Unbroken (7 page)

Cade bit back his intended response, which was going to be something alone the lines of
I know you are but what am I
, when he saw a petite brunette standing by the drink area in the lobby.

“Can I help you?”

Her blue eyes were huge in her pale face as she looked from Cole to Cade and back again. “I was hoping Kelsey would be around.”

“She drove over to the next town to do some shopping,” Cole said. “Can I help you?”

“It was Kelsey that I talked to, so I was hoping to . . . see her. I should have . . . called or something. I can go. I actually made a reservation in town—”

“Is everything okay?” Cade asked, because he didn't like to see a woman look that jumpy. It made him suspicious of things he didn't really want to be suspicious of.

“Fine. Yes. No, not fine, not fine at all. Are either of you a Mitchell?”

“Both of us.”

If Cade hadn't been completely certain he a) had never slept with this woman and b) hadn't had sex in four years, he might have been thrown into a slight paternity panic. But as it was, he was sure that whatever the sin, it wasn't that.

“I'm Nicole. Nicole Peterson. I think . . . we might share genetic material.”

“By that,” Cole said slowly, “you mean you're our half sister.”

“Sure, yeah,” she said, clearing her throat, “if you want to say the ‘sister' word. Which seems . . . weird, all things considered.”

Cade looked at Nicole Peterson, the woman who was at the center of one of the darkest, shittiest moments of his life. And he knew it wasn't her fault. He knew she had no responsibility for any of it. And that it wasn't a choice of hers that had caused that moment.

And he still couldn't deal with it.

“I'm going to Amber's,” he said. “For . . . you know. Nice to meet you,” he said to Nicole, then turned and walked out the door, leaving Cole to deal with the woman who was the physical evidence of just how imperfect their dad had been.

Cade knew it was the wrong thing to do. He knew it was weak, and terrible, and he still couldn't bring himself to stop it.

Because nobody knew the situation like Cade did. Nobody knew just how weak their dad had been.

But Dave Mitchell had made damn sure Cade knew. He hadn't even bothered to hide it, not when Cade had overheard a phone call between his dad and his dad's mistress. Dave had known Cade would keep his secrets. Because Cade was just like him.

Not Cole, not the responsible one that Cade knew had worked so hard to emulate a man who hadn't ever existed.

No, Dave Mitchell had known just which son was cut from the same cloth.

Cade hated it. Hated it more than anything. Because he'd been forced to keep secrets that had tried to eat him alive. Because he'd known things that he knew would destroy his mother and had kept them to himself until it was too late to do anything different.

Because he knew his dad was right. At the end of the day, Cole was good. Faithful to a fault. Loyal and responsible.

And Cade was just like their father.

Six

When Cade showed up at the door, Amber knew, immediately,
that something was wrong. She'd like to say it was the mystical friendship connection. But really it was because she'd seen Cade go through enough hideous shit to know when it had just hit the fan.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“Well, you live here now, right?” she said, moving to the side and allowing him entrance.

“I guess so,” he said. “And damn good timing.”

“What happened? Did you and Cole have a fight?”

“Cole and I always have fights,” Cade grunted, moving into the kitchen and opening the fridge, digging around for a while before resurfacing with a beer, which he promptly braced against the kitchen counter and popped open.

“So what's up then?”

“Nicole Peterson.”

“Did you knock someone up?” she asked. And she didn't know why, but the idea filled her with more than the normal, friendship-ish horror that one might feel over the thought of an accidental pregnancy.

“Fuck no,” he said. “And why is that always the assumption?”

“Who else assumed that?”

“My subconscious. Which is bullshit, because my subconscious, my primary conscious, and . . . all my damned consciousnesses know full well I have not had sex in four fucking years!”

The words about knocked Amber backward. “You . . . what?”

Cade took a long drink of beer, his eyes locked with hers, furious. He lowered the bottle, but his glare remained in place. “That's not really the point.”

Except it was the point that was sticking in her mind. Which was juvenile, but honestly, Cade got around. She'd known the guy since he was a virgin. And she'd known that he
was
a virgin, which spoke to just how young they'd been. And then she'd been privy to the loss of said virginity, and conquests thereafter, which was only fair, because she told him about hers.

At least until she'd stopped having them. She'd had to get her crap together, and once she'd realized that every time she'd ever let a guy put his hand under her shirt it was just a desperate bid for a feeling of connection . . . well, it had started to seem sad.

