Chapter 9
EMMA’S SMALL BEDROOM window was open halfway to let the late-afternoon breeze into the cool basement room. So when the dinner bell sounded, sharp and loud, she came out of her skin.
“Gah!” she shouted, scattering papers and nearly tossing her laptop.
“Dinner’s ready,” said a familiar male voice through the screen.
Cade.
She fumed silently. He’d done it on purpose. That was fine. The old adage, what goes around comes around, would catch him with his pants down someday.
“Right. Run with that. Ignore the pants-down part, though,” she muttered.
Untangling her crossed legs and nest of pillows, she slid off the little twin bed and began gathering her reports, predictions, charts and graphs from the floor.
The work represented forecasts in business, advertising efficacy, projected budgets and, above all, the goals for the grand opening in a few days.
The front door slammed and heavy footfalls sounded above her.
“You can ‘Cotton-eye Joe’ to the kitchen for all I care, Stompy McFee.” She flipped him a one-bird salute and took all her materials to the small desk.
Ignoring the voices upstairs, she settled in to work on the guest list. She wanted a folder for each individual who had been invited, the company he or she represented, how Emma might work in potential opportunities to connect with them in future and further promote the dude ranch.
This list was her last chance to keep her business.
If the event flopped, if she didn’t make enough contacts, she’d have nothing when she confronted Michael about his subpar work product and the company’s resulting losses.
If she fired him, he’d take his own failures and label them hers.
He’d be able to make it appear to both her professional peers and client list that she’d become lackadaisical in her work ethic and output, and the company would suffer. She’d lose everything.
The firm knock on her bedroom door had her flinging papers again as she spun. She let out a foul curse as the door opened.
Cade stood there, two dinner plates in hand. “Thought you might enjoy a little company while you worked through dinner.”
“Is it that obvious I’m skipping out on having a full-blown confrontation with you and your brothers over—” she glanced at the dinner plates “—meat loaf?” she asked, lightly.
He slipped into the room and nudged the door with his hip, pushing it shut but not bothering to latch it. “No, it was only obvious you were still working.”
“You didn’t have to bring dinner down.” Emma set the paperwork on the edge of the desk and dropped onto the end of the bed, accepting the proffered plate. She bit her bottom lip before looking up and offering a tentative smile. “I’m glad you did, though. I appreciate the company.”
“No reason to relegate yourself to your bedroom just because we’ve all been behaving like jerks.
” He settled into the desk chair, ankle resting on his opposite knee as he tucked a paper towel in the neck of his shirt.
“Sorry about that, by the way. I’ve talked to Eli and Ty.
You shouldn’t meet with any more resistance. ”
Unwilling to check a gift horse’s teeth, she opted to accept the kind gesture.
It was true that part of her had holed up in the bedroom to work instead of subjecting herself to questioning and being made to feel she was nothing more than an evil, tolerated necessity.
That part of her was the cowardly, vulnerable part she hated.
Another part demanded she stick this out and prove to everyone, herself included, that she could, and would, do this.
“For what it’s worth, I appreciate that.” Emma glanced around the room, taking in the paraphernalia of a childhood spent among family and friends. “I can’t imagine Eli would ever leave this.” The yearning in her voice nearly choked her.
Eyes focused on his plate, Cade forked up a bite of meat loaf. “What was your childhood like, growing up in the city?”
Emma grimaced into her iced tea. “Hmm. My childhood. It was decidedly less idyllic than the one you guys seem to have experienced.” She paused, considering what she’d already disclosed.
“You know a bit from last night. I can add that my parents were entirely focused on their financial worth. They were more familiar with their fixed assets lists than they were with their only child.”
“Why weren’t they interested in you?” he asked, pushing his food around on his plate.
She sipped her tea, absently coating a throat gone dry with truth.
“They were very self-important people who never wanted a child. Their birth control failed. They could have had an abortion, but they were too concerned with what their peers would say. In the end, after much discussion, they ‘maintained the pregnancy’ and were left with a person they aspired to mold into a miniature version of themselves. That’s probably the best description. ”
“Any love in there?”
