Killing Bliss (20 page)

"Are you always so damned take-charge or am I getting special treatment?"

She glanced at him, tilted her head. "Will you
please
start on page twelve, Professor?"

Half irritated, half amused, he said, "Drop the professor tag, okay?"

"Now who's giving orders?" Cade caught the smile she tried to hide by looking over her shoulder and decided he was in a no-win situation, which meant it was time to shut up. The lady liked to be on top. He'd remember that. On that pleasant thought, he settled back in the seat of the sturdy rowboat and opened
Zero
to page twelve. "Take us away, Captain," he ordered before starting to read.

Cade read his way across the lake, at first vaguely uncomfortable about using his own words as hooks into Addy's trust, but when he glanced at her from time to time over the spine of the book and saw her avid interest in the story, his unease dissipated—then he realized she was rowing in circles.

He'd put a stop to that. He read:

Zero stood in front of the new girl, his heart banging in his skinny chest.

He couldn't take his eyes off the knife in Slam's hand. Long and serrated, it glowed wickedly under the dim light of the lamp above the alley door of Harper's Deli.

"Take off, Slam," he said, sounding harder and tougher than he felt. "Leave her alone."

Slam laughed, lifted the knife, and—

Cade closed the book and put it beside him on the seat.

"Hey, you can't stop there."

"Just did." He gestured with his head toward the chestnut tree, raised a brow.

She stopped rowing and eyed him. "I'll bet your students called you names behind your back."

"No doubt."

She eyed the book, made a couple of dips with the left oar, and redirected the tiny craft to the shore near the tree.

When they were sitting on the quilt, him with his back against the tree trunk, Addy in a semi-relaxed lotus position, he pulled out
Zero Intolerance,
held it out to her. "You said you'd made it through to page twelve, so how about rereading it for me?"

"Okay." She took the book. "But I'm warning you, it took me all night to get that far." She looked seriously edgy now, and he saw her swallow.

"I'm in no hurry. Read what you can and skip the rest."

She turned the book over, opened it up, then slammed it closed again. "Toby says a person can learn anything if they set their minds to it. You agree with that?"

"Uh-huh. Just takes practice and courage."

"Courage?"

"To look stupid, take the knocks, fail, and keep going anyway. That takes guts." He leaned toward her, put a hand on her knee. "So, unless you're short on same, I suggest"—he nodded at the book now in her lap—"you get on with it."

She nodded, straightened her shoulders as if he'd ordered her to lead a frontline artillery charge without ammunition, took a deep breath, and opened to the first page.

Chapter 13

Addy stumbled through the first six pages before stopping abruptly. She felt like an idiot. If this reading business took practice and courage, she was in trouble, because all she had was frustration and embarrassment.

She wanted to bash something, and what really ticked her off was she'd read these same pages last night and done okay. But today, with Cade watching her from under those lowered lids of his, every stumble felt like a face planted on cement. Add to that the warm autumn sun, the shade of the chestnut tree, and the light of Cade's undivided attention, and she'd completely forgotten she wasn't here to learn to read, she was here to pick Cade's ex-cop-professor-of-criminology brain and decide if he could be useful.

"Why'd you stop?" he asked.

"Because I'm hurtling toward thirty years old, and I read like... like a windup toy with a broken spring." She didn't add she was tense as a drum, either because of her strained effort to read or her inability to forget the worry circling her mind like a robot sentry armed to the teeth.

Cade's thoughtful expression gave way to a smile that so warmed his face she couldn't help but smile back. He said, "You were doing great. To be honest, I expected worse. Taking a totally unscientific guess, I'd say you're reading at a fairly decent grade-three level. Another guess? With some serious practice, you could be reading smoothly—well beyond that level—in a few weeks."

Reading smoothly in a few weeks...

The idea excited her mind, engaged her normally optimistic nature, even, momentarily at least, immobilized her robot sentry—but not for long. When the muscles in her stomach quivered, and her thinking darkened, she tightened her grip on
Zero,
and entered reality therapy.

In a few weeks, if she didn't stop Gus and Beauty from killing Frank Bliss, she'd be reading
Run, Spot, Run
under the gray light of a jail cell—and they'd be right beside her. "And you'll help?" she added lamely, forced to keep up the pretense until she could be sure she trusted him enough to help her save Frank Bliss's miserable excuse for a life.

"Sure, why not?" He reached over and took the book from her hand, tucked the cover flap inside, and closed it. "But for now, let's give it a rest, soak up some of this sunshine." He tossed the book to his side. "Then tonight, we'll drive into town and I'll buy you dinner." He put his head back against the tree trunk and closed his eyes, looking as bonelessly at ease as Lund's old bloodhound did when he passed out on the couch.

She fixated on his breathing, watched his chest rise and fall with the flow of oxygen in and out of his lungs, then studied his mouth, die relaxed, easy line of it above his firm jaw. When her own breath became untrustworthy, she swallowed and turned away.

"What's with you and the food thing?" she asked, sounding unreasonably irritated. She shifted to claim part of the tree trunk for her own tense back.

He smiled with his eyes still closed. "I generally use the 'food thing' to lure attractive women into compromising situations." He peered down at her. "As a starter, it's generally foolproof." He paused, closed his eyes again, and rested his head back against the tree trunk. "Except with diehard nukers like you, of course."

Addy's lips twitched, and she couldn't think of a comeback, so she opted to match his position, head against the tree with eyes closed.

