Riverbend Road (16 page)

Warmth seeped into a cold little corner of his heart at the way she fussed over him, and he didn't tell her he hadn't even noticed the flavor of the cake. “Thanks, but I don't want to take away leftovers that should be going to the birthday boy.”

“I've got plenty,” she assured him. “Marsh said he'll stop by but I know how busy he is. If I don't see him by the middle of the week, I'll just run it up to the sheriff's office in Shelter Springs.”

He could just imagine how much Marshall loved having his busybody mother stop by the county jail. He had to smile as he returned her embrace.

He barely remembered his own mother. The image of her seemed hazy and faint, like a photograph that had been handled too many times.

He didn't remember her being particularly loving or warm. Maybe she had been sick longer than he knew but he mostly remembered her napping on the couch, yelling at him and his brothers for being too loud in the house, leaving for doctor appointments.

He remembered being totally shocked the first time he came to Marsh's house to see Charlene laughing with her children, playing ball in the backyard, bringing snacks even before they asked for them.

He had been fiercely envious of it—and livid whenever Marsh would talk back to his mother, like boys sometimes did.

If not for John and Charlene, his life would have been so different. They'd given him the precious gift of hope, of possibilities, and shown him by example that he could have something better.

He was doing a piss-poor job of repaying them.

“Don't be a stranger, Cade Emmett.” Charlene hugged him. “I hardly ever see you now that we're not meeting in John's room at the nursing home on Sunday evenings.”

As much as he missed John, he didn't miss those grim visits to see a man who had become a hollowed-out version of himself.

“I'll do my best to stop more often,” he promised, kissing the top of her carefully colored hair.

When he stepped away, he saw Wynona watching him with an unreadable expression that made his chest ache, for reasons he didn't want to look at too closely.

“Ready?”

She still looked reluctant to ride with him. “Yes. Though, really, I don't mind walking.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Charlene said. “You practically live next door to each other. Cade doesn't mind a bit, do you?”

“Not a bit,” he lied again.

It was only a mile across town, he told himself as they headed out through the steady rain to his vehicle. What could possibly happen?

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

T
HOUGH
IT
WOULDN
'
T
be full dark on these long summer days for another hour or so, the rain and thick storm clouds obscured the sunset, making it seem much later as Cade drove down rain-slick streets toward home.

Cade was intensely aware of Wyn beside him—her quiet breathing, the pale curve of her jawline in the low light, the little smile that played around her mouth as she watched her goofy dog in the cargo area move his head back and forth in time with the steady, almost hypnotic pace of the windshield wipers beating back the rain.

“You said earlier that you've been to Boise and back today,” she said after a moment. “I guess that means you probably went to see Marcus.”

“I did. I wanted to go earlier in the week but didn't have time until today. I'm not on his list of favorite people right now.”

“Why is that?”

He shrugged, fatigue and frustration weighing down his shoulders in equal measure. “He's angry that I refuse to bail him out.”

“I'm sorry. That must have been tough.”

“Just another lovely day with the Emmetts. He'll get over it. A little more time to straighten out his priorities and think about what he really wants out of life won't hurt him. If he wants to keep his family, he's got work to do. Being in jail at least keeps him off a bar stool.”

She smiled faintly. “There is that, I guess.”

“Your uncle Mike offered him a place at the shop.”

“Did he?” she asked, her smile softening.

“I told him I'm not sure Marcus is ready to come back to Haven Point. They're pretty settled in Boise, as far as I can tell, but it was nice of him to offer.”

She was quiet for a few moments, the only sound in the vehicle Pete's breathing and his tires humming on the wet road.

“If I ask you something, will you give me an honest answer?”

“If I can,” he said, bracing himself for her to ask him why he kissed her. He would have to lie. Plain and simple. He couldn't possibly tell her all the wild thoughts racing through his mind about her.

To his relief, she didn't take the conversation in that direction.

“You were there tonight,” she said instead. “Tell me the truth. Do you think something weird is going on between my mom and Uncle Mike?”

He never would have believed it, but he would actually prefer having to lie to Wyn about his too-active imagination if it meant he didn't have to talk about Charlene's love life. “Something weird?” he said, stalling. “What do you mean?”

She shifted in the leather seat to face him. “I don't know. They were both acting...odd. That's the only word I can use. Kat was the first one to point it out but after she did, I couldn't help but notice. Something's up. I can't quite put a finger on it but my mom blushed every time she talked to him and they were being almost
too
careful not to look at each other, you know?”

