First Kiss

by Bernadette Marie

  Her mother met her at the door to her hotel room, all dolled up for the day.

  “You remember Mary Ann? Her granddaughter is visiting today so we’re going to meet at the park.”

  “Please be careful with him. He’s all I have.”

  “You’re still alive, aren’t you?” Her mother reached for Gage. “I know what I’m doing.”

  Gage tried to pull back from his grandmother, but when she had him in her arms, Olivia took a step back.

  “I’ll be done right at five.”

  “I’ll be here. But don’t be late. I have an interview for a job.”

  “You’re getting a job?”

  “Sure. I’m sticking around. The bar needs a new bartender. Sounds like my kind of job.”

  It sure did, and Olivia realized she didn’t want her mother there. Aspen Creek was her home. There was no room for Celeste Baker there.

  Gage reached out for her again, and she had to just turn and leave. That moment had broken Olivia’s heart nearly as much as driving by Austin’s house and seeing Cade’s car still gone.

  Parker was waiting for her the moment she walked into the bank. He followed her into the office and closed the door behind him.

  “Is something wrong, Parker?”

  “Listen, I didn’t mean any harm last night when I kissed you. I mean, wow, I didn’t…”

  “Stop. It’s nothing. It wasn’t like we made out. It was a peck on the cheek.”

  “So Cade is okay?”

  She shrugged. “He left town.”

  “Oh, God, I’m so sorry.”

  She watched Parker pace back and forth. “Parker, let it go. After all, the whole night didn’t quite turn out like we’d thought.”

  He looked at her and chuckled. “I’m not sure they’ll ever let us back in that restaurant.”

  She laughed. “I’ve never seen three little kids make such a mess. Gage usually isn’t that much work.”

  “If it’s any consolation, my daughter loved you. She might have spilled her entire soda on you, but she thought you were really nice.”

  “Thanks. Maybe someday we can have dinner at my house. Then the kids can run around and no one will be bothered.”

  “I think my kids would enjoy that.” He walked closer to her and took her hand in his. “What about us? Do you think…”

  He was so close she placed her hand on his chest. “Parker, listen, I don’t think we should…”

  “I know. Cade, right?” He took a step back. “If you need someone, I’m here.”

  He opened the door and left her alone to think about the confused state she was in. How had it all come to this?

  Cade watched the ceiling fan spin above him. He must have found the cheapest, dirtiest motel outside of Vegas. Not that it had mattered. He hadn’t slept all night. The image of Gage so upset, followed by Parker kissing Olivia, had his stomach tied in knots.

  Perhaps he’d overstepped the boundaries by making moves on Olivia. But he hadn’t been the only one in that bed the other night. No, she’d matched him move for move as they made love all night long. He’d never felt so connected with a woman—ever.

  Then again, no other woman had been Olivia. In his heart, he’d waited his whole life to hold her.

  He looked at the clock on the nightstand. After a shower and a cheap Vegas breakfast, he’d head to his aunt’s house. Hopefully she’d have the papers he needed to close out his father’s estate. Then he could decide how to handle Olivia. But first he’d better call Ashley. It was going to be a few more days before he’d be home.

  Cade pulled into the trailer park complex that matched his aunt’s address. He knew the specific trailer the moment he pulled up in front of it.

  He stepped out of his car and saw the curtains in the window move. She’d seen him already. There was no turning back.

  Only a few moments later, his aunt opened the front door and stood there in a ratty bathrobe with slippers on her feet and a cigarette in her fingers.

  “I figured I’d see you sooner or later.” Her voice crackled as she spoke.

  “It seems I need a few things from you.”

  She nodded as she considered him. “Fancy car.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Money must be nice.” She walked back into the house, and Cade limped up the stairs to follow.

  The house was packed with miscellaneous items in uneven piles. There wasn’t an uncluttered surface. The air was thick, and the stench of stale smoke and cat hair clogged his lungs.

  “The postmaster said you might have the mail from Dad’s house.”

  She took a long drag from her cigarette and nodded. “Have a seat.”

  She pointed to a cleared spot on the couch and then disappeared into the kitchen.

  Cade hesitantly sat down. He could hear his aunt shuffling around in the other room, moving papers.

  He noticed the TV on the makeshift table in the corner. No doubt it was the TV she took from his father’s house.

  When she came back into the room she had an envelope in her hand. “I assume this is what you’re looking for.”

  He took it and looked inside. “Yes. Thank you.”

  “I don’t suppose he had much left for you. The house is falling apart, and he’d given all his money to that girl that used to live next door to him.”

  “Olivia?”

  She nodded as she took another drag from her cigarette. “She had her claws in him.” She looked him in the eye. “Already been in a fight? Or did she give you the black eye for showing up?”

  Cade touched the skin around his eye. He’d nearly forgotten about the bruise—or the fight which had ensued over something said about Conner.

  His aunt examined the burning ash at the tip of her cigarette. “You know, that relationship your father had with her wasn’t natural. She was just using him. Just as she used everyone around her. Must have learned it from her mother. You’re not the first visitor I’ve had this week, you know.”

