Riverbend Road (8 page)

If she hadn't spoken with the woman and children herself earlier, she might have thought the house still stood empty. It was a mystery she was determined to solve, though she accepted she couldn't do anything about it tonight.

She was painfully aware of him beside her, big and tough and gorgeous. That kiss. How on
earth
was she supposed to pretend it never happened?

“How's your family?” she asked, seizing the first topic she could find to fill the awkward silence.

If anything, his features suddenly appeared even more stark and remote in the moonlight. “Not that great, to tell you the truth.”

“What's going on?”

His mouth tightened as if he regretted saying anything. He said nothing for a long moment and she had a feeling he was trying to decide whether to answer.

Finally he sighed. “Marcus is in jail again in Boise. His wife called to tell me right before you knocked on the door.”

“DUI again?” she asked. He had confided in her a few months back about his brother losing his job and running into legal troubles.

“I don't think he's going anywhere for a while. His wife doesn't want to bail him out this time.”

She was grateful that he could still talk to her as friends, at least.

“You're not going to, are you?”

“No, but Christy wants me to talk to him. What do I say?”

“That's a tough one.”

“I just want to shake him and tell him to get over himself and think about what he's doing to his kids. If he loves them, how can he put them through the same damn things we had to endure?”

The frustration in his voice and the echo of old pain made her throat ache. She longed to reach for his hand, to share some of that burden but knew she didn't have the right.

She could only guess at what his childhood had been like after his mother died, when Cade had been expected by his worthless father to take care of himself and his brothers. She knew a little of it, things she had figured out herself and bits and pieces she had picked up from overhearing her parents talk when they thought no one was listening.

Walter Emmett, Cade's father, had been an alcoholic, in and out of jail, who eventually died a few years ago after his latest prison stint. She knew Cade was the one who held his family together, who got his brothers off to school, helped them with homework.

When Cade was eighteen, Walter Emmett went to prison again for robbery and Cade's younger brothers were sent to live with relatives in southeastern Idaho. Her parents and Marshall tried to persuade him to move in with them for the last four months of his senior year of high school, but he refused.

Instead, barely eighteen, he stayed by himself in their run-down home in Sulfur Hollow, working after school to keep the utilities on.

The day after graduation, he left for Marine Corps basic training. Through hard work, he became a military policeman and after two deployments, he left the Marines and came back to Haven Point to work for her father.

Cade was an extraordinary man.

Many people never managed to rise above the difficult circumstances of their youth and chose instead to re-create it in their own lives. Despite everything, he had broken the cycle to become a man who was respected by just about everyone in Haven Point, even the lawbreakers.

Was it any wonder so many women in Haven Point found him irresistible?

Including her, apparently.

She tightened her hold on Pete's leash as they neared her house. “That's what you have to say to him. Remind him of what things were like for all of you growing up and tell him he owes his children better than you had. We can't change the past but that doesn't mean we have to live there either.”

“That is absolutely right.”

When they reached her mailbox, Pete padded up the sidewalk and waited there for her to unlock the door for him.

“Thank you for walking me home. Can you believe we made it all this way and not a single person tried to attack us?”

He gave a mock scowl at her dry tone. “Don't press your luck, Officer Bailey. You're not inside yet and you never know who might be lurking in the bushes.”

She didn't have anything to worry about from random attackers. The man walking beside her, however, was definitely a threat—at least to her emotional health.

Memories of their kiss teased at the edges of her memory and she did her best to hide her sudden shiver.

When they reached her door, he stopped and faced her, his jaw set. “I have to say this one more time, Wyn. I should never have lost my head earlier. I swear, it won't happen again but if you think you need to file a complaint with the mayor and city council, I completely understand.”

She stared at him, hurt that he would even think her capable of such a thing—especially when her only complaint was that he didn't kiss her long enough!

She wanted this whole thing to go away. What had she been thinking, to kiss him like that? She hadn't been thinking, obviously, otherwise she would have realized it would change
everything
.

“I kissed
you
. I'm the one who wasn't thinking straight. I don't know, maybe smoke inhalation rattled my brain or something. It was an impulse, I acted on it and now it's done. It was one kiss. Surely our working relationship—
and
our friendship—can survive one kiss.”

A muscle flexed in his jaw but he said nothing.

Did he think they
couldn't
get past this?

The kiss had affected him more than he wanted to let on, she suddenly realized. He was attracted to her and he didn't want to be.

Was she supposed to find that flattering or offensive?

Neither, she decided. It just
was
.

“Absolutely nothing has changed,” she lied. “
We
haven't changed. When I return to work in a week—tanned, relaxed and well rested—things will be just as they were between us an hour ago.”

