Last Dance for Cadence (Corbin's Bend)

by Maren Smith

  And now there was Cadence Westmore, the ‘unofficial’ daughter of Venia Varner, just down the street. He knew Venia. Had been friends with her for years now, practically from the moment he’d come to Corbin’s Bend.

  It would have been so much easier to say no to her, but then…that lift of her chin, that stubbornness, that sass…

  This is my good girl behavior…

  His palm had itched. For the first time in years, his palm had actually itched.

  That more than anything else—her physical limitations, her lack of experience—practically shouted that she was the wrong person for the job. The last thing he wanted was to be physically or, worse, intellectually attracted to his children’s nanny.

  Her good girl behavior.

  God help him.

  Marcus watched her go all the way down the street until she turned into Venia’s driveway and disappeared behind a shield of all the trees and shrubs between here and there. Despite her limp, there had been a truly beguiling swish to Cadence’s hips.

  Running his hands through his short dark hair, Marcus shook his head at himself. He’d just hired her. Beguiling or not, he couldn’t afford to think about her swishes.

  No longer able to see her and knowing he still had his son to deal with, Marcus turned and headed back inside.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “But you just got here!” Venia protested, as Cadence packed the last few toiletries into her meager duffel bag. “I can’t believe you’re leaving already.”

  “I can’t sleep on your couch forever,” Cadence replied. “Sooner or later, I’ve got to start being a responsible adult again.”

  Venia frowned “Oh, like you ever stopped.”

  “I’m only going thirteen houses down the street.”

  “Thirteen houses can be plenty far enough when you’re on your own and in over your head.”

  “You said he was a nice man,” Cadence pointed out.

  “Marcus is a wonderful doctor and a very nice man,” the older woman agreed. “But he’s also got three kids, Cady. Growing boys, young and full of energy. I just…I don’t want you to bite off more than you can chew.”

  “You’re the one who wanted me to go after this job! If you didn’t think I could do it—”

  “Oh, I know you can do it,” Venia huffed, with an impatient wave of one hand. “I just didn’t think you were going to leave so soon.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Cadence soothed. “And if I’m not, I’m only a few houses down. That’s not so far away that I can’t walk back in abject defeat.”

  Venia tsked at her. “Don’t make me get the big stick, because I am not so old that I don’t remember where I put it.” She held out her arms, but when Cadence moved in to hug her, it wasn’t Cadence doing the comforting. “You’ll be fine,” Venia said, rubbing her on the back. “In all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never let anything defeat you.”

  Funny, as far as Cadence could tell, pretty much everything had defeated her to date. “I’m going to be late for work.”

  That was a lie, actually. It was a good fifteen minutes to seven o’clock. Even with her limp, it wasn’t going to take that long for her to walk to the Doctor’s house.

  “Want me to drive you?” Venia asked, then answered her own question in time with Cadence’s rejection. “Nope.” Venia held up her hands in surrender. “I know, I know. You’ll walk. Lord save me, you’re stubborn.”

  Hefting the duffle strap up over her shoulder, Cadence held up her hand to bid her Mama Venia goodbye, but an odd sound stopped her. Sounds, rather. Many sounds, sharp and slapping, and very quickly joined by muffled whimpering, then squeaking, then outright yelping. That sound was as shocking as it was unmistakable. Someone was getting hit.

  She turned around, her wide eyes following the wailing cries to the open window of Venia’s next door neighbor. She swung back to Venia, so shocked that at first she couldn’t make herself give voice to the incredible thought crashing through her head. “Is…is he…beating his wife? Should we call the police?”

  “Oh no, no!” Venia waved her hand, disregarding the notion with a laugh. “Never mind that. They’re, uh…” Venia glanced at what she could see of her neighbor’s house. “Well, they’re a little, um…kinky, I suppose you would say.”

  Cadence was appalled. “Can’t they do that with the window closed?” She lowered her voice when she said it, although for the life of her she didn’t know why. The neighbors obviously didn’t care who listened to them.

