Upper Hand (Cedar Tree Book 5)
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Authors: Freya Barker
Upper Hand (A Cedar Tree Novel, #5)
UPPER HAND
, a Cedar Tree Novel
Copyright © 2015 Margreet Asselbergs as Freya Barker
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or by other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author or publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in used critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses as permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author, mentioning in the subject line:
"Reproduction Request” at the address below:
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, any event, occurrence, or incident is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created and thought up from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
ISBN: 978-0-9938883-9-7
Cover Image:
Reggie Deanching of R+M Photography
Cover Model:
Alfie Gabriel Gordillo
Cover Design:
RE&D - Margreet Asselbergs
To my readers, who have so graciously embraced the characters in the Cedar Tree series. I strive to live up to your expectations and am awed by the incredible response I receive with the release of each new novel.
You all make writing even more rewarding!
xox
“B
etter wake up, you big ape. You’ve been tying up this bed long enough. I knew you’d be trouble the moment I laid eyes on you.”
The last is said with a distinct tremor.
I’m so tempted to let the darkness surrounding me suck me under, but each time I feel myself slipping, this voice keeps pulling me back to the surface. I don’t have to open my eyes to know who it is. That voice has stirred and grated on me equally over the past year. Deep and resonant most of the time, shrill some of the time, but there’ve been moments where it had some sweetness to it. It’s those times that stirred my soul; gave me the promise of a world of softness underneath the bristles. A promise that had all but disappeared, until now.
Sure, her words are combative, but Beth’s emotions are only too clear in her voice. She cares. She doesn’t want to, that much is obvious, but she cares nonetheless. At least I think so. So far, I really haven’t been on my game when it comes to her, and yet with every rejection and slight, she has managed to worm herself deeper under my skin. Damn.
-
T
he first time I laid eyes on her, she had soot all over her face and her dark hair had mostly pulled free of her ponytail. A strong, capable woman, I could see that from the way she stood straight. Despite her softer curves and the hint of fatigue around her liquid brown eyes, I could see this was not a woman to cross. Not that I wanted to, quite the opposite in fact. Her defiant stance and pronounced hourglass figure shook me awake, body and mind. Immediately, I managed to piss her off.
“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” I remember wincing the moment those words flew from my mouth. From the look on her face, she wasn’t that impressed either.
One of her eyebrows almost disappeared into her hairline, and her lush lips were pulled into an angry line.
Sonofabitch
. You’d think I’d learn after having already pissed off the owner of the place I was hired to do work on. The local diner in Cedar Tree was damaged in a recent fire, and I almost blew the job because of my runaway mouth.
It was hammered into me, growing up in the Deep South, to treat women like delicate flowers. Well, there wasn’t anything ‘delicate’ about Beth, the woman standing across from me now, just as there’d been nothing flowery about Arlene, her boss and owner of the diner in question.
In fact, there wasn’t a damn delicate flower to be found anywhere in or around Cedar Tree. I was making a name for myself pissing each and everyone of them off, at some point in time. The irony of it all was that my mom, although with the appearance of a true southern belle, had a spine of steel and a hand that was harder than my father’s had ever been. Always dressed in frilly dresses, giving the illusion of fragility, she ruled the household and us boys with an iron fist. She’d always been our pillar of strength until cancer took her. My father gave up after that and didn’t take long to follow her, and what remained of our family fell apart after that.
-
I
tried to redeem myself. I tried hard with Beth, and although I’d struck up a friendship with Arlene and some of her friends, despite my shaky start, Beth never seemed to warm to me. She confused the hell out of me though. That foot, which has a tendency to stick itself in my mouth, got itchy whenever I was around her. There wasn’t a time that our interactions didn’t end up with Beth irritated or angry with me. Although recently, after I’d scheduled to meet a new client at the diner to discuss some work on her house, Beth had been more snippy than normal; almost as if she was jealous. After many months of trying to get in her good graces, I thought I’d found a crack in her armor. The next time I walked in the diner and saw her walking toward my booth, I figured it was time to push a little. So I got up and the minute she was within reach, I pulled her against me and was going to lay a kiss on her. I’d always been told that if you wanted something you had to be clear in your intentions. I figured nothing would get the message across better than a kiss. Right? Well, my lips had barely touched hers when she gave me an almighty shove to my chest and to my horror started crying. Not exactly the reaction I had hoped for.
“You—you caveman! Why would you do that?”
