by BJ James
“But no matter what you decide, the stock is yours. It will be yours as long as Cade Enterprises exists.” Adams’ face was the stern face of the older brother. “If you’ll listen, I’ll lay out our options. If you still insist, we can argue later.”
“Tell me again why we’re doing this?” Dressed only in boots, jeans, gloves and a Stetson, Lincoln swiped sweat from his face with his forearm.
“To save our father’s pride?” Jefferson grunted as he hefted another fence post into place and tamped soil around it.
“What we’re doing,” Jackson drawled from his seat on the tractor, “is keeping the world in general, and the low country specifically, from knowing what a proud fool he’s been. With the funds from the merger of our company, we could hire others to get this done.”
The last had been accompanied by a sidelong glance at Adams, who had argued long and eloquently. Because ultimately there was no other recourse, and because the sons of Gus Cade loved the ornery bastard who was their father, Adams won.
His victory hadn’t been easy or swift. Which explained why the four of them were working in twilight. To a man, they were tired and hungry, but soon it would be dark. Then they could stop, and they prayed that Gus’ cook had something more substantial for supper than her usual toasted peanut-butter sandwiches. Which, Gus had gleefully informed them, she considered her specialty, and all her duties as cook required of her. Breakfast, lunch or dinner.
Pulling his sweat-stained gloves tighter over his hands, Adams hoisted a fence post over his shoulder. “Let’s finish this section and call it a day.”
“I’m for that,” Jackson chimed in. “As it is, my horses are going to think their throats have been cut.”
“I can still help with the stock. There’s nothing pressing waiting at the cabin,” Jefferson offered.
“Gus said you fixed up the old fishing shack down by the marsh.” Adams dropped the last post in the last hole Jackson had bored with the tractor. Jogging it into place and leveling it, he looked up, his gaze meeting Jefferson’s. “I’d like to see what you’ve done with it sometime.”
“Good Lord!” Jackson interrupted. “Where the devil did he come from? And what in blue blazes is he doing?”
“Who? Where? What?” Lincoln asked without looking up from the aged posts he was culling from a haphazard stack.
“Eden’s man.” Out of fatigue, Jackson spoke in shorthand. “On the porch. No,” he corrected. “Now the yard. There’s a fire.”
Adams spun around, his gaze touching on Cullen, then moving on. The man was never far from Eden. If he’d come to Belle Reve, she had, too.
But where was she?
Adams searched the porch and the grounds, but no Eden. It made no sense until the back door opened and Gus and his chair appeared with Eden a step behind.
Hungrily Adams watched her bend over Gus, settling him in place, seeing to his comfort. Then he heard her laugh, and all the tensions and exhaustion of the day no longer mattered.
“Eden,” he said softly, and didn’t notice as, one by one, his brothers turned to look at him. He didn’t see the surprise that transformed into knowing and pleased smiles.
Adams thought she would come to him. He hoped she would come to him. Instead, she waved and smiled and returned to Gus. “What the devil?” he muttered under his breath. Had she come to see Gus? Why would she? he wondered.
“Lord love a duck!” Jackson exclaimed. “I smell charcoal. The big fella’s cooking supper for us tycoons.”
“You hope,” Jefferson said. But the grin on his face said he hoped so, as well.
“There’s no other logical reason for Eden’s majordomo to stroll into our backyard and start a fire.” Lincoln looked from one brother to the other before he asked, “Is there?”
They burst into laughter, then by silent agreement tools were put away, and with the last post left sagging the three on foot hitched a ride to the barn with Jackson on the tractor. By the time they’d seen to the Arabians and washed up the bell used to call hands from the field was clamoring, and the mouth-watering scent of cooking steaks was redolent in the evening air.
“Thank you.”
“For dinner?”
“Among other things.” Adams held Eden’s hand loosely in his as they walked across a meadow that would be pasture again when the fence was completed. “Gus laughed tonight. Grudgingly, but he laughed. And he ate with good appetite. His nurses, when we can find them, say he usually only picks at his food.”
