All for You

by Christi Barth

  Sheesh. Her friends were so dramatic. Of course, they’d all met and bonded in drama club, so Casey should be used to it by now. She switched them from the twist to the jitterbug as Ella circled in, laughing. Motioned for Ward to join, because she needed his strength for her favorite dance move. One they’d perfected the summer they all were in Grease.

  He stood. Shook his head. “Say it.”

  “If I do, will you flip me?”

  Ward turned his back to her and cocked his arms. “Yes.”

  They were all nuts. “I want Zane Buchanan to be my boyfriend,” Casey shouted. She locked arms with Ward and squealed as he lifted her onto his back. Sooo much fun. Kicking her legs up, tightening her stomach, she was halfway over his head when a baritone voice she recognized all too well cut through their laughter.

  “You want me, huh? Why didn’t you say so?”

  Sure, Casey was hanging ass over braids suspended in mid-air. But that wasn’t the reason her cheeks superheated. Dancing didn’t embarrass her. Especially not when she knew how smoothly she and Ward moved as partners. The burning embarrassment came from being caught in her juvenile confession by the hot professor. At least she’d learned something: mortification kickstarted her even better than caffeine.

  * * *

  Zane paused on the stairs, one hand on the railing and the other clutching the heavy leather journal to his chest. Laughter had brought him down from the second-floor reading nook. He’d been told the store wasn’t open yet, so it surprised him. Overhearing Casey’s loud admission that she wanted to be his girlfriend? Now that was a bigger surprise. Pretty great way to start the day, too.

  Obviously caught off-guard, Ward had cut off his forward momentum so Casey hung with her legs suspended over his head. It looked uncomfortable. “Do I have to say a magic word to get you down?” Zane offered.

  Without any of the finesse they’d shown getting into the move, Casey half rolled off his back. Ward tried to reach around to help her. It killed his balance and they fell to the floor in a heap. Piper and Ella burst into laughter.

  “You guys gonna just stand there, yukking it up?” Ward spat out.

  Ella pulled her phone out of her pocket and waggled it. “Well, I might take a picture.”

  Zane swallowed his own guffaws and hurried the rest of the way down the steps to help. He plucked Casey up by her waist. Then it seemed easier to throw another arm under her legs and keep her in his embrace. Any excuse to hold her softness worked for Zane.

  “What are you doing?”

  “When you sign on as my girlfriend, you’re entitled to the five-star treatment. Your feet never have to touch the floor.”

  Color flashed into her cheeks. “I meant, what are you doing here? The store’s barely open.”

  So she didn’t want to talk about her admission? Didn’t plan to commit to signing the official boyfriend/girlfriend pact on the spot? Zane didn’t care. He knew the score. Besides, she wasn’t exactly trying to wriggle her way out of his grip. Not with one arm wound around his neck and a hand splayed across his chest. Two fingers rested on the bare skin in the vee of his blue-and-white-striped polo shirt.

  “What are you doing here?” he lobbed back.

  “We all meet here for breakfast before work a couple of times a week.”

  “Cosgroves is our unofficial clubhouse,” Ella said. “We always hung out here during school. Once we all came back to town, it felt right to keep the habit going.”

  “Donuts, ice cream and free-flowing soda? Talk about a teenager’s palace.” Ward scrambled to his feet. “Plus, Dawn let me put money in the register for condoms without actually showing them to her. Saved us both a world of embarrassment.”

  Piper gasped. One hand flew up to cover her mouth. “You never told me that.”

  “It was on a need-to-know basis.” Ward stalked right into her space and loomed over her. “You, for damn sure, never needed to know about my condoms.”

  The teasing, playful atmosphere vanished. Casey’s fingers curled, nails now scoring into Zane’s flesh. It didn’t take a huge leap to guess that Piper and Ward used to be an item. The only questions were how long ago and how serious. Neither of which he’d be stupid enough to ask right now. But as the uncomfortable silence grew, Zane knew he needed to do something. Casey had stiffened in his arms. Next step after that would be trying to get down, and he was in no hurry to relinquish her. So he perched on a stool and shifted her into his lap.