Before I could even form a response, she was running into the kitchen, tears running down her face. The kitchen where right at that moment half of Cedar Tree was assembled. Reckon that didn’t only not go over too well, but it didn’t go over too well in a very public way. I followed her, found her outside leaning against the dumpster, spouting some incoherent stuff about trying to kiss her when I was playing footsies with another. She could’ve spoken Greek and it probably would’ve made more sense to me. Seeming to make her only more upset, I left her and went back inside—eyes in the kitchen burning holes in my back.
I tried a few more times, until she told me to leave her alone, and she ended up hiding in the bathroom.
That’s when I’d decided this was a battle that was perhaps not worth fighting or winning. As much as women are an enigma to me; Beth was a complete alien. A beautiful, loving—at least to her friends—and hardworking woman I’d spent a year trying to get to know, but the woman was an impenetrable fort. I’m all about fighting to get in, but at some point it’d be nice to be invited. I’m getting too old for this song and dance. Having loved and lost before, I can say I’d gladly do the loving part, but the losing is not something I’d volunteer for again. Especially not before we even get to the loving.
So with continued rejection bitter on my tongue, I started spending all of my energy on my contracts: the house renovations in Cortez and Naomi’s place in town.
-
I
t’s actually the last thing I remember, the old house behind the feed store. I think I was there, but the memory keeps going to black, like turning off the TV. A clear picture one minute and the next thing a blank screen. My head hurts, and momentarily forgetting about the woman in the room, my hand moves of its own accord toward my head. I haven’t opened my eyes yet, but the gasp I hear is clearly from her lips.
“There you are. I gotta call a nurse.”
Busted. For as much as I’ve started to embrace the dark, I know she’ll just hound me until I open my eyes.
“H
e moved his arm,” I reply excitedly to the nurse, who enters the room I’ve virtually lived in the last few weeks. “I thought there was something different about his breathing this morning, but that was all until he moved, just now.”
“Mr. Mason?” She approaches the bed confidently, pulling a small flashlight from her pocket, as she carefully peels back one of his eyelids.
-
B
efore I got the news that he had been hurt badly and flown to Durango, I’d fought the feelings this man invoked in me tooth and nail. Successfully so, I thought, after having a few minor melt downs when my resistance was low but coming out swinging. He’d retreated to his corner, before stepping out of the ring completely in the last month. I ignored the pang of regret I felt every time he’d walk in the diner and would pointedly ignore me. So different from the entire time since we were first introduced.
Oh, he’d put his foot in time and time again. It just seemed to be his way to say the wrong thing at the wrong moment, but it was obvious the guy was a complete loss when it came to talking with women. One sentence from his mouth was even more insulting than the next. Yet, he remained incapable of reigning in the politically incorrect verbiage flowing from his lips without benefit of a hefty filter. Almost endearingly clueless, which is what made—makes—him so dangerous.
For all intents and purposes, Clint Mason was a decent man. A good man, who apparently never had the privilege of learning to communicate effectively with women. Real women that is. I’m sure some might be charmed by his redneck approach, but the apparent lack of respect for women was all in the eye of the beholder but not so much in his.
The simple fact that he’d found himself a place in the group of friends that made up part of the regulars at Arlene’s—hell, even befriending Arlene after the major faux pas he made with her the first time they met—told me there was more under that southern veneer he was hiding behind.
A dangerous man for me; unlike the smooth-talking losers I’d hooked my wagon to, from time to time, until finally giving up men altogether. Clint in all his stumbling communications, as far from smooth with the ladies as possible, has proven himself a good, honest, and protective friend to everyone but me. My doing entirely, I’ve simply not given him the chance.
-
S
o, while I was telling myself to be relieved not to have to deal with his undesired attentions any longer, and erasing that one moment where his lips were close enough to taste from my mind, I was literally shocked into motion when learning he was en route to the hospital in critical condition. Tearing off my apron as I was running to the kitchen for my purse, Seb, cook, part owner and husband to Arlene, tried to stop me. Nothing would’ve at that point though, not even the sizable, tattooed, and very willful Seb. Shaking him off like a bug, I beelined it through the back door and to my junker of a car parked beside the dumpster. Praying for at least half a tank as I cranked the sputtering engine, I breathed in relief when the gauge showed only a quarter gone.
-
C
an’t remember exactly how I got here, ignoring messages and texts noisily coming in on my cell on the way, but I got here. Then I lied through my teeth so I could come in to see him. With the ‘family only’ rule in place for critical patients, I morphed myself into his fiancée. I almost snorted when I said it, from habit I guess, but the nurse at the desk swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. At least I think so, because I was lead to the Intensive Care Unit waiting room right away.