Killing Bliss (42 page)

She liked a lot of things about Cade. The only thing that bothered her was his timing—and maybe his reasons for looking at her the way he did, saying the things he did.

Her stomach tensed.

Maybe he'd got carried away doing his job, maybe he'd have all kinds of regrets about... everything.

She touched the lines forming across her forehead, and made up her mind.

She needed quiet time, and she needed to talk to someone who'd understand, and she knew exactly where to find both. At the door, she put on her yellow rain jacket.

Thanks to Gus, Cade's truck was right outside, keys in the ignition. Should she? Her hesitation was brief, then gone totally in the seconds it took for Redge to rouse himself from his sleep on the porch, come up beside her, and lick her hand.

She opened the driver's side door and looked at the friendly dog. "Get in, Redgie boy, there's someone I want you to meet."

With Redge sitting alertly beside her, she glanced across the calm waters of Star Lake, revved the Cherokee, and headed to Seattle.

* * *

Cade found her four hours later, sitting on damp grass, running a hand over Redge's soft fur.

The rain had started again. This time it was light, misty, and joined by gentle gusts of wind that made it swirl and dance over her cool face. Kisses from heaven.

"Why'd you run away?" he asked.

Redge deserted her immediately and went to say hello.

She looked up at Cade, surprised he was here, and even more surprised to see he was angry. She couldn't remember seeing him angry before, at least not with her, and because she couldn't answer his question, she asked one of her own. "How did you find me?"

"Not hard. You've only been in two places in the last fifteen years, Star Lake and here." He waved a hand around the deserted graveyard.

"Ah, yes, the brilliant ex-cop, the
el supremo
profiler. I should have guessed." Redge, having paid his respects, came back to lie beside her, and she went back to stroking his back and staring at her mother's headstone. "I guess my next question is why? You've done your job, you don't need me anymore." She cursed herself for sounding like a needy, pouty little girl looking for assurances.

"You don't believe that and you know it."

"Not sure what I believe. That's the problem."

"Then don't believe anything—for now." He paused. "You're a free woman, Addilene Wartenski. You can go where you want, do what you want, and choose who the hell you want to do it with." He focused those intense eyes of his on her until her bones, cold from the autumn-damp grass, began to thaw and heat like freshly torched kindling.

She stood to face him, met him as eye-to-eye as their differing heights allowed. "The trouble is, whatever it is I want to do, I want to do it with you, Cade Harding. And I don't know how I feel about that, because you're a person of... false pretenses. You pretended to be someone you weren't and you suckered me." Which, of course, was the least of the problems between her and Cade, because there was something else that rankled her a whole lot more.

He thought a moment, then touched her cheek. "Let's go back a bit, shall we? When I drove into Star Lake Resort that day, I sure as hell didn't expect to find Addilene Wartenski—and I did not arrive with some nefarious plot to seduce you. I was looking for a lead, any lead, to Susan's grandson."

He took a step away. "But to be honest, I wouldn't have done anything different." He paused and his eyes, always so keen and sharply intelligent, softened, took on the grayness of the mist swirling around them. "Then it was all about finding Josh, Addy—a boy who'd been missing for fifteen years. It wasn't about us." He came back to her, took her face in his hands, and lifted it until their gazes met. "Now? It's all about us—if you want it to be. And we can take it fast or slow. Your call."

Her heart tumbled around in her chest like a bunch of play-crazed puppies on spiked milk. And for a woman who'd lived in the shadows for over half her life, looking over her shoulder, and planning her days around a wheelbarrow and a dozen needy cabins on a lake, the possibilities in the word "us" were too many to process. She didn't know what to say, and she sure as hell didn't plan on blurting out, "But I can't even read."

Cade's eyebrows shot up, and he went as still as one of the headstones in the graveyard. "You think I care about that? You think I'd love you less for that?"

"I may not be able to read, but I'm not stupid. You've spent a thousand years getting educated. Teaching other people. You're a professor. You'd end up... ashamed of me." She stopped. "I couldn't stand that. I wouldn't stand that." She shook her head to punctuate.

He took her by the shoulders, tipped his head to look deep into her eyes. "Addy, I love you and everything you are. When I look at you, what you've done, I'm so proud of you it goddamn hurts."

