by Erin Wright
Cady watched the woman in awe for a moment – she deserved to be in the halls of Congress with that kind of personality – but finally turned back to the overloaded tables with a quiet murmur of appreciation. Food, after all, was why she was in this mess to begin with, and as hungry as she felt in that moment, she was more than a little tempted to just pick up a casserole dish and tip the whole thing towards her mouth, skipping the niceties of plating the food beforehand.
She was a big city girl – maybe she could convince everyone that this was how it was done in Boise nowadays. The latest trend or some such bullshit.
Reluctantly, she gave up the dream and instead picked up a sturdy paper plate – no flimsy, cheap plate here; the Dyers obviously knew what kinds of food quantities to expect – and began working her way down the buffet tables, spooning out tiny portions of every delicious dish and still running out of room all-too-quickly on her plate.
As she went, she sensed…something and looked up to see Gage standing next to an older woman – his grandmother, perhaps? – an unhappy look on his face as they talked, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose absentmindedly. The older woman, her steel-gray hair pulled up in a severe bun, noticed that Cady was looking at them and instead of smiling at her in greeting, the woman turned her back on Cady in a clear sign of disapproval.
Is she mad about the power thing? Did I ruin her cakes like I ruined Gage’s? Or is it something else…?
Clutching her paper plate carefully, she wound towards the glass sliding doors, trying to pretend as if she hadn’t noticed the woman’s clear-as-a-bell unhappiness at her presence.
I’ll go outside and hide from her. Maybe she’ll forget all about me.
It seemed like just as good of a plan as any; Cady wasn’t about to give up her plate of food and drive to Franklin at this point based on a crotchety old woman. Not when she had sustenance right there, ready to be eaten, the smell drifting up to her nose in tantalizing waves.
The Dyers, having spent years holding an outdoor party every April when the weather could be warm, cold, or Antarctic-frozen, had apparently gotten smart and invested in heat lamps that they’d placed throughout the backyard, providing light and much more importantly, heat to the groups of people huddled around them. Cady scanned the crowds, worried that she’d taken too long to get out there – Emma would probably have a hundred friends hanging around her, all wanting to talk to her by now – but finally she found Emma and another girl huddled towards the back of the yard, chatting and laughing freely as they practically hugged the heat lamp they were standing next to.
With a grateful sigh, Cady made her way over to them, thrilled that she recognized at least one person in the huge group. She hadn’t spotted Hannah, so she was guessing her friend either wasn’t close to the Dyers, or had schoolwork to grade, or maybe Elijah didn’t like parties much more than Cady did.
I really need to get around to meeting this guy. Hannah, dating someone…will miracles never cease.
“Hi,” she said shyly as she came walking up to the pair of best friends. There was an energy – a level of comfort between them that spoke of their familiarity with each other – and they turned as one to Cady.
“Cady!” Emma exclaimed excitedly, greeting her as if she hadn’t just chatted with her five minutes earlier. “I was just telling Sugar here that you were going to come out back and join us. Sugar, this is Cady, Gage’s new next door neighbor at the bakery. Cady, this is Sugar, my best friend and Gage’s only full-time employee.”
Carefully, Cady balanced her loaded paper plate in one hand so she could shake Sugar’s hand with the other. Looking the woman over, she could see why Emma had thought her brother should date her. She was petite, despite having just given birth recently, with generously sized breasts for someone that small, and straight brown hair in a braid over her shoulder.
“So good to finally put a face to the name,” Sugar said with a warm smile. “I’ve been gone on maternity leave for the past five weeks, so I haven’t been at the bakery a whole lot, but starting on the 26th, I’ll be back to work full-time. I heard you’ve been having some…problems getting the store next door up and going.”
“Oh?” Emma said, looking at Cady quizzically. “Spill. With me being all the way over in Denver, I’m the last to hear any of the local gossip.”
