Last Dance for Cadence

by Maren Smith

  Yeah, Cadence thought. She just bet she did. Early morning booty call, and Marcus had answered.

  Still standing in the hallway, Buddy sulked as he stared into her room. “I didn’t get to carry anything.”

  “That’s ‘cause you spill everything,” Michael snapped back at him. “Tell her what you did with the milk.”

  “He spilled it,” Daniel supplied, sitting down on the bed near her feet.

  “All over the kitchen floor,” Michael added. “We didn’t have enough left for your cereal. We had to use coffee creamer.”

  Cadence looked at the glass of what she had assumed to be milk and tried not to think about how many heart-attack inducing servings of fat and sugar were staring back at her.

  “It’s vanilla caramel,” Daniel supplied. “It’s very good. I tried some.”

  Carla probably had never been a dancer or model or beauty queen and probably never gave much thought to things like fat, calories or sugar content. She probably put whatever the hell she wanted to in her body and might well even be a much happier person for it.

  Her blood curdled to do it, but she picked up the glass and took a sip.

  Daniel was grinning. “Pretty good, huh?”

  The saccharine sweetness was cloyingly strong. She hoped the smile she managed to paste on covered her involuntary shudder.

  “Mm,” was what she tried to say, but it came out sounding more like, “Does your dad go over to Carla’s in the middle of the night very often?”

  Michael and Daniel looked at one another. They both shrugged.

  What a terrible thing to do, trying to pump the children for information about their father’s whereabouts. Cadence was instantly ashamed of herself, especially since, really, what right did she have to be jealous? Hell, she didn’t even have the right to be mildly upset! What had she done? She’d slept with her boss. It’s not like there was a relationship there. He hadn’t made her any promises. So what if he found her so unsatisfying as a lover that he’d hopped right out of her bed and into Carla’s? Carla wasn’t needy like she was. Carla had two good working legs. Shapely legs. Legs Marcus probably had wrapped around him right now, pulling him in tighter, urging him deeper. And why not since it wouldn’t hurt Carla to do it.

  Did Marcus spank Carla the way he spanked her? Probably. Carla might actually even be crazy enough to enjoy it. She probably held his belt afterward, thinking about it the first time he told her to and probably even knew exactly what she was supposed to say when he asked her about it later on. Carla was probably a natural-born submissive who knew exactly how to make someone like Marcus happy and content for the rest of his damn life! And why was she on the verge of tears all over again now?

  “Is it that bad?” Michael asked, looking from the tray to the glass to her. “I could go ask Mrs. Thomas next door if she’s got some milk.”

  “No, no,” she assured him. “It’s really good, I…I’m just not very hungry right now. Um…How about you guys go put your shoes on? I have some errands I have to run today…”

  “Dad says you’re supposed to stay in bed,” Michael interrupted. “He’s got the car too.”

  “I have my own car.” With any luck, it might even start when she tried it. “Do you guys want to go see Mama Venia with me?”

  They looked at one another.

  “You’re going to walk down there?” Michael asked, cautious and seemingly confused.

  “I’ll bring my cane.”

  “Dad’s going to be mad,” Buddy piped up from the doorway.

  “I’ll leave him a note,” Cadence promised. She was already drafting it in her mind: Dear Cheating Bastard. Get bent. Love… No, love was inappropriate. She didn’t love him. Apart from the fact that he was a doctor, a spank-o-holic and knew how to put on a friendly face when the situation warranted it, she barely knew him. This might be the morning after, but really, they weren’t even lovers. She had needed to be held last night, so he’d held her. She had wanted to be wanted, so he’d given her that, too. What had they done last night? They’d had a one-night stand after knowing one another for one whole week.

  She didn’t know which was worse: her embarrassment or her shame.

  “Go get your shoes on,” she told the boys again, and she must have done it with the proper degree of authority and certainty since they all three of them obeyed without giving her more than a questioning look. Cadence got herself out of bed. She swallowed her grunts and groans as she walked herself to the bathroom and then got dressed. By the time she was ready to pen that note, she knew exactly what she was going to say.

