by Thianna D
Melinda slapped his leg, her long curls bouncing. “We’re doing the responsible thing.” She hugged the baby close and crooned to him for a moment. “Right, Benny? Mommy and Daddy have to be grownups now, to take care of you.” The love in both their eyes as they focused on the tiny scrap of humanity brought a sob from Teri’s throat.
Melinda and Shane’s deaths were so unfair. Who in the universe would break up that beautiful family? Leave a little boy without his parents?
“Anyway,” Melinda tore her attention away from baby Ben and returned it to the camera, “we want you to know we’ve never considered anyone but you and Roy to take care of our son. If anything happens to us….”
Her husband chuckled. “Which it won’t.”
She nodded. “But if it ever does, we know you will pick up where we left off, teach him how to be a good man we can all be proud of.”
Teri paused the video and let herself go. She cried until her eyes were dry and sore, all the tears gone. Her sobs must have covered any noise because suddenly two pairs of arms embraced her, one small, the other big.
“Aunteri, are you okay? Are you crying?” Ben scrambled onto her lap and she cuddled him close, his little boy scent of sunshine and grass and dirt sweet relief.
“What’s wrong?” Roy’s deep voice offered an anchor, something to hold onto while she absorbed, at a whole other level, the loss of her other half. Glancing up, she saw the screen had gone blank.
Swiping at her eyes, she tried to muster a smile. “I was, a little, but I’m fine now.”
Roy’s serious gaze held hers. “You watched the video.”
She nodded.
Ben gave her a sloppy kiss and wriggled free and her husband sat beside her, tugging her into his warm, strong body. “You okay?”
Teri toyed with the arm of his sweatshirt, frayed, from college. She hadn’t even known he still had the thing but when their clothing and other goods arrived on the truck, it had been right on top of one box. Soft and ragged and reminiscent of their early dating days. And the man Roy had really always been, despite his GQ office attire at the law firm. Solid as a rock, body of a god, and heart of a lion.
“So, Teri and Roy, I—” The words rolled on, but Teri couldn’t take them in. Ben stood in front of the television, holding the remote.
She waited, and Roy tensed next to her. What would happen? Would the little boy be traumatized into silence again?
“Aunteri, Uncle, look! It’s Mommy and Daddy.” He waved at the screen. “Did they make me a movie? Who’s that baby?”
Roy recovered first and stretched out an arm. “That baby is you when you were very small. Want to come sit with us and watch?”
Ben backed up, keeping his focus on the screen, until he bumped against their legs. “Me? I was a baby Aunteri.”
Her lip quivered but she couldn’t give in to grief. Not when Ben had so much more to be sad about. “You were the best baby ever, Benny.”
“I’m glad I have a Mommy and Daddy movie.”
Roy lifted him between them and they watched together as Melinda and Shane shared their plans for Ben’s future. The details they could take in again later, and of course they had the paper version of the will. But the precious sight of her sister, alive and happy with her baby and husband could never be replaced.
Any more than the new family they had become. Far from where she’d ever expected to live, in a community unlike any she could have imagined. Corbin’s Bend. Where Roy would soon take over Sam’s law practice and where she’d found a much more balanced life…and thrown her birth control pills in the trash.
As the video ended and Ben hopped up to grab the DVD for movie night, Roy bent close to her and murmured, “You should have waited for me to watch it.”
Teri glanced up at him. “I’ve been bad.”
He grinned. “I certainly hope so.”
Kate Richards
Kate Richards divides her time between Los Angeles and the High Sierras. She would gladly spend all her days in the mountains, but she’d miss the beach…and her very supportive husband’s commute would be three hundred miles. Wherever she is, she loves to explore all different kinds of relationships in her stories. She doesn’t believe one-size-fits-all, and whether her characters live BDSM, ménage, GLBT or any other kind of lifestyle, it’s the love, the joy in one another, that counts.
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Don’t miss the entire Corbin’s Bend Series!
Welcome to Corbin’s Bend
Return to Corbin’s Bend
At Home in Corbin’s Bend
Corbin’s Bend Homecoming
Love in the Rockies
Last Dance for Cadence
Maren Smith
©2014 by Blushing Books® and Maren Smith
All rights reserved.
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Smith, Maren
Last Dance for Cadence
eBook ISBN: 978-1-62750-4805
Cover Art by ABCD Graphics & Design
This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the author's advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.
Prologue
The phone rang for the seventh time as Jason Rolson helped his sick and elderly wife across what was (according to the housing developers) his formal living room but which was, in fact (according to his working needs), his patients’ waiting area. Once again, Doctor Marcus Devon had forgotten to switch his phones over to the answering service. Refusing to interrupt a patient examination to answer the phone, he held open the door to his office, listening as Rose wheezed and coughed, and her loving husband worriedly recounted her summer cold symptoms. Every few words and coughs and wheezes, that blasted phone shrilled out another ring.
