8. Haven
Chapter Eight
Haven
After that night, when Cash gave me a blistering good night kiss, then hightailed it out of my apartment like his feet were on fire, everything is different.
I’m different.
And yet in some ways, we regress to Before The First Kiss.
Cash comes in the next day to return the thriller. He gives me a polite smile and asks if there’s any chance I could meddle in the holds to bump him up the list on his next must-read book.
“Absolutely not.”
“No special treatment for your favourite patron?”
But there’s enough emphasis on patron that it feels like a pointed reminder of our official relationship. I’m his librarian, nothing more. For his own reasons, all flirting is strictly book-related. And he’ll shamelessly hide behind that and pretend that we’ve never shared anything else.
By his metrics, we probably haven’t. Two kisses? A dinner and a wobbly drop-off after a night of drinking? For Cash Kincaid, that’s stranger level behaviour.
That they were the closest I’ve ever come to experiencing romance first hand…I’ll keep that shameful secret to myself forever.
And then I don’t see him again for days.
It’s hard, like it makes my chest hurt, and that’s very annoying. How dare he make me miss him when he doesn’t like being my friend like that?
A variation of that thought spins through my head multiple times a day.
I go out thrifting with Mercy the following Monday, one of my days off from the library.
It’s a nice reprieve, but as soon as I’m back to work the next day, every free second is spent re-living the feel of his beard against my chin, his mouth, hot and wet, and the way his hands curved possessively against my body.
So easy for him.
Life changing for me.
What. A. Jerk.
I’m so tangled up in my thoughts about Cash and the kisses and him pretending that the kisses didn’t happen, that when the email arrives it takes me by complete surprise. I’d genuinely forgotten about the last harassing email the judgemental asshole sent me.
But as soon as it lands in my inbox, I know this one is from the same person.
From: faithfulwatcher2626
To: Haven Bingham
Subject: sluts don’t belong in the library
And there it is in the subject line, the whispers made explicit.
Shaking, I hit print on the email instead of reading the body of the message.
I grab the paper carefully, like it might be explosive and I tell my co-worker I need to take a quick break.
And then I run across the street.
Cash is under a car, all I can see are his long legs sticking out, but Riley takes one look at me and says, “Boss, you have a visitor.”
My heart hammers in my throat as he rolls himself free and jumps to his feet. Without saying a word, he grabs a rag and jerks his head for me to follow him into the office.
I close the door behind us as he wipes off his hands.
“I got another email,” I say, and my voice isn’t steady at all.
He reads it quickly, his nostrils flaring. “This came from someone at New Harvest, yeah?”
“I think so. I didn’t read it.” I suck in a sharp breath. “Did you hear about the Concerned Citizens for Community Standards initiative?”
He snorts. “No. The church crew? They’re always on about something. Is that what they’re calling it now?”
“It came up at the last town meeting. Mercy took me. Promised it would be fun and then it got weird.”
“Weird how?”
“It was, um, pointedly about Hope and Zane, and citizens concerned about—”
“Community standards. Got it. What the fuck? Who brought them up?”
“Brian Pelley, but I think my uncle put him up to it. Dr. Tailfeathers protested, said he was misrepresenting what happened. And then Jeb smoothed it over and twisted it into something else that felt…”
“Gross? Personal?” Cash crushes the email printout. “I’ll kill him.”
“You can’t.” Panic flutters in my throat. “Please, don’t get into trouble over this.”
I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself for that. I think about the room nodding along and I feel sick all over again at how quickly they could all turn on Cash.
Cash’s jaw flexes. “How many emails is this?”
“I think this is the fourth one. I didn’t delete this one.”
“Good.” He smoothes it out and hands it over. “I know it’s hard to read, but I need to know if you recognize the voice of the writer.”
“You think it’s Jeb?” My hands shake as I scan the words. There’s a typo in the first line that jumps out.
I know your a fraud
And you know it too
I saw you at the meeting, you felt shame (and you should)
You aren’t what this community wants, and you should leave
Well. That’s direct. I swallow hard, then shake my head. “I don’t know. If it’s him, he’s trying hard to sound stupid.”
Cash laughs, low and unexpected. “Yeah, he sounds like a fucking idiot. But he is—”
“I’m not disagreeing, but he’s an idiot with a graduate degree in divinity. He definitely knows how to use punctuation and spell check.”
“You should ask the IT department to pull the other emails from the backup files.”