With Hannah’s warning blaring in her mind, Cady did her best to downplay her disastrous first couple of weeks. “I apparently have terrible taste in electricians,” she said around a mouthful of potato salad, too starved to wait one more moment to start shoving food into her mouth. “I didn’t know that, of course, so…things got a little interesting.” She shoveled a bite of fruit salad in, hoping to stave off more questions by clearly being too busy chewing to talk, not realizing that Sugar would ever-so-helpfully take up the story instead.
“She hired Watson’s Electric,” Sugar told Emma, as if that one statement should explain everything. Emma turned back to Cady, her eyes wide.
“Oh dear God, tell me you didn’t.”
Cady shrugged her shoulders and sent her a grimacing smile as she began working on a juicy slice of ham.
Food. Give me food.
“Knocked out power to the whole town,” Sugar continued, when Cady didn’t. “They almost cancelled school over it because the principal didn’t think they’d get the power back online within the week, once he’d heard who the electrician was.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t get hauled out into town square and drawn and quartered for that one,” Emma said, starting to laugh at the idea of someone intentionally hiring Watson’s Electric, and then abruptly stopped. “Hold on,” she said seriously, every trace of laughter gone, “you’re not telling a lot of people about this, right?”
“I’ve managed to keep myself from making an announcement in town square,” Cady said around a delightfully moist and soft roll. “I’ve been informed that wouldn’t be in my best interest.”
“Definitely something to keep under wraps,” Emma agreed dryly. “Hey, I don’t know if you know this, but I’m actually an architect over in Denver and although the firm I work for specializes in new build projects, I could probably also help with a remodel. I could stop by this weekend before I head back to work and look over your building – tell you what I think you should spend money on, and a rough idea of how much each project should cost.”
This, finally, was enough to get Cady to stop shoving food in her mouth.
“Wow,” she said softly. “I…that would be great.” She wanted to hug Emma, but she kept her hands occupied by the plate of food instead. Having someone on her side, giving her guidance, not just shaming her for stupid mistakes she’d already made…there was no more perfect present than that.
Emma shrugged nonchalantly. “I like challenges, and helping you put together an action plan for a remodel of that piece-of-shit building would totally be a challenge.” Cady couldn’t help her shout of laughter at that. She wasn’t about to admit it to the other Dyer sibling, but the more she worked on the building, the more she realized that it really was a piece of shit.
At this point, she was sticking to it out of sheer pride and nothing more, something she wouldn’t admit to if her life depended upon it.
“I thought you said you were on maternity leave?” Cady asked Sugar hesitantly. “Where’s your baby at?”
“Jaxson, my husband, has her. It’s too cold to keep her outside, even next to the heat lamps, and at parties like this, I wouldn’t be holding her anyway. If you ever want free babysitters, just show up in a crowd of Idaho women with an adorable newborn in your arms. You won’t see your baby again until she either needs fed or her diaper changed. From age 10 to 100, Idaho women have this instinctive maternal love for every bundle of drool within ten miles. It’s a thing you have to see to believe.”
Cady nodded as if she totally understood but honestly, she didn’t. Unlike Hannah, her gift had never really been with the tiny human population; she preferred he
r humans to be able to pee in a toilet without help, and once they got over the age of 15, she also preferred them not to be in the possession of a penis or too many muscles.
Really, though, she was easy to please. People who had a high tolerance level for quirkiness were also a huge plus, along with the ability to appreciate a good book…or a guilty pleasure book.
As long as it was a female, someone who could pee and poop without Cady’s help, read novels like they were going out of style, and put up with things like Cady not wanting to be around other men, why then, they were destined to become best friends.
Easy to please, honestly.
Before Cady could figure out a socially acceptable response to Sugar’s statement – never her strong suit to begin with – a commotion broke out up on the deck of the house, leading from the house into the backyard. Cady squinted, the bright flames of light from the heat lamps making it more difficult to see in the darkness, when a drunken voice drifted towards them. “It was shupposed to be my baby.” It was a very male and very angry voice, and Cady felt panic shooting through her just from hearing him speak.
