Return to the Black Hills

by Debra Salonen

  He was willing to give her that, but running away never solved anything. Wasn’t he living proof of that? He’d turned his back on his family and missed out on whole chunks of his sister’s life. He barely knew his father, but that was going to change—even if Buck was the one to deliver Jessie to her car.

  “As far as I’m concerned, she left with her heart in pieces, Cade,” Kat said, her fingers gripping the steering wheel as if it might jump out of her hands and run away. “I’m a woman. I know these things. She left because she thought she was doing the right thing for you.”

  “How could leaving be good for me?”

  She put a finger to her mouth and pretended to think a moment. “Hmm…let’s see. Oh, right, because of her, your barn is now a smoldering shell. Because of her, you got Tasered and your daughter had to go stay with relatives for her own safety. Should I go on?”

  He snarled. “Damn. I hate it when you’re right. But none of those things makes any difference. She should know that.”

  “How? Did you tell her specifically that you would love her no matter how bad things got?”

  “Not in so many words.”

  Kat looked in the rearview mirror. “Shiloh, are you taking notes? Men have no clue what women in love need to hear out of their mouths.”

  Cade made a face, which made his daughter laugh. Kat did not find it amusing. “You are so juvenile. Do you want to win her back or not?”

  “Can I? She sounded pretty sure this was over.”

  Kat glanced at Remy. “Remy and I both agree that Jessie is the kind of person who requires proof of commitment.” She held up her hand where a sparkly diamond rested. “If you want Jess back in your life, you’d better be prepared to cough up a rock and prove to her that you are in it for the long run.”

  He took a breath. “I can do that.” He turned in his seat and reached out a hand to his daughter. “But I’m not the only one who counts here. Shiloh, you’ve been surprisingly quiet since all of this happened. Tell me what you think.”

  “Last night…when we heard about the fire, I was really mad at Jessie, Dad. I blamed her because the guy who set the barn on fire followed her here.”

  Cade nodded. “They did catch him, though. He’s not a threat to any of us anymore.” Cade had had a long conversation with Hank when the man showed up to take Cade’s statement. Apparently, Jessie had sought Hank out first, seeking permission to leave. Since Zane was not getting out of jail for a long, long time, and the case against him was pretty much ironclad, Hank had given her a green light.

  Shiloh nodded. With her hair in a ponytail, she looked so much like Faith, he could hardly breathe. Until she smiled. “I know. And Aunt Kat and I talked on the way back. A friend of hers had some bad things happen a while back. The guy died, but it took her friend time to figure out that he was to blame, nobody else. This wasn’t Jessie’s fault. I wanted to tell her that. I tried her phone, but she must not have it turned on.”

  He’d called several times, too.

  “So, what do we do now? Hang out and wait for her to come to her senses?”

  Remy let out a low groan. “Oh, no. Bad idea. With Jessie, you need to get in her face and make her say the words.”

  “Okay. I can do that. As soon as I get hold of our insurance company…” He stopped and began to grin. “Wait a minute. Buck’s home. He can do all that.”

  Cade pulled out his phone and hit speed dial number one. “I’m going after her, Dad. I need you to hold down the fort, so to speak. Can you do that for me?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” his father answered. “And it’s good to hear you calling me Dad. By the way, I happen to know an excellent pilot. Let me know when you’re ready to leave.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CADE LEANED PAST HIS sleeping daughter to look out the window of the plane. The South looked like the South even from a bird’s-eye view. He could almost taste the humidity in the air and the chicory in the coffee.

  They’d be landing soon.

  In the end, they’d passed on Buck’s offer of a jet. Cade decided it wouldn’t be fair to go without Shiloh. She had a test she couldn’t miss, and Remy felt obligated to fulfill her obligation to Jack and Kat to repay them for all their help. So, although he was champing at the bit, his travel plans were put on hold until the following Friday.

  Luckily, Cade’s pal Mac had a friend who happened to have a plane. William, their pilot, seemed like a friendly guy, who, according to Mac, had an interesting love story of his own to tell.

