by Maren Smith
Cadence wanted it.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you?” Venia asked, following her out onto the front porch.
“To the end of the cul-de-sac?” Cadence scoffed. “Don’t be silly. It’s only, what…” She looked down the long street, lined on both sides by house after well-kept, darn near identical house. “…thirteen lots down? I can walk that far.”
They’d had to drive all the way to Denver to find a decent clothing store, but she finally found the perfect sundress. It was sunshine yellow with blue and green vining flowers growing up one side and a skirt that extended almost to her ankles, hiding her surgery scars. Now, all dressed up and with sensible white flats completing her ensemble, at this point if Cadence didn’t do something to work off all this nervous energy, she was going to be an absolute mess by the time she got there. Afraid she might look too young to be dependable, she’d pinned her long blonde hair up into a no-nonsense bun. Afraid that might make her look too stern to be likeable, she’d added a touch of make-up, the first she’d applied since before her accident. Nothing dramatic. A little mascara, a little lipstick.
There was no way she was going to get this job. She simply wasn’t qualified.
Bracing herself against the disappointment, but determined still to try, Cadence headed down the driveway for the end of the street.
“Break a leg,” Venia called after her, grinning when Cadence cast her a backwards, withering glance. “But not really this time!”
Other Mothers…can’t live with ‘em, can’t muzzle ‘em.
Halfway to the end of the cul-de-sac, her legs began to ache but Cadence kept going. Regardless of what job she got, standing all day on her feet was likely going to be her new norm. She was just going to have to get used to working through the pain.
She passed the house with the white picket fence and a small black pug followed her, bug-eyed and grinning, tail wagging with ferocious cuteness as far as the fence would allow. It whined when she didn’t stop to play.
“You’re all right,” she said, although whether to the dog or herself, she didn’t know. With every step, she tried to soften her stiff-legged limp. There was no disguising that she couldn’t walk right, but she wasn’t crippled and she didn’t want this doctor fellow to think she was.
The end of the cul-de-sac came into view as did the house that was her destination, peeking out from around a curtain of evergreen hedges that shielded the property as if for privacy. A white washed sign at the end of the driveway announced the residence. “Dr. Marcus Devon and Family, By Appointment Only.” It included a phone number on the bottom.
Hearing laughing from the backyard, she glimpsed a flash of yellow and black clothing as one young boy dashed behind the row of dense hedges, seeking a hiding place. It took Cadence a moment to realize she’d stopped walking. She rubbed her suddenly sweaty palms against her skirt-clad thighs. She could do this. Kids were just little humans, and it’s not like she’d never had to get along with humans before.
What if they didn’t like her?
For crying out loud, she didn’t even have the job yet. Worry about one thing at a time!
Her knee wobbled on that first step off the sidewalk and onto the Devons’ paved driveway. It was nice, flat, even ground. No gravel. There was no reason for it, but when she felt the warning quiver shake its way up her leg, Cadence threw out her arms and quickly shifted her weight onto her other foot. She managed not to fall, but only by the barest margin.
Wiping her palms against her thighs again, she drew a calming breath and then continued on. One step after another…careful…calm… She should have accepted Venia’s offer of a drive. Her legs were really aching now. Each step felt as if her knees were grinding on gravel, but she was almost there. Flowering shrubs dotted the flowerbed that lined the walkway leading from the driveway to the front porch. Dear God, there were steps. But only three and with a railing. She could do three steps, particularly if she had something sturdy to heave herself up with so her legs didn’t have to do all the work.
Cadence had just crossed from the driveway onto the cobbled walkway when the bushes to her immediate left suddenly erupted. A young boy, no older than eight or nine years at best, threw himself out into the open with Rambo-esque bellowing, his blue and green squirt rifle firing full blast. The spray hit Cadence in the chest like a fist and, even as the expression on that young child’s face changed from victorious glee to wide-eyed horror, she lost her balance. Her knees went out from under her, twisting in opposite directions and the wrenching pain that shot up her legs made her shout even before she hit the pavement.
“Dad!” the boy bellowed, throwing his squirt gun in his haste to reach her. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh!” he cried. “I’m so sorry! I thought you were my brother!”
Cadence rocked on her backside, clutching her knees. It took a moment for the pain to abate enough for her to realize the boy was right there beside her, alternating between hovering uncertainly over her and screaming back over his shoulder for his father.
“I’m okay,” she stammered, and even tried to smile but the effect was ruined by the single traitorous tear that escaped over her lashes and rolled down her face. That tear was the young boy’s undoing. He began to cry now too.
“I’m so sorry,” he squeaked, which was when the front door suddenly flew open and a tall, dark-haired man, dressed in simple beige slacks and a neatly tucked white shirt, the sleeves rolled partway up his arms, stuck his head out.
“Daniel, what—” He stopped when he saw her, the squirt gun lying forgotten on the cobblestones, and the pattern of water saturation on her dress and dripping from her face. His face paled.
“I’m okay,” she tried again, but he was already charging down the steps, pushing past the young boy who, when hovering just behind the man, stood as a miniature mirror image of his father.
