by Susan Stoker
He’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth and inherited the multi-million-dollar ranch from his father. Never had he worked to achieve an objective, so he couldn’t relate to those with a dream, a vision, or just plain ambition.
Now, moving into the white tiled bathroom, she saw that the tiles repeated the colorful flowers found in Cade’s mosaic. “Did you redo the bathroom floor?” she asked, as she pointed to the bluebonnets among the tiles.
“Yes.” He shrugged a little. “My mother pointed it out. She said if I was going to make such a beautiful landscape, the bathroom should echo it in some way. She’s the one who suggested I take up the pecan wood floor and lay down tile instead. When I was finished with my shift, I’d come home and work on it. We drove to Houston, to a well-known ceramic tile maker, and I bought the wildflower tiles to place among the white tiles I’d already purchased.”
“How long did this take you?”
“Six months,” he admitted. “Hey, I had to teach myself how to lay tile and grout on a floor. And I was pulling overtime, so this became a half year’s labor of love on my part.”
“It’s so pretty,” Kara said, looking around. At one end of the room was a garden tub. It sat beneath an antique, stained glass window that sported geometric colors and could be opened to allow in fresh air. “Did your mom help you design your home?”
“Definitely. Couldn’t have done it without her input,” he admitted with a boyish grin, leaning against the opened door. “I needed a lot of help from her, believe me.”
Kara appreciated the huge garden tub at the other end of the large, spacious bathroom. “When I walked into your home, I was so surprised. I was expecting a lot of dark colors, poorly lit rooms, and industrial type of furniture.”
He lifted his brows. “Well, that’s about right. After I purchased this house, I brought my mom over to give me some ideas. What I wanted is exactly what you just described. She told me to approach each room as a canvas to paint on, or in my case, a place where I would lay mosaic and grout the panel.”
“She must be very proud of you,” Kara said, choking up a little. The bathroom was sparkling clean. There were lavender curtains on either side of the one window. Most of all, she liked the double skylight above, showing off the colorful floor tiles below. There was a fully enclosed glass shower, large enough for two people. She saw two rain shower heads in it, as well.
“This is not a man’s bathroom. This reminds me of someone who truly understands color and design.”
“That’s Mom’s influence,” he said with a chuckle. Walking to the linen closet, he opened it and laid out a fuchsia bath towel, hand towel, and wash cloth, setting them on the double sink counter. “These are yours.” He pulled open another drawer and said, “Mom has a thing for Herbaria soap,” and he pointed to ten different types of handmade soap. “Come and pick out your favorite organically made soap.”
Moving opposite him, looking into the drawer, she smiled. “Oh, I love handmade soap!” and she reached out, trailing her fingers over the wrapped bars. “Citrus oatmeal,” she murmured, curious and picking it up, holding to her nose. “Mmmm, this is like inhaling the fragrance of orange blossoms, Cade. I’ll take this one.”
His smile broadened. “It’s my mom’s favorite fragrance, too. Looks like you two have the same taste.”
Placing the bar on top of her towels, she said, “I’ve met her quite often in Clayton. I just never realized how talented she really is. I’d love to see her watercolors. She never told me she painted. I wish she had.”
Cade roused himself and pushed away from the door jamb, pulling his hands out of his pockets. “She’s shy about her art. Come into my office. There’s a computer in there, as well as Wi-Fi for the entire house. You can use the office any time you want.”
Kara followed him down the hall. Each room was different from the other, featuring another pastel wall color. The floors were either pecan wood or a pastel-colored tile with throw rugs or area carpet. Cade opened a door and gestured her to go on in. She stepped inside and he followed. There was a heavy double oak desk, obviously an antique, and two ergonomic, modern chairs on either side of it. The walls were cream colored with pecan wood floors. This room had a more masculine presence. She could see a lot of wooden oak file cabinets and other office furniture sitting across from the huge desk.
