by Sophie Oak
“He doesn’t talk about it, darlin’. It’s the one thing he hasn’t really shared with me. I know what I know because I’ve read the articles about the accident and I’ve heard him when he dreams about it. His dad lost control of the family car in the middle of one of the worst storms in his hometown’s history. Violent rains. A couple of tornados touched down. Pure grade A Florida Panhandle weather. The river they lived near flooded and the car went in. Only Cade came out. Search and rescue found him clinging to a floating tree trunk three miles down the river from his parents’ car. He spent the night in that river. When he has dreams about it, he sometimes struggles to breathe.”
Tears filled her eyes. How horrifying it must have been, just a kid fighting to survive when he knew his parents were dead.
“His mom and dad died on impact, blunt force trauma. But his sister went into the river alive. Her seat belt jammed. I’ve always wondered if Cade knew she was alive and couldn’t help her. He carries this guilt around like a backpack. He seems to collect more along the way. He blames himself for you nearly dying.”
Gemma turned over, looking him straight in the eyes. “That was your fault.”
He gave her that look, the one that told her she would be in serious trouble if she didn’t backtrack. She kind of loved that look.
“Fine. It was stupid.” That day seemed like forever ago even though only three days had past. She felt different. Stronger. And a little more willing to cop to her mistakes. “I was pissed, and I walked out. It’s not Cade’s fault. I’m stupidly organized, Jesse. I make lists of the lists I need to make. I have a handbag that contains enough crap to run a third-world country. I knew not to walk out without it. I knew what could happen.”
She just hadn’t thought about it then.
His hand came out, cupping her cheek. “Then why did you do it?”
She wanted to give him a crap answer that wouldn’t reveal too much of herself, but then he would likely growl and send her another of those patented looks. It was easier to just tell him the truth. “There was a little part of me that was thrilled when Pat showed up because I was mad at you and I wanted to show you both that you couldn’t control me.”
“That’s my girl.” He sighed and rubbed their chests together. “I’ll spank you for that later.”
He would, and she would enjoy it. “You really don’t care that I’m a righteous bitch?”
“You aren’t a bitch, Gemma. You have certain aggressive tendencies toward making your point clear.”
“Everyone calls me difficult.” Even her parents had been at a loss with how to handle her, but Jesse seemed to have the magic touch. “My mom and dad took me to a shaman when I was five. He said my aura was hard to read.” Even to the hippie kooks who tolerated everything from ancient aliens to obnoxious tourists, she was difficult.
He smiled that serene smile of his that tended to calm her down even during the worst situations. “Gemma, you are difficult. You’re headstrong and proud and so smart I can’t keep up with your brain half the time, but that’s not a bad thing. The best things in life are hard. Most of the worst stuff that ever happened to me happened because someone took the easy way out. I don’t want easy. I want beauty, and beauty is something you work for. Baby, you’re beautiful. You just don’t know it yet. You don’t know what you could be.”
All she wanted to be was in between them. She was down a man. “Where do you think he went?”
“Probably to Hell on Wheels. It’s a bar. I’ll go looking for him in an hour or two. I’ll drag him back home.”
She liked the way he said home. She loved the fact that their clothes were neatly folded in drawers next to hers. She hated that Cade’s duffel bag was sitting on the floor just waiting to be packed up and carried away. “You can drag him back, but I don’t think I can make him stay.”
She’d had one lovely moment when everything seemed to fall into place. Just for a second, Cade had seemed perfectly satisfied. Even the knowledge that Max Harper knew she’d been laid out on the hood of a Camaro hadn’t killed her afterglow. After they’d dressed, Cade had kissed her and walked her over to the Cut and Curl, and she’d had her toes painted a bright, deeply unprofessional turquoise and relaxed, thinking she’d found the way to Cade’s heart. She would just make love to the man until he saw things her way.
