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“I didn’t have to. I saw her. I saw Abigail.”
Cassie’s smile faded. “You did?”
“I never told the guys. They’d have ragged on me for the rest of my life. But I saw her, sitting in the parlor, by the fire. There was a fire, I could smell it, feel the heat from the flames, smell the roses that were in a vase on the table beside her. She was beautiful,” Devin said quietly. “Blond hair and porcelain skin, eyes the color of the smoke going up the flue. She wore a blue dress. I could hear the silk rustle as she moved. She was embroidering something, and her hands were small and delicate. She looked right at me, and she smiled. She smiled, but there were tears in her eyes. She spoke to me.”
“She spoke to you,” Cassie repeated, as chills raced up and down her back like icy fingers. “What did she say?”
“‘If only.’” Devin brought himself back, shook himself. “That was it. ‘If only.’ Then she was gone, and I told myself I’d been dreaming. But I knew I hadn’t. I always hoped I’d see her again.”
“But you haven’t?”
“No, but I’ve heard her weeping. It breaks my heart.”
“I know.”
“I’d, ah, appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention that to Rafe. He’d still rag on me.”
“I won’t.” She smiled as he bit into a cookie. “Is that why you come here, hoping to see her again?”
“I come to see you.” The minute he’d said it, he recognized his mistake. Her face went from relaxed to wary in the blink of an eye. “And the kids,” he added quickly. “And for the cookies.”
She relaxed again. “I’ll put some in a bag for you to take with you.” But even as she rose to do so, he covered her hand with his. She froze, not in fear so much as from the shock of the contact. Speechless, she stared down at the way his hand swallowed hers.
“Cassie…” He strained against the urge to gather her up, just to hold her, to stroke those flyaway curls, to taste, finally to taste, that small, serious mouth.
There was a hitch in her breathing that she was afraid to analyze. But she made herself shift her gaze, ordered herself not to be so much a coward that she couldn’t look into his eyes. She wished she knew what she was looking at, or looking for. All she knew was that it was more than the patience and pity she’d expected to see there, that it was different.
“Devin—” She broke off, jerked back at the sound of giggles and stomping feet. “The kids are home,” she finished quickly, breathlessly, and hurried to the door. “I’m down here!” she called out, knowing that they would do as they’d been told and go directly to the apartment unless she stopped them.
“Mama, I got a gold star on my homework.” Emma came in, a blond pixie in a red playsuit. She set her lunch box on the counter and smiled shyly at Devin. “Hello.”
“There’s my best girl. Let’s see that star.”
Clutching the lined paper in her hand, she walked to him. “You have a star.”
“Not as pretty as this one.” Devin traced a finger over the gold foil stuck to the top of the paper. “Did you do this by yourself?”
“Almost all. Can I sit in your lap?”
“You bet.” He plucked her up, cradled her there. He quite simply adored her. After brushing his cheek against her hair, he grinned over at Connor. “How’s it going, champ?”
“Okay.” A little thrill moved through Connor at the nickname. He was small for his age, like Emma, and blond, though at ten he had hair that was shades darker than his towheaded sister’s.
“You pitched a good game last Saturday.”
Now he flushed. “Thanks. But Bryan went four for five.” His loyalty and love for his best friend knew no bounds. “Did you see?”
“I was there for a few innings. Watched you smoke a few batters.”
“Connor got an A on his history test,” Emma said. “And that mean old Bobby Lewis shoved him and called him a bad name when we were in line for the bus.”
“Emma…” Mortified, Connor scowled at his sister.
“I guess Bobby Lewis didn’t get an A,” Devin commented.
“Bryan fixed him good,” Emma went on.
I bet he did, Devin thought, and handed Emma a cookie so that she’d be distracted enough to stop embarrassing her brother.
“I’m proud of you.” Trying not to worry, Cassie gave Connor a quick squeeze. “Both of you. A gold star and an A all in one day. We’ll have to celebrate later with ice-cream sundaes from Ed’s.”
“It’s no big deal,” Connor began.
“It is to me.” Cassie bent down and kissed him firmly. “A very big deal.”
“I used to struggle with math,” Devin said casually. “Never could get more than a C no matter what I did.”
Connor stared at the floor, weighed down by the stigma of being bright. He could still hear his father berating him. Egghead. Pansy. Useless.
Cassie started to speak, to defend, but Devin sent her one swift look.
“But then, I used to ace history and English.”
Stunned, Connor jerked his head up and stared. “You did?”
It was a struggle, but Devin kept his eyes sober. The kid didn’t mean to be funny, or insulting, he knew. “Yeah. I guess it was because I liked to read a lot. Still do.”