Eight now. Damn it. It must be important.
“Do you need to get that?” Rose asked, her rheumy eyes worried and wide.
“Not at all,” Marcus lied, ushering her to take a seat and settling his stethoscope into his ears. He politely parted the collar of her shirt to listen to her heart first, and then her labored breathing, and then the thumping cacophony three young boys made as they ran from one end of the second floor to the other, passing directly over their heads. A herd of elephants, that’s what it sounded like. A herd of shouting, squabbling elephants, the youngest of which was already on the verge of dramatic tears.
“It’s my turn now! You said I could play too!”
“We’re not done, Buddy! You can have it when we’re done!”
“Ow! My hand!”
“I’m telling Dad!”
Followed by the slam of a door, a scream of hurt feelings, the sound of breaking glass, and the inevitable sobbing wails of sibling exclusion.
“Do you need to get that?” Rose asked again, a slightly sympathetic smile beginning to tug at her lips.
“Nope,” Marcus said, as calm as he was resolute. He kept his expression schooled into one of polite professionalism. He was determined to keep it that way too, even if it killed him, something his gradually rising blood pressure might just do if some part of this drastically deteriorating situation didn’t change.
Out of the blue, that old f
amiliar sense of longing zipped in to bite at him. God, he missed his wife. Five years with Stacy just hadn’t been enough. The three years following the accident that had taken her and his unborn baby girl had been an eternity of hell that he’d only crawled out of with the numbing help of passing time and a truly gifted housekeeper, Libby, who having married last year, gave her two-week notice seventeen days ago. These last three days without her had been like those first few days after Stacy’s death all over again. Marcus was once more lost, alone, and overwhelmed.
Writing out a prescription for antibiotics and cough syrup, Marcus handed it to Jason. “If that cough isn’t better in ten days, I want to see you both back in here.”
“You got it, Doc.” Pocketing the prescription, the elderly man turned his attention to helping Rose put her coat back on.
Upstairs, a small fist was beating steadily on a bedroom door, rattling it in its frame.
“Knock it off, Buddy! We’re busy!” Michael, his eldest, shouted.
“I’m telling Dad!” the youngest wailed again, and then there was a loud ‘whump’ as he flopped down on the floor and simply cried instead.
Frowning at the ceiling, Marcus didn’t notice the look the elderly couple exchanged until the old man patted him on the shoulder.
“One day,” Jason said sagely, “when the boys are grown and have moved on to live their own lives, you are going to look back on this moment, son, and I promise, you are going to miss it.”
Not if he killed his children first. Marcus knew better than to say that out loud. He also knew better than to argue with patients, and so he simply held his office door open for them once more. With Rose leaning heavily on her cane, Jason moved out ahead of her, nudging a path through the toys scattered through the formal living room (where toys were never allowed because no one was ever supposed to play here, damn it). Marcus got the front door for them too.
“Drive safe,” he said, offering Rose a steady hand to hold onto as she negotiated her way down the three stone porch steps.
“Be patient, calm and wise,” Jason replied, and this time there was no mistaking the telltale glance that passed between the old man and his wife as they no doubt recalled a similar moment, perhaps in their own younger lives.
Back in his office, his work phone began to ring again. Marcus watched to make sure Rose was safely back in the Rolson’s car before he headed inside. Upstairs, Buddy was now kicking the door until Michael suddenly shouted, “Fine! Here, you big baby!” The subsequent slam as the door shut again only made the youngest wail louder.
Closing his eyes, Marcus plugged his other ear as he reached for the phone. After this call, he’d head upstairs to referee the fight, soothe away the tears, and mend what hurt feelings there surely were as best he could. And maybe after that, if there were no patients waiting to be seen in his office, he’d do what he should have done almost three weeks ago when Libby first let him know she was leaving to have a family of her own—he was going to draft an advertisement for a nanny and a housekeeper, and he was going to post it on the community center bulletin board. He needed help. Hopefully, someone from Corbin’s Bend would respond, because he really didn’t want to go all the way to Denver to get it.
Chapter 1
The sun was setting. It was about even with her bedroom window ledge now, casting the whole room in a blinding orange glow. That was good, in a way. Just before five, the electric company had finally made good on a month’s worth of threats and cut the power. The fading sun was providing all the light she had to see by, and when it was gone… Being Friday, that pretty much guaranteed there would be no reconnect until Monday.
Sitting at the foot of her bed with her bills and jewelry box spread out before her and her bank statement lying limp in her lap, Cadence knew there would be no reconnect on Monday either. According to her bank, she was $33.27 in the hole. According to her landlord, that was ninety days and $2,133.27 too little, too late. Any minute now, she expected the Sheriff to come knocking at her door with a court-ordered eviction in his hand.
She had failed.
