Girl Trouble
Sandra Field
He wanted a lover… Cade McInnes had fallen in love with Lori when she was sixteen and he was old enough to know better. But he hadn't known better. They had parted bitterly. Not a family! Now it was ten years later. Lori had a bad marriage behind her and two adorable daughters, Liddy and Rachel.Except they didn't seem all that adorable to Cade. Liddy had taken an instant dislike to Cade. Which was fine with him - he wanted only one blonde in his life, not three. But getting Lori into his bed meant accepting two little girls into his heart!MAN Talk There are two sides to every story - now it's his turn!
Letter to Reader (#u398695c9-2ad2-5980-82e6-fdb143a071e7)Title Page (#u1a041186-27d5-5238-9287-c9ad977adfa8)CHAPTER ONE (#u194a3523-1348-56ac-bf80-7574293ef03f)CHAPTER TWO (#u9b30baaa-59bc-59c0-9739-3480df58ba8e)CHAPTER THREE (#u58b34e88-7784-5f53-b7ce-ca7a82785853)CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Dear Reader,
Reflecting on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Harlequin Presents
has led me to contemplate other milestones. It’s twenty-four years since my first book was published by Mills & Boon in the U.K., and fifteen since my initial appearance in Presents. Over the years I trust my values have deepened and expanded, causing the conflicts and conversations of my characters to break new ground. Growth is one thing anniversaries commemorate—my congratulations to Harlequin for the phenomenal growth of Harlequin Presents
. May it continue!
Warmly,
Sandra Field
Girl Trouble
Sandra Field
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
Two shocks in one day.
The first had been pleasurable, rife with possibilities and potential. The second was like a kick in the gut.
Cade MacInnis stood very still in the middle of the sidewalk of one of Halifax’s busiest streets. It was a sunny day in June and he was back in Nova Scotia on vacation. He should have looked relaxed and happy. Instead, his mouth was a slash in his face and his shoulders were hunched, his fists thrust in the pockets of his jeans. He looked like he was ready to explode.
The jostling crowds on the sidewalk—it was noon and the offices had emptied—swirled around him, avoiding him, although some of the women sneaked backward glances at this tall, broad-shouldered figure with its air of pent-up emotion and physical prowess. But Cade was as oblivious to his observers as he was to the sun’s rays glinting in his black, curly hair. Rather, his gaze was fastened on the large photograph framed and mounted in a glass case on the brick wall of a photographer’s studio. A photograph of a woman with two children. Both girls.
Most people looking at the photo would have smiled, for all three, woman and girls, were dressed in denim dungarees, white shirts with the sleeves rolled up, and scarlet bandannas tied in jaunty bows around their necks; all three had baseball caps perched on their blond hair, and all three were clowning at the photographer, leaning on each other in casually exaggerated poses, laughing comically. The woman was clearly the mother of the two girls, for the resemblance was strong, the girls already showing the promise of a beauty possessed in abundance by their mother.
One girl, the one with the fall of straight, shiny hair, looked about nine; the other, who had an untidy tumble of curls around a heart-shaped face, was possibly five or six.
And then there was the mother.
Cade’s eyes, eyes of so dark a brown as to be almost black, returned to the woman and stayed there, fastening on her as though the very intensity of his gaze could make her step from the frame. appear before him, and speak as he hadn’t heard her speak for over ten years.
He’d known the instant he’d seen the photograph that it was Lorraine. Lorraine Campbell, daughter of Morris Campbell, a man wealthier than Cade ever aspired to be. Cade had fallen in love with Lorraine when she was sixteen and he twenty. Old enough to know better, be thought now. But he hadn’t known better. Hadn’t had the common sense of a flea.
She was Lorraine Cartwright now, of course. Wife of Ray Cartwright, businessman and entrepreneur, a man Cade had distrusted and disliked from the first time he’d met him eleven or twelve years ago.
She’d changed in ten years. The photo, he thought cynically, was no doubt touched up. But there was no disguising the new maturity in her face, the way it had fined down to an essential elegance of design: high forehead and long-lashed blue eyes over taut cheekbones and a generous curve of mouth. Her hair was different than he remembered. In its natural state, he knew, it was as straight as her elder daughter’s, with the sheen and flow of river water in sunlight. In the photograph it was a tangle of bouncy curls that somehow echoed the laughter in her face. Lorraine obviously liked being Ray’s wife. Ray, too, of course, was rich. Would keep her in the style to which she was accustomed, cocooned by the society in which she had grown up.
She’d always been out of reach.
Except once.
With a huge effort Cade tried to bring himself back to reality. He was making a fool of himself. Gaping at a photo as though it were alive.
Perhaps it was, he realized with a jolt. In one way. Because ever since he’d seen it, every cell in his body had become a roil of emotion, every muscle a tightly coiled spring. Anger, hatred, humiliation, helplessness, despair...the list was endless and he felt them all. He could have been twenty-three again, the intervening years vanished as if they’d never been.
By the time he was twenty-three everything had fallen apart. That was the year she’d married Ray.
Then, like another hard kick to the gut, he finally admitted something else, something he’d been doing his damnedest to avoid. He’d left out one emotion on the list. Omitted it purposely. And no wonder, because it was the most powerful of them all. Desire. A raging and all-consuming desire. For even in baggy overalls with scarlet sneakers on her feet and a silly cap on her head, Lorraine Cartwright was utterly and irresistibly desirable.
As she had been ever since she’d turned sixteen and he’d seen her in her very first evening gown standing in the moonlight. She’d looked so young and beautiful, so touchingly vulnerable, that Cade had for the first time in his life understood what those overused words “falling in love” meant. For it was as though he had indeed fallen, a vast, swooping descent into a mystical place he’d never known existed, a place illuminated by her very existence, a place where he would have done anything in the world for her. A place where—at first—he’d been content to worship from afar.
Furious with himself, Cade tamped down a flood of memories that, if he ever gave them place, could drown him. He hated her. Had hated her for years, and with good reason. He’d do well to remember that.
Love was an emotion long gone; it was no longer on the list. She’d killed it. Cruelly and deliberately, in a way he’d never forgotten or forgiven.
Stop it! he berated himself. For God’s sake, quit while you’re still ahead. It’s only a photograph, a piece of colored paper stuck in a gold frame. A printed image of a woman who’s as inaccessible now as she ever was, and not worth the time you’re wasting on her. That’s all it is. Nothing more.
You’ve got more important things to do than stand on the sidewalk as if you’ve been hit on the head and don’t know which way is up. Like think about Sam’s offer. Like get some lunch.
He strode around the corner and pushed open the door to the photography studio.
It was cool inside, the decor an attractive blend of glossy-leafed plants and cleverly arranged portraits. The middle-aged woman behind the counter gave him a friendly smile. “Can I help you, sir?”
Cade should have smiled back; but his face felt as stiff as a board. “There’s a photo in your showcase outside,” he said abruptly. “Of a woman with her two daughters.”
“Oh, yes...it turned out rather well, didn’t it?”
“I—I knew her years ago. But we’ve gotten out of touch. I wondered—does she live around here?”
The woman’s smile became a little guarded. “I’m very sorry, sir, I can’t really give you any details. We—”
“Her name’s Lorraine. Lorraine Cartwright. I used to work for her father, Morris Campbell.”
“We have a policy of client confidentiality, as I’m sure you understand,” the woman said. “Is there any other way I can be of assistance to you?”
Leave, Cade, he thought. Get out of here. Now. You’re making a total ass of yourself. “Can I get a copy of the photo?” he said hoarsely.
The woman was now regarding him through narrowed eyes. “That wouldn’t be possible without the express permission of my client,” she said briskly. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, sir?”
Cade turned on his heel and left the studio. Without giving the showcase a second look he marched down the street, blind to the tourists, office workers, students and children who thronged the pavement. Good work, MacInnis, he jeered. That woman in the studio—a thoroughly nice woman by the look of her—now thinks you’re a combination of a weirdo, a psychotic and a stalker.