“You read books?” It was an epiphany for Connor. Here was a man who held a real man’s job and who liked to read.
“Sure.” Devin jiggled Emma on his knee and smiled. “The thing was, Rafe was pitiful in English, but he was a whiz in math. So we traded off. I’d do his—” He glanced at Cassie, realized his mistake. “I’d help him with his English homework and he’d help me with the math. It got us both through.”
“Do you like to read stories?” Connor wanted to know. “Made-up stories?”
“They’re the best kind.”
“Connor writes stories,” Cassie said, even as Connor wriggled in embarrassment.
“So I’ve heard. Maybe you’ll let me read one.” Before the boy could answer, Devin’s beeper went off. “Hell,” he muttered.
“Hell,” Emma said adoringly.
“You want to get me in trouble?” he asked, then hitched her onto his hip as he rose to call in. A few minutes later, he’d given up on his idea of wheedling his way into a dinner invitation. “Gotta go. Somebody broke into the storeroom at Duff’s and helped themselves to a few cases of beer.”
“Will you shoot them?” Emma asked him.
“I don’t think so. How about a kiss?”
She puckered up obligingly before he set her down. “Thanks for the coffee, Cass.”
“I’ll walk you out. You two go on upstairs and get your after-school snack,” she told her children. “I’ll be right along.” She waited until they were nearly at the front door before she spoke again. “Thank you for talking to Connor like that. He’s still so sensitive about liking school.”
“He’s a bright kid. It won’t take much longer for him to start appreciating himself.”
“You helped. He admires you.”
“It didn’t take any effort to tell him I like to read.” Devin paused at the door. “He means a lot to me. All of you do.” When she opened her mouth to speak, he took a chance and brushed a finger over her cheek. “All of you do,” he repeated, and walked out, leaving her staring after him.
Chapter 2
Some nights, late at night, when her children were sleeping and the guests were settled down, Cassie would roam the house. She was careful not to go on the second floor, where guests were bedded down in the lovely rooms and suites Rafe and Regan had built.
They paid for privacy, and Cassie was careful to give it.
But she was free to walk through her own apartment on the third floor, to admire the rooms, the view from the windows, even the feel of the polished hardwood under her bare feet.
It was a freedom, and a security, that she knew she would never take for granted. Any more than she would take for granted the curtains framing the windows, made of fabric that she had chosen and paid for herself. Or the kitchen table, the sofa, each lamp.
Not all new, she mused, but new to her. Everything that had been in the house she shared with Joe had been sold. It had been her way of sweeping away the past. Nothing here was from her before. It had been vital to her to start this life with nothing she hadn’t brought into it on her own.
If she was restless, she could go down on the main level, move from parlor to sitting room, into the beautiful solarium, with its lovely plants and glistening glass. She could stand in the hallways, sit on the steps. Simply enjoy the quiet and solitude.
The only room she avoided was the library. It was the only room that never welcomed her, despite its deep leather chairs and walls of books.
She knew instinctively that it had been Charles Barlow’s realm. Abigail’s husband. The master of the house. A man who had shot, in cold blood, a wounded Confederate soldier hardly old enough to shave.
Sometimes she felt the horror and sadness of that when she walked up and down the staircase where it had happened. Now and again she even heard the shot, the explosion of it, and the screams of the servants who had witnessed the senseless and brutal murder.
But she understood senseless brutality, knew it existed.
Just as she knew Abigail still existed, in this house. It wasn’t just the sound of weeping, the scent of roses that would come suddenly and from nowhere. It was just the feel of the air, that connection that she’d been too embarrassed to mention to Devin.
That was how she knew Abigail had loved a man who wasn’t her husband. That she had longed for him, wept for him, as well as for the murdered boy. That she had dreamed of him, and despaired of ever knowing the joy of real love.
Cassie understood, and sympathized. That was why she felt so welcomed in this house that held so much of the past. Why she was never afraid.
No, she was grateful for every hour she spent here as caretaker to beautiful things. It had been nearly a year since she had accepted Regan’s and Rafe’s offer and moved her family in. She was still dazzled that they would trust her with the job, and she worked hard to earn that trust.
The work was all pleasure, she thought now, as she wandered into the parlor. To tend and polish lovely antiques, to cook breakfast in that wonderful kitchen and serve it to guests on pretty dishes. To have flowers all around the house, inside and out.
It was like a dream, like one of the fairy tales Savannah MacKade illustrated.
She was so rarely afraid anymore, hardly even disturbed by the nightmares that had plagued her for so long she’d come to expect them. It was unusual for her to wake shivering in the middle of the night, out of a dream—listening, terrified, for Joe’s steps, for his voice.
She was safe here, and, for the first time in her life, free.
