by Gigi Moore
“Do you want me there?”
“I mean, he said it was a romantic dinner, but he, um…he didn’t say it was for two.”
Interesting that she would pick up on that, though Cade knew in Thayne’s mind the assumption was two for dinner and not a third wheel. Thayne wasn’t on the same page of the playbook as he and Maia seemed to be.
He also highly doubted that Thayne had mentioned Cade’s dream about their parents to her, and unless Maia had been eavesdropping when he’d made his confession, there was no way she knew what Cade had planned for the three of them.
At least he knew now where he stood with Maia, though.
She wanted him as much as he wanted her. He could see it in her dilated pupils and come-hither smile. He could hear it in her flirty, seductive tone when she spoke to him.
Maia didn’t know that Cade would be there tonight whether she or Thayne wanted him at the dinner or not, however. It was his duty, and contrary to his brother’s opinion, Cade took his responsibilities seriously, especially one that meant protecting the only brother he had and safeguarding the woman that Fate had chosen for both of them.
Chapter 11
Thayne really hated to do this, especially after the comment Maia had made about Caroline. Even though he knew now that she’d been teasing him, he still took her words to heart. He probably shouldn’t have, but there it was.
Speaking of whom, Thayne told Caroline he was taking a quick break and headed toward the emergency exit that led to the ambulance bay.
“They’ll be here any minute,” she said to his back.
“I know. I’m not going far.” He rarely took breaks while on duty, and when he did, it wasn’t to smoke or sleep like many of the doctors and nurses he knew but to crash and recharge his much-in-demand batteries for another round of healing. He only took as long as necessary to achieve an adequate boost.
Today had been a particularly and out-of-the-ordinary hectic day. He’d seen a lot more than his share of broken bones, sliced limbs, and shattered skulls to go along with the usual minor cuts, scrapes, bruises, and sniffles for the day.
What, was there a full moon tonight?
It would get even worse when the next barrage of patients arrived, all victims of a school-bus-meets-minivan vehicle accident on a nearby thruway.
In the meantime, Thayne needed to reach Maia to apprise her of the situation, much as he hated to do it, because it looked like he wouldn’t be getting out of here any time soon.
He tried the house first, not surprised when the housekeeper Maria answered, but he was unwilling to leave his message with her. He wanted and needed to speak to Maia directly. He told Maria as much and hung up from her to try Maia’s cell. When he got no answer and it went straight to voice mail, he assumed she was in a dead zone. Goddess knew there were plenty of them out in the boonies.
Thayne called his last resort and miraculously got him on his cell.
Was the universe trying to tell him something or what?
“Diga me!”
“Cade, it’s Thayne.”
“Hey, bro, what’s up? And you know you’re lucky you caught me. We were just getting ready to head out for horseback riding on one of the remote trails.”
“I don’t have a lot of time, and I have a huge favor to ask.”
“Shoot.”
“Do you know where Maia is?”
“Why?”
“I need to tell her something.”
“Are you calling to cancel?”
“I…” He already felt like a piece of crap, but the disapproval he heard in his brother’s voice made him feel a hundred times worse. Not to mention he could only imagine the same tone in Maia’s voice just a hundredfold more, with a sprinkle of disappointment on top.
“Thayne?”
“There’s an all-hands-on-deck emergency on its way in. It can’t be helped.”
“How late are you going to be?”
“The patients haven’t arrived yet, so it’s hard to tell, but I’m guessing very.”
“Why cancel? I can entertain her until you get home.”
“I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“After the way I treated you earlier?”
“Oh, you mean the whole wanting me to be scarce thing?”
Thayne couldn’t help the grin that split his face. “Yes, that.”
“I was going to ignore you anyway and crash.”
Thayne caught himself between gritting his teeth and laughing out loud. He finally gave in and chuckled against the mouthpiece. Cade was Cade. What could Thayne do with him? “All right. But I still have to cook when I get home.”
“If you even have the energy to, but since you brought it up—”
“I already owe you my life, coming to my rescue.”
“Oh please, as many times as you’ve bailed my ass out over the years, sometimes literally, I can do this for you.”
Thayne shared a laugh with his brother remembering Cade’s not-too-distant, wild past.
“Look, I know I’m no Bobby Flay or even you in the kitchen, but I can follow directions as well as the next guy, at least get things started.”
The piercing sound of fast-approaching sirens filled the brief lull. Thayne’s heart began its we’re-about-to-get-bombarded beat in concert. Adrenaline pumped through his veins with fight-or-flight eagerness and ennui. It had been this way since he’d become a doctor. He looked forward to the rescue and healing but not the inevitable crash after depleting his gifts in the spirit of supplementing and sometimes bucking modern medical procedures.
“Bro, use me,” Cade prompted, and when Thayne didn’t answer he asked, “Do you really have a choice?”
Thayne pressed his thumb and forefinger against his closed eyelids and sighed. It was the only indulgence he’d be allowed for the next few hours, because the first ambulance pulled into the bay. It was now or never. “I have to go. Take care of Maia until I get there!”