“Love was intangible, a waste of energy that would be better invested in making more money or further climbing the all-important social ladder. We moved several times before I left for college, always into a better, more expensive neighborhood. We also wore the right clothes, drove the right cars, comported ourselves as if we were socially superior and always utilized my parents’ premium box seats at the theater.
‘See and be seen in the best and by the best’ was always their motto.
” Bitterness made her words caustic despite her best efforts.
“They looked and sounded right at all times. When I was beneficial for some social function or whatever, when having a child gained them something, I was to behave as a perfect child would—be visible but silent, be polite but not appear too full of independent ideas, and, later, be a lady who would make a fine match but never a woman who might challenge society’s, or her husband’s, ideals.
Ironically, their pursuit of perfection didn’t help them live any longer. ”
“Not everything’s as pretty as it’s painted to be, is it?”
She toyed with the peas on her plate, lining them up in rows before she spoke again.
“I was asked to speak at their funeral. I declined, but not for the reasons everyone suspected. It wasn’t grief.
” Emma forced herself to meet Cade’s steady gaze.
“I declined because I had no idea what I could possibly say about them.”
He nodded, and then set his relatively full plate on the dresser beside him, appetite seemingly lost. Dropping his foot to the floor, he leaned forward and parked his forearms on his knees.
“Our mom died when we were young. She treated her boys as if the sun rose and set because of us, but our old man was...difficult? Hard? Disengaged from our lives?” He snorted.
“That might be the understatement of the century. Eli left home when he was old enough and had banked a couple years of bravery. Took him fourteen years to come home. He accomplished his life goals and got the girl of his dreams in the end, so it worked out well for him.”
Shifting, she leaned against the little bed’s headboard. “That’s great for him, but what about you and Ty? What about your dreams?”
“It’s safe to say life wasn’t quite so easy for us, living out here with Dad.”
Emma set her own plate aside, what was left of her appetite following Cade’s to parts unknown. “Okay.”
She traced a finger along a hand-sewn repair to a tear in the bed’s quilt. It’s safe to say life wasn’t quite so easy, he’d said, piquing Emma’s curiosity. She wanted to understand what life had been like for the boy Cade had been, and how, in the end, it had shaped the man he’d become.
But admitting to her curiosity meant admitting that she was interested in him. Was she? After the way he’d treated her, with passion and heat, but also resentment that she was trying to change his way of life?
As much as it galled her, she did want to try to understand who he was and what made him tick.
Emma sucked in a deep breath, held it and let it out to the count of ten. Then she forced herself to meet Cade’s quiet eyes. “How did it affect you, Cade? How was it different for you than it was for Ty?”
His chin dropped to his chest, his voice quiet when he finally spoke.
“Ty was always the baby, the one nobody expected much of because he was a kid when all this happened—Mom dying, Dad withdrawing, Eli leaving. My old man just assumed I’d take over for Eli, become the oldest son as a matter of course.
I’d keep up my own responsibilities and take on his and I’d be damned grateful for it if anyone asked.
There was no discussion, short of...” He shook his head.
“Leave it at there was no discussion. It’s sort of a weird parallel to your parents wanting you to appear perfect. There were just more of us pretending.”
“How’re things with you and Eli since he came home?” she asked gently.
He glanced up, his eyes darkening before he shifted and focused on the floor again. “We’re working our stuff out. Takes a while.” He picked at a hangnail, shoulders hunching. “I asked him to come home once.”
“You asked who? Eli?”
Cade gave a short nod. “Yeah.”
“Did he?”
“No. He came when Ty called after Dad died, though.”
She recognized his resentment, but what shocked her was the absolute vulnerability that made the words so raw and hard to hear. “He didn’t love you any less, Cade.”
“Sure.” He stood and held out a hand. “Done with your plate?”
She handed it to him and opened her mouth to reassure him, but he cut her off with a glare. “Don’t, okay? Just don’t.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
He opened the door, those massive shoulders still sagging and stepped around Reagan, who was standing there, hand raised to knock.
The other woman watched him go, a strange poignancy tightening the corners of her eyes. Shaking her head as if to clear it, she faced Emma. “Can I come in for a second?”
“Sure.” She gestured to the chair Cade had occupied. “Have a seat.”