by Barb Han
Rather than focus on the amount of pain she was in, and it was staggering, she decided to recap what she already knew.
There were at least two men after her, three counting Dex.
Why?
Cadence searched her memory to find anything she’d done that could make someone want to take her life. But then, like she’d said before, being a Butler was dangerous and especially while her father’s killer was still on the loose. Her siblings had had brushes with criminals and the law. Thankfully, they’d come out on top.
Other than her half sister, Madelyn, Cadence hadn’t had a disagreement with anyone recently. Heck, she’d spent the past few months in Colorado, so she really drew a blank as to why she’d be targeted the second she came back to Cattle Barge. It made sense to focus on everyone she knew locally.
She heard footsteps outside the den and immediately knew that it couldn’t be Rory. He’d been stealthy before.
Cadence listened.
“Any sign of her over there?” one of the male voices asked in a hushed voice.
“Nope.” She recognized the voices as belonging to Wiry and Athlete.
A mind-numbing cramp hit and she bit her bottom lip to stop from screaming. Blowing out a breath was too risky. Fear seized her. What if Wiry and Athlete had gotten to Rory?
She heard the two men stomping around, making so much noise that animals and birds scattered.
Rory must’ve covered her tracks. Of course he would think of doing that and probably several other things a less experienced survivalist wouldn’t. She’d never been more grateful for his skill set because that was most likely the only reason the men weren’t walking right over to her and dragging her out of the small den. If hiding had been up to her, she would never have been so clever.
She just prayed she could keep quiet until they moved on.
“Hey, come over here and look at this,” one of the men said. She thought it was Wiry but everything had happened so fast earlier she couldn’t be certain.
Her heart clutched. Had they found her?
Oh, no. She felt around for a stick or something she could use as a weapon. Even though it was light outside, she couldn’t see a thing. It was dark inside the little den and that made it a good hiding spot. Not so great for her nerves as she felt something crawl over her left wrist. Please don’t scream. Please don’t scream. The thought of anything happening to her babies clamped her mouth shut. There was no pain so great that she’d put her little girls in jeopardy.
Slowly, quietly, she focused on taking longer breaths. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth like she’d learned in yoga class last year in order to calm her racing pulse.
A few minutes passed and she realized the voices were gone. She listened a little longer, breathing as quietly as she could. More minutes ticked by and she had no idea how long she’d been in there or if it was starting to get dark outside. What time was it anyway? Ever since she’d started carrying a cell phone, she stopped wearing a watch. Not having her electronic devices set her nerves on edge.
Suddenly there was activity at the mouth of the den.
“It’s me.” There’d never been a better sound than Rory’s voice.
Relief flooded her.
“They were here. They almost found me.” She grabbed on to his hand and used it to shimmy out of the den. As soon as she was free, she threw her arms around his neck and leaned into him. His body felt so good and warm against hers after lying on the cold ground.
He muttered a curse low and the sound of his voice calmed her racing heart.
“It’ll be dark soon. We should move,” he finally said. “How are the cramps?”
“They aren’t better and they aren’t worse. There’s hope in that, right?” The question was rhetorical and when she got a good look at his face, she could see how dark his features had become. Dark with frustration? Regret? Or worry? It was probably just wishful thinking, but she hoped for the latter.
She wanted to know that he cared and told herself it was reduced to primal survival. Offspring of most species had a better chance of survival if the father was involved in their care. But then she thought about lions and bears and how males would kill a cub. She’d seen that on a nature show once while she was nursing a sick stomach early on in the pregnancy.
Rory wasn’t like that, her mind reasoned. He’d do whatever it took to protect his own. He’d already demonstrated that. It was her fool heart wishing that he’d done it out of his feelings for her. That he could love her and really be there for her.
She leaned her weight on him as he helped her to the conversion vehicle on the side of the road.
Once inside, she finally felt like she could exhale.
“I have a few emergency supplies, water and ibuprofen,” Rory offered.
“Water would be nice,” she said.
He rounded the back of the vehicle, popped open the back door and then returned a minute later with a bottled water in hand.
She took the offering before he climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled up the nearest hospital on his GPS.
“I hope we’re far enough away that no one will recognize me,” Cadence said. Getting away from a place had never felt so good as leaving those woods. Emotions filled her and released in the form of hot tears. She turned her face toward the passenger window, away from Rory and did her best to conceal the tears.
“That’ll be tricky. Nurses and doctors have to maintain confidentiality, so even if they realize who you are, they won’t be able to tell anyone,” he said.
“True.” She hoped her name wouldn’t leak. “Hitting an out-of-the-way location should keep us out of the paparazzi nightmare. I think they have someone stationed at the hospital, the funeral parlor and every restaurant in the town.”
“Since you’ve been out of town, there aren’t a lot of recent pictures of you being posted and hardly anyone knows about the pregnancy,” he said.
“Right again. If I see one more picture of me from my high school yearbook, I might scream.”