“What did you do?” the man accused, dropping to his knees beside her.
“We were getting Buddy,” the tearful child moaned. “I thought she was Buddy.”
“It was just an accident,” Cadence said, swiping all evidence of that tell-tale tear from her cheek. “I fall all the time. It’s no big deal.”
Sometime in her fall, the skirt of her dress had hiked up above her knees, showing all her scars and the ugly bumps where the pins in her legs pushed up her skin. She tried to smooth it down, covering her legs, but the man dodged her hands. His were sheer gentleness when he touched her knee, at once every bit as professional as the doctor she suspected him of being. His next words confirmed that.
“Do you hurt anywhere? Is anything broken?”
The soft rasp of his fingers and palm as he felt his way to both ankles made her whole body tingle in a way she hadn’t felt in a long, long time. She shook her head slowly. “No, I’m fine, really.”
“Can you stand?” He shifted his weight, squatting first before he rose, reaching for her hands to help her up.
“Yeah, sure.” She waved his urging hands away, embarrassed now because she knew her aching legs were going to make her look so incredibly feeble in the struggle to get up again. “Just…just give me a minute. I can do this.”
Dr. Marcus Devon turned to his son, Daniel. “Get the door for me.”
The next thing Cadence knew, he was gathering her into his arms. “Oh, wait…no!”
Her protest became a shriek when her butt, feet and hands lost contact with the ground. She grabbed involuntarily, clinging to shoulders that felt far too masculine and strong to belong to any simple country doctor.
“I’ve got you,” he soothed, striding after his young son. Even with her in his arms, he climbed those three stairs with far less effort than she would have done. It wasn’t fair, and yet at the same time, it was hard for her to summon any hint of bitterness when every breath she took was laden with the scent of heady spice cologne, clean soap, and him. She almost closed her eyes. It took everything she had not to curl into him and just�
�breathe him in.
“Close the door, Daniel,” he said, turning sideways with her as he crossed the threshold. “And then, young man, you’ve got five seconds to get to your room. I’ll be up as soon as I can, and you’d better believe we’re going to talk about this.”
The look on that little boy’s face as he watched his father carry her into his office haunted her. He looked so worried, and it didn’t even seem to be for himself. Cadence couldn’t help but interfere. “It was an accident. It wasn’t his fault. Honestly, I fall all the time.”
“He knew better,” Marcus said, clipped. He set her down to sit at the foot of his examining table. “They’re not allowed in the front yard during working hours any more than they’re allowed in the living room. So naturally, the more off-limits it is, the more they gravitate toward it. Stop,” he said, when he tried to raise her skirt up over her knees and she immediately grabbed and tried to smooth it back down. His dark eyes met hers, so intense at first, before softening just a bit. “Stop, please. Allow me.”
A funny tingling sensation fizzled up and down her legs. The last thing in the world she wanted him to see was her scars, and yet, in that silent tug-of-war of wills that followed his request, it was Cadence who yielded first. She let go of her skirt and that tingling spread through her like wildfire when he raised it. His touch was nothing but professional and respectful as he folded back the cloth only high enough to see the lines of old damage done.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Car accident. Someone hit the gas instead of the brakes and I got caught between the bumper and a building.” Cadence tried to shrug it off. “I survived.”
“I’m surprised you’re able to walk without a cane.”
A pang of conscience thumped inside her chest, but Cadence swallowed it back. She’d rather be dead from a broken neck then to let people think her weak or crippled. “I get by fine without one.”
When he raised his eyebrow, she raised her chin.
“You’d rather fall?” he asked, so calmly, still professional and yet with a note of something else that tremored through her in those same tingling waves that now felt amplified by the sternness of his tone.
It made her feel oddly breathless and defensive all at once. “Not to be rude, Dr. Devon, but that’s my business.”
He continued to hold her gaze for several seconds longer. This time, he looked away first, albeit only long enough to hook the clipboard of blank forms off his desk. Still, she counted that as a victory…for all of three seconds.
“I don’t believe we’ve met before.”
“No, I arrived last night. I’m staying with my mother, down the street.”
Clicking a pen open, he began to fill out the form. “And that would be?”
“Venia Varner.”
He looked up at her. “Cecily?”
“No, I’m Cadence.” She tried to laugh, but it came out falteringly. “The unofficial daughter.”
“What brings you to Corbin’s Bend?”
Utter failure.
She rubbed her hands over the bumps of the pins in both knees. “Just visiting.”
He looked at her again, another long speculative look, before dropping his gaze back to his form. “What’s your last name, Cadence?”
Oh God. He thought she was here for an appointment. She cringed. Like she could afford the bill.
“Westmore,” she offered, helpless to figure out how to segue the conversation into why she’d really come and why a woman who had to be carried into his medical office should be considered the best person for the job of taking care of his house and children.
“What brings you to see me, Miss Westmore?”
And there it was, the perfect segue laid out for her as if it were a mercy present. The cause already felt lost, but Cadence took it.
“The job you advertised.”
His pen stopped writing, hovering over his page for a full second or two before he looked up. He didn’t look at her though. He looked at her legs.