You’re none of the above. But you’re an idiot. Letting Lorraine Cartwright jerk you around as if you were thirteen. not thirty-three pushing thirty-four. Grow up, will you? Quit reliving a fairy tale.
For hadn’t that whole three years between twenty and twenty-three had the remoteness, the otherwordly air of “once upon a time”? Lorraine, with her long blond hair and her cool blue eyes, had been cast as the princess, who one night in a fit of pique had thrown herself at Cade the commoner, the peasant, the tall, dark and—so he’d been told—handsome young worker on her father’s estate. Manfully the commoner had refused to take advantage of the princess’s youth, beauty, and undoubted virginity. Had the princess very prettily thanked the commoner? Had she presented him with a silk scarf she’d embroidered with her own fair hands as a memento of his noble act of abstention? No, indeed. She’d turned on him like a virago and then she’d engineered that her father fire Cade from his job.
Nor, he thought bitterly, had the peasant ever turned into a prince.
Unfortunately the story hadn’t ended there; and the rest of it was more difficult to fit into the mode of fairy tale. For someone from the village had seen him and Lorraine in the woods that evening, had witnessed their initial, impassioned embrace, and gossip had spread like wildfire through the little village of Juniper Hills. Cade had fought several pitched battles on Lorraine’s behalf, defending her virtue like a true knight of old. At which point three hired thugs—paid for by Lorraine’s father, spurred on by Lorraine—had given Cade the beating of his lifetime. Afterward Lorraine had made a point of calling at the garage where he worked, where she’d let him know with humiliating accuracy how little his militancy on her behalf was appreciated.
That scene was still seared in Cade’s memory. It had been, he supposed, the worst moment of his life. Worse by far than the beating, and that had been bad enough for a young fellow who’d prided himself on his fists.
Somehow Cade’s feet had carried him all the way down to the waterfront. A fish and chips truck was parked outside the market. But his appetite had disappeared and he was in no mood to stand patiently in the lineup and wait for his turn.
He’d go back to the hotel, change into his running gear and head for the park. He had to do something physical, and soon. Or else he’d go nuts.
Twenty-five minutes later Cade was jogging under the tall pines of Point Pleasant Park, which was situated on a peninsula jutting into the waters of Halifax Harbour and which had as its view the knife-sharp edge where the open Atlantic met the sky. He passed the container pier and the war monument, feeling his muscles loosen and his stride settle into an easy rhythm. Lorraine was nothing to him. Nothing.
Quite apart from anything else, she was a married woman. Happily married, by the look of her.
Which, considering the man she’d chosen for a husband, didn’t say much for her.
He forced himself to put her out of his mind, to concentrate on his surroundings. A group of children were playing ball on the grass by the edge of the harbor, their cries like the chittering of sparrows; dogs chased each other through the trees, and other joggers passed him, some breathing easily, some gasping for air. He ran through the woodland trails for the better part of an hour, then stretched out his calves against a tree and found himself a perch on the weathered rocks that overlooked the Northwest Arm. It was time, he thought wryly, wiping the sweat from his brow with the hem of his T-shirt, to think about shock number one. The one that Sam had landed on him when they’d met for breakfast that morning in the little diner across from Sam’s garage.
Sam Withrod. He’d been the area supervisor for a chain of gas stations, one of which had been leased to Cade’s father in the years when Cade had been growing up. Cade had always liked Sam. Liked him and respected him. They’d kept in touch ever since, one or two letters a year, short letters on Cade’s part, long newsy letters on Sam’s. When he’d come back to Canada a year ago and taken the job in Toronto, Cade had phoned Sam, and somehow they’d fallen into a pattern of monthly phone calls.
This morning Sam had offered Cade a job. More than a job. A partnership in his business.
“I’m sixty-four years old,” Sam had said, plastering his toast with butter. “Got no kin, no sons of my own. Not as bright-eyed and busy-tailed as I used to be, either. I’d like it just fine if you’d take over the garage eventually, Cade. When I get ready to retire. In the meantime I’d like you to be a full partner, learn the business, give me your ideas and your input. What d
you say?”
Sam specialized in foreign cars, employed a dozen mechanics and had always had an impeccable reputation for efficiency and honesty. Cade said blankly, “Do you mean it?”
“Sure do. Hadn’t you seen it coming?”
“Can’t say I had.”
“You’re not that happy in Toronto.”
“Hate it,” Cade said economically. “The city and the job. You can’t get out of the city and the job’s going nowhere.”
Sam gulped down the last of his bacon and eggs and swiped at his mustache with his serviette; his mustache, like his hair, was thick, white and bushy. “You’re in town for a few days. Come see me at the garage, look around, ask questions. Then think it over and let me know. No rush.”
Playing with his fork, Cade said awkwardly, “It’s a very generous offer, Sam.”
“I don’t think so,” Sam said, his bright blue eyes both shrewd and affectionate. “I watched you grow up, boy. You work like a demon and you’ve got a way with an engine like some men have with a woman. But most of all, you’re loyal and you’re trustworthy...I’d take your word to the bank any day of the week. And I can’t say that for too many folks I meet.”
Cade, moved, had said gruffly, “Thanks,” had quickly signaled to the waitress for more coffee and had changed the subject. But now, as he sat alone watching the sun dance on the water, he could allow Sam’s words to play through him, warming him inside as the sun was warming his skin. Sam trusted him. That was the gist of it.
Excitement kindled within him. He’d be willing to bet that Sam’s business was flourishing; foreign cars were becoming more and more popular, and in a city as small as Halifax the word would get around that the garage was honest in its dealings. Already in Toronto Cade had gotten himself into hot water because of his refusal to condone shoddy or unnecessary work; and the boss’s son was waiting in the sidelines to take over just as soon as his father gave the word.
He, Cade, could live by the sea again, in a province known for its shoreline and its wilderness, places where a man could stretch his legs and breathe free. Nor would he continually have to be shoving his principles down his boss’s throat; because Sam shared those principles. He could be closer to his mother, too; she still lived in Juniper Hills, a forty-minute drive from Halifax.
Closer to Lorraine? That, too?
Scowling, Cade stared at the far shore. Now that a couple of hours had passed since his impetuous entrance to the photography studio and his ignominious exit, he was appalled by how deeply the sight of that photograph had affected him. In taking him by surprise, it had revealed something about himself that he would have preferred not to know. That he was no more free of Lorraine now than he had been ten years ago.
Not that he’d spent the ten years constantly thinking about her. Far from it. He’d left Juniper Hills before he turned twenty-four, right after his father died. He’d roamed the rest of Canada, then the States, Chile, Australia, Thailand and Singapore, India and Turkey, ending up in Europe and finally Great Britain. He’d worked at everything from sheep ranching to dishwashing, he’d read voraciously, studied whenever he’d had the chance, and in terms of visas had stayed—more or less—one step ahead of the law. He’d grown up. Or so he’d thought until an hour ago.
For the first time it occurred to him to wonder if it perhaps hadn’t been the smartest of moves to bury in the depths of his unconscious everything that had happened with Lorraine so long ago. Because it had all lain there waiting for him, a bundle of dynamite with a coiled fuse; to which, today, that damned photograph had touched the blue flame of a match.
Cade’s mind made a sudden leap. Maybe Lorraine was the reason he’d never married. Although he hadn’t been celibate in the last ten years, he’d confined his occasional affairs to women for whom he’d felt a certain affection, yet who’d clearly understood that commitment wasn’t on his agenda: he’d be moving on as soon as his visa ran out. Moving on by himself. Trouble was, some of those women would happily have marched him up the aisle to the stately strains of Mendelssohn. Which had always made him feel as skittish as a fox kit and twice as wary.
Because he’d never really freed himself from Lorraine? From all the tangled emotions that had bound him to her? Was she his albatross, the weight who kept him from flying free?