  Dear Dr. Devon,

  Thank you for the job, but I think we can both see this isn’t going to work. The boys are with me. I’ll bring them back before dinner, but I just can’t be here when you come home tonight. I’ll have someone come get my stuff later. You can tell Brent I’ll be out of here by Saturday.

  Sincerely, C

  She left it on the kitchen table along with the cane Marcus had given her to use, before herding the children out the front door. The only things she took with her, apart from her purse, was the claim ticket she would need to get her mother’s ring out of hock, and Marcus’s debit card which she found still in her purse from last week’s shopping trip. To be perfectly honest, she’d only worked two days so she knew she didn’t have much of a paycheck coming. Although she knew what she was about to do amounted to nothing less than theft, before she lost everything for the second time this month alone, she was going to get her mother’s ring back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Her car started as if it had never given her a lick of trouble, ever. As Cadence sat behind the wheel listening to it idle, her first thought, rather than one of gratitude, was that the car was trying every bit as hard as she was to get her into trouble. Of course, she’d only be in trouble if she went back to Marcus. Considering the note she’d left for him, it was a pretty safe bet that that option was no longer hers to take.

  “I thought we were going to visit Mrs. Varner,” Michael said from the backseat.

  Cadence glanced at him via the rearview mirror, noting all three of their worried faces. Maybe they were reading her own indecision. She tried to smile. “We were, but uh…I’ve changed my mind.” She bit back her own excuse. She couldn’t exactly tell them that she’d changed her mind because the minute Venia saw her, her Other Mother was going to try to talk her out of this. The way Cadence felt right now, it honestly wouldn’t take much talking.

  She had no idea what she was doing. Oh, she knew, knew. It was hard not to recognize a burning bridge while dousing it in gasoline and setting bonfires to blazing at both ends. But what was she doing? She’d never stolen money before, but right now Marcus’s debit card was burning a hole in her pocket so hot that she could feel the numbers branding themselves into her thigh. And his three boys were sitting blissfully in the backseat, watching her and waiting. And the car was already idling.

  And what was the alternative except to just go back to Marcus’s house and pretend last night hadn’t happened or that it didn’t bother her that he had jumped right out of her bed and run all the way to Carla’s. It did bother her. It actually hurt like hell, even though it didn’t have a right to hurt.

  He was going to spank her if she went back, because even if he wasn’t at home right now, there was just no way he wouldn’t find out about this. She could hear it now: He’d probably bring dinner home again and there they’d all be, sitting around her bed while she lay in it, pretending as if she’d been there all day. He would say, “So, what did you guys do all day?” Someone, probably, Buddy, would pipe up and say, “We went to Mrs. Varner’s house and sat in Cadence’s car.” And then she would get spanked.

  She was so disgusted with herself right now, she actually hoped he gave her a good one. She deserved it.

  “I’m crazy,” she muttered, throwing the car into reverse and backing out of Mama Venia’s driveway.

  “Where are we going?” Michael asked. “Does
Dad know where we are?”

  “I left him a note,” Cadence assured. “And I’ve got my cellphone in my purse.”

  It didn’t have any minutes on it, but she had it and that seemed to put the boys at ease.

  “What say we go for ice cream and a movie?” Cadence asked as she headed to the gas station. No time like the present to start her thieving new lifestyle. While the boys ran inside to choose their ice cream, Cadence filled her tank on Marcus’s dime and tucked the receipt in her purse so later on tonight when she tallied up her sins, she’d know exactly how far from misdemeanor to felony she’d travelled.

  “We’re going the wrong way,” Daniel noticed from the backseat when she headed down Spanking Loop, the main street through Corbin’s Bend. Funny, how she hadn’t even noticed what this street was called when she’d first arrived. Boy, would that ever have explained a lot right off the bat. “The movie theater’s behind the community building.”