“Mom calls this my ‘Texas 1850s’ room,” he deadpanned, a smile lurking at the corners of his mouth. “I’ve always liked antiques and found this oak desk at a Goodwill store in McAllen. I found the English banquet oil lamp with the hand-painted flowers with the amethyst colored font around it at another Goodwill store in Houston. The frosted tulip shade is decorated with daisies. I kept the kerosene glass lamp that sits in the middle of it, but changed it from an oil lamp to an electric one.”
“I love antiques,” Kara sighed. “And this looks like a room straight out of Texas in the 1850s.”
“Note the pecan wood floor too,” he said proudly.
“It’s beautiful.”
“There was an old wooden floor that was going to be destroyed in an old home near McAllen. I drove down there one weekend and pulled up all the wood and brought it home and laid it in here. Paid the guys who were going to renovate it a hundred bucks. Everyone won in that exchange. That’s how this room got its name.”
“I can tell it’s really old because it has that marvelous golden sheen that pecan wood always gets when it ages.”
“It went well with the oak desk I already had,” he said. “You can come in here and use my computer, or if you want to use your laptop, just set it up and I’ll give you my password to hook into my network.”
“Thanks, I probably will.” She turned, looking at a four-by-five-foot framed watercolor painting hanging on the wall above where the desk sat. “Is this your mom’s work?” she asked, lightly touching the oak frame around it.
Cade walked over and stood in front of the desk. “Yes, it is. Mom paints a lot of Texas subjects, like this rancher on a horse driving his cattle. Dad had taken us over to the King Ranch, which is in the area, and Mom brought her camera. She was thrilled with the trip. The one shot was cowboys on horseback driving a small herd of Santa Gertrudis cattle across a pasture.”
Studying it, Kara said, “Your mother could be a professional. This is beautiful, Cade.” Lifting her chin, she absorbed his nearness, just a few scant feet separated them. “Does she sell her art?”
“Nah, she doesn’t think it’s good enough to see the light of day. I’ve pleaded with her for years to send jpegs of her work to Houston and Dallas art galleries, but she won’t do it. I think she’s afraid of rejection, so she doesn’t get her work out to the public to appreciate.”
Giving him a wicked look, Kara said, “Like mother, like son, huh? It’s okay to be humble about your work, Cade, but you shouldn’t hide your talents under a bushel basket. Did you know someone would pay thousands of dollars for your mom’s painting? She’s no amateur.”
“Well,” he sighed, wrapping his arms across his chest, “I’ve tried to tell her that. When Dad suddenly died of a heart attack, we had no income any more. Mom is a high school graduate and was always a housewife before that happened. She married my dad when they were eighteen. When he passed away, she got a job at the local McDonald’s and that’s how she kept our heads above the financial waters as I grew up. I took odd jobs around the town, mowing grass and such, and between us, we survived. She worked sometimes twelve to sixteen hours a day, trying to get enough money to pay our monthly bills and the mortgage on our house.”
“But I was told your mom had to declare bankruptcy and you did lose your home. Did that happen?” Kara saw the momentary pain of that memory in his eyes.
“Yes, she did but we survived that too. And the whole time she kept painting and refining her techniques throughout my growing up years. When I left for the Marine Corps after graduating from high school, I started sending half of my paycheck home to her so she could quit workin
g at McDonald’s. She didn’t want to quit because the employees are like family to one another, but she did cut down her hours, allowing herself more free time to paint.”
“You’ve been a wonderful son to her,” Kara said quietly, reaching out, resting her hand on his arm, feeling his biceps beneath the fabric of his khaki shirt respond to her touch. She wanted to trail her fingers down his lean, muscular arm and explore him. There was a change in his eyes as well, more golden tones in their depths.
She felt his muscles tighten momentarily beneath her fingers. Kara’s heart thudded once to underscore the sudden sexual tension swirling between them. Her thighs tightened, wanting him to explore her. What was happening between them? Whatever it was, it was clearly mutual and that alone stunned Kara.
