Mercury Rising

Or at least, he hadn’t until now.

Cade parked his car in one of the spaces reserved for family at the rear of the building and went in through the back door.

Caitlin Bravo had owned the Highgrade for over thirty years, since before Cade was born. The way Cade understood it, his bad dad, Blake Bravo, had set her up with it. The old man had given her three sons and the Highgrade and then vanished from their lives, never to be seen by any of them again.

In fact, Cade had never seen his father, period—not in the flesh anyway, only in pictures. It was no source of pride to him that he was the only one of Caitlin’s three sons who had his daddy’s eyes. Silvery eyes. Scary eyes, a lot of folks thought.

And let’s lay it on the table here, the old man had been a pretty scary guy.

Blake Bravo had faked his own death in an apartment fire not all that long after he’d planted the seed that would one day be Cade. And later, once everyone thought he was dead, he had kidnapped his own brother’s second son, claimed a huge ransom—and never returned the child.

The way everyone figured it now, in hindsight, Blake must have put some poor loser’s body in his place when he burned that apartment building down. And somehow, he must have managed to falsify dental records. He’d been out on bail at the time, up on a manslaughter charge after killing some other luckless fool in a barroom brawl.

Getting dead had made it possible for him to beat the manslaughter rap without even going to trial. One clever guy, that Blake Bravo.

The good news was, Blake was really and truly dead now. He’d died in an Oklahoma hospital a little over a year ago. Embarrassed the hell out of Caitlin, to learn that the dead guy she’d always considered the love of her life had lived an extra thirty years and then some beyond what she’d known about.

Inside the Highgrade, things were hopping on the café side. It was usually that way on Sundays after church. Caitlin, in skintight jeans and a spangled Western shirt, was playing hostess, leading people to the booths, ringing them up at the register when they were ready to go. She saw him and gave him a wink.

He went the other way, into the comforting morose silence of the bar.

Bertha was bartending. Big and solid with carrot-colored braids anchored in a crown around her head, Bertha didn’t talk much. She had a good heart and a ready smile. Cade had never known a Highgrade without Bertha Slider working there.

“Hey, honeybunch.” One look in his face and Bertha knew what to do. She put the bottle of Cuervo on the bar with a shot glass beside it, set out the lime wedges and the salt, poured the beer chaser.

There were two other guys down the bar a ways. Cade saluted them and got the expected pair of grunts in response. He fisted his hand, licked the side of it and poured on the salt. Then he knocked back the first shot.

It was no good, he realized about an hour later. He’d only had a couple of shots, after all, hadn’t even gotten himself to the stage where his lips started feeling numb.

And he didn’t want any more. Didn’t want to get drunk.

Things had gotten pretty bad when a man didn’t even have the heart to pour a river of tequila over his sorrows. He tossed a twenty on the bar, said goodbye to Bertha and got the hell out.

He knew he shouldn’t have, but he went back to his house. Somehow, while those two shots and that one beer to chase them hadn’t made him even close to drunk, they had broken through his determination to put the book-peddling temptress next door out of his mind. He stopped in front of his house and turned off the engine and just sat there behind the wheel, staring at her front yard where flowers of every kind and color twined the fences and lined the walk.

He didn’t see her. She must be in back. He knew she was out in that yard of hers somewhere. It was her gardening day.

Sundays, as a rule, she went to church with her mother. And after that, she would go out and work in the yard. Sometimes she wore a huge, ugly straw hat. But sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes, she’d go bare-headed, anchoring that wildly curling coffee-colored hair in a tumbling knot on her head. Always, for working in the yard, she wore baggy old clothes that somehow, to him, seemed all the more provocative for what they didn’t reveal.

Yeah, all right. He knew her habits. He knew her ways.

He’d observed her going in and out of her house morning, afternoon and evening, headed to and from that bookstore of hers, all that hair loose on her shoulders, snaky tendrils of it lifted and teased by the wind.

She often left her windows open. He could hear her in there sometimes, talking on the phone in that soft alto voice of hers. Her laughter was low, musical…warm.

