Kiss Me That Way: A Cottonbloom Novel (4 page)

“Good Lord, how old are you?” She rolled her eyes, tossed a wad of cloth in his lap, and lowered the window shade. “Put on a gown and sit on the table. I’ll give you a minute to disrobe.”

Damn, he enjoyed the sass in her voice. Most women either pandered to him or were too intimidated to be themselves, and honestly, he didn’t go out of his way to put people at ease. They either wanted to be around him or didn’t. He found himself alone more often than not.

Thank God she hadn’t actually been coming on to him, because the struggle to get his jeans off with his aching knee and one good hand was very real and extremely unsexy. By the time he’d kicked them off, wrapped the gown around himself, and scooched on the table, he had broken a sweat.

She rapped on the door, cracking it open enough so he could hear but not see her. “Decent?”

“As much as one can be in a hospital gown.”

She closed the door behind her, her mouth curved into a smile, but it seemed wholly professional and polite. “Lay down please.”

He maneuvered his legs up, grimacing and swallowing back a groan.

Her head was down as she made notations in a thin file folder. “You lied to me. You are wearing underwear.”

The unexpectedness made him chuckle, the pain in his leg taking second stage. When was the last time he’d bantered playfully with a woman? Maybe never. “No. I said, ‘
What if
I’m not wearing underwear?’ And you shouldn’t be peeking. It’s shockingly unprofessional, Miss Kirby.”

Her smile changed, and even without being able to see her eyes he knew it was a real smile this time. She set the file aside. “Try to relax while I evaluate you.”

He tried, but her prodding made him yank his leg out of her hands more than once. When she worked his kneecap in circles, he grabbed her upper arm in an unspoken bid for her to cease and desist.

Her hands quit their torment and massaged his tight calf muscle. He relaxed his grip on her arm but didn’t let her go. Through the layers of her clothes her arm was taut and strong.

“I’m sorry, but I need to understand what I’m dealing with,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry I fell off a cliff.” He was going for a joke, but it fell flat considering his voice was hoarse and pain filled. “Can you fix me?”

She harrumphed, but a smile lit her eyes. “According to Tally, you’re a hermit curmudgeon who is humorless and insufferable. In short, unfixable.”

He raised his head, the paper under him crinkling. “Humorless?”

“
That’s
what you take exception to?”

“I’ll have you know I honed my sense of humor with years of Monty Python and
Saturday Night Live
sketches.” He’d found the dusty videos in a box tucked in the corner of the charity store. The silliness had been a welcome distraction from the grind of his everyday life in Cottonbloom. The rest of Tally’s assessment hit too close to the truth.

She laughed. The low, husky sound somehow made him feel immeasurably better. “I’ll get you a temporary brace for your knee and develop some exercises that will have you back to your old self in no time.”

“What about my hand?” He held out his left hand, and she cradled it in both of hers, prodding the scar tissue and testing his grip strength.

“Are you right-handed?”

“Yep. But I need both hands to do my job. Right now I’m having a hard time holding a wrench.”

“You still work on engines? I thought you designed them.”

“How did you know that?”

“Tally told me.”

“I didn’t realize the two of you had become close.” In his mind, Monroe had been set apart from his family and everyday life. She’d been the keeper of his secrets. Was she still?

“Have you forgotten how small a place Cottonbloom is? She was bragging about your company and your place in Seattle.”

“Bragging?” Another surprise. His relationship with his sister had gone through a freeze after he’d left. They’d only reconnected when she’d choked her pride out and asked him to invest in her gym. He’d considered the money a gift, but she sent him payments the first of every month.

“She’s proud of you.” Monroe glanced up from her examination of his hand to flash him a smile that was like a punch in the chest.

She refocused her attention on his hand and rattled off instructions his brain followed automatically. Her features were delicate and pretty, the classic Southern belle, and her hands were small compared to his, her fingers thin but strong where they kneaded his palm. He couldn’t tell much about her body through her white medical-type coat, but she appeared slim and moved with an innate grace as if she was completely comfortable in her skin. Nothing like the doe-eyed, gawky girl he remembered.

