Cade stepped into the shallow water, the mud sucking at his boots, and pulled the boat half onto the bank, tying it off to a pine tree. He circled her waist and lifted her to dry ground. Instead of making her feel vulnerable, his strength made her feel feminine.
“I didn’t plan to spend my Sunday dealing with your special delivery, Cade.” Sawyer’s voice rang with more ire than the situation seemed to call for.
“Sorry about that. Wasn’t expecting it to arrive until tomorrow.”
“You’re planning to take over my garage, are you?”
“I’d like to use your garage while I’m here.” Cade didn’t seem to be asking for a favor. “Told you I was getting a project shipped down.”
“Sure, shove my stuff aside. It’s certainly not as important as your designs.”
Monroe looked back and forth between the brothers. No one could mistake the territorial battle brewing between them. Cade took a step forward. “You’re not even working on anything. What’s your problem, little bro?”
Cade’s jab sent them spiraling further, and Sawyer’s shoulders bowed up. “I had my eye on an old Camaro and was thinking about fixing her up, but now your shit is in my way.”
Monroe wrapped her hands around one of Cade’s biceps, surprised to find it taut and thrumming with static energy. “I have an idea. Divide the garage right down the middle with a long strip of tape. It worked on The Brady Bunch.”
Her forced teasing diffused the tension. Sawyer rolled his eyes, but the edge of aggression in his voice dulled. “Could you at least get that motor Delmar dropped off back to him?”
“Sure. I’ll take it over right now.”
Sawyer walked back to the house, his hands shoved into his pockets and his head down. She watched Cade watch Sawyer. As the distance between them grew, Cade’s muscles relaxed under her grip.
“You want to ride along with me?” He didn’t look at her.
“Why not.” She wasn’t sure whether he even wanted to talk about Sawyer, but he spoke before she came up with a question.
“You ever been out to Uncle Delmar’s?” He stepped out of her hands, leaving her to walk at his side.
“Can’t say that I have.”
“Well, are you in for a treat.” While his voice retained shades of his confrontation with Sawyer, his mood lightened, and she decided to follow his lead.
She sat on the metal desk while he backed the old truck into the garage and used the hoist to maneuver the engine into the bed. She enjoyed watching him work, his ease in the environment obvious. Yet he hadn’t seemed out of place in a fancy tuxedo circulating with Cottonbloom’s finest.
He opened the passenger door and helped her in as if it was a date. Maybe it was? If so, it was the most unusual date she’d ever been on. And definitely the best.
The truck bounced over the lightly graveled path to the main driveway in front of Sawyer’s house. As they picked up speed, the wind whipped her hair around her face and she gathered it in her hand as best she could. Between the boat ride and truck, she was going to be a windblown mess.
“Haven’t fixed the AC. Sorry about that,” he said over the loud growl of the engine.
She scooted to the middle of the bench seat to escape the worst of the wind. Duct-tape patches caught the cloth of her skirt. “No problem.”
His hand came down on her knee, easing underneath the cotton to touch her bare skin. She froze as if any movement from her might scare him away like a wild animal. His thumb caressed the underside of her knee in slow, light arcs of sensation. Tingles trailed up her leg, sparking a sexual response that caught her off-guard in its intensity.
They’d made out under the cottonwood tree. He’d touched her much more intimately after the cocktail party, even during it, but this touch held promises and portents.
Neither of them spoke, and when he removed his hand to turn onto a narrow track with grass growing between the rutted tire tracks she missed his touch desperately. Pine trees rose on both sides, offering flashes of respite from the sun.
The summer heat, the tang of pine sap, the feel of his body next to hers … Seemingly insignificant, the moment carved itself as a new memory.
They pulled up beside a small, square house, dark-green paint flaking off the clapboards. The porch was narrow and short and supported a single rocking chair. Several empty beer bottles sat on a side table, flies buzzing around the rims.