Then, not two hours later, she’d heard him talking to Jesse and they were right back where they’d been before. “I’m not secure enough to think this isn’t about me.”
“Baby, this is about Cade. He cares about you. He just doesn’t care about himself enough. The fact that he’s still here says something. Give it just a little time. Don’t give up on him.”
She didn’t want to give up on him. If Cade left, she wouldn’t be whole, but Jesse was enough for the moment. “Is all that stuff you said about your mom true?”
He turned over. She wouldn’t let him get too far. She put her head on his chest, her arm around him. She was happy when he relaxed and cuddled up to her.
“Yeah. It’s true. But don’t think everything was bad. Before she hit the meth, she wasn’t a horrible person.”
“She didn’t have any skills, did she? Did she get into prostitution to feed you?”
His head came up, staring down at her like that was the last thing he’d expected to hear.
“I did a stint working for a court-appointed attorney in the city. I met a lot of prostitutes. Heard a lot of stories. They don’t get into it because they love sex. They do it because they’re hooked on drugs or they don’t know how to feed themselves. You don’t have to worry about me looking down on you, Jesse. You think because I worked in a fancy firm that I don’t know how the world works, but I’ve seen it from all sides. People are just people. Good and bad. Poor and rich. They’re just looking for that one thing that makes them happy.”
He took a long breath, hugging her close. “See, that’s what you could be, baby. Difficult and amazing. And yes, she took her first john because my dad was in the pen, and he’d left her with more debt than she could handle. We lived in a motel after dad was gone. I got shoved into the bathroom when she had clients. Her one thing turned out to be meth. She loved it more than me. More than herself. More than anything.”
She sat up, staring down at him in absolute wonder. She had seen more of the world than she’d wanted to, but she’d never seen anything so lovely as Jesse McCann. He’d grown up in the worst of circumstances. He should have fallen into all the cracks that would have tempted him along the way. Drugs. Violence. Hate. Self-loathing. But he had avoided them all and come out with a kind heart, a heart that could love openly. His friend. His neighbors. Her.
Gemma Wells was a smart woman. She’d graduated at the top of her class. She’d gotten everything she could have wanted. But she knew when something better came along. One thing. She’d thought it was fortune and position. It turned out she was just a woman like the rest of them. Love. She wanted love.
“I love you.”
“What?” Jesse sat up beside her. “I tell you that my parents are a convicted killer and a drug-addled prostitute and that’s when you tell me you love me.”
She could do him one better. “I want to marry you.”
His whole face softened, and he gave her words back to her. “Baby, you be sure.”
She was sure. But she was sure of something else, too. “I love Cade, too.”
He pulled her close, bringing her back down to the bed. “I want us all to be together, Gemma. I love Cade like a brother.”
She grinned. “Most brothers don’t share women.”
“They do in Bliss.” He got serious. “I want to stay in Bliss. But if you need to go back to New York, I figure my home is with you now. You have to know that even if Cade doesn’t come back, I’ll go where you go.”
“I got a letter from the firm today.” It had come by the hand of a deeply confused FedEx guy who had knocked on every door in the valley before getting to her. Apparently, overnight servi
ces didn’t make it to Bliss County very often. It had been a formal invitation to come back with a letter from the head partner himself.
Jesse seemed to hold his breath. She knew she should tell him she’d already decided that the firm could fuck itself, but hey, she was difficult. “What’d they say?”
“They want me back. They’re willing to reinstate me at a fifteen percent raise to go along with my promotion to junior partner.” It was an amazing offer. Everything she could have dreamed of. She didn’t have to apologize. She could just walk back into Manhattan and reclaim an even better life than she’d left behind.
Jesse’s face went blank. “All right. I think we should talk about this. I don’t know that firm is the best place for you. When do you have to give them an answer?”
“When Hell freezes over, but I’m not going to tell them that yet.”
“Gemma?”