“You can count on—”
Thayne didn’t hear the rest of his brother’s vow as he had clicked “End Call” and slid his cell back into his pocket.
The doors burst open, and he met the EMTs as they wheeled a gurney, containing a small, badly bruised and bloodied figure in a neck brace, off the back of the ambulance.
It’s showtime.
* * * *
That couldn’t have worked out better had I planned things myself.
Of course Cade didn’t wish whatever emergency Thayne now faced on anyone, because he knew the next few hours would prove hard for his brother and whoever he treated. If his talent worked anything like Cade’s, Thayne would be emotionally and physically used up when he got home, in no condition to cook in the kitchen, much less anywhere else in the house.
Cade smiled at his joke, trying not to take too much pleasure in another session of lovemaking between Maia and Thayne being aborted.
Now he didn’t even have to crash the dinner. He would be an invited, welcomed guest.
“Hey, Malloy! You need to get the lead out.”
Cade glanced up to see Maia on her mount, a beautiful, spotted Appaloosa that she handled with such easy grace and skill anyone who knew horses would have thought she had been riding most of her life instead of just the last two years since she’d been on The Double R.
He smiled at her, remembering his vision of her before he’d even met her and how he’d imagined her on a horse like Lady Godiva. He had to squelch that thought as quickly as it surfaced for fear of getting hard right out there in the open for all the little guests’ kiddies to see.
“What’s up with you?” Maia asked.
“Who said there’s anything up with me?”
“I do, because you look like the cat that swallowed the canary.” Maia took the opportunity to dismount her horse, reassuringly patting the animal on his rump before taking him by the reins and making her way over to where Cade stood.
She watched him put away his phone and pointed her chin at his f
ront pocket. “Who was that on the phone?”
“Thayne tried to reach you,” he said and watched her shoulders slump as if she already knew why Thayne had called. Evidently, Thayne had already bailed on her at least once, and she hadn’t yet become inured against the disappointment.
“He cancelled our dinner.”
“No, not at all. He just wanted to let you know he would be pretty late. He asked me to keep you company until he got home.”
She looked at him doubtfully, and he didn’t blame her, really. Thayne asking Cade to take care of Maia until he got home was tantamount to asking the mouse to watch the cheese.
“He doesn’t want the entire evening to go to waste, so he figured I could entertain you in the meantime.”
“Really?” She bit her full bottom lip, and Cade had to stop himself from groaning out loud. It was all he could do, however, to switch his weight from one leg to the other and surreptitiously adjust himself. “You wouldn’t be pulling my leg, would you?”
Cade raised his hand as if taking an oath. “Scout’s honor.”
“You were a Boy Scout?”
“No, but that didn’t stop me from helping an old lady across a street a time or two.”
She rolled her eyes at him and scoffed. “Yeah, right.”
Cade laughed and wrapped his arms around her, drawing her close but not too close. “You know you don’t have anything to worry about with me or Thayne around, right?”
She looked up at him, frowning.
Cade silently cursed himself for letting the cat peek out of the bag and hoped it wasn’t too late to stuff it back in and tie up the sack tight. “What I mean is we would never let anything happen to you.”
“Well, um, that’s nice to know. I guess. I didn’t know I was in any imminent danger on the ranch, except from maybe an unlikely stampede.”
Cade shrugged. “You never know what’s coming down the pike.”
“You’re teasing my brain, Riddler, and usually I don’t mind trying to solve a good mystery, but we’ve got work to do and kids to train.”
“You go and I’ll catch up with you.” He gently pushed her away, back toward her mount. His jeans were getting a mite snug in the crotch area, and her being so close wasn’t doing anything to alleviate his condition, just exacerbating it.
She looked at him warily as she did his bidding, mounted her horse, then steered the animal around to follow the trail the rest of the party had taken to the riding path through the woods.
Cade watched her ride away and felt like his heart had been ripped out of his chest.
He wondered about the emergency in which Thayne now found himself enmeshed. He had a feeling the type was important and wondered, vaguely, if it had anything to do with the vision he’d had about the school bus. It was totally possible he had gotten it wrong and it had nothing to do with Maia’s past but everything to do with her future. He realized he had previously considered this possibility and had just as quickly discounted it, but what if?
Cade shook himself, trying to shake the bad sensations, too tragic to comprehend.
Why all these feelings of gloom and doom, anyway? It surely couldn’t have been because of his parents’ prediction of “evil at their door.”
That prediction was enough to scare the most stalwart skeptic, but he wasn’t a skeptic, not where the evil and weird were concerned. He had seen the worst that man could do and had spent a lot of time trying to make things better in his own small way.
He had a feeling, though, that “small way” would not suffice if he wanted to do his duty and keep Maia safe. He would need the help of his brother and some serious sex magick.
Cade was up for the challenge.
He just hoped Thayne would be, too, when the time came.
Chapter 12
Maia told herself she didn’t need to be uncomfortable.
No matter how much she tried to calm her nerves, however, it didn’t work. In fact it only made her more anxious.
