by Thianna D
She grabbed her cart, limping heavily toward the toy aisle. She went from trucks to dolls, to books and puzzles and finally spotted them, all the way down at the far end of the cards and games aisle. They were huddled around a woman Cadence didn’t know. She was hugging them, her long arms wrapped around all three boys. At the very center of this group hug stood Michael, his face buried against her stomach. Buddy let go first, followed by Daniel. Michael still clung on.
“But why can’t you?” he was begging as Cadence came down the aisle.
“I have a brand new baby now, Michael,” she said, softly rubbing his back. “I have to take care of him and he needs me more than you do.”
“No, he doesn’t!”
The woman took a deep breath, glancing helplessly up at Cadence when she noticed her coming. The two women looked at one another. The younger one smiled first, somewhat sadly.
“You must be Cadence.” She reached over Michael, extending her hand and Cadence took it. “I’m Libby.”
She barely looked old enough to be out of high school, much less to be married and with a brand new baby. Clearly the boys loved her.
“Cadence has her own car,” Buddy announced. “It wouldn’t start this morning, so Dad made us take his.”
“Don’t be embarrassed,” Libby told her. “My car started every morning like clockwork, but Dr. Devon still made me take his. Hey, Michael.” The young woman gently set him back from her. “I have to get my shopping done and get home. My little peanut doesn’t feel very good, so I can’t be gone too long, okay?”
Michael was crying. He kept his face averted and didn’t let anyone see it, but Cadence knew exactly what that motion was when he suddenly scrubbed his arm across his eyes. “Okay,” he said thickly. When he walked away, he went the long way around so he wouldn’t have to look at anyone.
So no one would see his tears, Cadence knew. Because she was the exact same way.
Shoulders sagging, Libby watched him go before turning her helpless gaze to Cadence. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed.
Suddenly, now it was Cadence’s turn to be comforting.
“It’s okay,” Cadence assured her. “He’ll be fine.” She stammered over the word, in an instant hating it. She knew what that word felt like and it wasn’t anything she would have wished on anyone, especially not a child.
Chapter 12
Marcus was just waving goodbye to his last client of the morning when his car turned down the street. His client backed carefully out of the driveway and Cadence just as carefully eased into it. He saw her minute search of the dashboard before, from the front passenger seat, Daniel helpfully pointed to the visor and she finally located his garage door opener. Closing the front door, he wandered back through the house to meet them in the garage. The boys filed past him, arms laden with grocery sacks. Cadence brought up the rear, limping heavily, her cane in her hand and her arms so full of bags that it was a wonder she could see over the top of them all.
“Need some help?” he asked, moving automatically to intercept and relieve her of as many as he could carry. He managed to rob her of all but one of those bags before she realized what he was trying to do. Instead of pricking at her pride and sparking another ‘Don’t baby me’ argument, Cadence dumped that last bag into his arms as well and headed straight back out to the car to load up again. She used the cane to hook the car door and swing it shut.
Marcus shook his head. Stubbornness and pride. “How was the trip?”
He propped open the garage door with his foot, waiting for her to come limping back.
“Meh. It was grocery shopping.”
“Did you get everything you needed?”
“I guess we’ll find out at dinner time. Are you ready for lunch?”
“I could eat.”
“I’ll make some sandwiches.”
“Peanut butter!” Buddy crowed from the formal living room, which was where they had relocated to after having dropped their grocery bags on the floor.
“Make mine grilled cheese,” Daniel called.
“Cadence is not a short order cook,” Marcus told them, eyeing Michael who was flipping through cartoon channels and who hadn’t even bothered to call in his own sandwich preference. Recognizing tension when he saw it, he looked from his son to Cadence, who was lifting bags from the floor to the counter top to unpack and put them away. She had the handle of her cane hooked over her forearm, where it would do her absolutely no good at all if she lost her balance or her legs buckled. It was, however, in general keeping to the letter of his command. “Did something happen at the store?”