Or was he, quite simply, a loner? A man who’d always felt most comfortable in his own company, free to follow his own instincts wherever they led him? In essence, ever since he’d started school he’d been on his own, fighting one battle after another in defense of his father in the school grounds: fights that at first he lost consistently. He could remember as easily as if it were yesterday the Martin brothers, who’d found it roaringly funny to lurch up and down outside the school library imitating the drunken staggers of Cade’s father. No one had ever come to Cade’s help when the Martin boys had pinned him to the ground and pummeled him until—sometimes—he’d cried. He must have realized way back then that he was on his own, alone in a world often hostile. Certainly he couldn’t have run home for solace from his mother.
So perhaps Lorraine had nothing whatsoever to do with his unmarried state.
She’d looked so goddamned happy in that photograph! So carefree. Yet her husband, unless all Cade’s radar had been way off base, was a sleaze.
A rich sleaze, though. A high-society sleaze. Not like himself, plain Cade MacInnis, whose dad used to run the local gas station. And Lorraine, as a teenager, had been a crashing snob. Why should she have changed?
Cade surged to his feet. Enough. This afternoon he’d go to Sam’s garage, and then he’d make his decision. Unless it was already made. Was he was going to move back to Nova Scotia to live by the sea? And then do his best to engineer a meeting between himself and Lorraine Cartwright, so that once and for all he could lay that particular ghost to rest? He didn’t want his emotional life on permanent hold because of her, nor did he want her lodged so deeply in his being that the sight of a photograph knocked him right off balance.
His mother probably knew where Lorraine and Ray were living. He’d ask her, track Lorraine down that way.
It’s a plan, he thought savagely. Yeah, it’s a plan. Because it’s time I get on with my life. Alone or not. If I have to see Lorraine Cartwright once more in order to leave the past where it belongs—nicely in the past, thank you very much—then that’s what I’ll do.
A good old-fashioned exorcism, that’s what I need.
Because I hate like hell feeling tied to that woman. In any way at all. She’s not worth the time of day, and never was.
CHAPTER TWO
THREE months later, on a Saturday morning in September as sunny and warm as that morning in June had been, Cade pushed open the door to the gymnasium of one of Halifax’s universities. Just yesterday he’d joined as an off-campus member. He’d been so busy the last few weeks settling into his new job as Sam’s partner and into his apartment, not to mention buying the property at French Bay, that he’d been neglecting his usual fitness routine. Past time to get himself in better shape.
He spent three-quarters of an hour in the weight room going through his regular routine. Although he didn’t overdo the weights, Cade felt much better for the exercise.
Once he’d showered, he’d go to French Bay to check out what the carpenter and plumber had accomplished in the last couple of days. His purchase four weeks ago of ten acres and a rundown house on the shores of a bay only twenty minutes outside the city had been unchar-acteristically impulsive. Yet Cade knew in his bones it had been the right decision; just as coming back to Halifax and taking Sam’s offer of a partnership had been. After his many years of wandering, he’d come home.
As he left the weight room, a woman’s voice suddenly overrode the chatter of the students who were lounging in the corridor waiting for a class to begin. “I’ll be right there,” the voice called. “Just let me get the tapes.”
Cade’s head swiveled around. All the hairs lifted on the back of his neck. Lorraine. That voice belonged to Lorraine. He’d swear it did.
But it couldn’t be her. What would she be doing in a crowded university gym on a Saturday morning? He was out of his mind to even think it was her. He hadn’t seen her for years, and lots of other women must be gifted with attractive contralto voices that had that edge of throatiness he recalled so well.
He turned and strode down the hallway toward the voice, went around the corner and collided head-on with its owner.
It was Lorraine.
Cade’s heart gave a great thud, as though he’d dropped a 20-kilogram weight on the carpet. Automatically his arms went around her, steadying her. In one startled and all-comprehensive moment he saw that she was both totally different and absolutely the same.
Her hair, which used to be a sleek, polished fall curving around her cheeks, was now pulled back into a ponytail with wisps Curling over her eyes. But it was the same warm blond, streaked from the sun. Her eyes—blank now with shock—were the smudged blue he remembered, a blue the color of kingfisher feathers. She looked tired; the shadows under her eyes were tinged a translucent shade somewhere between blue and mauve.
Her fingers, lying against the chest of his sweat-damp singlet, were slim and strong. But Lorraine at nineteen had had nails painted all shades from scarlet to garish pink; her nails were now bare of polish. Her hands were bare of rings, too, he saw with a ripple along his nerves.
The gentle curve of her belly was pressed against him, and as he looked down at her he was rewarded by an enticing and altogether disturbing view of her cleavage. Her breasts were fuller than they used to be, he thought, his mouth dry.
“Cade!” she gasped. “Cade MacInnis...what are you doing here?”
More details thrust their way into Cade’s addled brain. She was wearing an aerobics outfit, a shiny neon-pink latex top whose brevity made his head swim, and equally close-fitting black shorts. Her hips were deliciously rounded. To his horror he felt his groin begin to stiffen.
Her eyes widened and her cheeks flooded with color. Roughly Cade pushed her away, infuriated by his body’s betrayal, even more angry that she should be aware of it. He said harshly, “Lifting weights. What about you?”
“I—I have an aerobics class. But what are you doing in the city? I thought you were in Australia. Or Chile, or somewhere.”
“Australia was seven years ago, Chile eight” Realizing he was still clasping her by the shoulders, bare except for the straps of her top, he let his hands fall and bent to pick up the towel he’d dropped when she’d bumped into him. “I live here now,” he said.
“Live here? Since when?”
“A couple of months ago. You don’t look very pleased.”
That was putting it mildly. She looked appalled, distraught, even—his eyes narrowed—frightened. Now why should the reappearance of a man she’d spurned many years ago—had treated like dirt—make a woman as self-possessed as Lorraine Cartwright afraid?
She pushed a strand of hair back from her face; her fingers were trembling very slightly. Making an obvious effort to gather her wits, she said, “It’s nothing to me where you live, of course. It just startled me, that’s all, seeing you after all these years.”
“Ten,” Cade said. “Remember? The last time we talked was at the gas station in August.”
Two days after the beating. He watched her pale, then flush an unbecoming shade of red. “I suppose so. Look, I’ve got to—”
“So have you become a student in your old age, Lorraine?” he asked with an unpleasant smile.
Her chin tilted. “Lori,” she said. “I go by Lori now.”
It wasn’t the answer he’d expected. “Lori...why the change of name?”
Her chin went a little higher. “Why not?”
In other words, mind your own business, Cade MacInnis. Oddly, he thought the abbreviated name suited her. Lorraine went with the disdainful air of that much younger woman, the one with smooth hair and polished fingernails. The one way she hadn’t looked so far today was disdainful. “You didn’t answer my question,” he said.
He could see her searching her memory. “Oh...oh, no, I’m not a student.”
A blond guy over six feet tall and built like a football player punched her lightly on the arm with a familiarity that raised Cade’s hackles. “Hey, Lori—you ready to go?”
“I’ll be right there, Tory. Cade, I have to go, I’ve got a class. It’s been...nice to see you again.”
“Nice? Tell the truth, Lori, you’d rather I was in Patagonia. How’s Ray?”
She flashed him a look he could only describe as hunted, mumbled, “’Bye,” and, joined by a crowd of students, headed for the large room where aerobics classes were held.
Cade stayed where he was, his eyes glued to the blond ponytail of the woman he had once loved with all the desperation of youth, and then had hated equally fiercely and with youth’s complete lack of compromise. Nice to see you... Who are you kidding, Lorraine Cartwright? Patagonia’s too close for your liking. Central Antarctica would suit you better.
She was no more indifferent to him than he to her. That much he’d learned from a conversation as baffling as it had been brief. That, and the fact that for some reason his sudden appearance had frightened her.
