt as if I’d pushed her over a ledge she was dangerously close to when I’d questioned her yesterday.
I swiped at my cheeks and pulled out of his arms again. “I’m getting dressed and heading to the hospital. I need to be there for her. She needs to know whatever happened between us doesn’t matter.”
Cade leaned against the counter and stared at me for a few moments before shaking his head.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He pushed off and grabbed my hand.
I wouldn’t let him hold it until I had an answer. “Tell me.”
He let out a deep breath and stifled another yawn. “With everything else you are, you’re stubborn, too,” he mumbled. Once again he reached for my hand. “If you have to know, I was thinking what an amazing and loyal friend you are in addition to being unselfishly forgiving. You could treat Phillipa the same way she treated you all those years ago and simply ignore her and what’s happened.”
“I could never do that.”
He nodded. “Which is why I was thinking how wonderful you are.”
This time when he tugged on my hand I slipped into his arms without resistance.
He was still wake-up warm from being under the blankets despite standing in his kitchen in nothing but boxers, and I cuddled into him, drawing in all that delicious heat.
I could feel him trying to hold back another yawn. Despite the blaring sun pouring into the room it was still early and we’d had a rigorous afternoon culminating in an even more tiring night.
Of course the fact that all that energy had been expended in his bed…and shower…and bathroom floor, didn’t excuse the fact we’d both gotten less than two hours, total, of sleep.
We’d still be in his bed, spooned together, if Nick hadn’t roused us.
A sonorous sigh escaped him.
“Come on.” He slid his hands down my arms to hold mine. “Let’s get dressed. I’ll call Kip to get the car.”
“Don’t you have to work today?”