  Venia waved that off too. “I hardly hear them anymore. To each their own, right?” She came down off the porch, throwing open her arms for one last hug. “I miss you already,” she said with a sniffle and a smile.

  If Venia meant for the tears in her eyes to be the kick-starting distraction that got Cadence’s mind off the noisy neighbors and hurried her on down the road, then it worked. Cadence was almost halfway to Dr. Marcus Devon’s house before she got her own parting tears under control enough to realize what the older woman had done. By then, all she could do was tsk and shake her head at herself. It wasn’t as if she were moving half the world away, but maybe Venia was right: sometimes thirteen houses was plenty far enough.

  * * *

  Had anyone accused Marcus of taking more care than usual in his morning dress, he’d have hotly denied it. They’d have been right, but he’d have denied it anyway.

  “Here she comes, Dad!” Daniel called from his post at the window by the front door.

  The scramble of little feet instantly responded from both the living room, where his eldest, Michael, promptly shut off the TV, and from the kitchen where Buddy dumped his breakfast dishes into the sink, before both boys came running.

  “Places,” Marcus announced, checking his hair one last time in the hall mirror before he assembled with his boys by the door. He pointed at them. “Best behavior,” he warned. “I mean it.”

  All three gazed up at him with solemn, wide, innocent-seeming eyes. Yeah, well…the devil had his angels too, and one would have to know his boys to truly understand how the jury might still be out on which way they all swung.

  He pointed at them again, just to make sure they saw how serious he was, but by then, he could hear the step-limp, step-limp as Cadence climbed the three porch steps. He could have opened the door sooner, extended a hand, offered support while she heaved herself that last step higher, but his brief visit with her yesterday had been plenty long enough to tell him exactly how that would have been received.

  There was an awful lot of pride in Cadence’s willowy frame. He could just see it now, the look she’d give his fingers, that heated flush that would pinken her high cheeks right before she lifted her chin, snubbing his attempt to help. That lift of her chin had haunted him for a ridiculously long time last night. He’d actually lain awake in his bed thinking about it. Well, that and the saucy tilt and swish of her hips as she’d limped away from him, determined to walk despite her obvious pain. Determined to do what she could, if she could, all for herself.

  God, he found that sexy. Admirable, too. Maybe just a little bit aggravating around the edges. A woman on her own ought to be self-reliant, and he’d never been drawn to the wilting flower sort. But at the same time, a woman ought to know when to lean on her man’s strong arm.

  Except that he wasn’t her man. Her boss, sure, but not her man. He barely knew a thing about her.

  Her good girl behavior.

  No four words in existence should have this much power to fire a man’s imagination. He’d been alone too long. That was it, in a nutshell. He’d been alone and he was bringing a young, beautiful woman into his house for the first time since Stacy. Well, that wasn’t true exactly. There had been Libby, but right from the start she had been unavailable, already attached at the heart to her young husband. That had to be the difference. He’d never once been tempted by Libby. But Cadence…?

  He’d bet his life she was submissive.

  …my good girl behavior…

>   Last night, lying awake in his bed with a mind full of stubborn chin lifts, and sexy hip tilts, and a whole lot of ‘damn, but he knew better than this’ reservations, he’d still fantasized about all the possibilities that could be explored if he chose to cross the line she’d drawn in the proverbial sand using nothing but those four little words.

  “Do you want me to open it, Dad?”

  Marcus startled at Buddy’s hesitant tug at his arm just as a second set of knocks rapped the other side of the door. Oh yeah, he knew better than this, all right. But his heart still quickened and his palm still itched, and he still opened that door, affecting a friendly smile and a wave for her to come on in. “Good morning.”

  She was nervous, he could tell. Though she tried to hide it behind a smile, her eyes got wide when he moved aside and she drank in her first look of his boys.