“Cullen gets the credit there.” Taking her hand from his and without missing a step, Eden slipped beneath his arm and twined her own around his waist. “He’s a magician when it comes to food.”
“You get no argument from me on that. But you were the one who made Gus laugh. I suspect that did him more good than the food.” Adams walked in silence for a time. Her hair brushed his bare arm; her scent enveloped him in a tantalizing cloud.
Pausing on a low rise, he drew her to him, wrapping his arms about her as she leaned back against him. Twilight had come and gone. The last of the sun lay like a rim of fire over the tops of trees surrounding the manor house. The stately old building that had been the birthplace of more Cades than Adams could remember was a darker, massive profile etched against the graying of the night.
“I never thought I would be here again,” he murmured into her hair. “I never thought I would see any of this again.”
“I know.” Moving within his embrace, she faced him. In the fall of darkness, she could see only the handsome shape of his head and shoulders. But she knew that if she could see more, there would be that well of sadness in his eyes.
Gus Cade had asked his eldest son for help. Without hesitation and seeking nothing, Adams had returned to the place he could no longer call home. And, seeking nothing, expecting nothing, he would give his father only his best. Eden fervently hoped that someday Gus would see the truth and offer his forgiveness as generously as Adams had his support.
But Eden knew Gus’ forgiveness would be a long time coming. In the meantime Adams would travel a difficult road. This had been only the second day of that long, bittersweet journey. A journey destined to grow even more difficult.
“You’re exhausted.” She stroked his face, tracing the shape of his lips with her fingertips.
Catching her hand in his, Adams kissed her palm and turned his cheek into its comforting curve. “An ongoing condition for some time to come, I’m afraid.”
“There’s so much to do here. I didn’t realize how much.” In Eden’s voice he heard shock for all she’d seen.
“None of us realized, except Jeffie. At least not until last year, when Jackson came back from Ireland and Lincoln from California. Then, just as Jeffie wouldn’t tell the three of us, the three of them wouldn’t tell me. If Gus hadn’t asked for me and Jefferson hadn’t called—”
Stopping his words with a touch, Eden murmured, “If Gus hadn’t asked and Jefferson hadn’t called, you wouldn’t have come back. And I wouldn’t be standing here hoping you would kiss me.”
“I’m dirty, sweetheart, and I stink of horses, but if I kiss you,” Adams warned softly, “it may not stop with a kiss.”
His body was taut and still against hers. But the desire that rushed through him was unmistakable. “I’ll take my chances,” Eden whispered even as his mouth was brushing hers. “Any day.”
His kiss was light and warm, but only a whisper over her lips as he groaned and wrapped her tightly in his arms. Burying his face in her hair, he drew her closer, held her more tightly, as if he could never be close enough.
“Adams?”
When she would have drawn away to look at him, to question in concern, he muttered, “Don’t talk. Don’t question. Don’t worry about Gus or me. Just let me hold you for a minute.
“Just let me hold you, Eden.”
In the cover of darkness, a worried frown crossed her face. But neither worry nor anything else on earth would have kept her from giving Adams what he wa
nted, what he needed.
“Yes,” she said in a hushed voice as her arms circled his waist and her body curled into his. With her cheek resting over his heart, she heard the wild, ragged beat of passion. She felt the mounting, heated tension in his body. She knew the desire he valiantly fought to deny.
Adams had struggled with himself since the first time they’d made love. Eden knew, instinctively, that he fought that same battle now. Just as instinctively, she knew this night would set the course for the rest of their time together. No matter how she might want to influence him or even seduce him with heated baths and scented oils, tonight it must be his decision. Adams already had too much to bear. She would not add guilt over an affair with Eden Claibourne to the lot.
So she held him, ignoring the painful clasp of his desperate embrace, wishing she could bear even a small part of his burden. And she waited.
