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The weight of the day erased thoughts of Cassie’s personal life for the moment. She moved her hand across her stomach.
“The doc gave the okay, though,” she said. If Maggie, the ex-reporter, or Matt noticed anything off about the two of them, they didn’t say a word. “But you can never be too careful. Plus, I wanted to be there for Mara.”
Henry tore his eyes off her stomach.
“That’s good,” was all he said.
Matt put a hand on his shoulder and steered the deputy into the kitchen. Cassie settled back into her chair while Maggie followed the men. She was soon back with the dinner they’d just finished making. Nothing too fancy, just something to kill their hunger. Cassie doubted any of them could take any real pleasure from a meal until Billy could, too.
Like her hand had a mind of its own again, it moved up and touched the scar at her neck. Maggie didn’t miss it. She took the seat next to Cassie and patted her back.
“You’re okay,” Maggie whispered. “You both are okay. This will all get sorted out. Have faith.”
Cassie felt herself nod.
Maggie started a volley of questions as soon as the men were back and seated. More than anything Cassie wanted to pay attention, to learn more about Henry, a man at times she’d wondered if he was even real. Yet there was a rising feeling of overwhelming vulnerability in her chest. It tightened her stomach and pulled out some of the fear and anger she’d felt at the diner.
She didn’t know if it was because she was pregnant, because the man she’d spent the last several months hoping would call had showed up, or because she just hadn’t had the time to process everything, but suddenly she couldn’t just sit there anymore.
“If y’all hadn’t have been at my party, this wouldn’t have happened,” she said, cutting Matt off midsentence.
He was quick to shake his head.
“Cassie, you know as well as I do that you and your party had nothing to do with this,” Matt said in defense. “That man was angry, probably out for revenge. Location doesn’t deter someone stuck in the mind-set that they’re going to try to take on the law.”
“But it did give the bastard the opportunity, didn’t it?”
She felt the heat that surged through her words seconds before Matt’s eyes widened a fraction. She’d bet Maggie’s were probably wider, too. It wasn’t every day that Cassie Gates had an outburst. She was the sweet one. The Southern girl who always smiled and was agreeable. The one who stayed optimistic when things went badly.
Her cheeks stung now that she’d broken out of her normal character. It didn’t help that Henry was there, staring at her with those eyes of steel. The same eyes that had traced her lips seconds before he’d kissed her for the first time. The same eyes that had traveled across her bare skin sometime later in the night.
Cool, hard steel she hadn’t seen since.
And she hated that she was thinking about that night right now. After the day they’d been through, it didn’t seem so important.
Yet she could feel the tears of being rejected starting to push themselves forward.
“Cassie...” Maggie began, but her tone was what finally broke the dam that Cassie had put up to keep herself sane after the diner.
The chair scraped against the floor as she pushed herself back and stood. With one hand on her stomach, Cassie met no one’s gaze. “Sorry, I’m just tired and hormonal,” she declared. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I think I’d like to go home now.”
Maggie, bless her, must have caught on that Cassie meant what she said.
“Okay,” she said, a reassuring smile lifting her expression. “That’s fine. Let me at least make you a plate before we go, though, all right? Tired or not, you two still need to eat something.”
There was force behind her words. A mother mothering a soon-to-be mother. Practically the lifeblood of the South. But she was right.
Cassie nodded and collected her plate. “I’ll help.”
Without looking at the men, or the one in particular, Cassie fled to the kitchen, a storm of emotions battling it out in her chest.
* * *
THE WOMEN WERE out and gone before Henry could think of a reason to pull Cassie aside, alone. Not that it would have changed anything. Cassie could have medaled at the Olympic sport of avoidance with how she’d skirted him on the way out.
Instead of asking her the million-dollar question, he’d been left watching through the dining room window as she slid into Maggie’s car.
Not that he blamed her.
He’d just burned any normal bridge they could have had, announcing that he’d never met the woman before in front of her coworkers. Her friends.
Henry resisted the urge to slam his fist down on the tabletop.
Seven months give or take.