I wince at the thought of making a big deal.
Cash goes to lift my chin, his greasy finger right in front of my face, then he growls an apology. “Sorry, I’m all dirty. But I need you to look at me.”
I look at him.
He smiles as a reward. “Someone is getting really fucking close to making a direct threat. Tracing the threads before they do that is just smart, and your employer will want you to do that. And if they don’t—”
“I know, you’ll kill them,” I say weakly. “Which, I’ll repeat, you cannot do.”
“You asking for the other emails to be retrieved will go a long way to prevent me from murdering someone.”
I groan. “I know I’m a coward—” I choke up.
“Hey, no, it’s okay.” He grabs the email, then shoves it into his pocket. “Jesus, I wish I could give you a hug.”
With a jolt, I realize that’s really why I came here. Not just because Cash is a problem solver, and not just because he knew about the last email. What I really wanted was something I can’t get from anyone else.
With a sob, I throw myself against his hard chest.
“Ah, Lucky,” he murmurs. His arms come around me, steely hard across my back. “You’re okay. I’m sorry this happened again.”
It’s not his fault. He wasn’t at that meeting.
But I wish he had been. It would have been nice to be able to send him an SOS message. If I had, he would have come before the meeting was over, I know that without a doubt.
I think about Jeb’s confidence, and how it fuels cruelty from others. The cold shoulders, the silence that closes in around me in certain corners of this town. Six months of holding my head high and telling myself it’ll get better.
Now I’m not sure it will.
And Cash reads my mind. He eases me off his body and looks down at me grimly. “This is probably going to escalate.”
He’s right, and I hate that.
“I know,” I say. My voice is painfully small.
“So we should get ahead of it.”
“How?”
If he weren’t so serious, the sigh he lets out would be comical. “We’re going to have to let everyone in Dragonfly Creek think you’re my girl.”
“No.” I shake my head. “Cash, I can’t ask you to—”
“You might think you can’t, but your mouth had other ideas, didn’t it?
When push comes to shove, you know deep down that I’m your best weapon against Jeb.
And your mouth was right. If you’re up to it, this is the most straightforward way to make sure every small-minded person in this town understands that you have someone in your corner. Someone fearlessly terrifying.”
He doesn’t want to do this. He’d rather be my bodyguard than my boyfriend, he’s made that crystal clear, the way he faded into the background at Bar None.
But he was there.
He watched over me.
And I’d rather he be my fake boyfriend than my real bodyguard. That’s too weird.
“Fake dating?” I ask, just to be sure.
He shrugs.
“People would talk.” I scrub my hands over my face. “That’s really jumping into the fire, isn’t it?”
“Let them talk.”
I stare at him. “That’s easy for you to say, people are always talking about your…”
He raises his eyebrows. “My…”
Is he going to make me say it? “You know what I mean.”
He grins. “I don’t think I do.”
“Your reputation with women.”
“You kissed me, Haven. You went to fucking Bar None! You want people to think you’ve changed, right?”
That pulls me up short. “Yes.”
“Then let people think whatever they want. It’s a good way to filter out who’s real and who’s a judgmental jerk. Like whatever you think about me…that doesn’t change the fact that you like me, right?”
“Of course it doesn’t! I don’t care who you sleep with,” I say hotly.
Except now my belly pulls tight. After kissing him, after feeling what it’s like for him to hold my face and part my lips and lick me, I do care, more than I should.
I really hate the thought of Cash Kincaid kissing other people, even though he does it all the time. A different girl every day of the week, that’s what people say.
A funny expression flits across his face. “See? That’s what makes us such good friends. You don’t judge me, and I’m available for all your impromptu kissing needs.”
“Well, hopefully there aren’t many of those.”
“You think a creepy asshole who’s been waiting to marry you since you were sixteen years old is going to be chased off by a single kiss? We didn’t even make it nasty.”
My mouth falls open.
Cash shrugs off the casual crudeness.
But I know better than that. I see what he’s doing. He’s hurt that I used him, so he’s putting up a wall.
I’ve always known Cash Kincaid to be uncommonly kind. Most other people don’t see that, because of what he looks like. Even before the tattoos, he was big and muscled and needing to shave before the other guys in our class.
