“We have an update on that ship stranded in the Antarctic. An American oil company was able to fly in and has rescued the team.”
Rescued.
The news anchor’s words leave me slumped in my seat at the bar, limp with relief. Our team is having drinks after a day of barnstorming Oklahoma’s most economically depressed rural areas. I’ve been checking for news constantly since The Chrysalis crisis was reported, but there had been little news and no change for hours. Now, surrounded by the people who have become as close to me as family over the last few months of the campaign, I hear the news that Maxim is going to be okay.
“Thank God,” I whisper, pushing a trembling hand through my hair. Tears leak from the corners of my eyes and burn my cheeks. “Dammit.”
I swipe at my face, trying to keep my composure, but I’m undone with the unfathomable relief of knowing Maxim has been rescued. I give up. I can’t stave off the sobs that wrack me right in the middle of the bar. After Mama and Tammara and so many losses, I had braced my heart for another, but one I wasn’t sure I could handle. To lose Maxim before I ever really even had him would have devastated me. I may have no right, and he may not even want to see me, but I’m already devising a plan to find him, to go to him. To hug him and kiss him and slap him across the face for putting me through that hell.
“You okay?” Mena asks softly, sliding a glass of whiskey toward me. “Kimba told me about Maxim.”
“Yeah, I just . . .” I struggle to evict the words from my throat, to pull myself together, but I’m distracted by the coverage on the large screen mounted over the bar.
LIVE from DFW International.
Dallas?
Two tall, dark-haired men emerge from a private plane, coming one after the other down a short bank of steps. A swarm of reporters closes around them. Shock rips through my body. How could I have been so blind?
I’m a fool and Maxim is a liar.
Warren Cade, dressed in his tailored suit and wearing his usual privilege like a mantle, grins at the circle of cameras and microphones. Beside him is a man who, now that I see them together, looks exactly like him. Maxim is a younger, more casually dressed version of his father with his longer hair, Berkeley sweatshirt, and dark jeans. Little dots of blood show stark leaking through the square bandage on his forehead.
“Mr. Cade,” a reporter calls.
Both men look toward the camera, the same patina of arrogance stamped on the handsome set of features.
“Um, Maxim Cade,” she says with a chuckle. “Sorry. How’s it feel to be back in the States after such a harrowing adventure?”
Impatience flashes in those peridot eyes I thought I knew so well.
“Uh, great,” he says, pushing a shoulder through the crowd.
“And you were scheduled to go to the Amazon next,” another reporter shouts at his back. “After such a close call, will you be rethinking that?”
Not breaking stride, his long, lean legs taking him closer to the luxury SUV waiting on the tarmac where his father stands, he glances over his shoulder and shoots the crowd that pirate’s grin. “Hell, no. I’m still going. Why wouldn’t I?”
Too many emotions roil in my belly. Too many thoughts whisk in my head. Betrayal. Fear. Relief. Something tender, an unopened bud that I crush before it can fully open.
“That’s him?” Mena asks, her eyes fixed on the screen as Maxim climbs into the vehicle behind his father.
“No,” I say, blinking dry eyes and knocking back her whiskey. “I don’t know who that man is.”
32
Maxim
“I wanted to thank you for everything, Dad,” I say, sipping the water served with the elaborate meal my mother had our chef prepare. I haven’t been in this house in years, and wasn’t sure I’d ever return.
“No need to thank me, son.” My father takes a bite of his steak and points to me with his fork. “Coming home where you belong is thanks enough.”
I stiffen, knowing where this is going and how it will end. This détente will be short-lived because, as much as I appreciate my father’s assistance, I can’t give him what he wants.
“Yes,” Mom rushes to say, her look bouncing between my father and me. “So good to have you home. We’ve missed you, haven’t we, Warren?”
My father sips his red wine and nods. “I hope this last incident got all this Greenpeace shit out of your system. Cade Energy needs you.”
His words fall into a vat of tension-laced silence. I finish chewing and carefully place my fork on my plate. “I’m not working for Cade Energy, Dad. You know that.”