He strolled over to the ceiling-high windows that bordered one side of the aerobics room. The music had already started, poundingly loud, with an accelerated rock beat that was one of the reasons he’d never ventured near an aerobics class. Then his fist tightened on his towel. Lori was perched on a raised dais at the front of the room, doing toe taps and arm raises as the beginning of a warm-up. She wasn’t a member of the class. She was teaching it.
Lorraine Cartwright teaching an aerobics class to a bunch of students? What the hell was going on? The Lorraine he knew might have been riding her thoroughbred horse, or shopping in Montreal, or going to plays and concerts in New York. But she wouldn’t have been teaching aerobics.
The class was mixed, male and female, with a preponderance of students in bright garb, but also with some older people in the back rows, even a gray head or two. The student called Tory was in the front row, enthusi-astically jabbing his fists over his head. Cade stepped closer, watching Lori as she started marching on the spot. Her breasts bounced as she moved. The smooth play of muscles in her arms and legs bewitched him. Oh great, he thought caustically. A cold shower, that’s what you need, and saw her glance in his direction. Her step faltered, losing the beat.
Too bad I’m not in Patagonia, isn’t it, Lori? Too bad I’m right here in Halifax. Because you and I have some unfinished business, and I’m going to make damn sure we deal with it.
Almost as if she could read his thoughts, she hurriedly looked away, picking up the rhythm again. Cade had had enough of watching her. He shouldered his towel and headed for the showers.
When he emerged, wearing jeans and a summer shirt, his hair in wet curls on his scalp, the class was still in progress. Everyone was jogging on the spot, doing arm raises at a fast clip; Lori looked as cool and energetic as she had twenty minutes ago. She did not look his way.
Cade strolled to the front desk and picked up an aerobics schedule. She was listed as L. Cartwright. She taught six days a week. He frowned at the neatly typed list, wondering why Lorraine, who had never lacked for anything in her life, was teaching six classes a week for, probably, not much more than minimum wage. Thoughtfully he folded the schedule and put it in his kit bag. Then he said to the young woman who was handing out towels, “I have a pass for the weight room. Next week could I try out a couple of aerobics classes to see if I’d like to add that to my membership?”
“No problem,” she said. “Just pick up a guest pass on your way in.”
Monday he’d take early lunch at the garage, come to Lori’s class and then corner her afterward. After all, the two of them had quite a bit to talk about. He wanted to confront her with her actions of ten years ago. He also wanted to know what was going on in her life right now. She owed him a few answers, did Lori Cartwright. And maybe when he’d gotten them, he’d get over this adolescent obsession with her.
He’d better. What other options did he have?
As Cade turned away, fumbling for his car keys in his pocket, he noticed for the first time the two little girls who were sitting in padded green chairs by the doorway to the gym. Both were blond, one with straight hair and one with curly. Lori’s daughters, he thought with a lurch of his gut. They were squabbling, the elder girl giving officious directions, the younger whining in a manner calculated to aggravate.
Cade took a deep breath and walked over to them. “Hello,” he said pleasantly. “My name’s Cade. Your mother and I were friends years ago, before she was married. What are your names?”
The younger one crowed, “We’re not supposed to talk to strangers. Come on, Rachel, give it to me.” She made a grab for her sister’s hand.
Rachel pulled back. “Stop it, Liddy, you’re being a brat and I’m going to tell Mum how bad you were.”
“I’ll tell her you wouldn’t give me my gum. ’Cause you’re so mean and horrible.” Liddy’s face crumpled with maximum histrionic effect. “I’m only little, you shouldn’t be so awful to me.”
With matching melodrama Rachel cast her eyes heav-enward—kingfisher-blue eyes, Cade noticed with a catch at his heart—and said, “You’re the one’s who’s horrible. Take your silly gum, see if I care.”
Liddy snatched at the package and jammed a huge wad of bright pink gum into her mouth. “I bet I can make a bigger bubble than you,” she announced triumphantly.
“Oh yeah?” said Rachel, and blew a marvelously stretched bubble that, miraculously, didn’t end up smeared all over her face.
Cade said, casually he hoped, “Is your dad coming to get you?”
The gum was forgotten. Rachel and Liddy both directed stares of uniform hostility at him and said nothing. Cade had never thought of himself as easily frightened, but there was something about their instant alliance and the cold blue of their gaze that disconcerted him. He said, determined not to be outstared, “I guess I shouldn’t have asked that, I’m sorry. I hope I’ll see you both again.” Then he pushed open the swing door and stepped outside into the sunshine.
They won that round, he thought ruefully. Hands down. And why should he be surprised that Lori’s daughters had strong personalities? Lori had never been what you’d call backward.
But Lori wasn’t going to win the next round. The one that was slated for Monday at noon.
At five to twelve on Monday, Cade wandered into the aerobics room at the gym. Two or three others were already there, chatting desultorily at the front of the room. Lori was kneeling in the back corner, putting her tapes into the machine. Soundlessly he walked up behind her. “Good morning,” he said. “Or is it good afternoon?”
Her whole body jerked, then went still. With a deliberation he had to admire, she finished adjusting the controls on the tape deck before she looked around. Her eyes skidded up his long, well-muscled legs, his shorts and loose singlet. Quickly she pushed herself to her feet “Good morning, Cade,” she said. “The weight room’s two doors down. Or had you forgotten?”
“Unfortunately, I forget very little.” He held out his guest pass. “Thought I’d try aerobics today. One should always be open to new experiences, don’t you agree?”
“You’re coming to my class?” she said tightly.
“That’s the plan.”
She looked as though any number of sizzling retorts were on the tip of her tongue. He watched her swallow them as four more people came through the door. “Fine,” she snapped. “Just don’t overdo it your first day, I’d hate to see you hurt yourself.”
“Come off it, Lori,” he said softly. “You’d like to see me carried out on a stretcher.”
“No, I wouldn’t, it would ruin my reputation as a teacher,” she said with a sweet and patently insincere smile. “Enjoy, as they say.”
He watched her walk away. Today her top was green, her shorts navy. Both were shiny and both clung to all the right places. She didn’t look like the mother of two children. Cade positioned himself in the back row and prepared to pay attention.
A considerable number of people had gathered in the room by now. At the last minute a middle-aged woman rushed in the door and headed for the back row. Inwardly Cade flinched; it was the woman from the studio, the one where he’d seen the photo of Lori and her two daughters. The woman caught sight of him, gave him a pungent glance liberally dosed with suspicion, and pointedly moved forward a row. This, at any other time, might have amused Cade.
The class began. Very soon Cade concluded that Lori was very good at her job, no matter what her reasons were for having it. She referred to people by name, she kept up a running stream of encouragement and banter, and she insisted on good technique. The sequence of moves was extremely vigorous, disabusing him of any notions that aerobics was for sissies. The others in the class were accustomed to these moves; Cade was not. More than once he found his arms and legs at odds not only with each other but also with the smoothly orchestrated steps everyone else was taking. Including the big blond student called Tory, stationed once more in the very front row. He, Cade, had been smart to stay in the back, he thought irritably.
He found himself sidestepping to the left and doing bicep curls while the rest were stepping to the right and had switched to a rapid overhead move Lori was calling the arrowhead. Wishing he had half his father’s coordination—for Dan MacInnis had been an inventive dancer—Cade struggled on. It wasn’t the moment for Lori to look down at him, give him another sweet smile and say in a carrying voice, “Get your legs doing the moves first. The arms can follow. And you can always march on the spot if this is too strenuous.”
If sweat hadn’t been dripping into his eyes—he hadn’t worn his sweatband figuring he wouldn’t need it for a mere aerobics class—and if he hadn’t been determined to accomplish what students who were roughly half his age were doing with ease, Cade might have thought of a witty retort.
Just as he was getting the hang of what she was up to, Lori switched to something called the grapevine. “Keep your hips angled forward, not sideways...like this,” she called out. Cade looked at her hips, at their supple movements and delectable roundness, and stumbled out of step again.
