“We don’t get cable anymore,” she said quietly from right behind him. “Just the regular free stuff. But he doesn’t understand. We won’t have cable until we move.”
“Don’t you have a DVD he could watch?”
She sighed. “It broke last month.”
“Scooby,” Tommy insisted.
Rachel raised her voice. “Tommy, we can’t watch Scooby-Doo right now, but I’ll see what else is on,” she said cheerfully but firmly. “Maybe we can find a kids’ show on another channel.”
The boy’s mouth worked, his features tightening and grimacing. “Scoob. Mama.”
“We’ll find another show you can watch, Tommy,” Rachel repeated, even more firmly. “I’m sure there is something fun on—”
“Scooob, Mama. Tommmy...good boy.”
“We can’t watch Scooby, Tommy—”
Tommy let out one of his piercing wails and Cade suddenly couldn’t breathe, his chest on fire. “You can get DVD players cheap now, Rachel,” Cade said shortly, angry, so angry, and not even knowing why.
“Not cheap enough,” she answered, raising her voice even louder to be heard over Tommy’s wailing.
Cade’s gut hurt. His emotions were so damn raw. “I’ve seen them for sixty-five bucks—”
“And that sixty-five bucks will pay for ten hours of child care or buy groceries or pay for a half hour of speech therapy,” she snapped, facing him. Color flooded her cheeks, making her gray eyes luminous. “So I have to make choices, and they need to be good choices, and unfortunately buying a cheap DVD player so Tommy can watch Scooby-Doo isn’t one of them!”
Cade’s chest grew tighter and he drew a short, rough breath, temper simmering. “It’s that bad around here?”
“I wouldn’t call it bad. I’d call it tight. But it’s always been tight. And maybe it’s a struggle but it’s a good struggle, because I’m making it...I’m doing it. I’m taking care of my boy and I don’t need David or you or any other man to waltz into my life like you’re some fairy godfather and make things better.”
“I’m not interested in being a fairy godfather. I just want to get you a DVD player. Please.”
“That’s not necessary. But thank you.”
Tommy moved behind Rachel, and began bumping his face repeatedly into her hip. “Scoob. Show.”
“Rachel, it’s sixty-five dollars. And it’d make him happy.”
Her chin lifted even as she put a hand behind her to stop Tommy from pushing against her. “A lot of things would make us happy—a new car and hot-fudge sundaes and a trip to Disneyland, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to get them—” she held up a hand to stop him when he would have interrupted “—and I’m okay with that. Those are luxuries. I—we—don’t need luxuries. What we need is speech therapy and physical therapy and occupational therapy and doctors and teachers, and those all cost money. A lot of money.” She swallowed hard, and her chin jerked even higher. “But I’m doing it...I’m giving him every important thing I can.”
Cade clamped his jaw tight, his narrowed gaze taking in her compressed lips and fierce expression. He’d forgotten how stubborn she was. And strong. And proud. “It’s a housewarming present for your new apartment,” he said.
“Kind of you, but not necessary.”
“It’s not for you, it’s for Tommy.”
“He respectfully declines.”
“You can’t reject gifts I give to him.”
“Oh, yes, I can. I’m his mother.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Why are you?”
“Because I care about you, Rachel.”
Her hands balled into fists. For a moment she said nothing, her eyes sparkling with tears she wouldn’t cry. “Too little, too late,” she choked.
She’d said it quietly, but he’d heard, just as she’d meant for him to hear. And even though Cade knew she was right, it still felt as if she’d shoved a kitchen knife between his ribs.
“Sounds like my cue to leave,” he said.
“That’s probably a good idea.”
* * *
AN HOUR LATER, ARRIVING home at his ranch, Cade headed to the barn and checked on his horses before heading to the house where his yellow lab, Lacey, was curled up in the family room in her makeshift nursery with her litter of pups. The puppies were six weeks now and soon they’d be heading to new homes.
Cade sat on the ground next to Lacey and scratched behind her ears, crooning compliments as he gave her some love. “You’re a good momma, Lacey girl. So patient with all these demanding little guys crawling all over you.”
Lacey put her head on his thigh and thumped her tail.
“Don’t you worry,” he said, rubbing behind the other ear before giving her chin a scratch, “you’ll be sleeping upstairs again soon. You won’t be stuck down here in the family room forever.”
He gave her another rub and scratch before rising, and checked over the six blond puppies, who were pretty damn irresistible, then dimmed the lights and headed upstairs for the night.
In his master bath, Cade took a shower and changed into baggy flannel pajama pants and a soft, stretched-out T-shirt before climbing into bed. But once in bed he couldn’t sleep. He pounded his pillows repeatedly trying to get comfortable, but sleep wouldn’t come. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Rachel’s face, and he could see the creases in her forehead and the worry darken her eyes. Even in the dark of his room he could see how she stood, arms tightly crossed over her chest, her full soft mouth pulled into a thin line, as if holding all of her anxiety and pain in.
She didn’t want his help, but she needed help. And no, not a fairy godfather kind of help—he shuddered in bed, thinking the very idea was horrible—but support. Love. Someone she could lean on. Someone who could be another pair of hands as well as ears and eyes and everything else it took to raise a child. Because children were work and expensive, and Tommy was no different.
Unwittingly, Cade flashed back to when he was a boy and living with his mom, a woman completely different from Rachel, a woman who wasn’t maternal or patient. His mom was a woman who needed a man, not a child, and she hadn’t enjoyed spending time with him, preferring to hang out in honky-tonk bars, taverns and pool halls, always looking out for the next guy to sweep her off her feet and make her problems go away. Or at the very least, take her to bed and give her a place to stay for a week or two.
Child-protection services had removed Cade from Mama’s care when he was seven, placing him in foster care. She got him back six months later, but lost him less than a year after that. Cade was reunited with her one week before his ninth birthday and they had ten great months together before everything started falling apart again, and by the time he was ten, he was back in foster care. Cade spent sixth grade counting the days down until his mom claimed him, and then seventh grade, and was still waiting in eighth when it dawned on him that maybe this time she wasn’t coming back.
He didn’t give up hope, though. He couldn’t. Foster care wasn’t much better than living with an alcoholic mother, and he’d rather have his mother—even if she did stay out all night—than be thrust into a house with a bunch of strangers.
He was still waiting for her at fifteen when he “borrowed” a car and went to find her, finally tracking her down in Willow Park where she was shacked up with some guy in a trailer on a crappy piece of land. She’d been surprised to see him, crying and hugging him, said he was the spitting image of his father but even hand