His jaw ticks, the muscle flexing along his strong jawline. My jawline. My cheekbones. My eyes. My face.
My stubborn will, 1.0.
I’ve never admired and resented one person so simultaneously as I do my father. When he looks down the table at me, I know he feels the same way.
“You ungrateful fool,” he says through clenched teeth. His fist slams the table, clanging the glasses and silverware. My mother jumps and closes her eyes, resignation in every line of her body and on her face. “I rescue you and your conservationist friends. I fixed your stupid boat. I fly you home, and what do you give me in return? Defiance and rebellion.”
“No one asked you to,” I fire at him, my voice tight with anger.
“And what should I have done? Let you die?”
“If you saved me only to control me, then yeah.”
“Maxim,” my mother protests. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course, we’d save you.”
“Maybe if he’d known I wasn’t going to toe the line, he wouldn’t have bothered,” I say.
“That’s a fucking lie and you know it, Maxim,” my father says, his eyes narrowed and his body tense. “All I’m asking is for a little bit of gratitude.”
“Which you have, but I’m not changing the course of my life to make you feel I’m sufficiently grateful.”
“What course? Another useless degree? More wandering the world collecting mud samples? You call that a career?”
“I have a career. I have a plan that has nothing to do with you. You’ll see, Dad. You have no idea who I am.”
“No, you have no idea who you are,” he bellows, leaning forward over the table. “You’re a fucking Cade, and you’re running around like you’re a nobody. Well, be a nobody, Maxim. Meanwhile I’ll keep running one of the most successful businesses in the world and your brother will become president of this country. You go save whales.” He tosses a linen napkin over his unfinished meal. “See if I give a shit.”
Long, powerful strides take him out of the dining room and into his office. The heavy door slams behind him, locking me out of the inner sanctum that used to be like a second home.
“He doesn’t mean it,” my mother says, her eyes filled with tears. “Please don’t go again. I worry about you. I miss you.”
“He meant it, Mom.” I stand and cross around the table to pull her up and into a tight hug, knowing this may be our last one for a while. Her petite frame shakes against me while she sobs into my shirt. I swallow the emotion burning my throat and bury my nose in her hair. “He meant it, Mom, but so did I.”
33
Lennix
“There’s someone here to see you, Lenn.” Portia pokes her head into the conference room. Her smile is megawatt. I’ve known her just a few weeks, but she’s usually only this excited about donations.
“To see me?” I touch the Nighthorse Now graphic emblazoned on my chest. “You sure? Besides the team, I don’t know anybody in Oklahoma.”
“Well he knows you.” Portia purses the corners of her lips with suppressed satisfaction. “Why didn’t you tell us you knew Maxim Cade? He’s been all over the news.”
I’m in the process of packing up a box of campaign buttons. Her words stop me mid-reach. I send her a sharp glance and then shake my head. “I don’t know him and I don’t want to see him. Could you say I’m not here?”
The jubilation proclaimed all over Portia’s face fades. She folds
her arms across her chest and aims a look at me over the bottle-green rims of her glasses. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on,” Portia says. “But he just made a donation to the campaign, and if he wants to speak to one of our staff, our staff will be available.”
Donation. Money.
Of course. He is a Cade after all.
Without speaking, I tuck my T-shirt into the waistband of my skirt and walk past her out into the campaign headquarters lobby. Maxim sits on the shabby thrift-store couch. He makes it look like a throne, even wearing a simple white T-shirt and jeans. How did I not know this man was a Cade, or some equivalent? It’s so obvious now. Men like Maxim don’t happen overnight. It takes generations to breed them.
He glances up and stands. I force myself to stay where I am. His eyes gleam bright between a dark fan of lashes. There’s concern there and probably the closest thing to an apology he can manage. And desire. Oh, yes. I recognize that quick flare of want in his expression because it’s igniting in me, too, at just the sight of him. My heart calls him the liar he is, but my body clenches, seeking a satisfaction it’s only ever found when he was inside me.
“Mister Cade,” I say, my tone brisk and businesslike.