“I hope that's true.” He didn't look optimistic, however. He looked...troubled, his forehead furrowed and his eyes murky.

He seriously thought he had risked his job by kissing her. She couldn't do anything to help ease the stress he felt about his brother or the scars he still carried from childhood but she could help him with
this
.

“You're the one who said we should forget it. That's what I intend to do and I suggest you do the same. You've got enough to worry about right now. You're going to have to try to survive a busy June week on a lake full of crazy tourists while you're short your best officer. That problem, at least, is entirely your own fault.”

He gazed at her for another long moment, then the edge of his mouth lifted into a faint smile. He looked faintly relieved at her determinedly casual attitude. “No matter how rough it gets, I'm still not lifting your suspension early. I'll see you in a week, Officer Bailey.”

He reached down to give her dog a farewell pat. “See you later, Pete, buddy.”

“Good night,” Wyn said.

He waited until she unlocked her door and went inside before he headed back down her sidewalk toward Riverbend Road and home.

She watched him for just a moment, then headed through to the kitchen and poured water for Pete and for her. The window was open and she stopped for a moment to gaze out at the dark night and listen to the soothing sound of the endless river.

Yeah. She was a big fat liar.

She had told him nothing had changed while the truth was, she suddenly felt as if the entire world had shifted. The repercussions seemed to ripple around her like she had just jumped into that river, still icy with runoff.

How could she go back to being merely friends with him when she could no longer avoid the hard truth that she wanted so much more?

She had always felt something for Cade. When she was fourteen and he had been the rough-edged kid hanging around with her brothers, she thought it had been sympathy mixed with a healthy dose of forbidden crush.

She knew about his family, knew he had a rough home life, knew her dad had tried to mentor him and show him he could reshape his own destiny.

He wasn't the first young man John Bailey had tried to help out along the way, nor was he the last. Yet Cade was the only one who left her flustered and hot every time he came around.

Over the years, that secret crush had developed into affection and respect. She had chosen to focus on those things, not the little hitch in her heartbeat around Cade, especially after the terrible New Year's Eve when she was twenty-four, when everything changed.

She could do that now. Just put it aside and focus on her life—and on figuring out what she wanted to do with the rest of it.

CHAPTER EIGHT

W
YNONA
QUICKLY
DECIDED
she wasn't very good at doing nothing.

Though she had gone to sleep fully intending to stay in bed all morning and catch up on reading on this, the first day of her suspension, she woke before sunrise, exhausted from a night of twisted, tortured dreams.

She only remembered the last few bizarre scenes her subconscious had spun right before she awoke. In one, she had been back in the middle of smoke and flames and fear, trying her best to comfort two scared little boys when Cade galloped through riding a moose, of all things. He had scooped up the boys and rode out with them while telling her she was going to have to stay inside the burning building for the entire length of her seven-day suspension.

The dream had shifted then and she was on his deck with the river murmuring past and the night air swirling sweet and cool around them. Cade kissed her, his mouth hot and urgent on hers. In the dream, they kissed for much longer than they had in real life, until she felt like she was as hot and breathless as she had been inside that structure fire.

He murmured to her in that low, sexy bedroom voice that he wanted to do more than kiss her, that he wanted to do
everything
with her, but he couldn't. When she asked him why, he calmly pointed out that her clothes were on fire and he didn't want to get burned. In horror, she looked down and discovered she was wearing her full Haven Point Police Department uniform, which was completely engulfed in flames.

In the dream, she cursed at him for not telling her and letting her ruin her last good uniform, and then she ran to the bank of the Hell's Fury, ready to jump in, where she found Andrea Montgomery, her foot in a cast, floating down the river on an inner tube, her children right behind her like little ducklings.

Andrea told her she wasn't welcome there but Wyn insisted she had no choice. Couldn't they see her clothes were on fire?

She awoke right before she jumped into the icy waters.

Dreams. What the heck, right? Sometimes her subconscious was seriously whacked.

Sensing Wyn was awake, Pete padded over to be let out. She groaned and pushed the last tendrils of weirdness away as she climbed out of her warm bed and grabbed a robe.

She let him out, then stood watching the pink rim of sunrise above the mountains before letting him back inside again a few moments later. She thought about going back to bed but she was wide-awake now, too restless and unsettled to even settle back between the sheets with a good book.

Instead, she changed into work clothes then spent several hours weeding the perennial flower beds her grandmother had planted years ago. Wyn tried to maintain them but with her hectic schedule, it was a haphazard effort at best.