  “As a professor, I try never to let a question go unanswered. So.” It was a crappy segue. Obvious as hell. But it was all he could come up with on the spot. Zane stroked a hand down one of her braids, hoping it would soothe the tension from her. Okay, and because the softness felt amazing. “I met Dawn yesterday. We chatted for a while. When I told her I was a sociology professor at Hobart, she thought I might like to take a peek at the town journals. Even agreed to let me in early so I could read undisturbed.”

  Oddly, Casey stiffened even more, before all but leaping off his lap. She grabbed her mug, and took a big sip, eyes never leaving his over its rim. “Did you tell her about your other job?”

  “What?”

  “The whole cult expert thing. Did you tell her about that?”

  Piper slammed down her mug. Ella choked on her coffee and started coughing. Ward thumped her on the back. Casey inched backward toward them, as if retreating to the safety of her friends. Geez. She hadn’t reacted well the first time he’d mentioned it, either. He knew cults often brought out strong emotions in people: disgust, hatred, misunderstanding. Or in him, curiosity. Evidently Casey really didn’t like them.

  But that was okay. Cults were a quirky specialty, at best. Zane was used to not being the life of the party when his career came up. At least, until he hit the bestseller list and inked the Hollywood deal. Then a lot of people were suddenly fascinated by his anecdotes.

  “No, I didn’t mention it to Dawn.” He walked over to the line of silver carafes and poured himself a mug. The thing was the size of a skull and painted black with zebra stripes. “My other career didn’t seem to impress you at all. Gray practically put himself to sleep talking about my book. So I figured I was doing a public service by not bringing it up.”

  “A famous author like you?” Ward slapped him on the back. “Go ahead and brag. You’ve earned the street cred, right? Why not take the victory lap?”

  “The knowledge—and the paycheck—are reward enough. If I wanted bragging rights, I’d have become a neurosurgeon. Or an astronaut.” On the red-eye out here, Zane had devoured a book about life in space. The testing and conditions astronauts dealt with blew him away. “Did you know that without gravity, the sinuses can’t drain? So the whole time they’re up on the Space Station, it’s like having a horrible cold?” Because it was there, and he was curious to see how it complemented the hazelnut blend, he shook some cinnamon on top of his coffee.

  “Still, I bet they have to beat women off with a stick once they’re back on earth.” Ward shook his head. “That’s worth skimping on tissues for a few months.”

  “You’re right. I should’ve chosen a career path based on how much of a babe magnet it’d make me.” Zane looked over, but Casey didn’t respond at all to his joke. Hmm. Hoped she knew it was a joke.

  “I run a distillery. I’ve literally got women falling down drunk in front of me. Hard to beat that.”

  The bell on the front door jangled. Zane glanced at his watch. The store must be officially open now. Unless there were more people expected in this private breakfast bunch. Time to corral his ranger into another date. “Look, Casey, I’m glad I ran into you. I’ve got a question I want to ask.” He backtracked to grab the journal he’d dropped. Ella beat him to it.

  “I’m sure you’ve read enough for one day. Decades of small-town minutiae about people you don’t know can’t be very stimu
lating.” She passed it to Casey, who handed it to Piper, who dropped it on the counter and shoved it against the wall.

  “Read enough? I’ve barely begun.” If he could swing it, he’d take both of those bookcases packed with journals back to his room at the Manor. Just hunker down and binge his way through them. “This kind of reading is a sociologist’s dream. I’m delighted by them. Such a fascinating example of problem solving via group think.”

  Ward blew a cooling stream across the top of his mug. “The problems don’t always get solved. But you sure do hear everyone’s opinion. Whether you want to or not.”

  “It isn’t just problem solving, though. These books are a catharsis. A way of reaching out to touch everyone at once. Look at what I just found.” He grabbed the book and thumbed back to his spot. “I have no words. Since the town meeting where you voted unanimously to help me, to help run my business and fund the search, I’ve been overwhelmed with gratitude. I couldn’t have pulled this off without your time and money. We can’t risk formalizing an IOU with a bank, so this is my vow to pay you back. And now you’ve all pledged to keep our secret.” Zane jabbed his finger at the page. “Look at that. Tear tracks. Powerful stuff.”