He grimaces and shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He takes a few steps forward until only inches separate us. And that tiny amount of space hums with memory and hunger, but I ignore it.
“Nix,” he says, his voice husky, rough. He reaches for my hand and I step back, warning him with a look to keep his damn hands off. With his eyes never leaving my face, he nods. “Is there somewhere we could talk? Maybe grab a coffee or something?”
“Sorry, Mister Cade.” I gesture to the half-open boxes overflowing with buttons, bumper stickers, signs and other campaign paraphernalia. “As you can see, we’re preparing to hit the trail.”
He grimaces. “I should have told you. If we can just go somewhere, I can explain.”
“Anything you have to say to me, you can say out here.”
The bell above the door heralds the entrance of two volunteers. Our scheduler sits on the floor nearby with a giant whiteboard and dry-erase markers.
“I really think we should discuss this in private,” he says, reaching for my hand again.
I cross my hands behind my back, out of reach, and just stare him down, wordlessly warning him.
“Alright.” He gives a careless shrug. “That night in the alley when we fuc—”
I clamp my hand over his mouth and drag him by the arm into the conference room. He closes the door behind us and leans against it, a smug smile on his disgustingly handsome face.
“I’m still not sure why you’re here, Mister Cade.”
“Would you stop calling me that?” He releases a frustrated breath and drags his hands through the hair that’s even longer than it was the last time I saw him.
“Oh, I’m sorry. That’s what they were calling you on television. Did they get it wrong, too? What should I call you? Kingsman?” A humorless laugh spills out of me. “We both know that’s a lie.”
“It’s not a lie. All the men in my family have Kingsman as our middle name.”
“Your daddy, too?”
He stares at me for a moment before dropping his eyes to the floor. “Him, too, yeah. I should have told you about my family.”
“Oh, but you did.” I hop up on the conference room table and swing my legs back and forth. “You said your family was wealthy, but you didn’t have much money of your own.”
“True.”
“You said your brother was a senator.”
“He is.”
“You said you and your father were estranged.”
“Yes, we—”
“But somehow neglected to mention he’s the man I can’t stand. That you’ll inherit the company that trampled over the most sacred land my people still held.”
“I won’t. Inherit, I mean. I dedicated the last eight years of my life to researching climate change, Nix. Do you really think I want anything to do with my family’s oil company?”
“I don’t actually know what to think since you’ve misrepresented yourself to me this whole time.” I shake my head and force my lips into a waxy smile. “While all of us wondered what would happen after the protest, how long we’d be in jail, if the charges would stick, you knew you were guaranteed bail. Guaranteed freedom. Protection. Wrapped all cozy in your wealth. How you must have laughed at us.”
“I didn’t laugh.”
“But it was a game for you, one you played with absolutely no risk, while we risked everything.”
“It wasn’t a game. I saw you, I heard you, and it’s like I said before.” He takes a few steps closer until he’s mere inches from the table. “I knew I’d never forget you. When I saw those dogs headed straight for you . . .” He rubs the back of his neck and releases a harsh sigh. “I didn’t think twice. I left my father in the car and took off running. I just knew I had to . . . never mind. You won’t believe me. Just know it wasn’t a joke.”
“Every one of us was risking our reputation, our freedom, possibly our lives if things had escalated, and you acted like you had something to lose when Warren Cade would never let anything happen to his heir.”
“I told you we’re estranged.”
“Were you then? That day?”
“No. I tried to convince him not to go forward with the pipeline. When he refused to change his mind, I left.”
“You let me think you had come all the way from California specifically to protest with us. Was that true?”
His silence is thick with guilt and frustration.
“No,” he admits after a moment. “I’d flown in with my father. I didn’t know why we were there. Hearing what he had done and thinking I would never see any of you again, I didn’t see the point of saying who I was.”
“And in Amsterdam?” The words sour in my mouth. “The first night, could you have seen the point? Or maybe the second night before you fucked me? You could have mentioned who you were, but maybe you thought you wouldn’t tap this ass if I knew.”
“Nix—”
“And you were right. You wouldn’t have.”