  “Cadence,” he introduced, “these are my sons. Michael is ten.” He rested his hand on his eldest’s shoulder. “Daniel is nine.” He moved down the line, touching each boy in turn. “And this is Brody, my youngest. He’s six. We call him Buddy.”

  “Hello,” they said, nearly in unison. Michael and Daniel both extended their hands, offering her a smile and a shake.

  Not to be outdone, Buddy followed suit, but he was bouncing with the excitement this kind of newness brought to the family. “I put a flower on your pillow. So, there’s a flower on your pillow, if you’re wondering who put it there. Can we have macaroni for dinner?”

  “Oh, uh…”

  “I haven’t had a chance to talk to Cadence about menus yet,” Marcus smoothly interrupted. “She’s got a lot to do to get settled in now, and you boys are going to be late for school if you don’t hustle up. Lunches!” he called when the line of boys broke, scrambling for book bags and lunches.

  “Should I walk them?” Cadence asked, already preparing to go right back out the door and she hadn’t yet set her duffel bag down yet.

  Buddy came running back from the kitchen with his backpack on his shoulders and his lunch box. “She can hold my hand!”

  “They know where the bus stop is,” Marcus said, herding the boys toward the door. “Hold your brother’s hand,” he told the two oldest as they filed out past him.

  Bouncing out after them, Buddy thrust out both his hands and, rolling their eyes, each older boy took one.

  “Should I have come earlier?” Cadence asked as he closed the door behind them.

  “I have a feeling today is going to be hectic enough for you without adding our three-ring circus morning routine straight off the bat. Come on.” Marcus waved his hand, gesturing for her to proceed him past the stairs that led to the upstairs bedrooms, through the hall that bisected his home office from the waiting room, and into the back of the house where the kitchen and a second family room lay in its customary state of complete chaos.

  Marcus almost winced when he saw it. Bits of breakfast and breakfast dishes were scattered across the dining table and all the way to the kitchen sink. Toys littered the living room rug: footballs and blocks, broken crayons, an explosion of checker pieces and a Tickle-Me Elmo which had been thrown up on top of the high-backed entertainment center, probably because that was the highest point Michael and Daniel could reach that Buddy could not. Living in this every day, it took his standing beside Cadence, trying to see the mess through her eyes, before Marcus realized just how bad this all looked. He was mortified.

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized, bending to scoop up a discarded fork and a pair of Spiderman pajama bottoms on his way to pull out a dining chair for her to sit. He tried to choose the cleanest part of the table and hoped she wouldn’t be too grossed out by the spilled milk, splatters of jelly and smattering of Cheerios, to want to touch it.

  “It’s fine,” she said, limping in to start clearing the table when he went into the kitchen in search of a cloth clean enough to attempt a wipe down.

  “No, no. Let me get it,” he said, when she brought the first armload of dishes to the sink.

  “Don’t be silly. This is what you’ve hired me for.”

  True. Funny, how that didn’t exactly ease his embarrassment. The urge to apologize remained overwhelming.

  “You’re not seeing us at our best,” he offered, before realizing with a start that the cloth he’d just pulled out of the drawer was actually a pair of his own underwear. For the love of… He quickly wadded it between his hands and stuffed it down into his trousers pocket.

  “Guess I won’t be misled, then.” She moved through his kitchen as if she’d been made for it. Which was ridiculous, since one kitchen was pretty much like any other and, as she had said in her interview, she did know how to clean a house. She’d probably cleaned her own many a time. Except, his brain only too enthusiastically supplied, this was not her house. This was his, and what she was doing now in his kitchen felt so incredibly…intimate.

  He watched Cadence rinse off the breakfast dishes and fish a small plastic dinosaur out of the disposal before turning it on.

  Yeah, this was intimate all right. He’d definitely been alone too long. Now he just felt awkward. He didn’t remember it being like this back when Libby had been cleaning his house.