“It’s really a matter of loosening the scar tissue and giving your nerves a chance to heal themselves.” Monroe set his hand down, glanced at her watch—a sporty plastic type—and closed his file.

“Late for a hot date?” Instead of jokey, his voice veered sharply aggressive.

“Something like that. Let me get your brace.” She was back in less than two minutes and strapped the brace on his knee, checking the fit. “You can get dressed. I’ll tell Ms. June to work you into my schedule tomorrow. Any objections?”

She raised her eyebrows as if she expected him to protest. Honestly, with the fit he’d thrown in their waiting room when he realized what Sawyer was up to, Cade surprised himself by saying, “None at all.”

“Good. Wear athletic gear. Unless you want to be traipsing around in your undies.” She winked before backing out of the door.

The flirty tease in her voice and eyes was more intimate than mere acquaintances and certainly didn’t register as sisterly. In fact, the entire encounter held an intensity and intimacy he usually did his best to avoid. A vibrant energy swirled around her like a tornado, and when the door closed he was left reeling in the aftermath, mentally and emotionally.

By the time he’d dressed, made an appointment, and limped out the door with the borrowed cane from his uncle Delmar, Monroe was nowhere to be seen. Why wouldn’t she have a hot date—she was a beautiful woman—and what gave him the right to care?

She was a sliver of his past. A weak, scared kid who’d needed a champion. Her mother had liked to troll through the bars on the Louisiana side of the river, and he’d made it his business to know who she was hooking up with. A word or fist dropped here or there had kept a few scumbags looking for something easy away. Once Sam Landry married and moved away Cade had relaxed his vigilance. Yet even then, he’d continued his monthly treks upriver to make sure Monroe was safe.

She’d rarely crossed his mind during his busy days over the last decade. The work ethic he’d developed by necessity in his youth had carried into life away from Cottonbloom. Yet something about all the nights they’d shared talking under the full moon had drawn him back to Cottonbloom more times than he could count in his dreams. He always woke restless and yearning for something he couldn’t name.

Testing the knee brace, he walked down the street toward the stream that acted as the state line and had effectively segregated the town. In his grandparents’ day, Cottonbloom had been one town, sharing a school system and town center. A disagreement involving fishing and harvesting rights had split the old guard of city leaders and broken the town across the river. The south side became Cottonbloom Parish, Louisiana, and the north side remained part of Mississippi.

Monroe’s practice was on the Mississippi side of Cottonbloom, full of doctors, lawyers, and professors. His home lay on the Louisiana side, full of blue-collar middle-class workers—factory men, mechanics, fishermen.

Besides the two-lane steel bridge for cars, a wooden bridge for foot traffic had been erected since he’d last been home. Black graffiti marred the side, but a riot of flowers decorated the Louisiana riverbank. His heart swelled. His mother had loved her flowers. The wilder the better. Their front garden had been a colorful chaos of blooms.

He limped across the bridge. Clear and fast-moving, the stream bisected their town and then turned southwest, flowing through Cottonbloom Parish and eventually intersecting the Mississippi River.

The row of brick storefronts facing the river from the Louisiana side were of the antique and gently used clothes variety, whereas the shops on the Mississippi side were higher-end boutiques and specialty shops. Each side had called their road River Street, making mail delivery a crapshoot. The smell from Rufus’s Meat and Three had his stomach jumping. He’d dined in five-star restaurants around the country, but none of their chefs came close to matching Rufus’s magic with a smoker.

Tally’s gym lay on a street perpendicular from the river and directly off River Street. Starting with traditional aerobics and strength training, she’d expanded into martial arts and self-defense over the last year, taking over two more storefronts and giving the Louisiana side of the city an economic boost. She’d turned down his offer to help financially with the expansion, and another year would see his initial loan paid in full. If she bragged about him, he was equally as proud of her—even if he hadn’t had a chance to tell her yet.

He was regretting his decision not to swallow his oversize pride and text Sawyer for a ride. His stomach churned but not from hunger this time. The slight breeze that had sped down the river and mitigated the heat was cut off by the buildings, leaving the air stagnant, the humidity smothering.

A middle-aged woman in tight spandex pushed through the door of Tally’s gym. A burst of air-conditioning welcomed him inside. He leaned a hip against the front desk and took the weight off his bad leg.