She grabbed Cade’s sleeve as he was sliding out of the truck. “Do you think Delmar gets lonely out here? His place seems a little…”
“Run-down? Ramshackle?” Cade smiled, but it was full of a resonating melancholy. He folded his arms on the top of the cab and rested his forehead against them, peering in at her. “I offered to buy him something nicer and closer to town. Sawyer’s offered him a room at the farmhouse. He’s turned us both down. This is where he wants to be. He grew up here.”
She swallowed and looked back at the little house. It seemed too small for one man, much less a family.
“I don’t remember Daddy talking about it much. He worked to get out of this kind of poverty. And he did. Got married, bought a nice house, had a family.” Cade’s eyes closed and his lips thinned. “Makes you wonder why good men die while men like Sam Landry are allowed to live. It’s not fair.”
“No, it’s not fair.” She slid closer and cupped his cheeks, caressing his cheekbones with her thumbs.
He turned his head to lay a kiss in the palm of her hand, his eyes still closed. She wanted to pull him close and kiss the pain of his childhood away, kiss him because of what he’d done for her, kiss him for the man he’d become. The path they were on felt inevitable.
The knowledge was both a comfort and a curse, made her feel both strong and weak. Whether he knew or not, he would be taking a piece of her with him when he left Cottonbloom. Maybe he’d always had a piece of her. Maybe that’s why she’d never been able to give her heart to another man. She had been waiting for Cade to bring it back to her. Only problem was he’d claimed an even bigger chunk in the process.
Her throat felt scratchy with tears and the burst of emotion that came with the sudden, life-skewing realization. “Cade, I—”
“Cade! Monroe! Well, I’ll be. What’re you two doing out here?” Delmar’s yell cut her off.
Cade pulled away, the moment lost. “I’ve got your motor all fixed up. Where do you want me to put it?”
“Over by the shed would be good.”
Monroe slid out of the truck and wandered to stand under a mixture of evergreens and hardwoods in front of the little house. What had she been ready to admit? She wasn’t even sure. Less than three weeks he’d been in Cottonbloom. Yet even as her logic paced and lectured, her heart accepted that they were irrevocably tangled.
She picked at the bark of one of the pine trees and stared out into the dense woods. A flash of man-made white caught her eyes. Without the benefit of a hoist, Delmar and Cade were busy heaving the engine out of the truck bed.
She stepped through the woods, zigzagging around clumps of undergrowth. The tallest trees thinned and she stepped into what used to be a clearing, overgrown now with weeds and the sprouts of trees, some as tall as she was.
An old trailer on cement blocks stood in the middle. Sunlight reflected off the single remaining disc of a homemade wind chime, silent and twirling in the light breeze. There was something achingly sad about the lonely piece of metal. Kudzu had engulfed a quarter of the trailer, and left it sagging in that direction as if in a slow, painful surrender to nature.
This was Cade’s trailer. The one he’d lived in after his parents’ death. He’d told her about it, but nothing could prepare her for the reality. She tiptoed closer feeling as if she were disturbing a sacred spot.
On the ground under the former wind chime were several more pieces of metal that had given up the fight. She reached up to touch the last disc, and the rotted twine snapped, the disc lost in the tall grass. The sight was heartbreaking in a way she couldn’t
describe.
A branch snapped behind her and she startled around, scratching her leg on a nearby clump of thorns. Massaging his bad hand, Cade walked out of the woods toward the trailer, not glancing in her direction. He seemed hypnotized by the sight, and waves of his agitation shot her heart into a faster rhythm.
He stopped at the foot of the rotted-out steps, not six feet away from her, yet he hadn’t acknowledged her in any way. As she opened her mouth to speak, his voice rumbled. “If I had a gallon of gasoline in the truck, I’d burn this hellhole to the ground.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Delmar had presented the trailer to Cade like it was nirvana. It had been old even then, and so starkly different from their cozy two-bath, three-bedroom brick ranch-style home, it was laughable. He’d wanted to cry and give up. The first of many times he’d almost given up.
Instead, he cleaned it up as best he could before he brought Tally and Sawyer out to see it, putting on a happy face and telling them how much fun it would be to live next to Delmar. Somehow, they’d made the rotting, buckling trailer a home.