It was past time to put her brain to work. “It’s too easy. They have zero reason to bring me back. Well, not any I’ve figured out yet. I’ve been going over and over this ever since I got that damn letter this morning.”
“Well, they’re bringing you back because you’re good.”
She didn’t buy that. “Jesse, you obviously haven’t met many lawyers. At my level, we’re all good. Quite frankly, there’s always another up-and-coming genius, and most are way less difficult to deal with than me. It can’t be that they’re worried I’ll sue. There’s extensive evidence out there that I had a breakdown. I could fight the firing, but it would be a long, expensive suit, and I would probably lose. So that’s not the reason.”
“Then why?”
“I don’t know. I checked my computer. I don’t have anything suspicious on there.” She sighed. “I thought for a minute that maybe I walked out with important data or something. But they confiscated my work laptop and my personal one is fairly boring. Unless they want me for my mega scores on solitaire.”
It was a conundrum.
“Didn’t Patrick say they sent him?”
Yep. And that was another piece that didn’t fit. “I called the firm and asked for him. I thought maybe he’d gone back and he’d just been dodging Nate. I used Mom’s cell. It has a Chicago area code. I guess I was trying to trick him. I was told he’s on a case right now in Buffalo. They either don’t know he came here or they’re lying about where he is.”
None of it made a lick of sense. And she’d had another little note in the mail, too. One that pointed out an entirely new problem. “And you might rethink the whole marrying me thing. My health insurance doesn’t kick in until next month and the hospital bill for my little stubborn fit is in the five figures.”
“Hey, don’t you worry about that. We’ll make a payment plan. I might not make a ton of money, but I have a little saved up. We’ll take care of the hospital.”
A sweet thought. He acted like they were a team. Like her parents had behaved. It was a scary thought. She’d really given up on the whole “happily ever after” thing when her dad had died, but now she understood what her mom had been trying to tell her all along. What her dad had tried to tell her at the end. It would be better to have that ache than to be whole and empty. That ache her mother felt meant she’d been loved.
She sat back, her whole soul going soft. She would fight for Cade because this was a meaningful fight. And she should look into Calvin Township. They had craptastic lawyers who couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag if it was open, and there was a big arrow painted on the side. She couldn’t take the case, but she could ask around and see if there was any way to help the town.
Her mind started working in an odd loop, making connections. The heart. The letters. The pictures. So little time in Bliss and so much debt already accrued. The offer. The easy way was often the worst way. The pictures. She needed to figure out a way to get those pictures out of her head. Now that she was settling down, she couldn’t help but think about those kids. There was only so much time anyone had. The idea of those kids having less time than they should have was unsettling. Sure the EPA had cleared the company, but the EPA wasn’t infallible.
Jesse kissed her neck, working his way down to her breasts.
She was drugged by sex. That was why she wouldn’t even think about going back to Giles and Knoxbury. She’d turned into a raging sex maniac. If they had wanted her back six months ago, she would have run back to New York, but no, they waited until she’d gotten to Bliss and found a going-nowhere job where a crazy lady brought her muffins and guilt pictures and hot mechanics fixed all her girl parts up so she hummed just right. The firm had terrible timing. Not even Patrick’s lame-ass attempt to kill her would get her out of Bliss now.
Timing. Location. Pictures. Fuck.
She sat up. “They didn’t give a shit about me until I came to Bliss.”
Jesse’s eyes were glazed with heat. “What are you talking about?”
Her mind was a whirling dervish. She hoped she was making a lick of sense. “Think about it. Patrick didn’t call me until I was here. The firm didn’t care if I lived or died until I came to Bliss. Bliss, a town just an hour away from the site of their biggest case right now.”
“How do they know where you are?”
She’d been so dumb. “I had one friend at the firm. And I wouldn’t even call her a friend, per se. More like a work buddy I had lunch with every now and then. I was a little surprised when she called a couple of months back and asked how I was doing. I called her right before I came to Bliss to see if I could get her to sign the paperwork to close my storage shed. She asked where I was going, and I told her Colorado. She had to have been keeping tabs on me.”