  Backing out of the kitchen, Marcus ventured back down the hall to his office, digging through the slight stack of papers on his desk until he found the manila file folder he’d made for her last night. By the time he’d returned to the kitchen, she had the dishwasher full of dirty dishes and was washing down the kitchen table.

  “Sit down, please,” he said, taking his customary seat at the head of the table. “Before we get into this too far, I’d just like to go over a few household rules. I’m a big believer in everybody being on the same page right from the start.”

  “Okay.” She finished wiping the table before she sat, one hand full of cereal crumbs and topped with the damp, dirty cloth.

  “You can dump that in the sink first, if you want. I’ve got some papers I’d like you to sign.”

  She looked down at her hands, her cheeks flushing slightly. “Right,” she said, immediately getting back up again. Limping into the kitchen, she emptied her hand and shook the rag out over the garbage can, then rinsed out the cloth and washed her hands. “Sorry about that.” She returned to the table, wiping her hands on a sheet of paper towel. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  She took the chair to his immediate right and, as he lay a few sheets of paper before her, sat down.

  “This first one is just your standard tax form. Everything here is legal and aboveboard. I don’t pay under the table.”

  “Right.” She accepted the pen he handed her and quickly filled in the W2. She glanced at him once before supplying her social, but he was right, he was going to be providing her paycheck and the IRS would expect a cut of that later on.

  “I pay every Friday, in case you were wondering, and I pay with a check so I’ve got a paper trail.”

  “Okay.”

  “This next one is simply a rundown of what I expect from you in accordance with your duties.”

  “Okay.” She took the second sheet of paper, a neatly listed printout with her daily tasks broken down under the subheadings of either Nanny or Housekeeper, with each key responsibility bulleted. She looked at him.

  “I know,” he said. “But I don’t like misunderstandings. I want you to keep a timesheet. From the moment you ‘punch in’, so to speak, until I take over at night, I want you to track your time. You’re not here to be my 24/7 slave. I’ll get my boys up in the morning, but it would be helpful if you fixed their breakfast. I need help keeping up the housework, but I don’t expect you to do any of the yard work. It would be helpful if you did the grocery shopping. Also, after school, my boys have activities that they’ll need to be occasionally taken to and picked up from. If you can make dinner, I’d appreciate that as well. The weekends are entirely your own, but should I get called out unexpectedly, I would hope I could count on you to watch my boys until I got back.”

  “Of c
ourse.”

  “Do you have any questions?”

  “No, not right now.”

  “Would you like to see your room?”

  She perked a little. “Yes, please.”

  When he got up, he automatically reached for her bag, but she snatched it up before he could do more than hook the strap.

  “I can get it,” she said briskly.

  Very stubborn, very proud.

  “Of course.” Marcus gestured for her to follow him. “My bedroom is upstairs, along with the boys. They share a room. There’s also a separate play room. Your room is on the main floor, just off the family room.” He took her through it and down a short, dark hallway. “There’s a family bathroom here, but you have your own private one in your room and a small kitchenette, which sounds really impressive until you realize by ‘kitchenette’ I mean, there’s a mini fridge, a microwave and a hot plate on a small table in the corner.”

  Opening the door that dead-ended the hall, Marcus stepped into a brightly lit room and promptly moved aside to let her through. It was a sizeable room. The walls were powder blue, with complimenting white lace curtains over privacy blinds that covered windows in three of the four walls. The windows gave her a prime view of the hedges that flanked his driveway, more hedges and the cherry tree blossoming on the side of the house, and the back yard currently strewn with toys. The bed was a queen-sized pillowtop. Very comfortable, or so he’d been told. The dresser could easily have held all the contents of her duffel bag, plus whatever she’d left back at Venia’s.

  He glanced out the window at the driveway. “You didn’t bring your car?”

  She flushed slightly. “It wouldn’t start. I’ll get it fixed with my first paycheck.”

  “We’ve got a local mechanic, Lelo. Let me know when you’re ready. I’ll give him a call.”