Bad guy, bad guy, very bad guy, run away—
“Shit!” Sugar and Emma exclaimed in unison and they took off running towards the back porch.
Cady hesitated for a moment – honestly, running towards the pissed-off male struck her as a Very, Very Bad Idea – but they were also the only two people at the party that Cady knew other than Gage and she didn’t know where he was at, and so despite her very large misgivings, she wasn’t about to let them out of her sight. She dogged their steps, and drew to a stop when they did.
“I knew it!” Emma groaned under her breath. “Hey, Dick,” she called out, “no one invited you here, so why don’t you just leave, and we’ll pretend this never happened?”
A man turned towards them, a hand gun glinting in the porch light, and everyone in the crowd took a step back while inhaling simultaneously…everyone, that was, except for Sugar.
“C’mon now, Richard,” she said softly, placatingly, moving slowly towards the swaying man, his breath coming out in puffs around his head, ringing his head like some sort of dragon breathing fire. “You know this won’t help bring our baby back.”
Why is she moving towards this man? Sugar, you need to run away. Run away! Didn’t you see the gun? Run!
“Sugar and Richard had a baby together?” someone whispered, right behind Cady.
“She fell down the stairs to their basement and lost it before she was very far along,” someone else whispered back. “I’m guessing that he’s taking it personally that she actually had Jaxson’s baby.”
Cady looked at the clearly drunk Richard, waving a gun around in one hand and a beer around in the other, and at Sugar who was only a few steps away from him, doing her best to soothe him. Sugar had seemed so nice, so friendly, so…so normal when they’d stood in the backyard talking. How was it that she’d lived through something so horrendous and had come out the other side still sane?
Because she’s stronger than you are.
“Where is it? Where’s the baby?” Richard demanded, his words slurring together, and then he began stumbling towards Sugar, trying to attack her, his muscles rippling in the porch light, and this time, Cady felt the panic completely overwhelm her, paralyzing her. She couldn’t breathe or think or scream and she wanted to run and hide or kick him in the nuts or something but instead she was just watching as this man attacked a defenseless woman right in front of her—
Chapter 8
Gage
With a grumpy sigh, Gage rearranged the decimated platter of goodies that he’d brought, absentmindedly staging them for maximum appeal just as he did daily at the bakery.
Not that the guests really needed any encouragement to inhale his baked goods; he probably should’ve brought another tray, actually. Last year, the miniature cinnamon rolls had been a crowd favorite but this year, the cream puffs with chocolate inside were pulling ahead.
With another disgruntled sigh, Gage looked around the crowded living / dining room of his parents’ house, hoping to spot the Birthday Girls, but he couldn’t catch sight of either one. He hadn’t seen hide nor tail of Cady, either, since she’d made a beeline for the buffet table. He’d been caught when he first got there by his grandmother, who’d been supremely unhappy to see him showing up with someone of the female persuasion, and by time he’d finally convinced her that he and Cady were simply friends, Cady had pulled a disappearing act.
It wasn’t any of his business, of course – this had been a good idea to invite her here so she could get to know other people in the community. She was clearly busy doing that, so he should be happy. And he was. He just…
Restless, he headed for the sliding back door that led out into the backyard. Maybe she was back here, hanging out with Emma and Sugar. That was probably it. Emma could make friends with a taciturn hermit who hadn’t stepped foot outside of the Amazon for the last twenty years. She could surely make friends with Cady, who at least had flashes of friendliness…whenever she was brave enough to let her guard down.
He was stepping through the sliding glass door when movement to the right caught his attention, right before a heart-stopping scream grabbed his attention by the balls.
“Let me go!” Sugar yelled, her arms flailing as her ex-husband pulled her backwards across the porch, holding her in a chokehold as he went, and was that…? Dear God, the man had a gun shoved underneath her chin.