  Cade shoved the papers into his back pocket. He tried to breathe through his frustration. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Hmm,” she tightened her lips. “She was always around. Even when she was younger. Then he hid her away in Grand Junction when things got too serious between her and my son.”

  She took a drag from the cigarette burning in her hands and then took another out of the pocket of her robe and lit it with the stub of the other cigarette.

  “Conner? She was involved with Conner?” His jaw was hurting from clenching it. “She didn’t mention that.”

  “She drove him to drink and eventually kill himself in that house your dad thought he was saving us in. What a dump that was.”

  He couldn’t imagine that he was even related to this woman. “You said Dad gave all his money to her. How do you know this?”

  She let out a grunt and pulled out another envelope from her pocket. “His latest will. Seems he bought her the house she lives in now.”

  Cade looked at the front of the envelope. It had Olivia’s name written on it in his father’s handwriting, and it had been opened. Inside was his father’s will and the numbers to his bank accounts at the bank in Aspen Creek.

  He didn’t have time to stand there in the filth of his Aunt’s house and read the entire will, but it was clear enough. Everything his father owned now belonged to Olivia and Gage. Everything but his house and the contents of the safety deposit box at the bank.

  Cade swallowed hard. He noticed there was another form in the envelope, and he pulled it out. When he looked up at his aunt, there was a crooked grin on her lips.

  “You met her little boy?”

  He knew she meant Gage and he nodded.

  “Seems to have Carter eyes. He looks just like my daddy.”

  Cade looked down at the piece of paper shaking between his fingers. It was a copy of Gage Baker’s birth certificate—and his Cade’s father’s name was on it.

  Chapter Ten

  It had be
en three days since Olivia had awakened in Cade’s arms. She missed him.

  She drove by the house four times a day. There had been a few workers there painting the exterior of the house, but no sign of Cade or his car.

  Gage continued to be awake all night having nightmares, but now he’d begun to yell for Dade.

  Cade had promised not to break her baby’s heart, but he was doing just that. Not to mention, she was a wreck, too.

  Her back was turned to her office door as she worked on the computer. She heard it open and close. “Parker, I’m very busy.”

  “Yeah, and I’ll bet meeting you behind closed doors is just what he was waiting for.”

  She spun around in her chair when she heard Cade’s voice, but there was nothing she could think of to say.

  “I got the papers. Let’s close this damn thing.” He threw the envelope on the desk and fell into the chair below him.

  Olivia reached for the envelope. “This has my name on it.”

  “Sure does.” The pulse in his neck quickened. “Seems like I was written out of his will. All except the house and the safety deposit box.”

  Olivia took the papers out of the envelope and looked them over. “Cade, this doesn’t make any sense. I protest. I don’t want anything.”

  “He bought you a damn house.” He slapped his hand down on her desk. “You were already getting everything out of him.” He was up and out of the chair, pacing her office.

  She stood to meet him. “I didn’t ask him to. He asked me to leave his house, and he said he’d lend me the money to buy my own house.”

  “Lend?”

  “Please listen to me.” She pressed her fingers to her lips. “I had already decided that I’d pay you back. That money should have been yours. He’d saved it for you.”

  “And yet, somehow, you managed to get it from him? Is this how you work? Did your mother teach you how to manipulate men like this?”

  Any counter attack stuck in her throat. She tried to breathe around it but only found it was making her dizzy, so she sat down in the chair Cade had occupied earlier. “I didn’t want this. You have to understand, I didn’t ask him to do this. I don’t want it.”

  Cade turned his back to her and watched the traffic out on the road in front of the bank. “You didn’t tell me about you and Conner.”

  She gasped, and he turned to look at her.

  “So that is true, huh? You’ve had your share of all of us?”

  “Oh, Cade.” She stood. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “He killed himself? I thought he died in a fire.”

  The tears were rolling down her cheeks now. There was nothing she could do to control them. “He did.”

  “My aunt seems to think you had something to do with that.”

  She could only shake her head. What could she really tell him about Conner at this moment? “I will close out the account, and the money is yours.”

  “Great.”

  “Do you have the key to the safety deposit box?”

  Cade grunted out a laugh. “All business, huh? No, I don’t have the key.”

  “I’m sure I can get Parker to…”

  He stepped right up to her. “I’m sure you can get Parker to do anything.”

  She sucked in a breath, but their conversation was stopped by a knock at the door. Parker opened it slightly.

  “Is everything okay in here?”

  “Everything is fine,” she quickly spat out.

  “It’s more than fine. It’s done.” Cade slipped back on his sunglasses and walked out of her office and out of the bank.

  “Did he hurt you?” Parker moved in, closing the door behind him. “I’ll kill him if he hurt you.”

  “No. No, just my ego.” She looked into Parker’s worried eyes. “I seem to fall in love with the wrong guys, don’t I?”