That give or take could make the difference.
Had she met someone after him?
Or was he the father?
How had he missed that detail at the diner?
Why had he lied?
And why hadn’t Cassie corrected him?
Too many questions and no one to ask them of. At least, not right now.
“I’m sure Billy already told you, but we’ve been through a lot as a department the last few years,” Matt said, breaking the silence they’d fallen into. He moved his food around on his plate before dropping his fork and taking up his beer. “Stuff that scars. But I guess with your last job you know that better than most of us.”
It wasn’t a question. Few had been aware of the finite details that went along with his last job. The detective hadn’t been one of them, but Henry knew he wasn’t stupid. It was public knowledge that his partner, Calvin Fitzgerald, had died during an undercover operation.
Henry took a long pull from his beer as thoughts about Cassie were momentarily replaced by the one part of his past he’d been forced to leave behind.
“Scars are par for the course in this field,” he said. “Everyone seems to get them, no matter which side they’re on. And even if they aren’t on a side at all. A damn shame, if you ask me.”
Matt picked up his beer and tapped it against Henry’s bottle with a clink. “Amen to that.” He paused, his bottle hanging in midair. “But some of us have literal scars. Ones that came from calls that were way too close. Cassie’s one of them. So I’m sure she’s swimming in a sea of bad memories right now. When the dust settles and when Billy heals up, you’ll see us all in a better light.” Matt smirked. “Until then, try not to take any general grumpiness personal.”
“Deal.”
Henry didn’t have the heart to tell the man that any ill feelings he might get from Cassie were more than deserved.
Instead they finished their dinner just as Maggie returned to help clean up. The way she and the detective moved in tandem without even realizing they were doing it was refreshing to see. The only relationships Henry had been around in the last few years had been dangerous, toxic and unpredictable. Ones that were filled with uncertainty and almost always sank his world into trouble.
Which was why he’d come to Riker County in the first place.
He wasn’t looking for redemption and he sure as hell wasn’t looking for a second chance at his old life. He didn’t want to make things better. That was another bridge that had already burned.
All Henry wanted now was a big heap of nothing.
He wanted a clean slate.
But could he do it? Could he start over? Or had his last job rubbed off on him too much?
Henry sat heavily in the driver’s seat of his car after saying ’bye to the couple. He waved at Matt, who retreated into his house, Maggie at his side.
What about Cassie?
And her unborn son?
* * *
THE HEAT WAS THICK. Heavy. Unforgiving.
He didn’t care.
“What was that?” His voice wasn’t low. He was yelling. Again, he didn’t care. “You all had one job. One job!”
With a flourish he swept his arm over the desk. Everything on its top flew off and crashed to the floor. The man across from him winced. The woman holding his hand did not.
“We saw an opportunity and snapped at it,” she hissed, all venom.
“You could have ruined everything,” he yelled back. The keyboard that clung to the desktop by its cord didn’t last long. He put more feeling into his swing and it, too, crashed to the floor. This time the computer went with it.
The man across from him flinched again like he’d been the one struck. His woman didn’t bend.
“We have been waiting for you to put your plan into action for months,” she retorted, fire in her words. In a detached sort of way he noticed the tension that had tightened her muscles. He’d bet she was doing everything in her power not to throw her entire body into her anger. Her rage. Under different circumstances he might have been impressed.
At the moment he was not.
“What we’re doing, what I’m doing, isn’t planning some stroll through the park or setting up some simple con,” he said, pulling some of his own frustration back into himself. With Darrel’s death he’d already lost one of his players. He wasn’t willing to lose any more. Not yet. Not when they were so close. He straightened his tie and ran a hand over his hair to smooth it down. “It isn’t a plan at all, really. It’s a vision. One that will only work if we don’t do whatever the hell we want to.”
His calm shattered in an instant. He grabbed the lip of his desk and pulled up. If it had been his home office desk, it wouldn’t have budged, but this one was cheap. The desk flipped over without much resistance.