She could remember, clearly, the last guy she'd slept with. The craving she'd been driven by to feel rooted to someone, rooted to the world, for just a moment, and how his touch just hadn't done it. How he'd been inside of her and she'd felt like he was a thousand miles away because she'd become too aware of what her behavior meant.

There had been a time when she'd been able to squeeze her eyes shut and pretend that skin-to-skin meant she was close to someone. But then, right then, with this guy on top of her, she'd had a kind of weird, personal revelation and it was like seeing herself clearly for the first time. Like sitting above the sexual activity, watching it and wondering what that sad girl thought she was getting out of all this.

When sex wasn't about love, or even desire, it all seemed a little bit tragic. It was like she was living out a depressing art film. Complete with mediocre climaxes and a distinct feeling of disconnect and malaise.

Well, no more.

She was still a massive ball of dysfunction, but she was a massive ball of dysfunction alone in bed with her clothes on. So . . . win.

Though she hadn't been aware that Cade was on the celibacy train. Because there was a certain point where they'd started to keep their sex lives to themselves—that was what adulthood did, after all, took giggly over-sharing away from you—and she'd started very consciously turning a blind eye to his shenanigans, because it was a little like being on a diet and watching someone eat chocolate cake. And éclairs. And donuts. Over and over and over.

“Sorry, it's the point I came away with,” she said. Because when you were on a diet, even if you didn't want to see someone eat cake, it was nice to know that other people could still enjoy cake.

Dirty, sexy, naked cake.

And apparently Cade had not been having . . . cake.

Weird, now she was hungry. And a little horny.

“Well, it's not the point. Because she's not pregnant. Because I'm celibate as a priest and also she's my sister.”

“Oh.”

“My half sister.”

“No, well, obviously.” She knew about Nicole, though she hadn't known her by name. Knew about the affair Cade's father had had, and that it had resulted in a love child, debts and a whole lot of angst for Cade.

“She's here.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Like . . . like she has a right to be here,” he said, stalking back to the fridge and pulling out a block of cheese, then setting it on the counter, bracing one palm against the Formica surface, the other on top of the cheese.

“Doesn't she?” Amber asked.

“Yes,” Cade growled, turning back to face her, the cheese still in his hand, his fingers curling tightly around it.

“Well . . . for heaven's sake, Cade, what did the dairy do to you?” She leaned forward, took the cheese out of his hand and opened the fridge, putting it back inside.

When she turned back to face Cade he was scowling at her like she'd taken his best friend away, and not a block of cheddar.

“What?” she asked.

“I was going to eat that.”

“You were going to squish it. Anyway, she does have a right to be here, doesn't she?”

“My dad didn't make any provision for her in the will,” Cade said, his voice rough.

“And that means she doesn't have a right to anything that was his?”

Cade put his hands on his lean hips and let out a long, slow breath. “No. I know she does. But I don't know how to deal with this. I don't know how to just embrace her like a long-lost sister and I feel like her showing up here . . . Like she and Cole are asking me to do that, and I can't. Maybe Cole can because he found out in a different way. Maybe because he believed dad was a superhero until after he kicked the bucket, Cole can separate everything. But I can't. I had to keep this a secret from everyone. I had to . . . I knew. I knew he'd been screwing with other women. I knew that Nicole existed and I wasn't allowed to tell anyone.”

“Except me,” Amber said. “We keep each other's horrible secrets. It's what we do.”

They had been a dysfunctional petri dish of angst in high school. The keepers of every secret pain, every secret longing. Best friends in a way she could never have been with another girl, for fear of judgment. For fear of not seeming normal. And she knew it went the other way for Cade. He couldn't have talked to another guy about what he was going through. Because it was all about feelings. And pain. Things guys just didn't like to talk about.

The very reason their friendship probably seemed unlikely to weather adulthood and the crap that came with it was the very reason it had. No one else could provide what they gave to each other.

“Yeah,” Cade said, “it is. And in the spirit of horrible secrets . . . I don't want her here. I don't want to bring her into the family. I don't want her to be part of us, because I want to forget that . . .”

“I know,” she said. She opened up the fridge again and retrieved her own beer, then tugged on the back of one of the wooden chairs. “Set a spell, Mitchell boy.”

He gave her a withering look, but sat, and she did the same.

“So this sucks,” she said.

“Yeah, it sucks. And I'm too emotionally crippled to deal with it.”

She frowned. “Poor choice of words.”

“Why? Because I'm physically crippled too?”

“Well, I wasn't going to say anything.”

“Except you did,” he said, a reluctant smile toying with the corners of his mouth.