And he comes from a family of boys, each one bigger than the last. His younger brother, Dax, is a champion bull rider, an absolute mountain of a man. And his older brothers…
Well, the reputation of his family didn’t help Cash’s case when he was charged with aggravated assault. When they moved to Dragonfly Creek, his oldest brother, Ridge, was always getting into fights. He never fit in, and some of the worst people at our school made his high school years a nightmare.
But the Matthews boys, as they were known back then, never backed down from a fight. They met the nightmare in the parking lot, over and over again.
And then Ridge left as soon as he could and joined the army. Zane, the second oldest, followed when he graduated. So of course Cash did the same thing. It was inevitable.
But he still had friends here, and he would come back to party on weekends and holidays.
Cash makes friends everywhere he goes. He’s got a charm to him, and he’s working it on me right now.
He uses it to gain information, because information is power, and there’s nothing Cash likes less than feeling powerless.
It’s why he would come to bible study even though I don’t think he believes in much beyond his family.
My heart squeezes as I think about his brothers. They’ve been through a lot.
Because as Cash discovered too late, he had enemies here as well.
And yet the Kincaid brothers came home when Cash got out of jail…bought a ranch outside of town together and said, fuck you all, we’re landowners now.
I was halfway through my university degree and deeply lonely when I heard they’d bought a ranch and named it Kincaid’s Refuge.
That was the day I decided that I, too, would return to Dragonfly Creek in the future. I wouldn’t be kept from my hometown, either.
It hasn’t been easy, though.
And I really regret making Cash feel used, though. I don’t like the way he retreated behind that crude, brittle shell.
“I’m grateful for your friendship,” I say softly. “In every form it takes. Including kissing me. I’m very grateful that you did that.”
“Both times?” His gaze turns intense as he stares at me.
I blush.
His eyes soften immediately. “I’m not teasing you.”
“It’s okay. I deserve some teasing after getting drunk and saying ridiculous things to you. But seriously, I don’t want to take advantage of you.”
“You aren’t. And actually, you’d be helping me out, too.”
“How on earth?”
“Well, I need a date.”
I laugh. “You have no shortage of options there.” I wave my hand toward the window, to all of Dragonfly Creek and the Foothills beyond.
Heck, Cash probably has his Tinder settings to include Calgary to the north and Lethbridge to the south.
He might even include Fernie in there, to get the rich BC girls.
“I don’t want options. It’s not that kind of a date. It’s special.” He gives me a crooked smile. “And I wasn’t going to ask you, because you’re a good girl and I’m an ex-con and all that, but since you’ve embarked on this tough girl image do-over, and we know that you don’t hate kissing me…”
He curves over me.
I step back and immediately bump into the big metal desk that dominates his small office.
He braces his hands on either side of my hips and grins at me. “Don’t you even want to know what the date is for?” He pauses for effect. “Zane’s getting married.”
“That’s…amazing. Soon?”
He nods. “In two weeks, apparently. And…Hope is expecting a baby.”
“Oh.” Another baby on the way definitely puts an urgency on the timeline, though. And that vicious gossip will hurt even more.
Cash nods grimly. “You get it now. We need to make sure it’s a special day and not let any of that talk intrude.”
“Let them talk,” I say softly. “Someone really smart told me that.”
He barks a laugh. “Nobody’s ever accused me of being smart, Lucky.”
I try not to flinch at the old nickname.
He notices anyway. His brows pull tight. “What?”
“Nothing. We were talking about how smart you are.”
“You don’t like being called Lucky?”
“Not really. Tell me about the wedding.”
He gives me a look that says we’re going to circle back to the nickname thing at some point. “It’s at the ranch. Just family, but then they’re going to Raspberry Jamboree to celebrate after. I want you to come with me.”
“What will we tell your family?”
He crosses his thick, tattooed forearms in front of his chest. “The truth. We’ve been friends for a long time. I’m obviously no good for you, but I come into the library once a week anyway, and an unlikely connection was forged through books, and dinners, and really incredible kisses.”
“Incredible?”
“I like kissing you, too, Haven.”
My breath catches in my throat. Suddenly the office feels impossibly small.
“Every chance I get, I’ll make that clear from here on out. And I wouldn’t be making any apologies for it afterward, either.”
I have a response to that somewhere. I’m sure I do. I’m a reasonably intelligent woman with a graduate degree and a fully functional vocabulary.
It seems to have gone offline.
He gives me a grin that says he likes my reaction. “Go back to work. I’ll come by at closing and then I’m taking you to The Friendly Table for dinner. It’s time we’re officially seen in public together.”