  Parker let out a breath and took a step back. “You’re in love with him? Even after all of that?” She narrowed her eyes at him and he shrugged. “The walls in this place are paper thin. I didn’t mean to overhear.”

  Olivia nodded. “Parker, my problem is I’ve been in love with the jerk since I was six.”

  “What about you and Austin?”

  Of course he’d ask.

  Olivia shook her head. “He was a father to me. Anyone who thinks differently is just small-minded.”

  “I’m sorry for having considered it then.”

  “I can’t blame you.” She walked back around to the other side of her desk and turned off the screen on her computer. “Listen, I know this comes at a very bad time, with the festivities of the fourth coming up and all, but I need a few days off.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Parker, I need to sort this part of my life out.”

  He gave her a nod, and she quickly gathered her belongings, the envelope from her desk, and then headed out the door.

  Cade’s car was parked out front of the house and the painters’ vans were still in the driveway. She hurried up the front steps, skirting around ladders and paint cans.

  The house smelled of paint fumes even though all the windows were open. There were boxes stacked in the living room, labeled to be given away.

  When Cade finally walked down the stairs with another box, she was standing there. “You’ve been busy this morning.”

  “I’ve been here all week.” His words were sharp and pierced her, just as she assumed he’d meant to.

  She moved toward him, anger swarming in her belly. “You’ve been here all week and you didn’t tell me? You promised not to hurt us, Cade. This is exactly why I knew going to bed with you was the wrong thing to do.”

  “You have some room to talk. You brought this on yourself, you know.”

  “I’ve done nothing.”

  He let out a grunt and dropped the box in his hands. She heard the crash of the items inside. “What is that?”

  “Trophies, they don’t mean squat. None of it does.”

  She tried to move her focus away from the fact he was able to throw away the life his father had kept preserved. But Cade obviously never had thought that was too important.

  “Your father thought it was important.”

  “I don’t need to hear how he was proud of me and loved me. I know I was a sorry excuse for a son.” He ran his hands over his head. “I can’t believe he’d keep any of this stuff.” He looked at the boxes on the floor that surrounded them.

  “What is all this?”

  “Everything from my room and some of the boxes from the basement.”

  Olivia swallowed hard. “You disassembled your room?”

  “Can’t sell a house with a trophy room intact, can you?”

  That made it very official. He wasn’t staying—never had intended to.

  “Cade, about what happened the other night...”

  “You don’t owe me an explanation. Parker has always had you in his sights, and I did nothing but hurt you for years.”

  “That’s not true.”

  He bit his lip. “I remember so clearly the day you moved away from that house next door. I’d heard you cry all night from your bedroom. You hid in our tree house, and I climbed up and promised I’d run away with you.”

  Olivia bit back the tears that threatened to form. “I remember.”

  “You let me hold you. You’d never let me get that close to you before.” Cade picked up a box from the floor and set it on top of the one he’d dropped earlier. “I kissed you.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  He turned to her. His eyes were sad and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  He raised his hand to her cheek and held it there. “My first kiss and it was with the girl I loved.”

  Olivia’s mouth opened, but there were no words. She had to process what he’d said. “Cade, after that day you told me you hated me.”

  “I know.” He dropped his hand. “I did hate you. I hated that you left me here alone.”


  “It wasn’t my choice.”

  “No, your mother’s husband. But I didn’t see it that way. You, Dad, and Conner were my stability. When you left Conner didn’t come around as much. Dad had to work as usual, and you weren’t right there.”

  “You were quick enough to replace me as your friend.”

  “Junior high is supposed to be a bitch.” He laughed, but she didn’t.

  “It was the only time I had in town. Aside from that, I was locked up in that nasty trailer with that horrible man.”

  Her voice had risen in pitch, and Cade took a step toward her. “Tell me he didn’t really touch you.”

  She watched the pulse in his neck grow faster and his jaw set. “What would it matter?”

  “Olivia, I know my own father took a swing at the man over it.”

  This time she had to smile, though it wasn’t worth rejoicing in, but she remembered it so well. “Oh, he didn’t take a swing, he nailed the jerk.”

  “He actually hit him?”

  “Over and over.” She could still see her stepfather bent over in pain. “He’d attacked me…”

  “Olivia,” he reached for her. “You never told me that.”

  “You didn’t talk to me anymore, remember?”

  Cade nodded and stepped back.

  “It wasn’t the first time. He’d tried a few times, and I’d always managed to get out of it.” She turned and moved toward the couch, but he’d covered it in boxes so she just stood there, her back to him. “That last time he’d left a mark and your father saw it. The accusations went back and forth. He accused your father of inappropriate things, and your father threatened to kill him if he touched me again.”

  “And then he hit him?”

  Olivia nodded, and she let the smile land large on her lips. “Oh, yeah. He hit him.”

  Cade shook his head. “I can’t even imagine.”

  “He took care of me as if I were one of his own.”

  “He used to race over when you were small and your mother would leave you asleep in the house alone. We could hear you scream in your sleep, and he never knew who your mom had in the house with you.”