  “You have a theater here?” Cadence asked, glancing once into the rearview mirror when all three boys pointed back the way they’d come.

  “Back there,” Michael offered helpfully.

  “Oh…” Crap. “Um…well, actually. My errand is in Denver, so I thought we’d go to a movie there. Is that good with you guys?”

  “Dad!” Buddy straightened up as tall as his small boy frame would let him. His eyes and nose and one frantically waving hand peeked out the back window just as the doctor’s very familiar car drove past them.

  Oh, crap.

  Cadence hit the brakes hard enough that, even without speeding, she locked all four tires and left ten feet of slightly fishtailing rubber on the pavement. Her heart locked up too, a tight panging in her chest that hit so hard and so strong that for a moment she thought for sure she was honest to God having a heart attack.

  In the backseat, all three boys craned to see out different windows.

  “Was there a cat in the road?” Michael asked.

  “Did we hit it?” Daniel echoed, getting ice cream on the back passenger window when he pressed his face and hands to the glass in an attempt to see out ahead of them.

  “We’re okay,” Cadence assured them, clutching the steering wheel so tight that her knuckles whitened. “We’re okay. We didn’t hit anything.”

  Maybe Marcus hadn’t seen…but no. Twin taillights flashed bright red as Marcus hit his brakes just then. Unable to take her eyes off her rearview mirror, she watched helplessly as the shadow of his head checked her out via his rearview, then turned partway around to look at her directly.

  Oh no.

  Shifting into reverse, he backed into the nearest driveway, turned his car around, and—oh crap, crap, crap!—and came right back to her. Frozen, barely able to breathe much less to move, Cadence made it impossibly easy for him to catch up. The virtually non-existent traffic on this road didn’t hurt either. He pulled right up to her back bumper long enough for a single on-coming car to pass them and then he drew alongside her, already rolling down his passenger window. His look said everything she did not want to hear just then.

  “Hi,” he said, that mild tone of his as calm as ever.

  She squirmed, her bottom crawling so fitfully that holding still was impossible. A chorus of answering hails emerged from the backseat, but Cadence didn’t say a word. Her throat was every bit as locked up as the rest of her. She wasn’t sure she could make a sound.

  “What are you all up to?” He was looking right at her, the gray steel of his eyes making all the promises that his mouth wasn’t inclined to in front of his children.

  “We’re going to the movies,” Buddy chirped.

  “Is that so?” Marcus’s gaze never left her, but it seemed to sharpen just a bit, grow weighted with a whole different set of steely-eyed promises. “This is the wrong direction for the movie theater, Cadence. Corbin Bend’s movie theater is behind us.”

  “Cadence is taking us to Denver,” Buddy cheerfully supplied.

  “Is that so?” Marcus said again, the fingers of one hand drumming once, just once, along the curve of his steering wheel. “Denver, huh?”

  “I have errands,” Cadence tried to say, but he interrupted with a significantly less than cheerful, “Your car’s overheating.”

  Her gaze snapped to the temperature gaze even as the smell hit her.

  “Oh sh—” was as far as she got before the entire vehicle shuddered. A belch of steam and coolant followed the knocking ‘sprong!’ as something mechanical snapped under the hood. The engine coughed, rattled, and then died, the sudden stillness accentuating the angry hiss coming from under the hood and the even more telling stillness coming from the backseat.

  “Did the car just break?” Buddy tentatively asked.

  “Yeah,” Michael told him, and all three sat staring up at her with mirror images of solemn concern.

  Cadence stared at the dead control panel, horrified. Her stomach lurched so violently that for a moment she thought for sure she was about to throw up. She almost cracked her car door into Marcus’s when she shoved it open, fighting both the seatbelt and her rolling stomach to get her head far enough out not to lose it right there in her own lap.

  Marcus drove away.