  Cade didn’t ask. He was too worried that his own story might well grind to an unhappy ending the moment they landed and drove to the Bouchard home.

  Remy, who was peacefully sitting in the seat across the aisle from him with her eyes closed and her hands folded in her lap, kept insisting that they were on the right path.

  “You love her and she loves you, Cade. The rest of the details are simply details. Everything will work out. I saw it in my dream.”

  He wanted to believe that, but he also knew he might wind up looking like a fool in front of the whole world. Well, the part of the world that mattered to him. His daughter and his family.

  His father, for his part, seemed to be holding fast to some sort of West Coast inner equanimity that Cade couldn’t understand. Buck had been surprisingly blasé about the loss of the barn. “It was a waste of space. I think our next one should be solar. What do you think?”

  “I don’t think we need another barn, but we might be able to use a yoga-slash-gymnastics school.”

  Buck had chuckled. He hadn’t axed the idea, proving to Cade that his father truly had changed. “You’re different, Dad. That spiritual retreat really worked, huh?”

  They were alone, sharing a midmorning cup of coffee the day before Cade left. “Everybody should take the time to look back. Most of us don’t. We’re so busy moving forward, trying to keep out of the way of the wrecking ball that seems to be chasing us around. If I’d ever stopped long enough to look over my shoulder, maybe I’d truly have seen and appreciated how fortunate I was.

  “I loved two women in my life, Cade. I lost your mom by not paying attention. And I’m sorry for the way I shoved Helen down your throat. I was only thinking of myself. I was so damn afraid of being left with you kids after your mother died, I panicked. But the strange thing is I loved her.”

  “I know you probably won’t believe this, Dad, but I grew to care for her, too. Charlie hated her, but Helen always was nice to me. And she trusted me with Kat when she was a baby. That meant a lot to me. It might be why I wanted to be a father someday.”

  His father seemed lost in thought, so Cade continued. “We’ve all made our share of mistakes, Dad. I don’t know how things will work out with Jessie. I’m asking a lot of her. I’m not sure how she’d maintain a stunt career while living in the middle of nowhere. But I feel alive when I’m with her—not just living.”

  Cade knew he was leaving with his father’s blessing. Now he simply had to find the right words to convince Jessie that he was the right man for her.

  “We’re landing in two minutes, Cade,” a voice over the intercom said. “Make sure everyone is buckled in nice and tight.”

  He shook his daughter’s shoulder. “Shiloh, wake up, honey. We’re here. It’s time to go get you a new mom.”

  JESSIE WAS SITTING ON THE porch of her family home, which she and Remy had inherited. The Bullies each had received a beauty parlor. The drive south had been punctuated by crying jags, a bottle of aspirin and the recent addition of a dog. Ridiculous, she knew, but she’d found a forlorn-looking, mixed-breed Catahoula hound at a rest area. Abandoned, she’d guessed, since the poor beast was malnourished with no tags. His blue eyes reminded her of Cade, and when he licked her face, she was a goner.

  On her lap rested the old diary she’d hidden under the stoop. She’d remembered the diary her first night home. She’d been sitting in this exact spot, swatting mosquitoes, when it came to her. The next morning, she
got down on her hands and knees and went hunting.

  Some of the pages were mildewed. And the handwriting was that of a ten-year-old. She’d started it in the hospital where she was having one of her many skin grafts performed. The process was grueling, but for a child who was growing at a rate that far exceeded the stretching ability of her dead skin, she had no choice.

  She’d never thought of herself as a romantic, but this young Jessie had very strong opinions about who constituted her soul mate.

  He will be stronger than me.

  He will be nice but not pansy-ass.

  Remy would have been mortified that Jessie used a bad word to describe the love of her life…if she’d known about this book. She didn’t because Jessie hadn’t wanted to hurt Remy’s feelings. Requirement number three was why. He will like me best.

  Everyone liked Remy. Not everyone liked Jessie. Including their mother.

  “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” was a familiar refrain around the Bouchard home.

  The day Jessie answered, “Because I’m too much like you,” was the day she and Remy left home for Nashville.

