“You’re right. I wouldn’t have given the invitation if I’d known who her mother was. But I did give it, because I like Dylan. And I still do, despite who her mother is. She seems to be a good kid. Wonders never cease, do they?”
He spun on his heel. This round went to him. Brijette’s tight jawline and partially opened mouth gave him a slight feeling of satisfaction. He chose to ignore the other feelings seeing her again caused.
Stopping on the stairs to the patio, he looked back. One more thing he had to get straight. “Oh, and Brijette, my name is Cade, not Mr. Wheeler, not Mr. Cade and damn sure not Dr. Wheeler. People who know each other as intimately as you and I don’t usually use that kind of formality.”
THE THREE OF THEM finished their meal much faster than Dylan would probably have liked. When Cade offered them a ride to Mr. Robert’s to get their car, Dylan was thrilled, but Brijette would rather have crawled through the woods on her hands and knees than spend more time with him. He’d acted as though she’d said they were going to wade off into the swamp when Brijette told him they’d go through the woods back to their car. In the end it had been easier to agree than to try and explain her reluctance to Dylan.
Dylan wanted to sit up front by him, but he held open the back door and motioned for her to get in, forcing Brijette to take the passenger seat. Dylan asked him questions from the back seat during the ride. He didn’t seem to mind and Brijette was just thankful that she didn’t need to join in. When they stopped at Robert’s, the house was dark and his truck was gone.
“Do you think Mr. Robert is trying to find who took his horse, Mom?”
“He’s probably at the sheriff’s office. Now, thank Cade for the supper so we can go. It’s late.” She was desperate to extricate herself from this situation.
Dylan already had her seat belt off and she pushed herself between the front seats. “Thanks for the supper, Cade. We’ll have to do it again soon. Maybe you can come eat with us one night.”
Brijette pushed her into the back. “Dylan, good grief.”
Her daughter wasn’t the least perturbed by the reprimand. She was grinning herself silly in the back seat while Brijette was trying to decide if she could take a leave of absence from work. But there’d be no avoiding Cade. She had to work with him, but she didn’t want her daughter to be so awestruck by him. That could only lead to trouble. Brijette reached for the door, but Cade caught her arm. “Wait, Brijette. Dylan, go wait in the car. I need to talk to your mom about a patient and we have to do that in private.”
Dylan nodded and slid from her seat, kicking gravel all the way to their SUV. At least he’d made her mad in the end. She hoped Dylan would stay miffed at Cade for, oh, the next six months.
The lights from the dash glowed on Brijette’s skin and Cade had to tell himself twice to take his hand off her arm. Some things never changed and that shotgun-blast feeling he got from touching Brijette Dupre was one of them. He didn’t want to remember how her skin felt under his fingers, but he did. She faced him and he could feel his body leaning toward her, something about those dark eyes… He forced himself to straighten and put more distance between them. Thankfully, she spoke and that bewitching spell broke.
“Thanks for being so nice to Dylan. I’ll try to make sure she doesn’t worry you at your house.”
“Dylan doesn’t worry me, and I didn’t ask you to stay in this car so you could thank me.” At last he could get his brain on track and onto the most important question he’d ever asked.
“Right. Which patient did you want to discuss?”
“I don’t want to talk about a patient. I wanted to speak to you in private.”
She squirmed in her seat and he imagined she knew what was coming. “I want you to tell me who in the hell is the father of that child.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THE QUESTION she’d dreaded most, and it was coming from the last person she’d ever expected to say those words. Brijette didn’t try to answer right away. Nothing good could come of this. But, if she could keep Cade from learning the truth, then he’d leave and her life would be normal again, maybe. But how normal would it be for Dylan? In just a minute she would deny her child her father. A man who could buy her things, take her places Brijette never could. But would he teach her to love and care for other people, to give back to the community that raised her? Probably not. He hadn’t wanted a child with her years ago and she couldn’t imagine that he or his stiff-and-proper mother would want one now.
“She’s not yours, that’s for sure.”
His features seemed to crinkle in the dim light.
“How old is she?”
His words were softer than she expected. She might have described them as sad if she hadn’t known better.
“She’s almost ten.”
His eyes slammed on her with a force she could feel and she dug her back into the seat.
“So she could be mine. Unless you jumped into bed with someone else as soon as you got rid of me.”
“I think you know where I spent the three months after you left.”
He had the decency to stop glaring at her after that. She opened her mouth to ask him why he was so concerned about a child he’d never wanted in the first place—a child he’d been more than happy to get rid of. But she froze with her lips barely parted. What if he’d never known she was pregnant? Doubt had entered her mind when Cade’s mother told her of his decision, but she’d tossed the suspicions aside. Mrs. Wheeler was his mother and a seventeen-year-old Brijette had no reason to think the woman would lie. He’d probably decided to pretend it never happened. That he’d never had a part in anything so ugly as paying her off to have an abortion—not him, not Cade Wheeler. If he wanted to feign ignorance, she’d be more than happy to go along. It served her purpose to ignore the whole incident.
She’d been presented with money for an abortion, then left to spend three months in a youth correction facility. Brijette wouldn’t allow Cade to show up now and start making waves in hers and Dylan’s lives. From the moment she’d had her daughter she’d been planning for the possibility of Wheeler interference, though she hadn’t expected it. Thank goodness she’d made the effort anyway, because she was about to put those plans into action.
“Dylan was born twelve months after you left here, and I have the birth certificate to prove it. Unless I’m a human oddity, that’s a couple months too late for her to be yours. I’ll show you the birth certificate if you’re that concerned.”
The steering wheel creaked under the pressure of his hands. “Left that place and jumped into bed with the first guy who came along, huh?”
Brijette thought she wouldn’t care what Cade said, how he saw her. She was wrong. It hurt to know he thought she had no morals. But then he’d believed her guilty of a lot things before now. He was staring at the front windshield and she was amazed that looking at him like this could still make her heart skip. Maybe it was just fear affecting her rather than the glint in his eyes or his slightly full lower lip that she recalled kissing indiscriminately. She’d kissed a few men since, but no one like him. Cade had been in a class by himself.
She didn’t respond and he continued. “Where’s her father? Does he visit, send money?”
She eyed the green light on the radio’s digital display and shook her head.
“Are you telling me he doesn’t know he has a child?”
Her breath caught deep in her lungs then came out in a gust. “I’m telling you he wasn’t interested in having a child. He took off and hasn’t had a thing to do with us since.” That statement was the most honest one of the evening. “I need to go now. I can’t leave Dylan sitting