Folding up her bills, she bent to tuck them neatly into the side pocket of the only duffel bag she’d bothered to pack. If she left now, she’d be able to take it with her. If she waited for that inevitable knock, everything but the clothes on her back would go to pay her back rent, which still left her mountain of medical and rehabilitation bills, her credit card debts which she’d never had a lot of and which she’d never ever been late paying…until it had happened. Unwittingly, Cadence stretched out her right leg, idly rubbing just below her knee where the pins that held it together had once breathed life into the hope that at least she’d be able to walk again, while at the same time breathing death into her career.
Shifting through the contents of her mother’s jewelry box, she found again the programme for her last ballet. It had been the greatest night of her life. Her first starring role and a raving success, as critics had proclaimed. Sometimes when she closed her eyes, she could still hear the cheers and applause that had lasted more than eleven minutes at the end. Eleven! No one else in her troupe could claim better than that. But then, without exception, that night had also been her worst.
“I’m fine I said,” Sebastian had laughed, dangling her car keys just out of her reach. “This is your night, princess. Let’s not kill the mood with a fight. You should be celebrating. You’re a star! I’m perfectly fine to drive.”
Sitting on the edge of her bed, Cadence felt her fingers twitch as she remembered once again trying to grab the keys.
“You’ve had too much,” she’d said then, trying to coax her then-boyfriend and leading man to give in. “Come on. Hand them over. I’m serious now. Give me the keys or I’m walking.”
Sometimes, like now, she could still hear the way he’d laughed at her. Sometimes she heard it so loudly that it felt as if he were laughing right there beside her.
“So walk then,” he’d said, and turned away.
And there she’d stood, with that old brick bar house at her back, watching from the front bumper as he climbed in behind the wheel, put the car into gear and stomped the gas to prove just how well he could drive. Except that instead of backing out of the parking space, the car lurched forward, directly into both her and the building. There had been no time at all for her to get out of the way. Pinned between crumbling brick and metal, her legs had been crushed.
They’d talked amputation for a while. In the end, four surgeries and two massive infections later, the doctors managed to salvage both her legs with pins, but her career was over. One night of revelry and one accident had robbed her of everything—her job, her savings, her boyfriend, and her ability to walk without pain and falling.
A lesser woman might have curled up on her bed, folded her arms over her head and wept.
Cadence was made of sterner stuff, and she never cried. Opening up her mother’s jewelry box, she picked through the few pieces she had left. Everything worth something had been sold already. All but the most sentimental pieces: her father’s watch, and a necklace she’d been given the very first night she’d danced. She’d only been a minor extra, working for a very minor paycheck, but it had been in front of a very real audience. For days afterwards she had walked on clouds. Now, there was nothing in this jewelry box but bits and baubles. Pretty trinkets, but made of cheap metal and cut glass. Everything except her mother’s wedding ring, white gold with an opal stone surrounded with alternating diamonds and sapphires all the way around. Those sapphires really brought out the swirling blue, pink and red fire-like patterns in the opal. Her father had made it with his own hands. To a pawn shop, it wasn’t worth anything like what it was worth to her.
She hugged it to her chest but only for a moment.
Cadence never cried, but her hand shook when she picked up the cellphone and dialed the only person she could think of. The only family she had left—Venia Varner, her mother’s best friend back when they had all lived in Florida and her mother
had been alive. Mama Venia, her Other Mother, as Cadence had called her for all the years that she’d spent growing up alongside Mama Venia’s own daughter, Cecily. For all the years she’d spent playing on Venia’s backyard swing, learning how to cook in her kitchen. Being held, tucked up so tight and hard against Venia’s side in that awful moment while the cancer that had ravaged her mother’s once vibrant body took its final toll. Spending those last few teenaged years before she graduated living in Venia’s spare room, at first grieving, and then bitterly angry, and finally grateful that Venia had stuck by her through those really bad teenage years and had wanted her fiercely enough to fight first Children’s Services and then the courts to keep her.
It was Mama Venia who’d paid for her to continue her dancing lessons. Mama Venia who’d sat through recital after recital, clapping and cheering with all the other parents, even when her performance sucked. Mama Venia who had chipped in what Cadence was short so she could buy her first car and drive all the way from their home in Florida to Denver, Colorado where she joined her first dancing company.
And it was to Mama Venia now that Cadence reached out when everything else in her life felt at its worst, and the failure of her first foray into the big wide world of adult responsibility weighed in crushing tatters all around her.
She covered her eyes when she heard the phone pick up and Mama Venia’s voice came through warmly from the other end. “Well, hello, stranger! Cady baby, you’d best have one hell of a good reason for why I haven’t heard from you since Christmas.”
Cadence never cried. She had to bite her bottom lip to stop the traitorous trembling and squeezed in hard at her eyes to keep the burning of tears at bay. She drew in a shaky breath, one that Venia either heard or perhaps it was all those mothering instincts kicking into overdrive because all hint of cheerfulness abruptly abandoned her tone.