“Not really,” Cadence said.
“We saw Libby!” Buddy said, jumping up and down on the couch.
“Butt on the sofa, feet on the floor,” Marcus told him, and with one last hop, his youngest bounced down to sit on the cushions. “How’s she doing?”
In the living room, Michael dropped the remote on the coffee table, got up off the couch and left the room. His footsteps retreated all the way upstairs, down the carpeted hall, and then a bedroom door slammed shut.
Staring up at the kitchen ceiling, Marcus said, “That well, huh?”
Resuming his bouncing, albeit now on his knees, Buddy said, “Michael had to sit in the cart ‘cause Cadence said she’s not going to put up with any more of his crap.”
In the kitchen, Cadence dropped a can of soup on the counter with a little more force than necessary. Deliberately avoiding having to meet Marcus’s eye, she said, “We don’t tattle, Buddy.”
Hurt, his youngest whined, “I’m not tattling. I’m telling.”
“You’re tattling,” Marcus told him flatly. “We’ve talked about that before too, so knock it off.” Making his way to the counter, he began unloading grocery bags beside her. Lowering his voice to keep their conversation as private as possible, he asked, “Want to talk about it?”
“Nope.” She immediately sidled away from him, putting an extra inch or two of space between them. She still didn’t look at him.
“If you want me to talk to him, I’m going to need to know what sort of ‘crap’ went on.”
“What happened between Michael and me, stays between Michael and me.” Turning her back, she began to shuffle cans from the counter to the closet pantry. Probably because it was the only thing she could think of to put even more space between them. All that did was suddenly make him that much more intensely aware of how little space there actually had been, and all he could think of now was ways in which he could reduce the space even more.
Following her to the closet, Marcus sidled up behind her, bracing his hands to either side of the door jamb and leaning in close on the pretext of lowering his voice and maintaining the privacy of their conversation. She stiffened when he did that, but that was all right. Right now, he was pretty stiff too. “Vegas rules do not apply in this house, Cadence. Talk to me. What happened?”
He didn’t lean against her. He didn’t think he could without being tempted to rub just a little bit, and rubbing was the sort of thing that responsible employers just did not do to their employees. At least, not without the consequence of a well-placed sexual harassment lawsuit. But the way Cadence responded to his nearness said clearly ‘harassment’ was not how she was viewing this.
He heard it when her soft breath hitched in the back of her throat. He saw the slight quickening in the steady rise and fall of her breasts, safely contained behind the thin cotton barrier of her white blouse. Three little faux pearl buttons. That was all that stood between him and his first glimpse of those pale, pink swells. Crowned with tightly budded nipples, he’d bet. Perfect for suckling, nipping…nibbling.
“Cadence,” he coaxed, fervently wishing she would turn her head, just a few inches, just far enough for him to see her face. Maybe just far enough for him to bend around and meet her, lips to soft and trembling lips.
“I’ll never tell,” she whispered, but she was turning. Reluctantly. Bringing her mouth around to within easy reach of his
as if she were being pulled against her better judgment.
His better judgment was definitely in agreement, but the burning in his blood and the instant throb rekindling in his cock was demanding something altogether different. He hadn’t kissed her yet, but he could already taste her.
“Stubborn,” he said, so thoroughly enchanted that it was all he could do not to lean in those last few inches just to feel the heat of her dancer’s body scalding full-flush right up against all the hardest parts of his.
She raised her eyes then, looking first at his lips and then up into his eyes.
“Stubborn,” Marcus said again, and so damned unbelievably, unbearably kissable.
His kids were watching. He wasn’t exactly being discreet about this, and neither Daniel nor Buddy were being quiet in their giggling. He likened it unto a death of a thousand internal cuts, but Marcus pushed back off the door jamb and away from Cadence. He left her lips untasted, her mouth unclaimed, and her stubbornness uncorrected. The arousal he was suffering now was a fit punishment for that.