Bundled into her robe, she curled on the window seat in the parlor. She wouldn’t stay long. Her children slept deeply and were content here, but there was always a chance they might wake and need her. But she wanted just a few moments alone to hug her good fortune close to her heart.
She had a home where her children could laugh and play and feel safe. It was wonderful to see how quickly Emma was throwing off her shyness and becoming a bright, chattering little girl. Childhood had been harder on Connor, she knew. It shamed her to realize that he had seen and heard so much more of the misery than she had guessed. But he was coming out of his shell.
It relieved her to see how comfortable they were with Devin, with all the MacKades, really. There had been a time when Emma hesitated to so much as speak to a man, and Connor, sweet, sensitive Connor, had forever been braced for a verbal blow.
No more.
Just that day, both of them had talked to Devin as if it were as natural as breathing. She wished she was as resilient. It was the badge, she decided. She was finding it easier and easier to be comfortable with Jared or Rafe or Shane. She didn’t jolt when one of them touched her or flashed that MacKade grin.
It was different with Devin. But then, she’d had to go to him, had to confess that she’d allowed herself to be beaten and abused for years, had been forced to show him the marks on her body. Nothing, not even Joe’s vicious fists, had ever humiliated her more than that.
She knew he was sorry for her, and felt obligated to look out for her and the children. He took his responsibilities as sheriff seriously. No one, including herself, would have believed twelve or fifteen years before, when he and his brothers were simply those bad MacKade boys, that they would turn out the way they had.
Devin had made himself into an admirable man. Still rough, she supposed. She knew he could break up a bar fight with little more than a snarl, and that he used his fists when that didn’t work.
Still, she’d never known anyone gentler or more compassionate. He’d been very good to her and her children, and she owed him.
Laying her cheek against the window, she closed her eyes. She was going to train herself not to be so jumpy around him. She could do it. She had been working very hard over the past year or so to teach herself composure and calm, to pretend she wasn’t shy when she greeted the guests. It worked so well that she often didn’t even feel shy anymore.
There were even times, and they were coming more and more often, when she actually felt competent.
So she would work now to teach herself not to be so jittery around Devin. She would stop thinking about his badge and remember that he was one of her oldest friends—one she’d even had a little crush on, once upon a time. She would stop thinking of how big his hands were, or what would happen if he got angry and used them against her.
Instead she would remember how gently they ruffled her daughter’s hair, or how firmly they covered her son’s when he helped him with his batting stance.
Or how nice it had been, how unexpectedly nice, to feel the way his finger brushed her cheek.
She curled more comfortably on the padded seat….
He was here, right here beside her, smiling in that way that brought his dimple out and made odd things happen to her insides. He touched her, and she didn’t jolt this time. There, she thought, it was working already.
He was touching her, drawing her against him. Oh, his body was hard. But she didn’t flinch. She was trembling, though. Couldn’t stop. He was so big, so strong, he could break her in half. And yet…and yet his hands stroked so lightly over her. Over her skin. But he couldn’t be touching her there.
His mouth was on hers, so warm and gentle. She couldn’t stop him. She forgot that she should, even when his tongue slid over hers and his hand cupped her breast as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
He was touching her, and it was hard to breathe, because those big hands were gliding over her. And now his mouth. Oh, it was wrong, it had to be wrong, but it was so wonderful to feel that warm, wet mouth on her.
She was whimpering, moaning, opening for him. She felt him coming inside her, so hard, so smooth, so right.
The explosion of a gunshot had her jerking upright. She was gasping for breath, damp with sweat, her mind a muddled mess.
Alone in the parlor. Of course she was alone. But her skin was tingling, and there was a tingling, almost a burning, inside her that she hadn’t felt in so many years she’d forgotten it was possible.
Shame washed over her, had her gathering her robe tight at her throat. It was terrible, she thought, just terrible, to have been imagining herself with Devin like that. After he’d been so kind to her.
She didn’t know what had gotten into her. She didn’t even like sex. It was something she’d learned to dread, and then to tolerate, very soon after her miserable wedding-night initiation. Pleasure had never entered into it. She simply wasn’t built for that kind of pleasure, and had accepted the lack early on.
But when she got to her feet, her legs were shaky and there was a nagging pressure low in her stomach. She drew in a breath, and along with it the delicate scent of roses.
So she wasn’t alone, Cassie thought. Abigail was with her. Comforted, she went back upstairs to check on her children one last time before going to bed.
Devin was well into what he considered the paper-pushing part of the day by noon. He had a report to type and file on the break-in at Duff’s Tavern. The trio of teenagers who’d thought to relieve Duff of a bit of his inventory had been pathetically easy to track down.