He thoroughly disliked feeling like an uncoordinated klutz, he who rather prided himself on his body’s fitness. He scowled at Lori as his arms alternated triceps and lateral raises, thinking meanly, I bet you can’t bench press 250 pounds, lady.
Pretty childish. About Liddy’s level. Even if it does make you feel better.
She was jogging now, jogging as lightly as if she had springs in her heels, carrying the class along on her own energy and cajoling them in a way they plainly loved. This was not the woman he remembered. She wouldn’t have lowered herself to such a mundane task, let alone enjoyed it.
Some of the stretches in the last ten minutes used muscles Cade hadn’t even known existed; by the time the class ended, his hair was clinging wetly to his scalp and he was in dire need of a shower.
As Lori ran to the back of the room to get her tapes, he walked over to her. There were patches of sweat on her green top both down her spine and under her breasts; he thought they were one of the most erotic things he’d ever seen. He said truthfully, “I sure know I’ve been exercising. You run a good class—thanks.”
“It’s my job,” she said dismissively.
“Got time for a coffee? Or a sandwich in the cafeteria?”
“No. Thanks.”
It was time to make his move, the one he’d rehearsed on the way over. “Lori,” Cade said, taking her by the elbow as she would have walked past him, “it must be as obvious to you as it is to me that you and I need to have a talk.”
Her lashes flickered. She said in a rush, “I have only one thing to say, Cade...although it is important. I’m truly sorry that all those years ago I was partially responsible for getting you fired. Truly sorry. Now let go of me, please.”
“Partially?” he flashed. “That’s not the way I see it.”
“Partially. That’s what I said.”
“Let’s not get hung up on semantics—you got me fired.”
“It was more complicated than that.”
“It was very simple. You told Daddy and Daddy fired me.”
“How very convenient for you that rich rhymes with bitch!” Refusing to drop her gaze, Lori yanked at her arm. “Let go! Because that’s it. There’s nothing else we could possibly need to discuss.”
He said in a level voice, “Why did you look so frightened the first time you saw me?”
“Cade,” Lori said, “the past is the past. Dead, gone and buried. I’ve never believed in reincarnation and I’m not going to start now. I don’t want you talking to me. I don’t want you talking to my children. Have you got that straight?”
“I probably shouldn’t have said anything to Rachel and Liddy...I apologize for that.”
“I don’t see how you knew who they were.”
“Come off it—they look enough like you to be clones. Plus I saw a photo of the three of you in the window of a studio downtown. The woman who owns it was in the class this morning.”
“You mean Sally put that photo on display? I’ll have her hide for that!”
Cade didn’t want to talk about Sally. “Just answer me one question. Why are you working at a low-paying job that must get monotonous as all get-out, as well as being hard on the body, when you’ve got a rich husband and a very rich father?”
With a touch of her old haughtiness she ignored his question. “Take a hint, will you?” she retorted. “I have nothing to say to you. Not one word. If you persist in harassing me like this, I’ll lay a complaint and have you barred from the class.”
“For all your faults, you were never a coward,” he drawled, and decided the time had come to fight dirty. “Do you remember the night you threw yourself at me, Lorraine? Or have you conveniently buried that memory along with another one—the way you spoke to me at the gas pumps in August? Remember? I had a black eye, three fractured ribs and two broken fingers.”
For a moment her teeth clamped themselves to her lower lip. Her infinitely kissable lip, thought Cade, and wondered if he’d thrown away any chance of her ever speaking to him again. He hadn’t liked her using the word harass. Hadn’t liked it one bit.
“There’s no point in this!” she cried “I hate rummaging through the past, hauling stuff up that’s better left buried. We went our separate ways all those years ago—and that’s the way it still is.”
Abruptly he dropped her elbow and held out his hands; he was never fully able to remove the traces of grease ingrained in the creases of his skin from his work at the garage, and his knuckles were marred by scars and scratches. “I’m still not good enough for you, am I?” he grated. “I’m just a mechanic. A grease monkey. So far below you that you won’t even have a coffee with me in the university cafeteria.”
“That’s not—” Her eyes widened and her fingers, light as falling leaves, rested on his wrist. “Cade, what happened there?”
A jagged white scar ran from the back of his left hand to the inside of his wrist. He stared down at her fingers, feeling their warmth burn his flesh, and said flatly, “Accident on an oil rig in the North Sea. A couple of years ago. What do you care, Lori?”
She dropped her hand to her side and took a deep breath. Then she said quietly, “We’ve both got scars, haven’t we? Some outside and some in. That’s what living does to you. Please listen to me-I don’t want to hurt you and I certainly don’t look down on you. But you and I have nothing more to say to each other. You must accept that and leave me alone.”
“And where are your scars?”
“Cade...please.”
He’d always loved the shade of her irises, a color that hovered somewhere between blue and green, reminding him of the shimmering reflections along a lakeshore on a summer’s day. Right now those irises were full of appeal. He said nastily, “Very touching. You’ve learned a trick or two since I last knew you.”
She whispered, “You hate me, don’t you?”
“Now you’re beginning to get it. Can you give me any reason why I shouldn’t?”
Her face hardened. “I can’t give you anything,” she said, each word as brittle as a shard of ice.
“Ray always struck me as the kind of guy who’d be insanely jealous. Is it him you’re afraid of? That somehow he’ll find out you and I have met up again?”
An indecipherable expression crossed her features. “I’m a married woman,” she said, “that’s one—”
“Why aren’t you wearing your rings?”
“Here?” she said ironically. “The famous Cartwright diamonds? I don’t think so.”
Any stray thoughts Cade might have entertained that perhaps she and Ray had divorced in the last ten years—didn’t one out of three marriages end in divorce? —were squashed. Not that it made much difference. The turmoil of emotion lodged somewhere between his stomach and his heart had very little to do with Ray and everything to do with Lori. What he wanted to do was take her in his arms and kiss her senseless. Ray or no Ray. Married or not. Which was scarcely the way to behave with a woman who’d just accused him, more or less accurately, of hating her.
Nor did he have the slightest idea what to say next. Because nothing had gone the way he’d rehearsed it.
She solved his dilemma for him. “I have to get home,” she said coldly. “Goodbye, Cade.”
His voice seemed to be trapped in his throat. He watched her leave, the graceful swing of her hips in her snug-fitting shorts, the proud carriage of her head. Not until the door swung shut behind her did Cade, finally, work out exactly what it was he was feeling. It wasn’t hatred. It wasn’t anger. Nothing so simple. It was pain. Outright, all-encompassing pain. Lori Cartwright wanted no more to do with him now than had Lorraine Campbell all those years ago.
Pain? Because a woman he despised was rejecting him? He was losing his mind.
More to the point, what was he going to do about it?
Cade was no nearer an answer to this question by the time he got back to the garage, had shrugged into his overalls and addressed himself to the intricate workings of a custom-built Mercedes. Sam had been checking the idling speed on a Volkswagen Passat that one of the apprentices was working on; he wandered over to Cade and said offhandedly, “Good lunch?”
Cade chose a different wrench and made an indeterminate sound that could have meant anything.
“What did you have?”
“What?”
“To eat,” Sam said patiently.
“Nothing. I forgot. To eat, I mean. I went to the gym.”
“You okay, boy?”
No, thought Cade. I’m not okay. I’ve got a lump in the pit of my stomach as big as the battery in this car and all I can think about is a woman with kingfisher-blue eyes and a body to die for. A body I lust after. Me, who’s managed to keep my sexuality very much under control for years. “I’m fine,” he said. “You want to go over those accounts after we close?”
“You don’t have to lie to me,” Sam said mildly. “Just tell me to butt out.”
Finally Cade looked up. “Sam, I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s woman troubles, okay?”
“Didn’t take you long...what is it, less than three months since you moved here? Not that I’m surprised. You always did attract the women.”
All except for one. “I don’t want to talk about it,” Cade said through gritted teeth.