  But despite their butting of heads and the unresolved feelings Jessie held over being left alone in the hospital, Jessie had loved her mother.

  Funny, it had taken a second fire for her to remember all those things she’d forgotten about the first. Such as how the fire started. If she closed her eyes, she could picture watching her mother walk into her bedroom carrying that tall white taper, safely protected from the wind by the glass chimney. Mama put it on the night-stand right in front of the window closest to Remy’s bed. The twins’ room faced the street and had two old-fashioned windows side-by-side, separated by the width of an eight-year-old’s shoulders.

  When Mama turned to leave, she noticed Jessie watching her. “Go back to sleep, honey child.”

  She dropped a light kiss on Jessie’s cheek then hurried away on a cloud of her best perfume. Jessie knew what that meant. The candle was a signal of some sort for a man.

  Jessie pictured the tableau all too clearly. The candle flickering when an errant gust of wind passed over the chimney. She didn’t know why she felt the need to move the candle. Was she afraid it might go out and her mother would wait and wait for the man who wouldn’t show? Was she worried the flickering might wake Remy? She didn’t know, but she knew what happened next.

  The antique candleholder was heavier than she thought it would be. The glass chimney was wobbly. Heated wax sloshed over the rim and landed on her fingers. She dropped the holder. The lit candle fell into a pile of dress-up clothes the girls had been playing with that day.

  Jessie tried smothering it with a blanket, but that only made the fire spread. Toward the door, blocking their escape route. She screamed and cried for help, but no one came. She shook and shook Remy, who slept like the dead, until she opened her eyes. Then, terrified and frozen in panic, she refused to move until Jessie finally pulled her out of bed and shoved her out the window. Jessie went next. Too late.

  Mama had been the first one there after the girls got out of the house. She’d rolled Jessie in the grass and patted out the flames using her bare hands—hands that worked every day to put food on the table and pay the mortgage.

  Mama’s burns.

  How could I have blanked that out? Why didn’t she remind me?

  The answer had come to her near the Nashville turn-off. Mama did what she did out of love, not guilt. She didn’t put that candle in the window to create havoc. She was signaling her lover. Her married lover. What happened next was an accident, plain and simple.

  That knowledge changed everything.

  Her mother might have set this catastrophe in motion, but she hadn’t done so on purpose, and she’d risked her life, her livelihood, her other children’s well-being to save Jessie. If that wasn’t an act of love, Jessie didn’t know what was.

  That knowledge seemed to give Jessie permission to forgive her mother—and herself. Love wasn’t perfect. People made mistakes, poor choices. But if you were lucky, you had people in your life who loved you no matter what.

  People like Cade.

  She truly admired him for living his convictions. When Shiloh had needed more love and support than Cade could give her on his own, he’d reached out to Buck, the father who’d let him down—in his childhood and as recently as a few weeks ago. Did that send Cade into a panic? Did he hop in his truck and drive away? Of course not. He stayed and faced life’s challenges head-on—even adding new and unexpected complications to his already complicated life. Jessie, Remy and, literally, trial by fire.

  She picked up the phone on her lap and hit redial. “Why isn’t he answering?” she asked Beau. That’s what she’d named her new dog. He cocked his head and blinked in answer to her question.

  She quickly punched in a second number. “Maybe Remy will pick up.”

  She did. On the third ring. “You are in such trouble.”

  “Me? What’d I do?”

  “You ran away. Like a coward. In the night. I’m so ashamed.”

  Jessie scooted down so her butt was almost to the edge of the rattan bench and lifted her ankle to the railing to relieve the throbbing. Almost time for another aspirin. And a trip to a specialist to see about surgery.

  “It was broad daylight. Ask Cade. I called to tell him goodbye. I had to think. I couldn’t do that with everybody looking at me. You know how I am. Is Cade mad?”

  “Furious.”

  Jessie groaned. “Is that why he isn’t answering his phone? He hates me, right? I’ve been trying all morning.”

  “No.”