Gage didn’t pause or think or breathe but only launched himself at the man who dared to hurt Sugar. For just one moment, he was back in high school again, going for the tackle to bring down the other team but this time, so much more than just a championship was on the line.
Dick’s eyes, bleary and unfocused from the massive amounts of alcohol he’d consumed before crashing the birthday party, swung towards Gage, realizing a bit too late that he was going to go down. Instinctively, he threw Sugar off to the side, probably realizing that even as tiny as she was, she could still slow him down just by fighting him tooth and nail, and turned to make a run for it.
Which was when Gage hit him with an oh-so-satisfying crunch of bone and muscle beneath him. They skidded across the deck with Dick on bottom, thank God, no doubt depositing slivers where the sun didn’t shine as they went, until they came to a stop next to the railing.
“Stop! Help! He’s attacking me!” Dick yelled like the little girl he was, throwing his hands up in front of his face to protect it.
“It doesn’t feel so good to be on the receiving end, does it?” Gage asked, rolling to his feet so he could get some good leverage behind his punches. He’d hate to land only light taps on the worthless son-of-a-bitch. He was just debating whether he should do an uppercut to the jaw or a fist straight into Dick’s stomach when he heard Abby Miller’s voice behind him.
“I’ve got it from here, Gage,” she said calmly, stepping up beside him. A Long Valley County cop, she was apparently on duty tonight, decked out as she was in her police uniform.
“Oh hey,” Gage greeted her, cool as a cucumber, even as he drew back his booted foot and kick Dickwad in the side as hard as he could. “I didn’t know you were here,” he said calmly over the screams from the worthless conglomeration of cells writhing on the deck.
“Just stopped by while on my rounds to wish the Birthday Girls a happy birthday,” Abby replied easily, not batting an eyelash at the kick Gage had delivered, but when he drew his foot back for round two, she put her hand on his arm. “We don’t want to give this man any reason to be able to talk his way out of jail, right? Because we all know what happened the last time someone tried to teach this guy a lesson.”
With a regretful sigh, Gage stepped back to give Abby the space she needed to work. She was right, of course – a beat-down on Richard Schmidt was how Abby fell in love with her prisoner and future husband, Wyatt Miller. Because the damage to Dick’s face wrought by Wyatt’s fists had been so extreme – requiring facial r
econstruction surgery to get him back to semi-normal looking – his lawyer had been able to successfully argue that he’d paid for his mistake of driving while fall-down drunk, and Dickwad had walked away without having to serve even a day behind bars.
It didn’t hurt that Richard Schmidt’s father was the judge in town. In small counties like theirs, it never did.
Gage straightened his glasses on his face – they’d been knocked askew during the fight – and then looked around to try to figure out where Jaxson was, and if Sugar was okay, and where was Emma and Cady? He found that Jaxson was holding Sugar who was holding their one-month-old, Rose, and even as the beautiful baby slept peacefully in her momma’s arms, Sugar kept cooing to her, “It’s okay, baby girl. No one’s gonna hurt you. You’re all right. Uncle Gage saved us.”
Uncle Gage…It was an honorary title Sugar had granted him the day of her wedding to Jaxson, and it’d touched Gage every time he heard it but tonight, it meant so much more.
But what if he hadn’t been there? What if Dickwad’s finger convulsed out of panic or fear, and Sugar had died? Terror spiked through him at the thought and he caught the gaze of Jaxson, whose arms were protectively wrapped around his wife. Jaxson mouthed, “Thank you.”
Gage nodded once in acknowledgment, and he felt his panic over Sugar’s well-being subsiding just a smidge. Jaxson would take care of her. He would make sure she was okay, but who would look after Emma and Cady? He’d come out partway through the confrontation – it was possible that Dickwad had put his hands on them also. He pushed his way through the crowd, nodding as people clapped him on the back and congratulated him on being the “hero of the night,” until he finally found Emma and Cady together, clinging to each other, a terrorized look on their faces.