  He could not have destroyed her any more thoroughly had he used a bomb. Cadence sucked air into lungs that refused to breathe and spat to clear the sickly watering out of her mouth, but she didn’t cry. She refused to cry.

  Not until she heard a man she didn’t recognize shout, “Hey, Doc! Need a hand?”

  “Please,” Marcus called back just before he pulled the door out of her hand, shoving it all the way open and scooping her hair up out of the way. “Breathe, sweetheart.” Although he had to be at the very least irritated (if not sincerely angry) with her right now, she could feel no evidence of either in his comforting hands. That’s when she cried, not because she was grateful, but because she was caught. She was relieved, though she knew she ought to be anything but. Her car was toast, her job and living situation were every bit as gone, and when he got her home and found out about the debit card, which she had no doubt in her mind that he would sit her down and make her confess to, then she wouldn’t have anything left. Not even her dignity.

  But for the here and now, he was holding her, comforting her in a way that left no confusion or doubt that there were consequences still for her to face and that they would not be easy to bear. She welcomed them anyway. She deserved them. She maybe even needed them.

  “It’s okay,” Marcus said, unclicking the seatbelt and helping her out of the car just far enough to fold her into his strong arms and hold her. “Go get in the car, boys. Michael, hold Buddy’s hand. Watch out for that truck.”

  Marcus held her securely, waiting until his sons had obeyed and the driver who had been patiently waiting for the road to unclog before cautiously going around them had gone, before stroking her hair back from her face. “Where were you running off to?”

  “I don’t know.” That was a grim and depressing truth. She could have given him any number of excuses, but once she got past picking up her mother’s ring and going back to Venia’s house, followed by the community’s inevitable eviction, she honestly had no idea where she could go. There was no place. She had nothing. “I just…I couldn’t stay.”

  “Why not?”

  She laughed through her tears, a soft, self-depreciating sound. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe if you put your heads together, you and Carla can come up with one really good reason.” She was ashamed of herself the instant she said it, but there was no taking it back. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “You think I slept with Carla?”

  “Didn’t you?” She gave him a look. “Why else would you go to her place in the middle of the night? Did I not do something right? Is there something I could have done better? Am I just not a…a good lay?” Her voice cracked a little on that last word, but before she could apologize again, Marcus caught her butt in both hands and lifted her against him. Her feet lost contact
with the pavement and she yelped, grabbing at his shoulders for stability.

  Carrying her around to the back of the car, he dropped her to sit on the trunk. The heat of the Colorado sun had warmed the metal. She could feel it searing in through the seat of her denim jeans. It wasn’t painful, but it did serve as a very stark reminder of what she was likely to feel a little later on.

  Bracing his hands on the trunk to either side of her hips, Marcus pinned her with a look. “I went to Carla’s because she fell off her porch and twisted her ankle…or at least that’s what she said. By the time I got there, she had magically managed to crawl her way back into the house and was trying to make me a drink. We had a talk, that’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. The next time she calls me, it’ll be because she needs my medical services or I will haul her butt before the Discipline Board and request a public penance the likes of which will result in an afterglow they’ll be able to see from space! I don’t want Carla.”

  She tried to look away, but he caught her chin and brought her face back to his.

  “I don’t want Carla,” he said again, just as firmly as before. “I know who I do want though. I guess what I need to be asking now is, what do you want, Cadence? I’m forty years old. I have three kids who depend on me, a job and ties to a community you couldn’t pry me out of with a crowbar. I look at you, sweetheart, and I see things…a lot of things…I really like. I won’t lie, I’m falling for you in ways I haven’t felt in years. I don’t know where this is going. Maybe six months, a year down the road, we’ll look at one another and decide this isn’t where we want to be. Right now, all I know is I don’t want to lose you, but I won’t keep chasing after someone who doesn’t want to stay. No, look at me.”

  Cadence raised her gaze back off her tightly clasped hands in her lap where it had fallen. It was just as hard for her to breathe now as it had been in the car.

  “Do you want to leave?”