Time lost its meaning. Borne on a freshening breeze, the laughter of Lincoln and Jackson and Jefferson as they argued and jousted went unnoticed.
Adams was aware only of the woman in his arms. Only Eden, whose arms and lips and body offered willing surcease for all that hurt. When he lifted his face from her hair, with the lingering scent of her a part of him, he wasn’t sure if he’d won his battle with the harsh man an outcast’s world had made him, or lost it.
Framing her face with his hands, he lifted her mouth to his kiss and found it waiting and giving. Eden had welcomed him back into her life with gentle ease. She’d given him love and kindness such as he’d never known. Love and kindness he would keep for his own and return tenfold. But he knew he couldn’t.
Eden must know that and understand.
“Eden.” Stroking her lips with his fingertips, mesmerized by the satin curves, he struggled to say what he must. “I can’t stay.”
“I know.” Her voice was hushed, resigned.
“When my purpose here is served, I’ll have to go.”
“Yes.” Her head was thrown back. But the pale glow of the rising moon cast no light on her face, blinding him to what she needed him to see. In the veil of night, Eden only hoped he could hear in her voice that she would never try to keep him.
“I can’t ask you to come with me.” Adams wouldn’t explain that his world was too brutal, too cold. He wouldn’t tell her the callous man he had to be to survive that world didn’t deserve her.
“I know,” she said again as softly and tenderly as before.
“You would have me?” His fingers tangled in her hair. “Knowing the day would come when I would go and not look back?”
“I would have you, Adams, under any circumstance. For as long as I can.”
“Dammit, Eden, you’re not making this any easier.” Whirling away, keeping his back to her, he said roughly, “Haven’t you figured out that I’m trying to drive you away?”
“Only because you can’t send me away?” Eden countered.
“God help me, you know I can’t.” Stiff fingers stabbed through his hair as if he had to punish something for his weakness. “But I should. If I were a better man, I would.”
“But not because you don’t want me, Adams Cade.”
“Never because I don’t want you.” Adams’ voice was harsh and tender at once.
Eden’s spine straightened now that she knew the course of their lives. She could live with his conditions. In this precious time she could live with anything—even her own shortcomings as a woman—as long as he wanted her. As long as he was here, she would love him in mind and body. When he was gone, she would love him as she’d always loved him, in her heart and her soul.
She had always loved him. She would love him forever. Everyone but Adams seemed to know. Even Nicholas Claibourne had known, when he asked her to come to the Marquesas as his wife, that she loved another man. That she would always love him so completely remained one of the elements Nicholas found most attractive in his young, unquestionably faithful and compassionate American wife.
But Eden couldn’t think of Nicholas now. Her mind was too full of Adams. Closing the distance he’d put between them, she laid a hand on his shoulder. He tensed but didn’t face her. “I’m here, Adams. Until you can say you don’t want me.”
With a hoarsely muttered curse, he returned to her. His embrace was unrestrained and fierce. “I’ve cursed myself for not being honorable enough to send you away. I’ve tried, Eden. Time and again, I’ve tried. But, damn my selfish soul, I can’t.”
“I know, Adams. I know, and I’m not going away. Not as long as you want me and need me.”
“How can I deserve you?”
“It isn’t a question of deserving.” Eden took his hand in hers as she stepped from his embrace. “This, you and I, whatever you want to call it, has nothing at all to do with deserving or not deserving.”
Adams chuckled hoarsely, and there was profound weariness in the sound. “I’d forgotten you were captain of the debating team in high school.”
“Ha! You weren’t in high school when I was. So how would you know?”
“I know a lot about you. Much that no one suspected I knew.” His voice thickened. Dehydration, a couple of beers with dinner and full-blown exhaustion had finally taken their toll.
“Sounds like love to me,” Eden teased as she slipped her arm around him to coax him back toward the house.