She could count on one hand the number of times she'd eaten out or even been off the Star Lake property for other than the necessary trips into Lynden for supplies. And since she'd turned seventeen, the once-a-year visit to her mother's grave that was such a nerve-racking experience, she couldn't sleep for days before going.

From the day she and Beauty arrived, Lund told them to stay out of town, keep to themselves. Beauty, tired of being "stifled," she said, ran off when she couldn't take it anymore. But Addy was okay with playing it safe. Now, away from here—her home, the calm waters of her lake—she was jumpy and ill-at-ease. But not here, now, with Cade beside her.

"Cade?" she said, suddenly curious about something.

"Uh-huh." He didn't move.

"Have you traveled much? Like to Europe, maybe Italy?" If he said he'd been to Venice, she'd be green with envy.

He didn't speak for a time. "Yes, my... wife and I went for several weeks. Spent a month in Siena."

She sensed his mood lowering, her curiosity rising. "I thought you weren't married." She was disappointed, and it shocked her. Dear God, given the situation she was in, whether Cade Harding was married or single was a piece of news that should rank up there with the report of a clogged drain in Cabin One. Her illogical reaction scared her, reminded her how emotional her thinking was these days, and when you had a problem as big as hers, emotional thinking was worse than useless—it was dangerous.

"Was married. For six years," he added, then paused. "She died... over a year ago now."

"Oh." Death again. Death everywhere. But not at Star Lake. Not yet. "I'm sorry. That must have been tough."

"Beyond tough." He opened his eyes, stared straight ahead. "I miss her."

Addy knew about missing people you loved, knew the raw soreness of it, and couldn't think of a thing to say.

"She was a lawyer. A good one," he added.

"Any kids?"

The silence lasted so long Addy grew uncomfortable. She'd asked more questions in the last five minutes than in the past five years, and they were all the wrong ones.

"No, no kids. When Dana miscarried a second time, the doctors said trying again wouldn't be smart—or safe."

She said nothing, decided to firmly reel in her curiosity before Cade developed some of his own.

He shifted away from the tree, looped his arms around his knees, and looked across the lake. The position put her slightly behind him, and she could see the tension in his neck, the rigid set of his shoulders. "Dana had a child, though. She told me about him after her second miscarriage."

A breeze, warm and mellow, suddenly ruffled the calm water, lifted to chatter among the leaves above their heads. When it blew at Cade's dark hair and set it across his forehead, he left it there, seemingly transfixed by either the lake or what was going on in his head. Addy waited.

"She was a kid when she had him, barely seventeen, so her parents, and Dana—she never did blame anyone but herself—thought it best he be adopted."

"A boy then?" Addy was riveted, and somewhat stunned he was letting go of something so personal.

He nodded. "William. She didn't tell me about him until after the second miscarriage. He would have been fourteen then." Cade picked up a leaf from the grass beside the quilt, rubbed it between his thumb and index finger. "After that, she was determined to find him." The leaf tore apart in his hand, but he didn't appear to notice. "She only wanted to see him, she said, not make trouble for him."

"What happened?"

"We located the adoptive parents easily enough, but we were too late. The boy was gone." He tossed the damaged leaf and turned to look at her. "Turns out he'd run off eight months before—and it wasn't the first time—and it didn't look as if mom and dad had put a hell of a lot of effort into finding him. According to them, he'd been nothing but trouble, and they were leaving him to the 'proper authorities.'" He shook his head. "I never did understand what they meant by that, or who exactly the 'proper' authorities were. Not that it mattered. The bottom line was they'd written him off."

"I guess adoptive parents don't come with any guarantees." Or foster parents.

"Dana was sick with guilt," he went on. "Said she should never have given him up, should have told me sooner." He shook his head. "Should have, should have... the most overworked words in the English language."

Addy agreed with that; her whole life was one long should-have.

"I promised her I'd find her son, that we'd make things right for him." He leaned back against the tree, but this time he didn't look relaxed. His jaw was hard-set, his mouth a thin seam. "Hell, it's what I did... find people."

"And did you? Find him?"

"Yeah. Two years later. A month before Dana's diagnosis—and two weeks after he'd died from head injuries sustained in a car crash. His blood alcohol level was off the charts. He was barely sixteen. If I'd have known what she was faced with—the cancer—I'd never have told her. I'd have—"

"Let her go on hoping?"

"That hope might have kept her alive."

"Did she see it that way? Blame you?"

"No. When she was diagnosed, she said maybe there was some kind of cosmic plan after all, because now that she knew William was on the other side, she had something to look forward to."

"She sounds very... cool, and smart."

He slanted her a gaze. "She was both those things, and losing her damn near killed me."

"But it didn't." Addy remembered her mom, the black aching hole her death punctured in her nine-year-old heart. "And you did the right thing. She trusted you, you had to tell her the truth."

He met her gaze, his own switching from brooding to speculative, but he didn't say anything, which made her nerves jump.

He probably saw right through her. After all, who the hell was she to talk about truth when her whole life was a lie? A lie designed to keep her safe, keep her from answering for her spinelessness that long-ago night. Gus said run, so she'd ran, then she'd erected an I-was-only-following-orders excuse to survive the guilt. She'd told herself she'd had no choice; she had to run to protect Gus and Beauty. She'd made a terrible mistake, been as ignorant of right and wrong as she was about words in a book.