“I’m going to go talk to Michael.” He quickly held up his hand, stopping her protest before she could do more than suck a breath. “What happens between you two, stays between you two. For now, at least. I’m still going to talk to him. See if I can’t convince him to come down and join us for lunch.”
Her eyes on his retreating back felt like a caress. Just before entering the hallway, he glanced back, but she immediately dropped her gaze and quickly busied herself with organizing the new groceries into the pantry again. He could have sworn what he saw in those baby blues of hers was nothing less than pure longing. That she wouldn’t look at him long enough now for him to confirm it was a different kind of confirmation on its own.
He smiled and went upstairs.
Knocking twice on the boys’ bedroom door, he waited a few seconds for an answering hail that never came and then he went inside.
Michael was lying on his back on the bottom-most bunk bed, hands folded behind his head, feet braced up on the mattress above him. He currently had it shoved up out of the frame as far as his short legs could get it. When Marcus stepped inside and quietly closed the door, Michael made a slight face, lowered the mattress and rolled over to sit up on the side of the bed.
“I didn’t mean to slam the door,” he said sullenly. “The wind got it.”
“Uh huh.” The window was closed, so Marcus didn’t believe that for a second, but he was a big believer in picking his battles, and this was definitely one of those moments. “Do you want to talk about what happened at the store?”
In an instant, Michael’s face underwent a series of bitter changes before he spat, “Well, she didn’t use the scootabout like you said to and she never once used her cane. So she can get me in trouble all she wants to, but she’s in trouble too!”
Folding his arms across his chest, Marcus waited until the explosion was done. “Funny, but when I asked Cadence that question, all she’d tell me is that it was between you and her. When I ask you, you throw her under the bus. I was going to invite you down for lunch, but I think instead what needs to happen here is for you to sit right where you are and think about what you want to happen next.”
The bitterness and anger slowly drained out of Michael, leaving only ill-masked sadness behind. He lay back down on his bed and folded his hands behind his head again. “It doesn’t matter what I want.”
“Why don’t you like Cadence?” Marcus asked.
His son only shrugged.
“Daniel and Buddy don’t have a problem with her.”
“That’s because they haven’t figured it out yet.”
“Figured what out?” Marcus pressed.
Michael pressed his lips together.
“No, sir,” Marcus said, crossing the room. He sat down on the bed beside his son, bending down under the bunk, bracing his weight on one arm while he leaned over Michael, forcing eye to eye contact. “You don’t get to drop a statement like that and not explain it. What haven’t they figured out?”
Another veil of anger quickly blossomed over the sadness, masking it once more. “She’s not staying, Dad. Liking her doesn’t make any difference! I liked Mom and she still left! I liked Libby and she left too! Why do I have to like Cadence if all it’s going to do is make her leave?”
Marcus stared at his son, unsure whether he ought to be upset by that childish leap of logic or appalled. “Your mother didn’t leave because she wanted to. She loved you and your brothers. She never would have left if she’d had the choice. If you want to be mad at someone for that, be mad at the man who decided to drive these mountain roads with brakes that didn’t work right. We’ll deal with that another time. As for Libby, she has her own family, son. She has a baby who needs her and a husband who works to provide for them. She was very fond of you boys, but she has the right to want to stay at home and be a mother to her own little boy. You don’t get to be mad at Cadence for that, either. That isn’t fair.”
Michael glared up at him, blinked hard in an effort to keep back tears. “I don’t want to be fair, Dad. I just want to be mad.”
“All right,” Marcus allowed. “Be mad then. When you’re ready to be civil, come downstairs and have some lunch, but mad doesn’t leave this room. You don’t get to be unfair to Cadence for things she can’t help.”
Already the strength of Michael’s bitter glare was fading, though he was trying hard to hang onto it. Unable to do that and hold his father’s unwavering stare, Michael switched his gaze to the top bunk again.