For the first time, she saw hunger and desire in Cade’s eyes as he held her upturned gaze. All those years as a child and later, as a teen growing up with him as a quiet shadow in her life, they had never really met, never really talked. And yet, her mind spun back to those twelve years they’d shared, an economic chasm stood between them at the time. But her heart, oh her heart had always been drawn to humble, silent Cade Patterson. When she saw him on the football field, he was her hero. How many dreams had she spun around him? Too many to count.
And right now he was standing inches away from her. She inhaled his masculine scent, saw the fire burning deep in his eyes that he held for her alone. Every inch of her body responded to that heated look. Cade Patterson had just stepped out of the shadows of her life and into the light of day. He was letting her know in no uncertain terms that he desired her. The revelation blindsided her.
But it was in the best of ways because Kara had secrets of her own she carried about him in her heart. She wondered if Cade realized just how much she had yearned for him over the years. None of it had ever been given voice in any form.
Searching his gaze, her fingertips tightened around his hard, muscled arm. The change in his eyes was instantaneous, narrowing, as if she was his quarry and he was going to capture her. A frisson of desire erupted in her lower body, flashing to life, flowing upward, tightening her nipples, her mind melting beneath his intense look—one that spoke directly to her lonely heart. This meeting had been a long time coming. But now, it was here.
Chapter Five
‡
Where had the last two weeks gone? Kara had just towel dried herself off after taking a long, hot soak in the garden tub in Cade’s home. Her heart beat with happiness. She placed the bright yellow towel on the rack, smoothing it out. She’d just gotten home from Delos and Cade was out in the kitchen, fixing them a dinner of chili and homemade jalapeño cornbread he’d whipped up.
Glancing in the mirror with steam curling around the edges, she touched her left cheek. Her black eye was gone and the swelling on her cheek finally looked normal once more. Although she was sure she looked like a troll to Cade, he never mentioned how distorted looking her face was for those weeks. Her nose looked as if it had never been broken, much to her relief.
But law enforcement had not found Fuentes, the man who had assaulted her, and that bothered her more than anything else. She was now finding herself afraid of her own shadow, except when she was in Cade’s home. Here, she felt safe—and desirable.
Yet, Cade remained the perfect gentleman, never flirting with her, never touching her, or making a move to let her know he wanted her. Kara had seen the desire in his eyes from time to time but he never acted on it.
She climbed into a pair of comfy white linen pants and a pink tee with cap sleeves. Kara quickly ran a comb through her hair, smoothing it into place. One thing she’d noticed was that Cade enjoyed seeing her with her hair down. Sometimes when they were watching a TV show, she would glance up and he’d be studying her with a tender look that gripped her heart and made her momentarily breathless. It was as if her father’s edict that he was from the wrong side of the tracks and had to keep his hands off her still sat silently between them, a moat that could never be crossed.
She hated that. More and more, Kara was reaching out to Cade to let him know she invited his touch, his attention, and that she liked it. Now, she would lie awake for an hour or more at night in the huge bed alone, trying to think of subtle, nonverbal ways to let Cade know she was interested in him personally, woman-to-man.
So what was stopping him? Frustration swirled and eddied through her as she pulled her fingers through her straight sable hair, watching the darker strands along with the gold highlighted ones, tangle through the sable color. She saw interest in Cade’s eyes when she’d catch him staring at her. It wasn’t that he did it often. He didn’t. Just—sometimes, her heart would catch, beat a little harder and her whole body went on alert, an ache building deep within her for him alone.
Did her father’s harsh warning to him when he was a young boy keep him in a strangle hold? Did he still see her as unapproachable? Untouchable? Her lips thinned as she slipped her feet into a pair of white sandals.
Maybe it would take a confrontation with Cade, telling him how her feelings were growing for him, that she was deeply interested in him, and wanted to explore what they might have together. Wasn’t it obvious to him by now that she was her own woman? Her father no longer ran and controlled her life. She made her own decisions.
More frustration rose within her. Sometimes men could be so thick-headed! It seemed to be a disease they all had. Setting the comb aside, she cleaned up in the bathroom, opened the door, and walked out into her beautiful bedroom.