“It’s cute.” Rory laughed and so did she. Another cramp cut the moment short, but levity felt good and she liked putting a smile on Rory’s face.
Puppies were cute. She wanted to be a gorgeous woman in Rory’s eyes. He’d made her feel every bit of that and more during their fling.
“First to the ER and then to the sheriff,” he said.
“Agreed.” Another thought dawned on her. “If the check-in nurse doesn’t recognize me, I’d like to give a fake name.”
“That’s a good point. We can check you in as my cousin, Hailey, from Oklahoma,” he said.
“You have a cousin?” She spoke before reason kicked in.
“Of course I have a cousin,” he countered and there was a hint of defensiveness in his voice.
“I guess I knew that.” She knew it was possible, but Rory had never spoken about his family.
“She’s on my mom’s side and it wasn’t like she came to visit before I took off,” he added. “I met her a couple of times when we saw my mom’s family around the holidays.”
“You never told me what happened with your family. Why did you leave them when you were so young?” she asked.
Rory’s gaze intensified on the stretch of road in front of them and he clenched his jaw. “Isn’t much to tell.”
With that, he put his blinker on and changed lanes.
“Okay then. I’m Hailey from Oklahoma,” she said, trying it on to see if it felt natural. Even though she’d known the man next to her for more than a decade, he’d never shared anything about his childhood or his parents with her. It struck her as odd after they’d been intimate that she knew so little about his background. She could tell by his change in posture that the subject was a sore one, so she didn’t press. But was it possible to really know a person without knowing where they
came from?
Another thought struck. “But what about insurance?”
“I can figure out a payment plan. I’ll put the bill in my name and we’ll tell the truth. We don’t have insurance,” he said.
“There’s no need to do that.” She had a sizable trust and would be inheriting one-sixth of the Butler fortune. There was no reason that Rory should have to struggle to make payments. She wiped away her tears and looked at him when he didn’t respond.
Anger practically radiated off him. Was it about the money?
When she really thought about it, her brothers would want to pay if one of them were in this situation. Had she just insulted Rory by not wanting to put him in a financial bind?
“Hospital fees can be really expensive for the silliest things,” she continued, and another look at Rory said she was digging a deeper hole.
Why was he so hard to talk to?
* * *
ONCE CADENCE WAS checked in to a hospital room and settled Rory needed to get some air. The fact that he had no medical insurance to cover a baby let alone her visit to the ER sat in his stomach as though he’d eaten nails. He’d worked and saved his money, so he had a small stash of cash. From everything he’d heard, babies were expensive and he wouldn’t be able to take the risks he took now. The thought of how much his life was about to change almost paralyzed him.
He was in no way ready to bring a child into the world. He’d forgotten to ask Cadence about the due date with everything else going on but it couldn’t be too far off. Wasn’t pregnancy nine months? She looked to be at least halfway there. Maybe more. Although, he was the last person to be able to calculate a due date.
And how the hell had this happened?
Rory had always been careful. There’d always been a condom because he’d never wanted to be in this position.
Now that he was picking the situation apart, he realized that it wasn’t even the unplanned pregnancy that had him twitchy. It was Cadence. She’d been hiding this news from him for months. Sure, he’d ended the fling but didn’t she trust him at all?
Granted, he’d been on the range in Wyoming, where he didn’t exactly get cell coverage most of the time, but Cadence was resourceful. If she’d wanted to reach him, she could’ve.
That annoying voice in the back of his head piped up again, reminding him how clear he’d been about wanting space from her. The high truth was that he’d needed her to move on before he did something stupid, like ask her to marry him and force her into a life well below what she was accustomed to. A life that would make her miserable.
The stubborn look in her eyes when she’d told him to go ahead and leave that day five months ago had faltered. Hell, his parents had spent a lifetime making each other miserable in the name of love.
As strange as it might sound, Rory cared too much about Cadence to ever let it come down to that.
Rory wondered if his folks were still together. He hadn’t spoken to either of them since taking off at fifteen after one of their world-class brawls. His mother had broken the lamp over his father’s forehead, swinging it like a baseball bat after he knocked her into the wall. Drywall had broken her momentum, which had been so intense the wall had given. Picture frames had flown off. The glass in them had shattered long ago. His mother hadn’t bothered to replace it. Even she knew it was only a matter of time before the next all-out fight with her husband.
The worst part wasn’t witnessing the fight. That was bad, don’t get him wrong. Horrible. And he tensed up thinking about the abuse. But his mother making excuses for her husband after made Rory sick to his stomach. She’d roll up her sleeve to reveal several bruises and tell him that’s how she knew his father loved her. She’d said a man wouldn’t fight with a woman he didn’t have passion for.
Rory had known at a young age how twisted that logic was. He’d tried to convince her, too. But she’d smile at him and tell him that he had a lot to learn about relationships. If that was love, Rory wanted no part.
