All she wanted to be was in between them. She was down a man. “Where do you think he went?”
“Probably to Hell on Wheels. It’s a bar. I’ll go looking for him in an hour or two. I’ll drag him back home.”
She liked the way he said home. She loved the fact that their clothes were neatly folded in drawers next to hers. She hated that Cade’s duffel bag was sitting on the floor just waiting to be packed up and carried away. “You can drag him back, but I don’t think I can make him stay.”
She’d had one lovely moment when everything seemed to fall into place. Just for a second, Cade had seemed perfectly satisfied. Even the knowledge that Max Harper knew she’d been laid out on the hood of a Camaro hadn’t killed her afterglow. After they’d dressed, Cade had kissed her and walked her over to the Cut and Curl, and she’d had her toes painted a bright, deeply unprofessional turquoise and relaxed, thinking she’d found the way to Cade’s heart. She would just make love to the man until he saw things her way.
Then, not two hours later, she’d heard him talking to Jesse and they were right back where they’d been before. “I’m not secure enough to think this isn’t about me.”
“Baby, this is about Cade. He cares about you. He just doesn’t care about himself enough. The fact that he’s still here says something. Give it just a little time. Don’t give up on him.”
She didn’t want to give up on him. If Cade left, she wouldn’t be whole, but Jesse was enough for the moment. “Is all that stuff you said about your mom true?”
He turned over. She wouldn’t let him get too far. She put her head on his chest, her arm around him. She was happy when he relaxed and cuddled up to her.
“Yeah. It’s true. But don’t think everything was bad. Before she hit the meth, she wasn’t a horrible person.”
“She didn’t have any skills, did she? Did she get into prostitution to feed you?”
His head came up, staring down at her like that was the last thing he’d expected to hear.
“I did a stint working for a court-appointed attorney in the city. I met a lot of prostitutes. Heard a lot of stories. They don’t get into it because they love sex. They do it because they’re hooked on drugs or they don’t know how to feed themselves. You don’t have to worry about me looking down on you, Jesse. You think because I worked in a fancy firm that I don’t know how the world works, but I’ve seen it from all sides. People are just people. Good and bad. Poor and rich. They’re just looking for that one thing that makes them happy.”
He took a long breath, hugging her close. “See, that’s what you could be, baby. Difficult and amazing. And yes, she took her first john because my dad was in the pen, and he’d left her with more debt than she could handle. We lived in a motel after dad was gone. I got shoved into the bathroom when she had clients. Her one thing turned out to be meth. She loved it more than me. More than herself. More than anything.”
She sat up, staring down at him in absolute wonder. She had seen more of the world than she’d wanted to, but she’d never seen anything so lovely as Jesse McCann. He’d grown up in the worst of circumstances. He should have fallen into all the cracks that would have tempted him along the way. Drugs. Violence. Hate. Self-loathing. But he had avoided them all and come out with a kind heart, a heart that could love openly. His friend. His neighbors. Her.
Gemma Wells was a smart woman. She’d graduated at the top of her class. She’d gotten everything she could have wanted. But she knew when something better came along. One thing. She’d thought it was fortune and position. It turned out she was just a woman like the rest of them. Love. She wanted love.
“I love you.”
“What?” Jesse sat up beside her. “I tell you that my parents are a convicted killer and a drug-addled prostitute and that’s when you tell me you love me.”
She could do him one better. “I want to marry you.”
His whole face softened, and he gave her words back to her. “Baby, you be sure.”
She was sure. But she was sure of something else, too. “I love Cade, too.”
He pulled her close, bringing her back down to the bed. “I want us all to be together, Gemma. I love Cade like a brother.”
She grinned. “Most brothers don’t share women.”
“They do in Bliss.” He got serious. “I want to stay in Bliss. But if you need to go back to New York, I figure my home is with you now. You have to know that even if Cade doesn’t come back, I’ll go where you go.”
“I got a letter from the firm today.” It had come by the hand of a deeply confused FedEx guy who had knocked on every door in the valley before getting to her. Apparently, overnight services didn’t make it to Bliss County very often. It had been a formal invitation to come back with a letter from the head partner himself.
Jesse seemed to hold his breath. She knew she should tell him she’d already decided that the firm could fuck itself, but hey, she was difficult. “What’d they say?”
“They want me back. They’re willing to reinstate me at a fifteen percent raise to go along with my promotion to junior partner.” It was an amazing offer. Everything she could have dreamed of. She didn’t have to apologize. She could just walk back into Manhattan and reclaim an even better life than she’d left behind.
Jesse’s face went blank. “All right. I think we should talk about this. I don’t know that firm is the best place for you. When do you have to give them an answer?”
“When Hell freezes over, but I’m not going to tell them that yet.”
“Gemma?”
It was past time to put her brain to work. “It’s too easy. They have zero reason to bring me back. Well, not any I’ve figured out yet. I’ve been going over and over this ever since I got that damn letter this morning.”
“Well, they’re bringing you back because you’re good.”
She didn’t buy that. “Jesse, you obviously haven’t met many lawyers. At my level, we’re all good. Quite frankly, there’s always another up-and-coming genius, and most are way less difficult to deal with than me. It can’t be that they’re worried I’ll sue. There’s extensive evidence out there that I had a breakdown. I could fight the firing, but it would be a long, expensive suit, and I would probably lose. So that’s not the reason.”
“Then why?”
“I don’t know. I checked my computer. I don’t have anything suspicious on there.” She sighed. “I thought for a minute that maybe I walked out with important data or something. But they confiscated my work laptop and my personal one is fairly boring. Unless they want me for my mega scores on solitaire.”
It was a conundrum.
“Didn’t Patrick say they sent him?”
Yep. And that was another piece that didn’t fit. “I called the firm and asked for him. I thought maybe he’d gone back and he’d just been dodging Nate. I used Mom’s cell. It has a Chicago area code. I guess I was trying to trick him. I was told he’s on a case right now in Buffalo. They either don’t know he came here or they’re lying about where he is.”
None of it made a lick of sense. And she’d had another little note in the mail, too. One that pointed out an entirely new problem. “And you might rethink the whole marrying me thing. My health insurance doesn’t kick in until next month and the hospital bill for my little stubborn fit is in the five figures.”
“Hey, don’t you worry about that. We’ll make a payment plan. I might not make a ton of money, but I have a little saved up. We’ll take care of the hospital.”
A sweet thought. He acted like they were a team. Like her parents had behaved. It was a scary thought. She’d really given up on the whole “happily ever after” thing when her dad had died, but now she understood what her mom had been trying to tell her all along. What her dad had tried to tell her at the end. It would be better to have that ache than to be whole and empty. That ache her mother felt meant she’d been loved.