She had all the time in the world now, she told herself. Might as well do it right. When she was satisfied all the morning glory and dandelions, curly dock and those pesky mallow had been ruthlessly eradicated, she turned her attention to the inside of her house and all the jobs she always claimed she didn't have time to finish.

Two hours later, her kitchen cupboards had been scrubbed and organized and her closet plucked clean of all the clothes she no longer wore. The excess now filled a couple of bags in the back of her SUV that were destined for Goodwill.

So. That was done. How she would fill the remaining days of her suspension, she had no idea but at least her house was shipshape.

A quick glance at her clock told her she had more than enough time to clean up and still make it to the regular monthly potluck lunch held at McKenzie's store.

The doorbell rang just as she was heading for the shower. She switched directions and opened it to find her mother standing on the doorstep carrying two large tote bags.

“Mom! Hi. This is a surprise. What's all this?”

Her mom headed straight back to the kitchen, completely comfortable in the home where she had been raised. “I know you told me you would grab something last night but I decided to bring dinner anyway. I came over about eight thirty but I guess I still missed you. Nobody answered the door and I couldn't find the key under the doormat.”

Wyn followed her. “I'm a police officer, Mom. I don't keep my spare house key in an obvious place like under the doormat. I've told you that. The key is under Grandma's naughty garden gnome.”

“Oh, I'd forgotten. You've told me that before but maybe I've just blocked it out. I can't believe you didn't throw that awful thing out after you moved here.”

“It makes me laugh,” she said of the little creature, forever grinning saucily while it flipped the bird to everyone in sight.

Charlene shook her head, one more way she didn't understand her daughter, but said nothing more about it as she reached into the bag and pulled out a covered casserole dish then set it on the counter. “You and McKenzie must have had a lot to talk about. Are you planning her bridal shower?”

For a moment, she didn't know what her mother meant, until she remembered she had fibbed to keep her mother from coming over and fussing over her and had told her she had plans with McKenzie.

Oops.

Guilt pinched at her, especially when Charlene unloaded more dishes onto the kitchen counter until she had set enough food for a good-sized dinner party onto the cooktop.

“Wow. That's...a lot of food.”

“I know, dear, but I couldn't help myself. You know I cook when I'm upset.”

Yes, Wyn could attest to that. Her chubbiness as a girl had been proof that her mother had often been upset. The stress diet Wyn had gone through after that horrible January and the rigorous regimen of fitness and self-defense classes she'd turned to before applying for the police academy had finally eradicated the last of her baby fat.

“So tell me about the shower. Where is it going to be? Is there a theme? Do you need help with the food or the decorations?”

Yeah, the truth always came out. Sometimes she was sure her mother had a built-in lie detector. Cade should seriously put her to work interrogating suspects.

“I didn't end up actually meeting up with McKenzie last night,” she finally admitted.

Charlene raised a carefully shaped eyebrow. “Oh. That must be why she seemed a little discombobulated this morning and tried to make something up when I bumped into her at the grocery store and asked her about it.”

Great. Now she would have to explain to McKenzie why she had shamelessly used her for a cover story.

“If you weren't with her, where did you go?”

Charlene obviously had known from the moment she walked in that Wyn had lied to her about her whereabouts. She had no choice but to tell her mother the truth now.

She went to her mom and hugged her. “I'm sorry. I told you that because I just needed to be alone. You know how I get when I'm stressed.”

Her mother sniffed. “Yes. You take after your father that way.”

“I ended up going on a hike up the Mount Solace trail. On my way back, I stopped to talk about a couple of cases with Cade. He was grilling steaks and he invited me over, sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

And then he kissed me until I couldn't think straight.

Even without knowing the last bit that Wyn kept to herself, Charlene huffed out a breath. “Well, he's got some nerve, suspending you one minute and having you over for dinner the next.”

She didn't want her mother thinking poorly of Cade. Charlene adored him and fussed over him just like she did the rest of the Bailey clan and Wynona couldn't ruin that for either of them. He had too little softness and tenderness in his life and she didn't want to deprive him of any of it.

“He's doing what he thinks is best,” she said softly. “I'm not saying I agree with him but he's the chief of police and it's his decision.”

“Didn't you even try to change his mind while you were having dinner with him?”

She'd been a little busy, what with the kissing and all.

“You know how stubborn he can be,” she hedged.

“Oh, do I ever.” To her relief, Charlene let herself be distracted. “He was more hardheaded than Elliot, Wyatt and Marshall
combined
. I always said Cade had more of your father in him than any of John's own boys.”

“A little stubbornness isn't a bad thing when you're the chief of police,” she said, used to the ache of sorrow burning in her throat for the man she had admired and loved so very much.