His sister, Renee, who was two years older than him, had kept him sane during all the screaming matches. When she’d taken off at seventeen years old to follow her musician boyfriend across the country, Rory had seen no reason to stick around at home.
A job on the Butler ranch and a room in the bunkhouse had saved his life and kept him out of serious trouble. Mr. Butler had covered the legal arrangements. Rory’s friendship with Dade and Dalton had been a lifeline during his teenage years. And how had he repaid the family? By having a secret fling with Cadence, getting her pregnant and then walking away. Granted, he hadn’t known about the pregnancy but he wasn’t ready to let himself off the hook.
Way to go, Scott.
Sarcasm couldn’t make a dent in his frustration with himself. He clenched and released his fists a few times, allowing a blast of frigid air to strike as he walked into the parking lot.
There was no question that he’d do the right thing by his child. Part of that was going to be getting along with the baby’s mother.
Rory made a couple of rounds in the parking lot to burn off his excess energy and focus. Exercise always had a way of clearing the clutter in his mind and helping him find his center.
By the fourth lap, he realized that if he and Cadence were going to get along, the first thing they’d have to do was establish trust.
The fact that she didn’t trust him was his fault. He could own that. Because he’d walked out on her and she probably assumed he’d do it again. On the drive over, she’d asked about his background and family. He’d gone quiet on her. The odd thing was that he wanted to tell her. Maybe it was to release some of the frustration and shame that he couldn’t fix his home life.
Either way, she needed to know that he planned to be in his child’s life and that meant being part of her life.
Damn, it wasn’t like he didn’t have feelings for her. He could use those to develop a friendship, right? Anything more was too risky with his blueprint for relationships. There was no doubt in his mind that he would never put a hand on a woman. That was without question. Hurting someone in the name of love—as his mother had always tried to make him believe—made even less sense to him.
But every time he tried to talk to Cadence, he ended up frustrating her and the last thing he wanted to do was argue. They’d made a little progress in his vehicle when she’d cracked a joke. But that had barely made a dent in the distance between them.
As it was, she stood on one side of the river and he stood on the opposite. There had to be a way to build a bridge so they could meet somewhere in the middle and especially for the child’s sake. He could admit that being near her brought up old feelings—feelings he’d shoved down so deep that he hadn’t thought they existed anymore. Dwelling on them was as productive as putting a Band-Aid over a bullet hole.
Speaking of which, his finances had been on the right track. He’d been taking some risks in order to amass more money. Stupidly, he thought he could find a magic sum in his bank account that would allow him to take care of Cadence in the right way. Taking care of the ER visit might put a healthy dent in his savings account but he’d do whatever was necessary to step up as a father.
A few deep breaths followed by repeating his favorite mantra—patience, silence, purpose—to psych himself up and put him in the right state of mind to check on Cadence.
Rory walked back inside the hospital and located her room. He stopped when he heard voices inside. There was a male voice that he recognized as the doctor’s from earlier. He didn’t feel right intruding, so he stood outside the door and listened, hoping to hear good news. The look on Cadence’s face when she was cramping earlier had him worried that something might be wrong with the pregnancy. He couldn’t even think about something going wrong with her health.
“I know you said you were worried about the lack of movement in the past few hours but both babies look good...”
&nb
sp; Both? Did that mean what he thought? Twins?
Anger roared through him at the thought that he’d been deceived twice.
First, she’d hidden the pregnancy and then she’d lied to him?
Rory didn’t realize he’d started pacing until a concerned-looking nurse stared at him. He cut right and took a few steps down a different hallway so he’d be out of the line of sight of the nurses’ station.
Several trips up and down the stairs got his blood pumping and helped stem some of his frustration. Besides, Cadence was already in enough distress. He didn’t want to make the situation worse.
He located Cadence’s floor and pushed the door open, ramming the metal edge right into a janitor’s back.
“Sorry about that,” Rory said.
The guy didn’t turn and look at Rory. He waved a hand and then took off in the opposite direction in a hurry.
There was something about the interaction that caused Rory’s warning bells to sound off.
Cadence.
Chapter Eight
Cadence’s door was closed and that sent another warning flare soaring high into the sky. The fact that he’d left her alone when he should’ve stayed put and kept vigil over her punched him. His temper had put her in danger.
Rory muttered a few choice words as he beat feet, wasting no time in getting to her room. His instincts were finely tuned because of his work on the range and those predispositions were screaming at him to get to Cadence.
He blasted through the door in time to see a nurse inserting something into Cadence’s IV.
“Stop,” he commanded severely. “Step away from her and drop that thing in your hand.”
A flash of fear followed by determination darkened the medium height, medium built, brown-haired nurse. “I’m sorry, sir. But you can’t be in here.”
“Like hell I can’t.” He darted to the nurse as she tried to sidestep him. He shot a glance at Cadence. “Get that thing out of you.”
She sat up with a panicked look on her face as she jerked the IV out of the vein on her right arm.