Marcus left him there to think and went back downstairs. That same young mother with two small children were sitting in his waiting area when he reached the bottom step. At first glance, he could see the baby was still very sick, but breathing easier. He’d forgotten about this follow-up visit.
Damn.
“One moment,” he told her with a smile, and headed back through the short hall to the back of the house. “Boys,” he announced, breezing straight on through to the kitchen. “Help Cadence put the groceries away. Daniel, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches all around.”
“Aw,” Daniel groaned.
Bouncing off the couch, Buddy cheered all the way to the kitchen.
“I can make you a grilled cheese,” Cadence said, working her way through the last of the bags, most of which needed to be packed into the now well-stocked fridge and freezer.
“No,” Marcus corrected, “you can’t. You, young lady, are grounded.”
She stiffened and probably would have protested had he not picked up one of the bar stools, brought it around the kitchen counter and thunked it purposefully down in front of her.
“How do you want to do it, Cadence?” he asked and then, specifically so his sons would not overhear, mouthed, “Panties up or panties down?”
He pointed to the stool.
Her face turned a bright shade of red, but her hesitation was barely long enough to even be called such. Cadence sat right where he pointed.
“You tell them what to do and the boys will do it,” Marcus said. “But for the rest of the day, I want you on your butt and off your legs, is that clear?”
She smiled, but there was a hardness to it that said clearly her lack of argument right now was for the sake of his children alone. “You’re the boss.”
“Yes, I am.” Before this day was over, he had a feeling she was going to make him prove it. Feeling nothing but eagerness in his spanking hand, Marcus gave her a fond chuck under her stubbornly set chin.
Bring it, her snapping eyes challenged.
Just as soon as the boys were in bed, he let his answering smile promise, consider it brought.
Chapter 13
The longer Cadence sat, the worse she felt. Her legs were killing her, and the more she rested, the more it seemed to hurt, but that was only half the problem. The real issue was the boys. Daniel and Buddy were doing everything for her. They did it cheerfully, jumping up off the couch the first time she asked, but it grated ever
y nerve she had that she had to ask anything at all. Clear off the table and wipe it down. Put away the sandwich fixings. Transfer the clothes from the washing machine into the dryer, and then bring them to her so she could fold them. The boys even put them away for her, running towels to the bathrooms and clothes upstairs to the appropriate bedrooms. These were her jobs. This was what she’d assured Marcus she could do to earn her room and board, but what was she doing instead? Sitting here. Just sitting.
Her legs hadn’t hurt this much in months. She tried to tell herself it was because of all the standing, all the walking, that she’d get used to it, that Marcus wasn’t right to make her just sit here, but there was a niggling little voice deep inside her that was starting to wonder if continuing to push herself when her knees already hurt this much might not be doing some very real damage.
She wasn’t a cripple, she told herself bitterly. All she was doing was walking, just walking. Human beings were made to walk, that’s why they had legs! She wasn’t trying to run a marathon. All she wanted was to do a little housework! How was she going to get used to being physically active if she wasn’t allowed to do anything?
Her butt was getting flatter by the second because these stools were God-awful, but when she got up long enough to visit the bathroom and then returned to sit again, switching to the softer sofa wasn’t any more comfortable. Every passing second of idleness when there were beds upstairs to make and dishes in the sink and bathrooms to scrub, felt like needles under her skin.
Michael hadn’t put an appearance in since he’d banished himself to his bedroom just before lunch. All things considered, that was probably for the best. In the mood she was in, she wasn’t sure if she could handle his sullen temperament on top of everything else.
She was going to have to fix something for dinner pretty soon. It was almost five o’clock. How was she going to do that sitting down? She might not be much of a nanny, but even she knew you didn’t send a nine or a six-year-old into the kitchen to play with pans and the stove. She wouldn’t send a ten-year-old either, not that he was going to let her summon him to chores. Heck, considering what she knew of Marcus’s cooking, she wouldn’t send him either. Nobody deserved that kind of punishment.