“Did you hear from Bryce?”
“Not since the airport in New Orleans.” Merrick glanced around, hoping no one else was listening to the potentially dangerous conversation.
“Maybe I’ll call him tonight and put this business with the Bracato family to bed. Giovanni’s been strong-arming our suppliers for a better deal, and with his unfair advantage, he’s starting to hurt us.”
“Unfair advantage?” Merrick was lost.
“His guardian angel, sweetheart, try and keep up.” Cain winked at Merrick as she took a right at the next intersection, following the new fence line. “When we get back to the bunkhouse, I’m going to call and tell Bryce to go ahead with the shipment and see what happens. I’m hoping tripling the amount will keep our guys from jumping ship.”
Merrick just kept quiet, her mind working to try and decipher the conversation. By the way her body felt, they had gone at least four miles, and she wondered where Cain was finding the energy for two runs so close together.
When they passed a break in the fence, Cain glanced to her right where, unlike the Verde place, their neighbors house sat much closer to the road. Suddenly Cain slowed down, but her very visible breaths sped up. The color drained from her face, and she just stopped in the road, as if she had been coldcocked by an invisible fist.
“Are you okay?” Merrick moved closer and put a hand on Cain’s chest.
“I’m fine, let’s head back.”
Merrick prided herself on the kind of shape she was in, but by the time they headed down the long dirt road in front of Ross’s farm she was about to drop from the stitch in her side. Cain was moving as if she were running away from something, something that had scared her.
Emma stopped in the middle of what she was telling Hayden to watch her ex-lover run until she fell against the side of the barn and promptly threw up. The move was so uncharacteristic that both Emma and Hayden ran toward Cain to see what was wrong.
“Mom? Mom, what’s going on?” Hayden sounded upset, never having seen his mother this out of control.
“Just give me a minute.” Cain leaned heavily on the side of the barn and looked down at her feet, trying to process the information running crazily through her head. The sight of Emma’s face made her hands twitch and clench. Never before had she wanted to wrap her hands around someone’s throat until they were dead.
“Honey, is there something I can do?” Emma forgot the years and circumstances that separated them, and put her hands on Cain’s back in an effort to comfort her. She instantly felt the muscles tense and watched Cain’s long fingers grow white from gripping the wood.
“I just need a minute.” Slowly Cain shoved her emotions back into the recesses of her heart and took a deep breath. “Too much exercise for one day.” With that short explanation, she smiled at Hayden, then left to clean up.
“Are you sure I can’t do something for you?” repeated Emma. “Something I can get you?”
The questions and the concern in Emma’s voice stopped Cain at the corner of the barn, where she leaned against it again as if she were exhausted. “I think there’s nothing you can do now, Emma. Nothing at all.”
Not understanding what was going on, Hayden turned his fury on his birth mother. Cain had been fine when he had last seen her. “What did you do to her?” Hayden looked at Emma and frowned. No one had ever made Cain look that defeated, and the fact that she never moved away from Emma’s touch meant whatever was wrong was serious.
Hayden had been only seven when Emma left, but he was old enough to see how her absence had affected Cain. He spent a lot of time with her and knew how important he was to her, but it wasn’t enough. Something had changed in her when Emma walked out, and it took Hayden time to realize that she was obviously lonely, and that he could do nothing to fill the gap his mother had left.
“Hayden, I was with you all afternoon. I’m sure Cain will be fine once she showers and lies down for a little while.” Emma just stood there when Hayden left her to follow Cain, glancing back at her with suspicion.
She turned to Merrick and knew the woman wouldn’t give her any information, but thought she’d take the chance and ask anyway. “What happened?” Emma had to admit Merrick seemed as confused as she did.
“She just overdid it. Nothing to worry about.”
Emma fought a feeling of sheer panic that insisted something was terribly wrong. She knew the mobster would’ve rather been shot than show that kind of vulnerability in public. “I’ll give her and Hayden a few minutes. Then I’ll come over and help you with dinner.”
“Look, Emma, how about you just skip tonight.” Merrick saw the protest forming on Emma’s lips, so she overstepped her position and tried to defuse it. “How about I try and talk Hayden into going up to the house to join you and your parents for dinner? That way I can take care of Cain.” Merrick looked at the woman and tried one more thing to get her to agree. “If she’s sick we’ll have to leave early, and I know you don’t want that to happen. I’m sure things will be better in the morning. Just let me take care of her.”
I’m sure you’ll take every opportunity to take care of Cain. The thought made a flash of jealous anger bolt through Emma’s heart, but it quickly died away when her head reminded her that she had left, not the other way around. No, Cain had given her every chance to change her mind, only turning away when Emma refused to believe her and insisted on leaving. Whomever Cain chose to spend her time with, in or out of bed, wasn’t Emma’s concern anymore.
Four Years Earlier in the Casey Home, New Orleans
Cain dismissed the guards outside the door, wanting to spend a quiet afternoon with Emma. The memory of what Danny Baxter had tried to do to Emma had kept them up for a good portion of the previous nights. Cain was exhausted from holding her while she tried to comfort and soothe her, and Emma was worn out from bouts of crying.
Something had changed that morning, though, when Emma sent Cain off to work with a promise she would call if she needed anything. She had said that she was trying to put Danny out of her mind.
Danny was Cain’s cousin from the Baxter side of family, who had talked her father into a job a year before Dalton was killed. Unfortunately, the young, short redhead was a little too aggressive for either Dalton or Cain to trust him with too much responsibility or information about their operations and business associates.
At first, Danny accepted his low-man-on-the-totem-pole position, since his family relations wouldn’t get him a more important role in the business. But with each passing year he resented his status more, and he centered his hate on Cain.
He blamed her for locking him out of the main family business and was quick to complain to anyone willing to listen. The attempted rape was his way of trying to show those closest to Cain how weak she’d become, and he had gambled on her falling apart after she saw Emma broken and bloody.
He wasn’t planning to take over the family. Even he wasn’t so stupid as to think he could. He just wanted someone else at the helm who would give him a chance--the chance to prove he was man enough to expand their operation and up their profits, at the expense of the store owners who dealt with Cain. To him they were all pathetic sheep whom he could bend to the will of his gun.
“So close” became his mantra when Cain spared his life after he attacked Emma. With the woman’s underwear feeling silky under his fingertips, he had come so close before the dark side of his cousin’s nature turned its fury on him. It had taken months for the bones in his once-handsome face to mend, and weeks for the bruises on Cain’s knuckles to fade, but she had let him live. His only punishment was banishment from her family and her business.