Sometimes it was a good thing to brace one’s self for disappointment. It kept failures like this from cutting quite so deeply.
Cadence met his eyes, when he finally raised them to hers, solidly and without blinking. “I can clean a house, Dr. Devon. I can cook. Good, decent, healthy meals. I can make beds, wash clothes, pick up toys. I’ve got a driver’s license and my own car. I’m responsible and dependable.”
He tried to hold up his hand. “I’m sure you are,” he demurred, but already he was looking at her legs again.
“I am not my legs, Dr. Devon.” It was a curious mix, this inner turmoil of desperation and pride. Both combined to make her voice sharper than she intended. Certainly, it was sharper than a woman in need of a job should ever use when talking to her prospective employer.
“I don’t mean to be offensive,” he said, quietly, evenly. “Look at me.”
Angrily, she looked everywhere but, until he took hold of her chin, pinching lightly between two fingers as he turned her back to face him.
“I don’t want to offend you,” he said again, even softer than before. “But I know my boys. They’re good kids, but they are rambunctious and active and I don’t think you could keep up with them, not without hurting yourself. I don’t—” He stopped, his breath catching with a slight hitch of frustration, probably because in spite of the fact that she never cried, she could feel the sting of very real, very hot and embarrassing tears, filling up the back of her throat and leaking into her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I really am, but this is not a good fit for my family.”
“Okay.” Cadence stubbornly blinked back the tears. She managed a smile, tried to make it one of her brightest. “Couldn’t hurt but to try, right?”
She got down off the exam table, evading his steadying hand when she wobbled, both knees screaming at the suddenness of having to take her full weight. They were going to scream even more during the long walk back home to Venia’s. Thirteen houses. It may as well be a thousand. How was she going to survive that distance?
The same way she survived everything else. One step at a time, teeth gritted, eyes staring straight ahead.
“Let me drive you—”
Oh, she must really look feeble. She almost laughed, except that might have come out sounding bitter and that just smacked too close to weakness. “No, thanks,” she said tightly, forcing the cheerfulness as she limped toward the door. “I can walk.”
He made another soft, puffing sound. The sort of sound a man made when he didn’t know whether to be amused or annoyed. “It’s not a bother,” he called, trailing behind her.
“Neither’s walking.” Stepping out onto the porch, she tried to close his front door behind her, but he caught it and followed her outside.
Damn.
Cadence kept her head up and struggling to control the limp, which hurt like hell, down each descending stair of those three stone steps.
“Are you always this stubborn?” Marcus asked. She shot him a withering look over one shoulder. Arms folded across his chest, he had propped one broad shoulder against a front porch post while he watched her go. His eyes were sparkling. Apparently, he’d settled on amused over annoyed. Already one corner of his mouth was losing its fight with the smile he was trying halfheartedly to hide.
That smile was her undoing. Her own annoyance erupted, surpassing all her best intentions to just leave and leave gracefully. “No, sir. As it so happens, this is my good girl behavior.”
Just what every good employee ought to say to her boss. Shaking her head at herself, wishing she could just learn to bite her tongue, Cadence headed for home. She was mere steps from the end of the driveway when the doctor called out behind her, “How long are you ‘just visiting’ for, Miss Westmore?”
“As long as I jolly-well feel like it, Dr. Devon!”
“And if I hired you?” he called out.
That stopped her. He had to be playing with her. He just had to be. Except that when she turned
around, he had sauntered up the driveway after her, arms still folded across his chest, his dark eyes still dancing with all the amusement that he no longer bothered to hide.
“Well?” he asked, not stopping until he was standing directly in front of her and they were face to face. “How long would you stay then?”
He couldn’t possibly be hiring her. He…he just couldn’t.
She stared at him, trying hard not to get her hopes up. “I would stay as long as I had a job.”
They stared at each other then, in the wide open of his driveway with her clothes still soaking wet and his expression still amused, yet oddly closed. He considered her quietly and for so long that she almost turned and just started walking again.
“Can you start tomorrow morning, seven o’clock?” he finally asked.
Her heart faltered, stumbling in her chest. The resuming beat felt as hard as a physical blow.
She was going to cry.
Except Cadence never cried.
She nodded once. Chin held high, both legs screaming in pain, she turned and walked away.
* * *
He was out of his mind.
Marcus watched the woman he’d just hired limp off down the road, and there was just no doubt about it, all the wrong parts of him had been involved in giving her the job. She was entirely wrong for the position. Of course, of the four women who had applied, she was the best interviewee, bar none. At barely eighteen and soon to be out of high school, Bethie Ann had been too young. Agnes Hasselhoff, at eighty-two, had been too old and, as Buddy had loudly proclaimed before Marcus sent them all outside to play, smelled funny. A few years younger than himself, Carla Methon was just fine age-wise, but she was less interested in the job than she was in Marcus himself. Two months ago, she’d been far more subtle about her seductress intentions. These days, just walking into the same room with her made him feel like a prize piece of meat on display. Carla was a lovely woman. He should have been flattered by her persistence, but he just…wasn’t.