Behind the desk Tally put down the papers she was sorting. “You look like hell warmed over. Come sit before you collapse.”

He didn’t argue. Plopping down on a metal folding chair, he stretched his leg out and massaged his knee.

She joined him, her mouth tight. “Did you seriously walk all the way over here? Sawyer’s going to have a fit when he goes to pick you up and finds you gone.”

“How about you text him for me? You can give me a lift back, can’t you?”

“You scared of Sawyer, big brother?” Her face sparked with a familiar tease, and the tension across his shoulders eased.

Cade made a
phish
ing sound. “Please. I’m not scared of anything anymore. But Sawyer and I are getting on like two crawdads trapped in a bucket.”

She bumped his shoulder with hers. “It’ll get easier. Can I get you a drink?”

“I would kill for a whiskey.”

“I can do Coke.”

“Jack and Coke?”

“Just Coke, you lush.” Tally walked off, presumably to retrieve him a plain Coke.

A self-defense class was in progress on the matted floor. A bunch of youngish women gathered in the far corner.

The semi-circle parted to reveal a woman in tiny black shorts and a tight red top with straps crisscrossing defined shoulder blades. A long blond braid swung when she stepped forward and kneed a dummy in the crotch. She slow-motion punched its nose with the heel of her hand. Then, she quickened the pace, performing the combination move several times in succession. On the final hit, the dummy’s head bounced across the floor and the girls dissolved into high-pitched giggles.

Tally plopped back in the seat next to him and held out a can. He took it with his left hand, the icy metal helping dampen the tingles of firing nerve endings. His gaze never left the woman on the mat.

She could have posed for a fitness magazine. Although toned, she was shapely, with long legs and arms. Her movements were reminiscent of a choreographed dance rather than a fight sequence. She bent over to retrieve the dummy’s head, her backside high in the air. He swallowed, pretty sure if someone wanted to draw him as a cartoon character his eyes would be bulging comically.

When she turned, it took a few blinks for her face to come into focus. The sweating can slipped out of his numb fingers, a good amount of Coke spilling over his crotch before he could right it. Their gazes clashed briefly, and without taking his eyes off her he asked, “What is Monroe Kirby doing here?”

“She teaches a self-defense class. She’s a double black belt in jujitsu and karate, you know.”

“How was I supposed to know that?”

Monroe’s attention was back on the giggling girls, so Cade transferred his to Tally, who sat with a Cheshire cat smile, examining her dark-purple-painted fingernails.

“Gee, I don’t know. Come visit more often? I assume you were Monroe’s late add-on. I didn’t get a chance to grill her.”

“Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Should I have? Didn’t realize you two were so well acquainted.”

Ironic that he’d said almost the same thing about Monroe and Tally. “I barely knew her.” He used misdirection in licensing negotiations all the time without a twinge of misgiving. With Tally, the half lie left bile climbing up his throat. He took a sip.

His sister’s “uh-huh” seemed to convey deep meaning. What, if anything, had Monroe told her about them?

Monroe was looking over her shoulder at him, but as soon as their gazes met she spun around, her braid flicking. She stood beside one of the girls and drilled the movements. He shifted on the chair, unable to tear his gaze away. “Did she say something about knowing me?”

“Nope. Just like you’ve never said anything about her. But she’s asked about you. More than a couple of times. Like she was fishing.”

The picture he’d held of Monroe Kirby broke, and he wasn’t sure how the pieces fit back together or if they ever would.

“Every eligible bachelor on both sides of Cottonbloom is pursuing her,” Tally added.

He grunted. “So what, about five men?”

Tally barked a laugh. “’Bout that.”

Time for a subject change. Thinking of multiple men chasing Monroe had him putting finger-shaped indentations in the aluminum can. “Sawyer said you’re dating Heath Parsons.”

“
Was
dating. Definitely past tense.” She still watched Monroe, but her eyes had narrowed and a frown drew her face down.

Tally was more like him than he cared to admit—distrusting and wary. Neither of them had inherited their father’s optimism and natural good humor. Or the little of it they carried in their DNA had been stamped out during the struggles of their childhood.