“Nothing new about that—you never were much of a one for talk.” Sam grinned at him. “We’ll go for a bite to eat once we close and we’ll do the accounts after that. No point starving yourself for the sake of true love. The manual for the Mercedes is in the office if you need it.” Smiling benignly, Sam sauntered off.
True love. Huh, thought Cade. What he felt for Lori was nothing to do with love. Lust, definitely. Frustration beyond anything he’d ever experienced. A rage that frightened him with its force. But not love. No, sir.
Thoroughly exasperated with himself for parading his emotions so blatantly that Sam had picked up there was something wrong. Cade went to get the manual. He’d figured out one thing today. His neat little theory that once he’d seen Lorraine he’d be able to get on with his life had been shot down in flames at high noon. Instead of exorcising her—had he actually used that word to himself? How naive could you get?—he’d only gotten in deeper.
But he’d never in his life been involved with a married. woman and he wasn’t going to start now. Not that Lorraine wanted anything to do with him. So his high-minded principles weren’t worth a heck of a lot.
Some days. Cade decided morosely, scanning the crowded shelf of manuals, you just plain shouldn’t get out of bed.
CHAPTER THREE
THAT evening Cade phoned his mother. Nina MacInnis was a schoolteacher who’d managed for years to instill a love of learning into adolescents more interested in the opposite sex than in modern literature. Although her husband Dan, Cade’s father, had been an accomplished dancer and a man of great charm, he’d also been an alcoholic who several times a year would drink himself into insensibility. This Nina had suffered in silence, a silence that would ring with things unsaid and had made the young Cade long for shouting matches and thrown plates; they’d have been easier to deal with.
Two years ago she’d arranged for early retirement and had taken up with the school principal, a widower who never touched alcohol, who had an endearing sense of humor and who loved to travel. Cade, on his first visit a couple of months ago, had been delighted by the change in his mother and had liked the principal enormously. So the first thing he said when Nina picked up the phone was, “I thought you and Wilbur might have left for Outer Mongolia.”
“He’s in the living room watching the hockey game and having a cup of tea,” said Nina primly. “But we’re thinking of flying to Hawaii before Christmas.”
“Go for it, Mum. And say hello to him for me.” Cade went on to chat about other things, describing the new deck that had been built on the front of his house in French Bay, and asking her advice on colors for the bathroom. Then he said, rather mendaciously, “I saw someone the other day who reminded me of Ray Cartwright Do you know if he and Lorraine live in Halifax?”
“I don’t think so. Shortly after they got married they moved to Toronto. As far as I know, that’s where they still are.” Nina sniffed. “He wasn’t someone you’d want to invite for tea. And I’d always hoped you’d forgotten her.”
I wish I had.
For a horrible moment Cade thought he’d spoken the words out loud. He said, even more mendaciously, “I have, of course... If I put dark green tiles on the kitchen floor, what shade of paint should I go for?”
Nina gave this her serious consideration and the subject of Lorraine was dropped. After accepting an invitation to Sunday dinner, Cade put down the receiver and took out the phone book. There were two L. Cartwrights listed, no Ray Cartwright, and the only R. Cartwright lived in an area of town Ray wouldn’t be seen dead in.
What was he playing about at? Even if he dialed both L. Cartwrights and one of them was Lori, she wouldn’t speak to him. She’d made that all too clear today.
He remembered the look of appeal she’d given him, the huskiness in her voice when she’d pleaded with him to leave her alone. He’d sneered at her, accused her of manipulation. But what if he’d been wrong? What if her appeal had been genuine? Was Ray the reason she was so frightened? And what were the scars she’d referred to?
She hadn’t made that up. He’d swear to it.
Did Ray mistreat her?
Lori was five-foot-eight, fit and agile. But she’d be no match for Ray, who’d always been a heavy man, only a couple of inches shorter than Cade’s six-feet-two. To think of Ray grabbing at Lori, forcing himself on her, made Cade feel sick. He closed his eyes, a murderous rage almost choking him. I’ll kill the bastard if that’s what’s going on. Kill him and ask questions afterward.
Right, Cade, he thought savagely. That’d realty simplify Lori’s life. If she’s afraid of Ray, the best thing you can do is keep your distance. Just as she requested. Don’t talk to her. Don’t go near the gym at the times of her classes. Stay away from her kids. And quit mooning over the phone book as if you’re a lovesick teenager. You turned thirty-four last month and it’s time you let go of the past.
Alone is the way you’ve operated for years. Stick with it.
He jammed the book back in the drawer and slammed it shut. That’s exactly what he’d do. Let go of her. Stay away from her. Forget about her. Maybe even date other women. That way he might get lucky and get laid.
Miguel, the mechanic at the garage who specialized in Hondas, had a sister who loved movies. Cade liked movies, too. He’d ask Miguel’s sister to go with him when The English Patient opened next week. That’s what he’d do.
It would beat sitting around his apartment worrying about Lori Cartwright and proving the old adage that you always wanted what you couldn’t have. He was going to prove that adage wrong. Even if he had to date twenty different women until he found one who was interested in him but not the slightest bit interested in wedding rings.
He picked up his book, the novel that had won the Booker Prize last year, and determinedly began to read.
There was nothing wrong with Cade’s self-imposed advice to stay away from Lori. It was an admirable stance and should have solved all his problems. Except that twice in the next week he saw her, each time by accident. And each time stirred him up in ways that made his advice meaningless.
His apartment was in the north end of Halifax, only four or five blocks from the garage. The north end wasn’t the fashionable part of the city; but Cade liked his apartment, which took up the whole second floor of an older house, had a fireplace and hardwood floors and spacious rooms with interesting nooks and crannies. And he enjoyed the walk to work each morning, finding that by now he was chatting with the old fellow who owned the corner store, and saying hello to people he passed every day on the street. It gave him a feeling of belonging; he hoped he’d find the same thing true of French Bay when he moved out there.
He liked feeling that he belonged. Nine years of wandering the globe had been long enough.
Three days after the aerobics class, Cade was striding down the street at eight twenty-five in the morning. He was in a self-congratulatory mood. Last night was the first night he hadn’t dreamed about Lori, one of the highly erotic dreams that had haunted his sleep ever since he’d bumped into her at the gym. The cure was working. The past was assuming its proper place. Today he’d ask Miguel about his sister.
He glanced down a side street to check on the progress of the chrysanthemums that for the last few days had been a glorious tangle of scarlet, yellow and bronze in the garden beyond a secondhand clothing store run by a well-known charity.
A woman in a blue jacket was crossing the sidewalk to enter the store. Cade nearly tripped over the curb.
It was Lori Cartwright. She opened the door and disappeared inside.
Lori? In a secondhand clothing store? Lori, who used to spend more on one dress than Cade’s father earned in a week?
She must be volunteering there.
Of course. That was it.
That was nice of her, he thought, and found himself turning down the street. He was only going to take a closer look at the chrysanthemums; he’d like to start a garden once he was settled at French Bay.
He looked through the window of the store. Another woman was seated behind the counter, reading; Lori, still wearing her blue jacket, was going through a rack of girls’ clothing.
He was watching a film that somehow had gone wrong, Cade thought crazily; its script had got muddled up with that of an entirely different film. A surreal film. Then, as if she felt the strength of his gaze, Lori glanced over her shoulder and saw him. The look of horror on her face should have been funny and was not. She ducked her head, turned her back and couldn’t more clearly have told him to vanish from her sight. From her life. Forever.
Leave me alone...please.
Cade pushed open the door and marched over to her. “What’s up, Lori?” he demanded with something less than diplomacy. “Ten years ago you wouldn’t have been found within five blocks of a place like this.”
She straightened to her full height, her blue eyes blazing. “How many times do I have to tell you I don’t need you in my life? That doesn’t seem like a very complicated message and I don’t understand why you’re not getting it.”
“I just want you to tell me what’s wrong!”