“Yeah, well, count on me to say the inappropriate. Like I'm about to now.
Four
years?
” It didn't beat her dry spell, but even so.

“There's a reason I've never mentioned this.”

“It's too late. You did now. And you know how I am.” Desperate to take his mind off of his problems, and also hopelessly fascinated by this new bit of information. What the hell was wrong with her?

“Infantile?” he asked.

“Yuh-huh. That.”

“You said it yourself,” he said.

“I said what? That I'm infantile?”

“No, I mean, you summed up the issue earlier today. Do I need the woman to be on top? I think that was your question.”

She felt her face get hot. How was it they were talking about sex again in such a short succession? Oh, well,
her
. That was why. Because for some reason she kept bringing it up. She was kind of wallowing in morbid, sexual Cade curiosity. Which, in many ways, wasn't wholly unusual, but she usually kept it all under wraps a little better than she was at the moment.

“Oh, yes, that question. Which we should probably forget. For the betterment of our friendship. Because it was bitchy.” She added the last part quickly, because she didn't want him to get confused and think she meant it was because she was actively thinking about what sort of sex he could have.

She
was
wondering that, but she didn't want him to know it. Hell,
she
didn't want to know it.

“Yeah, it was bitchy. But I suppose I deserved it,” he said.

“For moving in with me and protecting me from the big bad man?”

“Yeah, that. Well, either I deserved you to insult my virility and masculinity or I deserve a medal of honor.” He leaned back in his chair, then abruptly leaned forward. “And to be clear, it's not a question of whether or not I could have sex. It's that the women I might approach may have a similar concern about my ability.”

Her face stung, heat lashing her cheeks. Okay, now she felt like a Grade A dick. Because she'd really stabbed him in an insecure point, and she hadn't meant to. Not quite that unerringly. It was the best-friend curse. Almost like a sister, she knew just which places to punch, even if she wasn't trying to go for a weakness.

Though, unlike a sister, she'd gone on to picture a woman riding Cade like he was the horse and she was the cowgirl . . .

She coughed and looked away from him.

“I have no physical problems in that area,” he said.

“Great! I get it,” she said, holding her hand up. Good Lord, she was going to have the vapors. She didn't even know what the vapors were, except that her grandma had sometimes said something shocking had given them to her.

And while she didn't know what they might do, or feel like, Amber was certain she was on the verge of them.

“I'm just saying, because I feel like I have to defend myself here.”

“I'm about to cover my ears and hum.” For everyone's safety.

“Fine, we'll talk about something else. Something that is not my damn family's own personal secret baby scandal. And something that is also not whether or not I have full use of bodily functions—and I do.”

“Great. Like what?”

“Like the fact that I'm going to bed, and in the morning, I have an appointment to talk to a rancher, because in a few weeks, I'm thinking bison.”

“Bah! Bison.”

“You doubt me, but I promise you, I can help. Leasing the land to me, and having me pay to fix it up, is going to help you dig out of debt, and then that asshole Davis isn't going to have a leg to stand on. He'll lean to one side worse than I do.”

“Har har.”

“Think about it. We'll get this place going and it will solve your financial woes, plus it will be a working ranch again.”

“You're scheming. You're like Pollyanna when you scheme. All heart and optimism. It's fricking nauseating, Cade, I hope you know that.”

“Part of my charm,” he said.

“Feh.” She waved her hand.

He let out a long sigh. “Ready for bed?”

Her heart skittered up into her throat like a cat up a tree. “What?”

“Ready to go to bed? I have an early morning ahead of me now. I assume you do too.”

Oh, right. Yes. She'd overreacted. And her brain had jumped straight to . . . well, to sex again.
Bad Amber! Bad!

“Oh . . .” she said, hoping she didn't sound as breathless as she felt, “like to go to sleep.”

He looked at her like she'd grown a second head. “Yes. To go to sleep.”

“Yeah, I'm exhausted.” And embarrassed, because her mind was completely in the gutter tonight. She needed some alone time. And by that she meant . . . time with her oscillating showerhead. But if she did it tonight, with Cade down the hall . . .

Gah.

Sleep was what she needed. The rest would have to wait. She was a pro at just ignoring physical lust. It was what she did now. Mainly because she'd never felt like she was in a place where she could have a relationship that was even halfway functional.

Usually, she didn't miss it. Every now and then she did. This was one of those times, apparently. Which was strange, because sex had never been that good. In that it wasn't better than what she could accomplish on her own, or with the aid of her shower massager.