She had been at work on the ranch and out on the trail with the man most of the day. Why should now be any more nerve-racking than earlier?
Well, first, they were alone and without the buffer of several screaming, enthusiastic, and inexperienced riders all looking to Cade and Maia for guidance and instruction. She’d had her hands full worrying about and teaching the kids earlier, full enough that she didn’t have time to address her attraction to her very hot and virile colleague—either consciously or subconsciously.
She now paid for that neglect in spades, her libido a wild she-beast jumping up and down, waving her hands inside of Maia, screaming, “Hel-LO! It’s me, I’m horny, and I want what’s coming to me now!”
Second, and probably more important, she was on her way to a dinner with two irresistible men she shouldn’t want but did.
Maia closed her eyes, and a vision of her most recent masterpiece sprang before her mental sight unbidden.
Oh Goddess, not now! Down, girl. Stay. Heel!
She squeezed her legs against the wet warmth that flooded her panties, barely able to hold back the sudden onslaught of arousal. Still, she shuddered at the sensations that rode through her, igniting all her erogenous zones.
“Are you cold? You want me to turn on the heat?”
Was she cold? Ha, not freaking likely!
Maia just shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. She didn’t know how long she could last in such proximity to half of the reason behind her condition without exploding. She wondered what she would do when Thayne finally arrived home and she had to face the other half of her quandary, both her fantasy men fully conscious and present in the moment.
Cade turned into the driveway, and Maia had an almost crippling sense of déjà vu, one that prevented her from opening her door and getting out on her own.
Cade didn’t seem to notice her inability to move. He probably took it for granted that she had been trained by Thayne to wait for her man to open the door for her.
When she still didn’t get out after he’d opened the door, however, he bent at the waist to stare at her, finally sensing a problem. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
“We’re here.”
“I know.”
“Are you going to wait out here for Thayne to arrive or come in with me?”
Maia turned to look at him, drawn by the heat she’d felt on the side of her face from his sharp gaze. “What are we doing, Cade?”
“We’re doing exactly what we’re supposed to be doing.”
“And how can you be so sure?”
He grinned, dazzling her with the full wattage of his Hollywood smile as he reached out a hand for her. “Trust me.”
She put her hand in his and let him pull her out of the passenger seat to her feet.
He wrapped his arms around her, drawing her close enough for her to feel his body heat through his clothes.
Maia returned his hug but tried not to snuggle too close or get further drawn in by the firmness of his abs, the broadness of his shoulders, the delicious smell of his aftershave, the rugged sexiness of the stubble shading his jaw, the crooked tilt of his full lips as he smiled, or the sweeping curl of his lush, girlish lashes.
She could go on, but put simply, the man was gorgeous and sex on a stick.
“You have no idea, my Little Maia.”
She tilted back her head at his cryptic words, looked into his eyes, and saw the serious expression. Something heavy was on his mind and had been on it since earlier. He just didn’t seem like he wanted to share it. “I have no idea about what?”
He shrugged.
“You can’t just drop a bombshell like that and not follow it up.”
“I don’t think you’re ready to know everything just yet.”
“Hello. Bombshell. We’ve established dropping one is not good.”
“It’ll be better if we talk about it when everyone involved is present.”
“Thayne?”
“Of course.”
&nb
sp; “Does he know any more than I do? Does he know what this is about?”
“He knows.”
Maia pouted, taking her arms from around his waist to fold over her breasts. “Well, isn’t that just peachy?”
Cade chuckled and put an arm around her shoulders as he steered her toward the front door. “I said he knows. I didn’t say he’s in agreement with me. That’s why we all need to air things out, to get everyone on board.”
“What, the Love Train?”
He just looked at her, and when he didn’t respond, Maia squinted at him as if to intimidate his six-foot, broad-shouldered frame from her elfin five-two stance—a lot of fat good that did. “Something tells me your agenda for the night and your brother’s agenda are not in synch.”
Cade nodded as he took out his key to slide in the lock. He turned it, opened the door, and entered the house in front of Maia to turn on the lights. “We’re not on the same page at all, but I’ll get him there.”
“You have such confidence in your persuasive abilities, don’t you?”
“Supreme confidence.”
She didn’t know whether his tone engendered her faith or her fear and wondered if his agenda was the same as hers.
Maia knew that Cade knew she was attracted to him, but did he think she was the kind of woman who would entertain the attentions of two men, two brothers, with the purpose of bedding them both…together?
She thought she should be insulted that he would see her that way but recognized that this perception wasn’t a lie. She did want him and Thayne. Her desire, however, didn’t stop at just the physical. She wanted so much more than sex, and that concerned her most of all.
Maia had never felt this intensely about any man, much less two. She had never wanted to know a man inside and out like she wanted to know the Malloy brothers. The men she came across usually were so shallow and self-centered. They didn’t arouse her interest beyond the superficial or the physical. This was fine to her, easier for her to handle. When men were too wrapped up in themselves, they didn’t have time to dig too deeply into her psyche, and this was a good thing as far as it concerned Maia.