There went her heart again, thumping and banging in her chest. She wrapped her arms around his waist and muttered into his shoulder, "Well, you'd better stay proud, then, because I'm thinking I'll take you up on that 'us' thing you're so set on."

He kissed her then, and soft hearts and melting bones were forgotten in the wonder of it. "Thank God," he whispered finally, his breath hot against her forehead.

She pulled back, took a breath for courage, and said flat out, "I love you, Cade. And I owe you."

He frowned.

"You've given me back my life." And she'd never forget that. Nor would she forget the tears she'd cried when she'd arrived at her mother's grave hours before, first tears of grief for Beauty, what might have been, then tears of relief, of gratitude for what now might be.

She wasn't sure how to put it into words, but she knew she had to try. "Today was the first time I've sat on the grass beside my mother's grave. Before, I was always too afraid I'd be seen. Thank you for that And thank you for coming after me." She smiled then.

He kissed her again and smiled back. "You're welcome. And as for my coming after you? I didn't have a choice. You stole my dog."

Epilogue

Three months later

Susan went to the window. By Cade's count, it was at least the fifteenth time in as many minutes.

"Relax, Susan. He'll get here when he gets here," he said. "You know the traffic on I-5."

Addy came in with a tray of sandwiches, the tower that was Stan a few steps behind. "Is he here yet?" Addy asked, her eyes wide with curiosity.

Addy had a lot of curiosity—and dedication, as Cade had discovered in the past three months. She was already reading at high school level, and she'd surprised him yesterday by telling him she'd signed up for some online courses and had Toby helping her on the side. When he'd told her not to be so impatient, she'd calmly advised him that her "learning" was taking up too much of his writing time, and she planned to speed things up so she could start taking college courses next year.

Cade got up from the chair he was sitting in and took the tray from her. "No," he said, "he's not here yet. Now will everyone relax? You sound like a bunch of kids in the back of a van heading to Disneyland."

"I second that," Stan said, adding, "Susie, sit down, you're giving me an ulcer. You've waited this long to see him, you can be patient another ten minutes."

She sat, but didn't look happy about it. "I'm not patient. And if it weren't for that Gus person insisting he send Josh to me—in his own good time, I might add—I'd already have seen him ten times over. Now the boy has to find his way here alone. What if he gets lost?"

"He's seventeen," Cade reminded her gently. "He can make telephone calls and hail a cab."

Susan wasn't to be placated. "And that Gus fellow," she went on. "Arrogant, that's what he is. With far too many secrets if you ask me. In the private security business, he says. Humph. He might be smart enough for that, but he doesn't seem to have grasped the fact that he kidnapped my grandson."

"He did not kidnap him." Addy rose to Gus's defense, as Cade knew she would. "First off, Gus didn't know Josh had family, Susan. He thought he was... like him. That he was alone, had no one. All he wanted to do was take care of him, like he did Beauty and me."

"He should have—" Susan started.

"Leave the should-haves, love. Let it go," Stan said firmly. "Or, at the very least, reserve judgment until you meet Josh. From all reports, Vanelleto did a hell of a job raising him. If, after you meet the boy, you think otherwise, you can have the man hanged, drawn, and quartered. But the way I read it, Vanelleto and the boy are tight. Family. You mess with that and you risk alienating that boy, maybe never seeing him again, no matter what the law says."

She glared at him, unable to argue, but every bit the petulant have-everything-her-way woman Cade had come to love and respect. She might be mad as hell, deeply regretful she'd missed seeing her grandson grow up, but Cade had no doubt her every instinct was to do right by him, even if it cost her.

"I hear a car," Addy said and jumped to her feet. In four steps, she was at the window. "It's him. He's here, Susan. He's here. In a limo."

The reality of Josh's arrival froze Susan where she sat.

The doorbell rang, and when she still didn't move, Cade walked over, took her arm, and led her to the door.

On the second ring, she opened it, and the smile that bloomed in her eyes rivaled a summer sunrise.

The boy, wearing jeans and sporting a blue backpack, was thin and nearly as tall as Cade. He stood nervously looking down at the white-haired woman in front of him.

When she didn't speak, he coughed and awkwardly stuck out his hand.

"Grandmother? I'm... Josh."

The End

Page forward for more from EC Sheedy.

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