Kara never tired of looking at Cade’s mosaic wildflower panel above the bed. She had a dream last night that they were making love in this bed and she looked up to see the beauty and color of the flowers. The dream had stayed with her all day at the school and her lower body felt achy and needy this evening.
Living with Cade was turning her into a hormonal wreck. She wanted him so badly that it was all she’d thought about the past week.
Putting her dirty clothes in a nearby hamper, she inhaled the spicy scent of chili wafting through the partly open bedroom door. Cade liked quiet music in the background. Most of it was bluegrass or country music, but what Texan didn’t like those kinds of songs and instrumentals? She smiled, pushing her palms down the sides of her linen pants, hurrying out of the room and down the hall.
They’d fallen into a rhythm with one another at dinner time. She made the salad and set the table. He did all the serious cooking. She’d been right about Cade being a gourmet chef—that Wolf stove was more than just a showpiece. He loved to cook and she often thought that his mosaic works were just another extension of his artistic nature.
Cade loved creating things and combining them, like a mad scientist, curious about how things fit together. He used colorful pieces of broken ceramic tiles and pieced them together to create beautiful mosaic pictures. His use of spices enhanced the food he was cooking and was another art form. He used those same skills in his police work as a deputy sheriff investigating a crime scene for puzzle-like clues.
The August sunlight was bright, filling the open-concept room that included the kitchen with bright, rich color. Kara was grateful for the air conditioning, knowing how hot and humid the Texas Gulf Coast could become.
She watched as Cade stood at the stove and a new tenderness swept through her. His mother, Tracy, had actually sewn him what she called “manly aprons,” mostly khaki and without fanciness or frills. He’d come home and shed his deputy sheriff’s gear and put on an old, worn pair of Levis, his beat-up boots and a long-sleeved white cowboy shirt. He certainly looked sexy with the sleeves rolled up and cuffed to just below his elbows. And he was even sexier in that manly apron. Cade was so confident about who he was, in his masculinity, that he could wear an apron without apology. She approached from the side, knowing he didn’t like her to quietly move up behind him for good reason. She saw the veins standing out along his lower arms as he slowly stirred a large pot of chili with a long wooden spoon.
“Smells goo
d,” she said, halting near the end of the stove, absorbing his intent profile. There were several jars of spices sitting nearby and she was sure he was working on getting the chili to taste just right. His mouth drew upward and he twisted a look in her direction.
“Hope you’re hungry, Ms. Knight.”
“Starving. Ever since you let me stay here, I must have gained five pounds and its all your fault, Patterson.” She loved when he laughed, as he did just then. It was a rolling rumble within that exquisitely broad, deep chest of his.
“That extra weight looks good on you,” he teased, taking one last taste of his chili. “You were underweight when you came here, Kara.”
She leaned her hip against the counter, enjoying watching him as he tasted his spiced chili. A look of pleasure wreathed his face and he licked his lips. “Want a test taste?” He scooped up a bit of the juice from the top of the twelve-quart stainless steel pot and into the wooden spoon. He blew on it to cool it for her.
“Sure,” she said, coming close, her breast brushing lightly against his upper arm. He held one hand beneath the spoon and guided it toward her opening lips. Her eyes never left his as she tasted the warm juice. There was such hunger in his eyes and it sure wasn’t for food. It was for her.
“Mmmm,” she said, moving away enough so that she no longer had contact with his body, “That is so good, Cade.” She watched him hesitate, as if torn about something. He nodded and set the spoon aside.
“I like pleasing you, Kara,” he said gruffly, holding her gaze, unmoving.
There was such a powerful energy that suddenly sprang up between them that Kara felt faint. Cade was going to kiss her. She saw it in his golden eyes, saw the intent. Only inches separated them. Her whole body swayed forward as he slowly lifted his hands toward her face. His palms were rough, his fingers calloused and strong. He held his passion back as much as he could as he cupped her chin.