Paula was quick. She was up and out of her chair in a flash, long legs graceful in their movement. Her poor excuse for a boyfriend, Jason, wasn’t as fast. The weight of the desk pinned the top of his foot. He yelled out in pain.
Again, if it had been his personal desk, Jason’s foot would have been broken by the weight.
“Things are about to get crazy,” he continued, voice lost to the strain of trying to figure out if he should keep his tantrum going. “And that chaos is the goal, the end game.” He fixed Paula with a look that kept whatever she was about to say behind her lips. “No more acting out of line in the name of revenge. No more taking shots because you have the opportunity. You’re here for more than something so insignificant.”
Paula crossed her arms over her chest. She made no move to help Jason free himself. It was as if she’d already forgotten him.
Which was even better.
“What’s more significant than revenge?” she asked, cool and calm. “What’s better than making the people who wronged us and ours suffer?”
He was quick to answer. “The power to prolong both.”
For the first time since he’d summoned them both into his makeshift office, Paula’s expression went blank. Then, slowly, she smiled. “Then let’s go make some chaos.”
Chapter Four (#u160bac0e-890a-5ac5-a740-28aa9cec7c8a)
The night ended without any more fuss. Cassie went home, showered and then took comfort in the arms of her padded duvet. But only after dropping the air-conditioning down a few degrees. She’d had a good pregnancy so far when it came to morning sickness, but she never stopped being amazed at how hot she got.
Her sister Kristen called her a walking furnace.
Cassie lived up to the name the next morning. She woke up sweating. It wasn’t until she made it to the kitchen for a glass of water that she fought through the haze of sleep and remembered everything that had happened the day before.
She downed half the glass and went in search of her cell phone. It had also spent the night tangled in the bedsheets. Which meant her battery hadn’t been charged. A notification showed it was less than 15 percent. The one below it listed two new text messages. Cassie perched on the side of the bed. She didn’t give herself time to worry about what each message said before opening and reading both.
The first was from Denise, the Caller ID reading Mrs. Beadle. Several hearts were on either side of the name. Cassie smiled. Her eldest sister and sibling was just as maternal as their mother. She’d actually been the first person Cassie had called after getting to the hospital to make sure everything was okay with the baby.
Which hadn’t made Kristen happy, since she was local and Denise lived in Colorado. However, it was a force of habit to call the eldest Gates sibling and had been since she’d moved out of the house when they were younger. Denise had a gift for worrying about a person with all of her being while simultaneously helping comfort that same person with all of her being. And that was what Cassie had desperately wanted. Comfort, released of the fear and uncertainty that had just crashed back into her life. Both sisters said in their own ways to call them when she was up and moving around.
Cassie sighed.
It was only a matter of time before word got out to the rest of the Gates clan. Then her brothers would be the ones filling her inbox.
It came with the territory of being the youngest of six siblings. The baby. Which, by default, meant she received the full weight of their worry and less and less of their confidence. Never mind Cassie was twenty-nine, had a mortgage and was a few months shy of becoming a full-fledged mother.
She placed a hand on her swollen belly.
A love she didn’t think was possible consumed her entire heart and soul at the touch. Relief cascaded down until she felt like crying.
The sound of gunfire shot across her thoughts.
If anything had happened to her son at the diner...
Cassie fisted the sheets in her hands, suddenly as angry as a kicked hornet’s nest.
Then she was picturing gray eyes and feeling the warmth of a body protecting hers.
Henry. Henry Ward.
The rage at the most horrific what-if about her son lessened into a different kind of anger. One that, if she was being honest, was backed up by insecurity.
After a night of connection so deep with the man that it had surprised her, he had promised to call when he got back home.
Yet he never had.
No call. No text. No anything.
What’s more?
He’d told her his name was Henry Smith.
How idiotic she found that now. Of course the gorgeous man she’d had a wonderful night of passion with after meeting in a bar had given her a fake name. She should have taken it as a hint he didn’t want to see her again after he’d told her he couldn’t give his number out because he didn’t have one yet. But, boy, if she hadn’t believed him then. Hung on his every word.