Sort of like Cade did with Wyn? Yeah. He was familiar.

“I don't know,” she went on. “Maybe I was imagining things.”

He ought to just keep his big mouth shut here. It wasn't his business. On the other hand, if his suspicions were right, she was going to have to find out somehow. Maybe a little warning would be appreciated.

“What are the chances the two of them are...seeing each other?”

She stared at him, her features mottled by the rain streaking down the window. “As in
dating
? Dad's only been gone since January!”

“
Physically
, he's been gone since January,” he pointed out, hating that he had to, as familiar guilt and regret pressed in on him. “In reality, your mom has been alone much longer than that.”

“But Uncle Mike? That's crazy!”

“Why? He's been a widower for years. They're both still relatively young, not even sixty. They both have a lot of living to do.”

“Why do they have to do it together?”

“I don't know if they are. It's just speculation.”

Speculation that hadn't been without basis. He had sensed something different between them too, small signs that they were constantly aware of each other, some little shiver vibrating in the air when they were together.

Sort of like the shiver between him and Wynona. He quickly pushed away the stray thought. The situation wasn't the same. He and Wyn weren't
dating
. They just had this...heat between them.

“I don't believe it,” she said, but he heard the threads of doubt woven through her voice. “He's my dad's brother! Don't you think that's weird?”

“Why? They've been friends for years. Maybe it just developed slowly over those years.”

He refused to think about any more parallels between her mother and Mike Bailey and him and Wyn.

“I can't accept it. Uncle Mike. What is she
thinking
?”

“Wyn, your mom was completely devoted to caring for John for more than two years. You know she was. I doubt there was a single day she didn't spend at least a few hours at the care center with him. He was her life and she cared for him with all the love and concern any man could ask for. But he's gone now. If she has the chance for happiness again, don't you think she deserves that, after everything she's been through?”

She was silent as they drove down Riverbend Road toward home. He couldn't see her expression and couldn't tell if she was angry with him or merely pensive. She didn't speak again until he pulled into the tree-shaded driveway of her grandmother's old stone house.

“I miss him so much,” she said, her voice ragged.

His heart ached at the pain of her words and the answering echo in his own chest. What a measure of a good, decent man, that he was mourned so completely.

“I do too,” he murmured. “I still can't bring myself to take his number out of my cell phone contacts. Somehow, that seems too final, my last connection to him.”

The rain was beginning to ease, he saw. The dying sun peeked between the clouds to send a last glow across the landscape, brushing her lovely features with light.

“He loved you and was so proud of the man you've become,” she said with that faint smile again. “During your deployments, he read your emails to the whole family. Kat and I used to watch the clock, waiting for the moment when he would have to stop reading and grab a tissue to wipe his eyes.”

He smiled, though he felt funny to think not only about her father becoming emotional at his stupid emails but about her whole family being party to them.

“You know, you couldn't have made him happier when you decided to go into law enforcement after you got out of the Marines,” she went on. “And I seriously thought he would bust through the phone with excitement when he called to tell me you were coming to work for the Haven Point PD.”

He shifted as that guilt pinched him again. “John always had a warped perspective when it came to me.”

She shook her head. “No, he didn't. He always knew you were a good man.”

“I'm not,” he said, his voice low. “You have no idea.”

She made a face. “Oh stop. Who's the guy who goes into the elementary school as often as he can to read to the kids so they don't see the uniform as scary and will trust the police when they need us? Who responds to every single call at every lonely old lady's house in town, even when everybody knows it's bogus, and treats them with the same kindness every time? Who's the only person I know besides McKenzie who can be polite to Darwin Twitchell when he's in a mood? Face it, Cade. You're a good man.”

He couldn't let her words seduce him, to work their way to that cold place inside him. It was too dangerous. He wasn't her father, kind and compassionate and beloved.

“If I were a good man,” he growled, “would I be sitting here talking about your father and Darwin Twitchell and old ladies on the surface, while underneath it all, I'm stuck wondering how the hell I'm supposed to keep my hands off you?”

Just like that, the mood changed inside the vehicle, as if the storm had returned and another lightning strike had just arced between them. He could almost hear the sizzle of it.

She stared at him, her lips parted and her breath catching a little on the inhalation.

“Oh Cade,” she whispered. “Why do you have to?”