  Ward craned his neck to take a look. “I wonder what the secret was?”

  “I wonder why this person would’ve done something so dumb as to commit a secret this huge in writing. Your dancing interrupted me before I could turn the page. Hang on.” Zane flipped forward, scanned the first few lines, and then sat heavily, his knees just about giving out beneath him. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be that simple, after all this time. Right after he’d given up a decade-long quest, had he really finally found his personal white whale?

  “The ‘Light Searchers’ destroyed many lives. But not all. The people of Seneca Lake have saved one child from its clutches. We’ll be grateful to you all for the rest of our lives.”

  Light Searchers. Right. Whoever wrote this might have thought they were hiding something, but they weren’t hiding it from him. It was just a clumsy and obvious attempt to disguise the real name of the cult.

  “Light Searchers, my rosy red ass.” Zane drilled his finger into the journal. “This is about the Sunshine Seekers. He’s here,” he murmured. Son of a bitch, he’d done it. Zane could barely process the words in front of him. It was almost anti-climactic. This wasn’t the result of any of his research, any of his literal pounding on doors. This information had, instead, actually fallen into his lap.

  “Who?” asked Ward.

  “The Lone Survivor.” Zane jumped back up, turned in a circle with the book in his hands. He wanted to run outside and hurdle over something. Excitement surged through him. Dropping the book on the table, he grabbed for Casey’s hands. Stared into her gorgeous green eyes while he shared his joy with her.

  “I’ve spent my entire career looking for survivors of the Sunshine Seekers cult. You know, because when those people died, it fragmented. Everyone who didn’t go to jail disappeared. And that was after signing non-disclosure agreements with prosecutors.” Zane grabbed a breath. Told himself to slow down. Remembered not everyone lived and breathed cults like he did. Even though it had been all over the news for months on end when it happened.

  She cleared her throat, clearly taken aback by his enthusiasm. But at least Casey’s hands stayed wrapped around his. “What happened? Why’d they break up?”

  Zane appreciated her willingness to play along. “It didn’t happen by choice. This wasn’t one of your classic end of the world cults. It started out way back in the sixties, as a free love commune. Over the years, guided by generous doses of LSD, the leaders decided to formalize things into more of a cult. Religious overtones got stronger and stronger.”

  “What religion?” asked Ward.

  The opportunity—and to him, the fun—to share his highly specialized knowledge was something Zane never ignored. He spun Casey in until her back rested against his chest, and crossed his arms at her waist. “Originally, the Sunshine Seekers was just a catchy, hippie name for a bunch of people who lived and loved together. But once the sixties passed and membership dwindled, they infused it with an amalgamation of sun worship. There was a total solar eclipse in 1970, and they used that to jump-start the whole thing. It still hovered on the fringe, as your dangerous cults go, but each successive leader ramped up the levels of crazy.”

  “That’s your scholarly term for what happened? Levels of crazy?” Casey’s voice had an edge to it. Probably disdain, or boredom that he’d gone into full lecture mode. Or both. Rebecca used to get annoyed and then tune him out all the time. He’d better wrap this up before Casey did the same.

  “More or less. It all fell apart when four people died in a sweat lodge session. It was supposed to tie in to the Aztec mythology, that the Sun God Tonatiuh demanded human sacrifice in order to move through the sky.”

  Ella’s jaw dropped. “Obviously, human sacrifice is a no-go in the modern world.”

  “True. So the Sunshine Seekers demanded suffering. The heat of the sweat lodge was supposed to send you on a vision quest to join up with Tonatiuh. Instead, the people kind of parboiled.”

  “That’s horrible.” Piper looked astonished. It was the reaction he often got when he told this story. People were shocked that modern Americans would subject themselves to such conditions. What they didn’t understand was that the desire for true happiness trumped logic nine out of ten times.