“The only thing wrong is that you won’t leave me alone.”
The woman at the counter said in a carrying voice, “Need a hand, Lori?”
“No thanks, Marta—he’s leaving. Right now.”
Cade grated, “The only reason I’m leaving is because I’ll be late for work if I don’t.”
As an exit line it lacked a certain punch; but it was the best he could come up with. Cade strode out of the store and down the street, the chrysanthemums forgotten.
Had Ray lost all his money? After all, the recession was still on and bankruptcies were common. Why else would Lori be buying her children used clothing?
The reasons were nothing to do with him. Any more than she was. He crossed the main street, his jaw set.
Even though they’d been busy yelling at each other, he’d seen how tired she looked. Part of him wanted to sweep her up in his arms, carry her to his apartment and look after her, this woman who’d scorned and humiliated him. Look after her and make love to her, he thought with a twist of his mouth. Make love to her day and night, and to hell with her children and her husband. And if that wasn’t an unrealistic and totally mad scheme, he didn’t know what was.
All day Cade worked like a man demented; and he didn’t speak to Miguel about his sister.
On Saturday morning Cade decided to drive across town to check out stereo equipment; he wanted speakers installed throughout the downstairs and part of the upstairs of the house at French Bay. After a series of the mild, sunny days so characteristic of September in Nova Scotia, rain was now pelting the windy streets, glistening on the tossing leaves of the maples and collecting in puddles because the drains couldn’t carry it away fast enough. No day for umbrellas, Cade thought, and with a dizzying thud of his heart saw that the woman running toward the bus shelter was Lori, her head down against the rain.
I’m doing my level best to avoid you. To forget about you. So why the devil do I keep meeting up with you?
Because Halifax is a small city?
Because I’m meant to?
She was wearing her blue jacket and carrying a kit bag. She must be on her way to aerobics.
He glanced in his rearview mirror and pulled over to the curb, being careful not to splash her. Rolling the window down, he shouted, “Get in—I’ll drive you!”
As Lori recognized him, shock fixed her features into a mask; rain was streaming down her cheeks as if she were weeping, and her jacket was plastered to her body. She turned her head to see if the bus was coming in a movement as jerky as a puppet’s on a string. Only then did she grab the door handle and plunk herself down on the seat beside him.
Take it cool, Cade told himself, and said easily, “Just push that black button, it’ll raise the window again. Do you get much of this kind of weather in Halifax?”
Lori fussed rather unnecessarily with her seat belt. “Not often,” she said in a smothered voice.
She pushed back her hood. Her hair was a loose tumble of wheat-gold curls and her cheeks were pink from running. Every nerve Cade possessed tightened to an unbearable pitch. She was so close, yet so unutterably out of reach. Forcing himself to concentrate, he pulled back into the flow of traffic. “Are you going to the gym?”
She nodded, and again he was reminded of a marionette: this, in a woman normally so graceful. “If it’s not out of your way,” she said.
It was, and he couldn’t have cared less. “You don’t have the girls with you,” he said at random.
“I was able to get a sitter.” She shot him a quick glance. “Do you live near here?”
“On Whitman Street.”
“Oh,” she said faintly. “Where are you working?”
“At the garage on the corner near the Commons.”
They’d pulled up at a set of lights. Without even knowing he was thinking it, Cade heard himself blurt, “Lori, if you ever need help for any reason, all you have to do is ask me.”
The words replayed themselves in his head. He ran his fingers through his damp, untidy curls. “And what that was all about I don’t have a clue. But—” he gave her a sudden, wide smile devoid of calculation “—I mean it. Every word. It can be for old times’ sake, if you like.”
She was staring at him, her jaw gaping, her eyes dazed. Hastily he added, “What’s wrong?”
In a rush she whispered, “I’d forgotten your smile. There’s something about it...it makes me feel...oh God, I don’t even know what I’m talking about.”
His heart was now racketing around his chest like a ping-pong ball gone berserk, and again the words came from a place far from conscious thought. “You can say whatever you like to me, Lori. I mean that, too.”
She looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap. “No, I can’t,” she muttered, and to his horror he saw that the moisture gathered on her lashes wasn’t rain now, but tears.
“Lori—” Someone in the next lane blasted a horn at him, and hurriedly Cade paid attention to his driving; the wipers swished over the windshield and the tires hissed on the wet pavement.
In a voice so low he had to strain to hear it, Lori said, “Forget this conversation, Cade, forget it ever happened. I’m tired, that’s all. And I’ve always hated the wind.”
“That’s right,” he said slowly, “you told me once how you got lost on a windy day when you were only little.” The day she’d told him, he’d been polishing one of her father’s cars and she’d come to get her little red sports car to go to a horse show. “You were wearing jodhpurs and a yellow shirt, and the wind grabbed your scarf—do you remember? I ran after it, and luckily it caught in the lilacs.”
“They’d been in bloom for over a week—it was a good year, they were like purple foam all along the driveway.” She bit her lip. “Do we ever forget anything?”
Another man might have missed the anguish underlying her question. Cade did not. “Not much,” he said. “In my experience. But I would have thought your memories were happy ones.”
“Would you?” she said sardonically. “Then you’d be wrong.”
It wasn’t an opportune moment for Cade to remember the night when he’d walked home alone through the woods; how the three men had loomed out of the darkness, taunting him as they’d backed him against a tree, laughing raucously as he’d gone down, helpless, beneath a hail of blows and kicks. He said in a clipped voice, “We’re nearly there. I hope your class goes well.”
Flinching at his change of tone, Lori visibly retreated from him. “Thank you for the ride,” she said with formal exactitude.
Then he was pulling up in front of the gym and she was climbing out of the car. He kept silent, his hands gripping the steering wheel as if it were a thoroughbred as volatile as the big bay mare she used to ride. Lori slammed the door and ran up the steps. Cade drove away.
So much for detachment. As for exorcism, he was going to exorcise that word from his vocabulary. What on earth had persuaded him to blurt out that ridiculous offer of help?
His eyes flicked down to the little finger on his left hand, the one that had healed crooked. Lori was the reason he’d been beaten up. She might have forgotten that. But he hadn’t.
Nor ever would.
In a foul mood he drove to the music store, spent more money than he’d planned on the speakers, and took them out to French Bay. The wind had churned the sea into a froth of white and dirty gray; ragged clouds skudded across the sky, while the spruce trees that sheltered the house were madly waving their arms. The plumber hadn’t turned up on Friday as promised, and the electrician had left a note that he’d run into a problem with the wiring. Wondering why he’d saddled himself with a rundown old house and ten acres of granite and scrub spruce, Cade paced through the empty rooms, trying to work out where he wanted the speakers to go.
He was having dinner with Sam that night, and with his mother and Wilbur tomorrow night. Right now he was exceedingly glad to be busy both nights. All the less time to think about Lori Cartwright.
Because the nights were unquestionably the worst.
That evening Sam took Cade to his favorite steakhouse. “Eat up, boy,” he urged. “You look like you’ve been dragged through a knothole backward.”
Cade raised his beer in salute and described the various problems of French Bay. Sam listened, offered some suggestions and tucked into nachos and salsa. They ordered second beers and the steaks arrived, along with steaming baked potatoes and crisp Greek salads. “I’m hungry,” Cade said. “I didn’t eat lunch, now that I think about it.”
“You planning on moving out to the shore with a woman?” Sam asked, dumping a dollop of sour cream on his potato.
Cade’s knife slipped. “No.”
Sam said obliquely, “If a car’s a real lemon, you sell it and take your losses. You don’t keep pouring good money into it.”
Cade had spent the latter part of the day trying to settle into reading, watching television or studying the stock market, all without success. “Consign it to the scrap heap?” he said ironically. “You speaking from experience?”
Sam grimaced. “Nope. After Bonnie died I never had the heart to get out there and start looking. Dating? At my age? Didn’t seem proper, somehow.”