“After Mama and Daddy were killed, I tried to hang on to our house, but they hadn’t planned on dying.… No life insurance. The drunk driver that hit them died with nothing. They left a few thousand in savings and most of that went toward the funerals.”
She shuffled closer to him as if he were a wild animal she wanted to trap—slowly, quietly, as if she worried he might balk. He longed for the comfort of her touch yet couldn’t reach for her.
“We made it about six months in the old house before the bank repossessed it. Uncle Delmar offered up this place. I did the best I could.” His voice hoarsened.
She took his hand. He squeezed too tightly, but she didn’t protest or pull away when he brought her hand to his chest, somewhere over his thumping heart.
“You kept your family together. You made incredible sacrifices for them.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I wonder sometimes if I should have let the state put them in foster care. They might have had a decent place to live. A decent meal on the table every night. A better start.”
“What are you talking about? Sawyer went to college and Tally owns a very successful business. You’ve obviously done all right for yourself.” A fair amount of tease lightened her voice. But something else, too. Something important that rang false.
God, she sounded proud of him when the truth resided in the dark parts of himself he rarely examined. He swallowed hard and squatted down in the tall grass. With her hand still in his, she was drawn down, too.
“I was so goddamn jealous of Sawyer.” His voice dropped to confessional tones.
“Why?”
“He breezed through high school, popular despite our circumstances, dated a rich ’Sip, headed to LSU on a scholarship. I was smart enough to go to college. Instead, all I got was a GED and a job as a mechanic in a boatyard, making jack, covered in grease, while Sawyer … I sound like the biggest prick on the planet.”
He wouldn’t be surprised if she shoved him down and stalked off. His bad hand tingled. He spread his fingers wide and put his hand down on the sun-warmed ground. She tugged free, and he finally looked over at her. No horror clouded her eyes, only pity. He wasn’t sure which was worse.
She looped her arms around his shoulders, her mouth close to his ear. “You sound human.”
He couldn’t stop himself from leaning into her, their foreheads touching.
“I’m happy at how well Sawyer’s done; I swear.”
“I know. He’s proud of you, too. But this does explain a lot.”
“What do you mean?”
“The tension between the two of you. You need to talk to him. Does he know why you left?”
“Not yet, but if I tell him everything, he’ll think…”
“What? That you’re normal? You tried to be everything to Sawyer and Tally—father, mother, brother, friend—and left before you could find a different footing with them.”
He shifted to his knees, wrapped her in his arms, and laid his cheek at her temple.
“I wish I could have given Sawyer and Tally the things you had.”
She tensed and pushed off his chest. “Yes, I lived in a big house with an awesome pool. Between my mom and dad, I got almost anything I asked for—clothes, shoes, ballet lessons—I could’ve had a stupid pony if I wanted one.”
“Sounds pretty damn good to me.”
“You seriously don’t get it, do you?” She cupped his cheeks, forcing him to look at her. “What I didn’t have was a real family. Safety. Protection. Those are the most important things you gave Tally and Sawyer. I may not have gone to bed hungry, but I went to bed scared. You were jealous of Sawyer? Yeah, well, I was jealous of Tally. She had you to take care of her and I had no one. So don’t tell me what you gave them wasn’t enough. It was more than enough.”
Tears glimmered in her eyes even as determination steeled her features. He’d been so caught up in his pity party, he’d discounted the emotional scars she bore from her own childhood. Even more than that, her words resonated, tempering the guilt that had steadily grown over the years of self-imposed isolation.
He wasn’t sure what to say, how to apologize, so instead he kissed her, leaning in with a desperation that shocked him. She murmured something unintelligible before she pulled him close, her hands in his hair and pulling at his neck.
What started as a simple kiss of comfort morphed into something that threatened to spark a forest fire. It turned languid and sensuous, almost as if the heat around them slowed their movements. She rubbed her tongue against his, her throaty moan driving his arousal higher.