“What do you know that you shouldn’t?” His eyes were sharp now, and he reached for his jeans.
“The fact that they’re coming after me means they think I know something. I just have to figure out what I know. It was just coincidence. Mom wanted to come home.” She sighed. “How well known is Nell Flanders as an activist?”
Jesse chuckled. “Uhm, I think she’s very vocal and has a website called Activists Unite that connects that whole world. And she gives away recipes.”
“So I come to Bliss and suddenly I’m connected with an activist who wants to publicize the Calvin Township case. What am I supposed to know?” She got out of bed. The stuff with Cade would have to wait. “I need to talk to Nell.”
Jesse frowned. “Damn it. I’m going to have to eat tofu. I hate tofu.”
* * * *
Cade took a long pull off his beer, wondering what the hell he was doing here. He’d ordered the beer an hour before and hadn’t even gotten through half a bottle. He couldn’t even drink properly anymore.
He shrank back in his booth as the door opened and someone he actually knew walked through. Michael McMahon strode in, his dark eyes looking around the bar. He was dressed in jeans that had seen better days, a black T-shirt, and a beat-up leather jacket. He looked dangerous and mean.
Crap, Cade really hoped he wasn’t looking for Lucy. She took a shift here sometimes when the tourists were light at Trio. What Lucy saw in the man, he had no idea. But her eyes got soft when he walked in the room. Lucy seemed to be a little masochistic.
And so was fucking Cade Sinclair. He was an idiot and a masochist. He’d had every chance to get his shit and run. He’d walked straight out of the shop and gone to Gemma’s with one thought. He would get his duffel and be gone before she could turn those blue eyes on him again.
And the first thing he’d seen was the enormous bill from the hospital.
And he’d come here because the dude who ran Hell on Wheels had always wanted to buy his Camaro.
He had the money to pay Gemma’s bill. He did not have his freaking duffel bag.
What was he going to do? Walk in and hope that Gemma thought he was a fucking hero for selling his car? It had been an easy decision to make. He loved his dad, but he was gone. Gemma was here.
He loved Gemma.
He was stuck. He knew he didn’t de
serve her, and he still couldn’t walk away.
A huge figure loomed above him, shutting out most of the light from the bar. Sawyer stood roughly six foot six with the shoulders of a linebacker and a perpetual frown that would send most men running for their lives. His long black hair hit just below the shoulders, and despite the fact he worked the bar, he didn’t pull it back or put it in a hair net. He let those locks flow and didn’t bother with a shirt. His massive arms were on display along with a sleeve of some scary-ass tats that ran from his right hand all the way up to the base of his neck. He wore only a leather vest and some jeans that had seen better days.
Nell Flanders had described him as trapped between two worlds—his Native American culture and the modern world. Cade kind of thought he was trapped between asshole and violent asshole.
“You going to make love to that beer now that you’ve played with it?” Even over the loud rock and roll thumping through the dive, Cade could hear Sawyer’s low growl.
And if Sawyer wanted to mess with him, he just might take that beating. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do. “You going to try to throw me out now that you have what you want?”
Sawyer snorted and slid his body into the other side of the booth. “You sound like a whiny female. And I didn’t exactly get what I wanted. I wanted to pay five thousand less.”
“I’m not running a fucking charity, Sawyer. You’re getting a damn good deal as it is. That car is in mint condition.”
“Why now?” Sawyer leaned over, sliding a bag to Cade’s side of the table.
Cade stared down at it. “I just need the money. It’s just a car.”
“That’s not what I’ve heard.”
Cade opened that bag, his eyes going wide. “Cash? You’re giving me thirty thousand in cash?”
Sawyer’s frown deepened. “Well, you won’t keep it for long if you keep shouting out that you have it. Do you want to get knifed on the way out of here?”