“I suppose. He does a good job, doesn't he? Your father would have been a hard act to follow for any man, after twenty-five years as the chief of police, but Cade has stepped right into his shoes.”

“Yes. Dad trained him well.”

She didn't want to talk about Cade—thinking about him all morning had been enough, thanks—so she deliberately changed the subject by gesturing to the containers on the countertop.

“You do remember I live alone, right? What am I supposed to do with all this food?”

“It's not that much. Only lasagna, bread sticks, salad and brownies. And, yes. I do remember you live alone. How can I forget? I just don't know why. You go on plenty of dates.”

Here it was. Her mother's favorite topic. From experience, she knew enough to move off that subject quickly or Charlene wouldn't let up.

“I'm actually headed to McKenzie's for the Haven Point Helping Hands luncheon. Why don't you come with me?”

“Today?”

“Yes, as soon as I clean up. They would love to have you. I know you always said you couldn't come to the luncheons because you felt guilty leaving Dad at the nursing home by himself. Maybe it's time to start doing all these things again that you used to enjoy.”

Her mother glanced at her watch, then back at her with an oddly guilty look on her features. “I can't today. I'm sorry. I already have plans. If I'd known about it, I would have tried to make it. Maybe next time. Text me when the next one is and I'll put it on my calendar.”

What plans did she have? And why did the mention of them seem to make Charlene so nervous?

“Okay. I'll let you know. Thanks again for the food. It's enough to feed a soccer team but maybe I'll freeze it.”

She would never be able to eat an entire large pan of lasagna. Maybe she would invite a bunch of girlfriends over to watch a movie or something, now that she had all this free time. Devin and McKenzie had crazy schedules but would both try to make it. Katrina and her best friend, Samantha, had active social lives on the weekend but they might be available on a weeknight.

“Sounds good, dear,” Charlene said. Her mother's cell phone alerted her of an incoming text and she pulled it out of her pocket then smiled a little at the message before she quickly shoved it away. If Wyn wasn't mistaken, her mother's cheeks looked a little pinker than they had a moment ago.

“Well, I have to go,” her mother said. “I'll call you later. Have fun at your lunch.”

“I will. And you have fun at your...other plans.”

Charlene's smile seemed distracted as she let herself out.

Wyn slid the plate of brownies into the microwave to make sure Pete didn't suddenly get a hankering for them while she was gone. Plastic wrap would provide no barrier whatsoever to him but he hadn't yet learned to work the buttons on the appliances.

Whatever was she going to do with all this food?

The answer came to her while she was in the shower. When she returned from lunch, she would take it over to Andrea Montgomery's house. It would give her the perfect excuse to check on the little family and see how Andrea's ankle fared.

* * *

“L
OOK
WHO
'
S
HERE
! It's the hero of the year!” McKenzie hurried forward when Wynona walked into Point Made Flowers and Gifts an hour later carrying a pasta salad and gave her a big kiss on the cheek. “Too bad we already named Mick Sargent the grand marshal for Lake Haven Days or you would have been a
lock
.”

Thank heaven for small favors. She was spared that, at least.

“How fun, to have you here during the day.” Devin Shaw—McKenzie's sister—beamed. “Your schedule is usually so busy at the police department.”

“I've got nothing but time this week,” she said.

“Why is that?” Eliza Caine asked.

Wynona didn't want to go into the whole story but her sister helpfully did it for her.

“Because Cade Emmett suspended her for a week,” Katrina grumbled. “Can you believe it? She runs into a burning building to save two little boys and ends up losing a week's salary because of it.”

“That's just not right,” sweet Hazel Brewer exclaimed.

“I thought that boy had more sense,” her sister Eppie piped up.

“Sounds like he was just jealous that he wasn't the one getting all the attention,” Linda Fremont piped up with her usual negativity.

“I don't believe that was the case at all,” Wyn said. Again, she was in the uncomfortable position of having to defend Cade. She didn't want her friends to think poorly of him, especially when his reasons weren't without merit.

“Chief Emmett was concerned that I jeopardized the boys' safety by going into the fire without protective gear, especially after he ordered me not to. It's a personnel issue and I would rather not talk about it.”

If something had happened to you on my watch, it would have destroyed me.

His hoarse words came back to her, low and intense, sending butterflies twirling through her insides.

“What's the project today?” she asked, to change the subject and distract herself.

“We're making these handy bucket organizers to sell at our booth at Lake Haven Days,” McKenzie said. “We're painting the lower part of the bucket with chalkboard paint so you can write what's inside on the side. You can be on paint duty, if you want.”