At some point that had escaped her notice, the younger Cades had taken their leave. Likely as wearily as Adams. With her usual foresight, Eden had asked Cullen to see to Gus before he left. In case the invisible nurses chose to remain quivering in their hiding places. Silly cowards, she recalled in disgust. Five minutes with Gus, and she had discovered that with any reasonably attractive female, his bark was worse than his bite.
In fact, the stubborn old hell-raiser could be quite charming when he wanted to be. Sometimes even when he didn’t particularly want to be. Both discoveries explained his four wives for four sons.
“What did you say?” Adams stopped in the middle of the meadow, his head bent toward her.
“I said you weren’t in high school with me.”
“After that.”
“I said it sounds like love.”
“Yeah, that.” Reaching for her, he drew her back to him. With his arm heavy across her shoulders, he asked, “Where were we going? Where is everyone?”
“First question—to the inn.” Eden matched her pace with his. “Second question—everyone else has called it a night. Even Cullen. We’re all that’s left of the party.”
“Did seem like a party, didn’t it?” Adams looked up at the house that was dark now. “Like old times, almost.”
It was always there. Even when he was numbed by too much work and worry and a morass of emotions, the hurt and sadness he thought he kept hidden still lurked and waited.
“Speak for yourself, Cade.” Eden chose to tease rather than commiserate. “I thought it was better than old times. No boys with zits and roving hands.”
Adams laughed aloud, his mood lifting rapidly. “Don’t be so sure you escaped scot-free. In fact, I was wondering what my chances would be of enticing you into the barn.” The smile he cast down at her was utterly wicked, utterly enchanting. “Have you ever made love in fresh, fragrant hay, sweet Eden?”
“Can’t say that I have.” With great relief, as they approached the drive, Eden saw that Cullen had taken Adams’ rental car, leaving her sedan. Which would make it easier to convince Adams, ever the gentleman, to let her drive back to the inn.
“Wanna try?” Adams had gone from despair to euphoria.
Eden would like to have taken credit for the last, but she suspected it was the result of a combination of circumstances. She suspected, as well, that she would rarely see Adams so relaxed again. “It’s a tempting invitation, but we wouldn’t want to shock the nurses, would we?”
“A rain check?”
In the glow from the line of gas lamps that lit the drive, she caught a glimpse of a twinkle in his eyes. He was teasing her, but two could play the
game. “Sure. It’s a date. Making love in a loft on a mountain of hay is every girl’s dream.”
“Sure it is.” Without an argument, Adams opened the driver’s door for her, then settled himself into the passenger’s seat. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t hold my breath?”
Eden was laughing as she steered through the tunnel of green formed by giant oaks. Wondering how long the mood could last, she drove in silence while Adams drifted into a light sleep.
“Oh, no,” Eden whispered as she turned onto Fancy Row. But for a few lights, the normally quiet street would have appeared deserted, except for the chaos in front of the inn. Revolving yellow lights flashed garishly, painting the faces of the small crowd gathered on the sidewalk in eerie shades.
In response to her cry, Adams was awake and alert, his gaze clear and sharp, without fatigue. When she brought the sedan to a halt in the middle of the street, he was out of the car instantly and circling to her door.
Taking her hand, Adams crossed the walk and threaded through the crowd. He paid no attention to the whispers of the onlookers; his attention was riveted on Jericho Rivers. Looking as tired as Adams had only a short while ago, Jericho stood among a group of uniformed deputies flanked by four squad cars.
Before either Adams or Eden could speak, Jericho was addressing their unasked question. “Easy, Eden,” he said, his deep voice rumbling from his massive chest. “Just a break-in. No one was hurt.”
“A robbery?” Eden couldn’t imagine it. A thief risked almost certain discovery, with guests and Cullen about at all hours.
“Breaking and entering, but we’re not sure yet about robbery,” Jericho explained. “Cullen says nothing that belongs to the inn is missing, but we need Adams to check his personal belongings. I doubt he’ll find anything missing.”
“The river cottage? How? Why?” Eden looked from Jericho to Adams and intercepted a meaningful look passing between them.