Cade had the grace to look ashamed; he’d known what a blow it had been to Sam to lose his wife of many years. “My mother’s got a new man friend,” he said. “It’s never too late, Sam.”
“Miguel’s sister’s a real pretty gal. Hair as black as yours, loves to dance.”
“And what,” said Cade carefully, “if the car that’s a lemon is the first car you ever owned, and you’re not sure you can sell it? Then what do you do?”
“If you’re a young fellow, you park it out back on blocks and get yourself a new one for driving down the street,” Sam said. “At your age you don’t want to be spending every weekend polishing the old one. Not like me.”
It was on the tip of Cade’s tongue to tell Sam the whole sorry story. But ever since he was a kid, he’d been in the habit of keeping his own counsel; he’d always done more fighting in the school yard than talking. “I only met Bonnie a couple of times,” he said, “but I liked her. How did the two of you meet?”
As Sam began to talk, Cade listened; he was a better listener than a talker, he knew. It was one of his mother’s complaints. Her other complaint was that he wasn’t making any moves to present her with grandchildren.
Two little blond girls called Rachel and Liddy.
Sure thing, Cade. You planning on abducting another man’s children? You know darn well when you go to Juniper Hills tomorrow, you’re not even going to mention Lori’s name.
When Sunday evening came, it was a resolution Cade kept. He just wished it was as easy to stop thinking about her.
Another week passed. At French Bay the plumber finished the bathroom and the speakers were installed; at Sam’s garage Cade made noticeable strides toward being accepted by the rest of the mechanics, a couple of whom had resented an outsider from Ontario coming in as Sam’s partner. But Cade wasn’t only a hard worker and highly skilled mechanic; he was also fair in his dealings, and knew when and how to put his foot down. After a standoff one morning between him and Joel, the unacknowledged leader of the other men, a standoff Cade won hands down, the hierarchy was established and even Joel started joking with him. Cade was pleased by this development. He liked the garage. Liked it a lot. The fact that it was a small gold mine was a bonus.
On Saturday he went in early to further his acquaintance with Sam’s haphazard and highly original methods of bookkeeping. Cade had taken some business and accounting courses in Seattle; soon, and as tactfully as he knew how, he must suggest some changes. A computer, to start with. Revenue Canada wouldn’t be amused by receipts stored in an old cardboard box that had once held engine oil.
At one o’clock he called it a day. He’d go to the weight room then go for a run; by the time he got to the gym Lori would have left.
He wasn’t going to think about Lori.
But when Cade pushed open the gym door, the first thing he heard was Liddy’s unmistakably shrill voice raised in outrage. She was sitting bolt upright in one of the padded chairs, her little cheeks scarlet. “He is so coming back!”
“He’s not. Mum said he’s not!”
Even Rachel looked upset; she was. twirling a long strand of her hair with agitated movements. Then Liddy faltered, “He’s my daddy. He can’t stay away, not forever.”
“They’re divorced,” Rachel retorted. “Mum told you all about that, you know she did.”
Liddy looked on the verge of tears. “I don’t care about their silly ol’ divorce. I just want him to come home.”
“Well, he’s never going to,” Rachel said sullenly.
At the same moment that Liddy burst into noisy and copious tears, Cade looked up. Lori was standing in the doorway that led from the front desk. Standing as if she were glued to the floor. Staring at him.
You lied to me, he thought, impaling her on his gaze. You’re not a married woman, you’re divorced. You’re free.
Like two drums with different rhythms, the words banged at his skull. You lied. You’re free. You lied. You’re free. Dimly he wondered if he looked as stunned as he felt. By the way she was transfixed to the floor, he probably did.
Then Liddy saw her mother, too. She erupted from her chair and flung herself across the carpet into her mother’s arms, sobbing, “Daddy’s coming back someday, isn’t he, Mum?”
“No,” Lori said steadily, still staring at Cade, “he won’t be coming back, darling. I told you that.”
“I didn’t think you meant it,” Liddy wailed.
“I knew you meant it,” Rachel said, slouching over to join them.
“He moved to Texas,” Lori said with the same dead calm. “That’s a long way away, Liddy.”
“Cowboys live in Texas,” Liddy snuffled.
“Your father lives in a city, darling. He doesn’t like the country, remember?”
Rachel patted Liddy awkwardly on the shoulder. “We’ll be late for the movie, Liddy, and you know how much you want to see it,” she said and pulled a ragged bunch of tissues from the pocket of her jeans. “Here, you can have these.”
Liddy scrubbed her cheeks with the tissues, Lori dragged her eyes away from Cade’s and glanced up at the clock, and Rachel said in an agony of frustration, gesturing through the tall glass windows, “Oh no, there goes the bus—we’ve missed it! And we’ve waited all week to go to the movies.”
She, too, looked about ready to burst into tears. Cade said stiffly, “I’ll drive you. That way you’ll get there in time.”
“We can’t do that,” Lori protested. “We’ll—”
Rachel gave Cade a dazzling smile. “You’re Mum’s friend, aren’t you? The one who spoke to us the other day. Come on, Mum, you know how much Liddy wants to see all the dalmatians, and it might not be on next week. Let’s go.”
There were no flies on Rachel, thought Cade. “My car’s out in the parking lot. What time does the movie start?”
“One forty-five,” Lori muttered. “My class ran late.”
“We can make it in lots of time,” Cade said. His smile was mocking, because Lori was caught and she knew it. Once the three of them had been for a drive in his car, he’d be officially accepted as a friend of the family. As a friend of Lori, single mother and divorcée. A woman who was no longer the wife of Ray Cartwright.
Texas wasn’t far enough away for the likes of Ray Cartwright. But it sure beat Halifax. Cade felt quite extraordinarily happy.
Rachel grabbed her mother’s hand while Liddy glowered at Cade. Liddy didn’t like him, that much was clear. Cade knew very little about children, and in consequence tended to treat them as smaller size adults. He said calmly, “I know I’m not your dad, Liddy...all I’m doing is giving you a ride to the movies.”
Liddy buried her face in her mother’s jacket. “The movie will cheer you up,” Lori said, “so we’re going to accept Cade’s kind offer... although weren’t you just arriving, Cade?”
“Yep. But I’ve got all day.”
“No heavy dates?” she flashed, then blushed scarlet as if she’d meant to think the words, not say them.
“Not unless you call dinner with my mother in return for fixing her car a heavy date,” he said, and recklessly decided to call the emotion that crossed her face relief. “What about you?” he added.
“If we’re going, we’d better go,” she said crossly. “Blow your nose, Liddy.” Liddy complied and Lori dropped the tissues into the nearest wastebasket. Cade led the way out to his car. He unlocked it, opened the back doors for the girls and showed them how the seat belts worked. By this time Lori was sitting in the front. She blurted, “Isn’t this a Mercedes?”
How can you afford a Mercedes? That was what she meant. Smoothly he started the car and drove out of the parking lot. “I picked it up secondhand when I was here in June, and Sam, my business partner, worked on it in his spare time all summer.”
Lorraine would have tossed her head haughtily without a hint of apology. Lori, however, looked ashamed of her artless question; the differences between Lorraine and Lori were beginning to intrigue Cade a great deal. She said clumsily, “It was raining so hard the other day I didn’t even notice the car.”
“Plus you were surprised to see me.” To say the least.
She said in resignation, “We only live two blocks north of Whitman, that’s why we keep bumping into each other.”
“Celtic Street,” Rachel supplied. “In an apartment.”
So his two sightings of Lori, once at the secondhand store and once at the bus stop, hadn’t been coincidence at all, but merely the result of location. Nevertheless, questions were seething through Cade’s mind. Ray must have left her well provided for; and if he hadn’t, her father was a wealthy man. What was she doing living on Celtic, a street that was lined with apartment blocks? He’d checked a couple of them out before he’d found his own apartment, and hadn’t liked them at all. Cramped rooms, old carpeting and cheap appliances.
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