  “To be fair, it was accidental. Deemed negligent homicide. But once the police cracked open the lid on the crazy, a lot of bad things came to light. They discovered there were fortunes being swindled by ‘high priests’ at a certain level, and not dispersed to the rest of the members.”

  Casey set her jaw. “Greed always messes up religion.”

  “That it does. The guilty went to jail. The members in the dark about the felony stuff went off the grid completely once law enforcement was done with them. This all happened before anyone, press or scholars, got to interview them. Once the legal documents were signed, nobody would talk. I know, because I’ve tracked them all down and tried. All except for one. The Lone Survivor.”

  “What made them different?” asked Ward.

  “It was a child. Too young to be required to sign anything. I’ve been on a wild goose chase trying to track it down. This makes it sound like it’s here. Right here,” Zane shouted, waving the book in the air.

  Casey flipped the cover shut. “That’s a really old journal. Even if you’re right, there’s no guarantee they’re still here after all this time.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m too excited to be sensible right now.” Zane lifted her off her feet and swung her around in a circle. And kept at it until she threw her head back and laughed, finally catching the contagion of his elation.

  “Well, I’m glad you can cross this mystery off your list of things that keep you up at night.”

  “This isn’t just a check mark on a piece of paper. This is amazing. Incredible. Like Christmas arrived six months early.”

  “Guess if this is your big present, then I won’t bother to start knitting you a sweater.”

  Zane set her down carefully. “You can knit?”

  “Yes. I can also mend a torn hem, bake a lemon meringue pie, and change my own oil in the Jeep.”

  “You’re the whole package. Is there anything you can’t do?”

  “I should probably make you wait to learn about my failings.”

  Fair enough. Zane was in no hurry to admit that he racked up speeding tickets like confetti. His foot found it impossible not to press the pedal to the floor. “I bet you’ve never failed at anything you set your mind to.” He cupped her shoulders and squeezed. Started to pull her in for another hug, but Casey twisted from his grasp.

  “Sorry, but I’ve got to get to work. I busted my butt to get up on time after you kept me up so
late last night. I won’t let you lure me off track.”

  Zane figured he should feel guilty. His class only met once a week. Poor Casey had to clock in daily. But he didn’t. They’d had too much fun for him to regret a moment of their time together. He would, however, try to remember not to overdo it on work nights. Maybe keep bringing her lunch everyday instead, as a way to squeeze in more time without burning the midnight oil. “I’ll make it snappy. Here’s my question: Will you be my date to a party?”

  “We’re the only people you know in town. How’d you get invited to a party?”

  “It’s a meet and greet the college is throwing for me.”

  “A faculty mixer all for you? Wow. It sounds like a big deal.”

  It was. The department was pulling out all the stops to woo him. He’d spent enough years in academia to be impressed and honored. But Zane could tell Casey was already halfway down the road to freaked out, and he didn’t want to hasten her journey.

  “Open bar, which sounds fun, but I’ve been to enough of these to not expect anything close to decent wine. Safest to stick to gin and tonics. Appetizers, some mingling—you showed me your world. I want the chance to return the favor.”

  Casey’s head swiveled to look at Ella and Piper. They grinned in response. Which Zane appreciated, but he wasn’t thrilled she’d checked in with them first. He hadn’t offered to spirit her off on a week-long trip to Mexico. It was a couple of hours of conversation in her hometown. Why’d she have to check with the peanut gallery?

  Had he missed her taking some giant step backward? Had he pissed her off and not realized it? Then it hit him. How he’d just run off at the mouth for probably ten minutes straight about his favorite topic. Shit. Was she worried he’d yammer on about cults all night? The day Zane signed the divorce papers from Rebecca, he’d sworn never to do that again. Never to drive away a woman with his dedication to exposing the truth.

  “It won’t be all work talk,” he promised. “Everyone brings a date. We’ll talk about normal things. I promise nobody will drone on about sociology all night. Or if they do, we’ll just walk away. We can even have a signal.” Zane scratched the back of his neck. “Do that, and I’ll eject us from the conversation. Simple and fast.”