  “No, what? He doesn’t hate me or that isn’t the reason he isn’t answering his phone.” What if he never spoke to her again?

  “He didn’t answer because he forgot to turn his phone off in the airplane and it spent the entire flight roaming, which sucked his battery dry.”

  Jessie didn’t have to ask what that meant. She had enough leftover twin-sense to know the convoluted explanation meant Cade was coming here. “How soon?” she whispered, her throat too tight with emotion to take a full breath.

  “Now,” Remy crowed triumphantly as a funky yellow-and-black taxi pulled to a stop at the curb. “Is that dramatic timing or what? I should have been the one to go to Hollywood, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Did Remy sound ridiculously self-satisfied? Yes. Did she deserve to? Yes.

  Jessie jumped to her feet and hopped to the railing, because she simply couldn’t bring herself to ask the Bullies for a pair of crutches. With all their kids, they were bound to have a few, but she wasn’t yet ready to see the whole fam-damily, as her mother liked to say.

  Beau gave a loud woof then planted himself on the top step and began barking furiously at the man who was striding intently toward the house.

  “You didn’t tell me you had a dog,” Cade called out over the racket.

  “I have a dog,” Jessie yelled back. “Does that change things?”

  He stopped, then looked toward the driveway where Yota was parked. “Yeah. It means we’re gonna have to drive back. I hope your car is up for it.”

  Jessie reached down and patted the dog’s head to calm him. “It’s okay, boy. This is Cade. You’re going to like to him. I promise.”

  Cade approached cautiously. The taxi that had dropped him and Remy and Shiloh pulled away with a friendly toot. The dog flinched but didn’t bark.

  “Hey, fella, welcome to the family,” Cade said, extending his hand. “I hope you don’t eat raccoons. Sugar has been moping ever since your master left.”

  “I’m not his master. He sorta found me at a rest area. No tags.”

  Cade stroked the dog’s head and earned a friendly lick. “I’m sure you have an interesting story to tell, old boy, but first things first.” He looked at Jessie. “Why did you run?”

  “I didn’t run. I can’t run,” she said, resting her shoulder against the corner post. “My ankle’s messed up bad. My career may be over.”r />
  “I’m sorry for your career’s sake. But what does that have to do with us?”

  “I never wanted to be the kind of person who needed someone else to support me. If I can’t work, I bring nothing to the table. My job is who I am.”

  He bounded up the steps in one smooth vault—the kind any free runner would have been proud of. “Jessie Bouchard, you drive me crazy. You’re so much more than your job. How can you not see that? You’re you. And I love you. I want you to be part of my life. Part of my daughter’s life. If you need time to figure out how big a part that is, fine. You’ve got it. Just, please, never disappear like that again.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Have you ever heard me say something I don’t mean?”

  She shook her head. “How bad was the damage from the fire?”

  “The barn is a complete loss, but Buck is getting estimates as we speak. He said to tell you you can have your old room back, but he thinks it would look better if you moved in with me.”

  She looked over his shoulder to where Shiloh and Remy were standing with their suitcases. “Shiloh, are you sure about this? I’m not Remy.”

  Shiloh and Remy exchanged a what-the-heck sort of look.

  “Yeah, I know,” Shiloh said. “I get a cool mom and a cool aunt at the same time. What’s not to love?”

  Remy smiled broadly. “And aunts get to spoil their very cool nieces without dealing with any of the consequences. That is so me.”

  Jessie and Cade looked at each other and grinned.

  “Can we come in?” Remy asked. “I emailed the Bullies before we left. They’re probably on their way over here.”

  Jessie groaned, but Cade gave her a reassuring squeeze. “I should meet my future sisters-in-law, shouldn’t I?”

  Her jaw gaped. “You want to marry me?”

  He took her hand and kissed her ring finger. “I’ve been told nothing says commitment like a big honking diamond. You give me the word and we’ll make it official whenever you’re ready.”

  She was ready now, but she didn’t say so. No, she was done rushing through life in search of something she couldn’t quite define. She knew what she wanted, who she wanted to be with and even when she wanted to make this happen.