“I won’t let you cheapen what we had.”
“I’m cheapening it? You told me because I had been so honest with you, you wanted to be completely open and honest with me.”
“I did.”
“And then you lied to me for the next week.”
“I omitted it because it doesn’t matter, dammit.”
“If you really believed that, you would have told me, and you know it.”
“I’m telling you now.”
“No, I saw it on television with the rest of the world and you came here for what?” I grip the edge of the conference room table. “To ensure if you ever make it back from the Amazon, or whatever remote place you visit next, you’ll still have some ass in Arizona?”
He moves so quickly, I jerk back when he’s standing right in front of me, caging me with his arms on either side where I sit on the table. This close, I smell him. I feel him. His body, big and familiar and still a mystery, radiates heat. It makes me remember us curled around each other, naked in sex-scented sheets; to recall a day lying among half-opened tulips, sharing our dreams and ambitions.
“I’m losing patience, Nix,” he says, so close his words rest on my lips.
“Oh, am I not forgiving you fast enough? How very privileged of you to expect it.”
“I don’t want it to be like this.” He leans forward until only a sultry centimeter separates us. “I missed you. I came for—”
“What?” My will wavers and then snaps back into place. “What do you want?”
The look he pours over me is hot oil, burning me even through serviceable layers of cotton. His heated perusal caresses my face, sluices over my breasts and hips, and then pools at my feet.
“Oh, that you won’t ever get again,” I say, my voice a soft, certain promise. “I don’t fuck liars. I’m particular that wa
y.”
“Never say never,” he drawls, tilting up my chin with his finger.
“Nev–”
He crushes the word between our mouths. It falls apart in the scorching, sweet tangle of lips and teeth. With one hand, he digs his fingers into my hair. The other splays across my lower back, his grip on me almost convulsive, urging me up and closer. I’m in stasis. I’m completely startled by the kiss, unable to respond. I send a desperate message to my brain.
Move. Pull back. Push him away.
But the urgent glide of his hand down my spine to cup my ass melts my thoughts to liquid and they swim in my head. I can’t pull back, and all hope of resistance dissolves when he presses his thumb to my chin, prying me open. He stalks my tongue, hunts down a response, licking and sucking and groaning and growling. His hands tighten on me until I strain up to seek him, yanking his hair, pulling him even closer.
“Dammit, Nix,” he mutters between kisses. His hand wanders down my neck and across my shoulder, and cups my breast, twisting the nipple through flimsy barriers of cotton and lace. He shoves up my skirt, pulling my legs wider, and pushes my panties aside, his fingers invading me. My body remembers this mad craving that claws out of my bones—that wants out. That wants him. Under his rough touch, my body blooms and my hips rock.
“That’s it,” he says, taking my earlobe between his lips.
My head falls back and I moan. It’s so damn good. His touch awakens me. His hands, his kisses bring me to life. It feels like I’m taking my first deep breath since we were last together, and it fills my lungs, seeps into my pores. He’s all over me and inside me.
“I missed you,” he says, sucking my lips and kissing the corners, quick, hungry. “I’m sorry. Baby, I—”
“Stop talking.” I reach between us to loosen his belt, catching his zipper and dragging it down, dragging him out. “Shut the fuck up.”
He’s thick and rigid in my hand. The promise of stretching around him makes my body weep. I don’t wait for him to move or ask, but scoot forward to interlock our bodies. A harsh exhale clashes between our mouths, both of us losing our breath at this most carnal of reunions. For a moment, it’s the perfection of us together, our bodies conduits to our souls. And then he moves, reducing the world to this mating dance. It’s ancient, the beat of my blood and my heart. The way he takes me, it’s new, fresh. Like it’s the first time, the last time, he grips my thighs to hold me in place while he claims me, at first a deep, slow thrust, and then increasing. Faster. Pounding. Louder. Our pleasure reaches the top of our lungs, heedless of who hears beyond the conference room door. I couldn’t hold back these sounds if I tried—involuntary grunts and hisses and moans, too much for my body to keep private as I come hard and he soon follows.
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