The sound of her had the same effect on him as the sight of her. It made him think of getting her naked and burying his face in all that hair—of listening to that gorgeous voice of hers pitched to a whisper, saying wicked things meant for his ears alone.

He knew damn well she had a wild side. He also knew she kept it under strictest control. Ask anyone. They’d tell you. Since Rusty Jenkins died seven or eight years back in a botched convenience store robbery, Jane Elliott had strictly walked the straight and narrow. She’d gone to Stanford after Rusty died, got herself a nice liberal arts degree. She had her garden and her auntie’s house and her cute little bookstore on Main Street. She dated only upwardly mobile guys with steady jobs. She was thoroughly practical, completely down-to-earth and obstinately sensible.

Cade, on the other hand, had made his money in poker parlors up and down the state and later, in the big tournaments in Las Vegas and L.A. And yeah, he’d been in a few tight scrapes with the law—most of them while he was in his teens and early twenties, back when Jane’s uncle, J. T. Elliott, who was now the mayor, had been the sheriff. He also had that rep as a lady-killing charmer. And yeah, all right. He’d admit it. The rep was mostly earned.

Jane Elliott, unfortunately, was the one sort of woman a guy like Cade didn’t really have a prayer with—and he knew it. She was the kind who’d been there and done that and learned from her mistakes. If he had any sense at all, he’d forget her.

But hey. Who said sense had a damn thing to do with it?

He was suffering, and it was bad. And since his brother had married Jane’s friend Celia, it had only gotten worse. Now, he and Jane sometimes ended up at the same social events.

And don’t think he hadn’t tried to make use of the opportunity those events provided. He’d been no slouch. He’d tried all the preliminary moves a man will use on a woman who attracts him. He’d stood a little too close—and she had backed away. He’d struck up achingly casual conversations—which she concluded quickly and politely before they even really got started. When there was food available, he’d offered to bring her a plateful. What he got for that was a cool smile and a “Thanks, Cade. I’m not hungry right now.”

Once, there was dancing. He asked her to dance. She surprised the hell out of him by following him out onto the floor. He held her in his arms—for one dance, and one dance only. Her spectacular breasts rubbed against his chest. The scent of her hair almost drove him insane.

The minute the music stopped she thanked him and pulled free.

Before she could escape, he’d suggested, “Hey. How about one more?”

For that, he got a wry twisting of her wide mouth and a maddeningly arousing low chuckle. “I’m not really a big one for dancing, Cade.”

He knew she wasn’t interested—or if maybe she was interested, she would never give her interest a chance to become anything more.

He’d had enough women come on to him over the years to realize when one was not coming on, when she wasn’t even willing to sit back and relax and let him come on to her.

It was probably nothing short of hopeless, the yearning inside him that tied him in knots.

So why the hell did it keep getting stronger?

He knew where this had to lead. That the moment was fast approaching when he would come right out and ask her. Give it to her point-blank: Jane. Will you go out with me?

He’d just been putting it off for as long as he could stand it. After all, he knew what would happen when he asked her. She would turn him down flat.

The day was really heating up. Cade shrugged out of his leather jacket, tossed it on the passenger seat.

Then he got out of the car. This craziness had to end.

He would ask the question now, today. She’d give him her answer.

And then, just maybe, he could get over Jane Elliott and get on with his life.

Chapter Three

J ane had picked the ripest tomatoes. They waited in a basket on the porch steps. She’d pulled up a bucketful of carrots, shaking the fragrant black soil off of them and sticking them just inside the back door, ready to clean up later, when she was done outside for the day.

For about thirty-five minutes, she’d been squatting among the rows, digging up persistent dandelions and other irritating weeds. Her back was feeling the strain.

With a small groan, she stood, pulling off her grimy gardening gloves, dropping them at her feet. Sweat had collected under her straw hat, so she skimmed it off and raked her hand back through her unruly hair, letting the slight afternoon breeze cool her off a little. She grabbed the boat neckline of her old shirt and fanned it. It felt wonderful, that cool air flowing down her shirt. Then she put her hand at the base of her spine and rubbed a little.

Oh, yes. Much better….

“Jane.”