A Kiss for Cade Read Free

pets.
    A tight knot coiled in the pit of her stomach. So Cade had gotten her message. He was finally back. The last time she’d seen him he’d kissed her goodbye and said he was going in search of a wanted man who had a twenty-five-dollar bounty on his head. He wouldn’t be gone long, he said. She didn’t know what his conception of “long” was. In fifteen years, she’d received a few sketchy letters, a smashed box of fancy chocolates from New Orleans, and a Christmas doll with two broken legs and a cracked face.
    His gifts were meaningless, except for the locket he had slipped around her neck before he left. Her fingers touched the small oval resting in the hollow of her bosom. She had needed him . She had ached to hear his voice and feel again the heat of his kiss and warmth of his arms—not eat smashed chocolates and sleep cuddling a doll with broken legs.
    Over the years she had grieved for him until she could grieve no more. He’d pledged everlasting love and said nothing would ever separate them.
    Nothing except a man with a bounty on his head.
    As the years rolled by, she’d stopped believing he’d ever come home—except in a pine box. Addy told her he was just sowing wild oats and that he’d be back someday. Well, she didn’t have his sister’s faith. She had finally stopped looking out the window.
    But now he was back, and how would she handle the situation? She wasn’t the young, foolish girl he’d left behind. His return changed nothing.
    Cade Kolby was a stranger, a cold-blooded predator. It was only a matter of time before someone with a faster draw killed him, and at one time, she told herself, that would have suited her just fine.
    Brody shuffled over to the table and sat down, staring at the sugar bowl. Since Addy’s and John’s deaths, he had been quiet and withdrawn. Where was the lively youngster Brody had been a few short weeks ago?
    “I know it’s him.” The boy laid his head down on the table.
    Of course it was him. Who else would be late for his sister’s funeral? Why, after all these years, did she want to run and peek through the windows like one of the kids? Had he aged? Was he still good-looking and twice as ornery?
    “He won’t get here any sooner by you looking out the window,” she told Brody. “Besides, it’s not polite to stare.”
    Her nerves were raw. Over the past few weeks, her orderly life had turned chaotic. Brody’s and Will’s bedrolls filled one corner of the kitchen. The children’s scattered belongings so cluttered the two rooms that she could barely move around. And the children’s pet dog and cat came and went, inside and out, adding to the confusion.
    Sleep was just a fond memory. Little Missy insisted on sharing her bed. The five-year-old had elbows like water witching sticks.
    Zoe carried freshly laundered sheets to her bedroom off the kitchen, tripping over eight-year-old Holly’s pallet at the foot of the bed. Stacks of clean children’s clothes were piled about the disheveled room. The place looked like a hovel, but at least she felt as though she had a family now. She had toyed with the thought of keeping the children from the moment Addy drew her last breath.
    Finding the money to clothe and feed them wouldn’t be easy, but she could pinch a penny harder. In addition to the washing and ironing she took in, she would start a bookkeeping service. She prided herself on being good with figures.
    It was highly unlikely that Cade would stay in Winterborn and raise them, and Zoe would die before she would allow him to take them with him. Nor would she allow him to give them to complete strangers. John’s great-aunt Laticia was the only other relative the children had, and she was much too elderly to assume their care. Cade had little choice but to let Zoe have them.
    She recalled how John disciplined the children by fear, threatening to send them to Aunt Laticia if they didn’t behave. The photograph on Addy and John’s dresser portrayed a