He ran his hands from her shoulder blades through the dip in her waist to cup her backside. Pressing her close, he rotated his hips into her, knowing she could feel his growing erection.
Delmar’s whistle cut through the trees, startling a covey of birds. Part of Cade wanted to curse his uncle for interrupting them, while part of him was relieved. Over the past few weeks, the wavery image of her from his dreams and memories had coalesced into a flesh-and-blood woman. A woman who knew and understood him better than anyone. Maybe even better than himself. It was madness.
Still he held her close, didn’t answer his uncle’s call. He dipped his head for one last kiss, this one sweet, tugging her bottom lip lightly between his teeth. He raised his head and watched her eyes flutter open, a dazed arousal blurring her features.
What would happen when he went back to Seattle? Richard’s impatience was bleeding through his e-mails. He thought shipping Cade’s current project down was a waste of time and money.
“Where’re you at, boy?” His uncle’s voice snaked through the trees.
“Coming, Uncle Delmar.”
He helped her stand and led her back through the dense woods, holding back branches and stepping on thorny brambles so she could cross without getting scratched. The track he’d driven on so many years ago had been erased by time. They were both silent.
He put on a smile for his uncle, who thanked him over and over for his help. Cade owed Delmar a thousand favors for everything he’d done over the years. Even if Cade had hated the trailer, it had been a lifeline.
Monroe climbed back into the truck, but before Cade joined her he grabbed his uncle around the shoulders for a hug. Delmar gave a surprised jerk but returned the hug wholeheartedly. Cade pulled away even as Delmar continued to pat his shoulder.
“It’s good to have you back, boy. I’ve missed having family around that understands.”
“Understands what?”
“Life out here.” Delmar gestured behind him, toward the river.
Cade wasn’t sure what his uncle was getting at, but it seemed important. “Sawyer likes to go out on the river.”
“Fishing to Sawyer is fun. Fishing to us is survival. The bond we have with the river is different from Sawyer’s.”
His heart kicked up a gear, knowing deep inside what his uncle meant. That’s
why Cade had stayed close to water after he’d been forced to leave Cottonbloom. Mobile, Alabama. New Bern, North Carolina. Maryland. Connecticut. And finally Seattle.
“I’m not staying in Cottonbloom. I can’t.”
His uncle cast a glance over Cade’s shoulder to the truck. “You love Seattle that much?”
“It’s amazing. How many times have I offered to fly you up there for a visit?”
His uncle made a scoffing sound. “You’ll never find anywhere else like Cottonbloom.”
“That is most definitely true,” Cade said dryly. “Listen, I’ve got to get Monroe back. I’ll come by soon and we’ll go fishing, all right?”
Delmar turned away and waved two fingers over his head, redneck sign language for “Let’s do it.”
Cade slid behind the wheel of his truck, unaccountably restless. The road noise and the blowing wind made conversation next to impossible. A blessing. She sat close to him again, but he didn’t touch her this time. Too much of his past had been unearthed over the course of the afternoon. The swirling ambivalence toward Cottonbloom on top of the deepening connection with Monroe made for an uncomfortable bramble of emotions.
He parked behind her SUV in front of the farmhouse. He slid out and she followed. Shifting on his feet, he looked anywhere but at her, afraid she would see more in his face than he was willing to admit.
“Okay, well, I guess I’ll see you later?” she asked even though he heard a different question in her tone.
“You still need me to play dummy at your next class, right?” He risked a glance in her direction.
The corner of her mouth was drawn back, a spark animating her eyes. “Yeah. You’re still a dummy.”
“What?” He took a step toward her, but she yanked her door open and climbed in.
“Nothing. I’ll see you around.” The wheels spun gravel up, pinging the bumper of his truck on her exit.
Chapter Twenty-two
Monroe juggled two paper bags of groceries, the wind whipping her yellow sundress around her legs. Her wraparound porch offered respite from the coming storm. Normally, this time of night in the summer children rode up and down the sidewalk followed close by hovering parents ready to prevent tears. Tonight it was deserted.
Kiss Me That Way: A Cottonbloom Novel Page 22