It wasn't the answer he expected and now that her words hovered in the air between them along with his own, he didn't know what the hell to do. Why wouldn't she see reason? Why couldn't she understand that he was lousy for her?

He might be the chief of police but some part of him was just as wild and lawless as the rest of his family. Did he really have to prove it to her?

Apparently so. Without thinking beyond that, he made a low sound in the back of his throat and yanked her against him.

* * *

A
S
C
ADE
KISSED
her again, his mouth hungry and urgent, all the heat from before roared back like they hadn't just spent the last hour apart.

They picked up right where they'd left off, as if both of them had been at a slow simmer and only needed a tiny spark to blaze out of control.

His mouth was warm and tasted of chocolate and caramel from Marshall's birthday cake and she wanted to lick every last inch of it.

She was vaguely aware of the gathering darkness as the sun went down, of the rain that had slowed to a patter, of the wipers still beating it back.

Mostly, though, she was consumed with him, with Cade, this man who had been part of her life forever.

Though the heat was there, midway through their kiss shifted from urgent, needy, to something slower, more deliberate, but infinitely more arousing. He kissed her as if he couldn't get enough, as if he treasured each taste and wanted to remember it always.

All the words she had said about his compassion and decency seemed to slide through her thoughts, jumbling this way and that until they seemed to catch on each other like magnets, forming one overriding thought she couldn't ignore.

She was in love with him.

She blinked with shock as the world came back into focus a little. The realization was still there. Indeed, it seemed to be swelling, expanding, until it crowded out everything else.

She was in love with Cade Emmett.

She probably had been since he was a boy in too-short jeans and a ragged T-shirt working out in her mother's garden in exchange for a bag of green beans or a basket full of corn.

She thought it was merely healthy attraction for a gorgeous man, mixed in with the lingering crush from her childhood, but this was so much more.

Emotion swelled in her throat, thick and hot, and tears burned her eyes.

She couldn't tell him. And how horrible was
that
, suddenly discovering she had this vast reservoir of love inside her at the same time she knew without question he wouldn't want it?

She hitched in her breath, refusing to cry. He might not want her love but it was quite obvious he wanted
her
and she wasn't about to give up this chance to be in his arms.

His fingers traced her face, the curve of her ear, the expanse of skin bared by her summer dress and she wrapped her arms around him tightly, wishing they could keep the world at bay forever.

Amid the warmth they generated between them, she suddenly felt something cold pressed against her shoulder that made her twitch away.

She shifted slightly and came face-to-face with familiar brown eyes, watching the two of them with curious interest.

Her dog.

She eased away from Cade with a breathless laugh. “Pete, you scared me!”

The dog must have climbed over the seat from the cargo area to the backseat. She didn't want to think about the muddy footprints he was probably leaving all over Cade's leather.

“Get down,” she ordered. When the dog settled onto the seat, she turned back to Cade, ready with an apology, only to find his features had once more turned to granite.

“I guess that clears things up, doesn't it?” he said, his voice as hard as his expression.

Not for her. Realizing she was in love with him only made everything more murky and confusing. She'd never been in love before. What was she supposed to do now?

“Not really,” she murmured. “You kissed me. That doesn't make you some kind of...criminal.”

“It makes me just like the rest of the Emmetts, who take what they want without thinking about stupid things like rules and pesky laws—who act first and worry about the freaking consequences later.”

He genuinely believed what he was saying. He thought kissing her put him in the same category as his father, who died in prison after being convicted of armed robbery. If she hadn't been such a mess, she might have found it laughable.

“Exactly what are the dire consequences of two unattached adults kissing?”

“You're not that naive, are you? What would happen if Mayor Shaw happened to drive by and caught us steaming up the windows? Or Jane Parker from the
Haven Point Sentinel
? The chief of police and one of his officers found making out in the front seat of the chief's SUV. Great headline, isn't it?”

“Nobody can even see us back here.”

“Yeah, it's dark and it's rainy, but people know my vehicle and we're parked in your driveway. They can do the math.”

“What does it matter? Nobody cares!”

That clever mouth tightened. “Again, don't be so naive. My job is tough enough without everyone in town gossiping about how I'm banging one of my officers between traffic stops.”

“When exactly did we jump from kissing to
banging
? I can't believe I missed that part.”

“I'm a guy. In my imagination, that's exactly where we've been since I kissed you the day of the fire—over and over, in every possible position.”