Thwack-crack. Conn had a massive fucking problem with assholes who terrorized other people simply because they shone bright.
He made a mental note to go through the psychos folder again, with a fresh perspective. The threat had changed from physical to psychological. Reading explicit descriptions of someone wanting to take a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire to Cady was obvious. He needed to think of this in a different way, and he needed to set aside his emotions to do it.
Thwack-crack. He tossed the logs on the pile and set another piece on end to split. Which led to problem number two: Cady’s threat to him.
He was falling for her. Hard. He’d stood at the Field Energy Center and watched Queen Maud deliver a two-hour set, and felt not the slightest interest in her. But Cady … Cady drove fast and ate barbecue. Teased, and took care of, her little sister. Asked him for what she wanted, something he found hot as hell. Truth was, she was amazing. Not just as a singer-songwriter, because to be honest, it wasn’t his kind of music at all. But he appreciated people who did things from their heart, with all of their passion behind it. He raced that way, worked that way, had everyone fooled that he felt that way.
She’d see through him, find the fear inside. Which frightened him more than walking down one of the dark alleys in the warren of the East Side’s abandoned warehouses, more than flipping open the folder and seeing Jordy’s jacked-up face, more than seeing 10.00 come up on the clock at the drag races, more than watching the McCools at a holiday meal or a family function. The deepest fear he had was that he’d never truly belong.
Cady was making him face that fear. He’d been accepted into Shane’s family for so long he didn’t think about it. But Shane’s family was basically picture perfect, a miracle. He’d never aspired to have something like that for himself. But Cady’s family, with her salt-of-the-earth mother and her snotty-teenage-girl sister, was imperfect enough that he could dream about it. She’d cleaned his jacket, shared meals with him, taken him Christmas tree shopping with her family.
“Because you work for her,” Conn said, swiping the back of his hand over his forehead. His Henley clung to his back and arms. He shrugged his shoulders to adjust the fabric, then hoisted the axe and brought it down. The log splintered into two pieces that all but flew to the sides. “That’s all.”
Except it wasn’t. She’d made it abundantly clear that she didn’t sleep with everyone who worked for, or with, her. He knew her well enough now to believe he’d done her a disservice assuming he was just a way for the celebrity to blow off steam.
He’d made a dent in the woodpile but gotten nowhere by letting his brain churn along while he worked. Breathing hard, he pulled his phone from his pocket and checked in on Cady the same way Chris checked in on Cady: social media. She’d sent out a bunch of pictures he’d taken of her and Emily at the Christmas tree farm. Scrolling through the list of reposts and comments took five swipes of his thumb, and she’d posted it less than an hour ago. Emily’s coats had struck a chord with Cady’s followers, something that was sure to make her happy. Finally she posted a shot of her guitar and her notebook in the studio. Going in for some songwriting time! <3 <3 <3
She was in the house, and safe. The first part of that sentence was temporary: Cady was leaving town again, sooner rather than later. He’d damn well make sure she was safe when she left.
*
The woodpile workout gave him an excuse to take another shower, so he did, then pulled on a Henley and fresh jeans. His laundry was piling up, so he took it downstairs, threw in the pile of towels sitting in the basket to round out his load, puzzled his way through the high-end washing machine’s digital readout, and pressed START. Water started flowing into the drum, so he guessed it was working.
“Hey there,” Cady said. “Thanks for throwing the towels in.”
He turned to see her peering around the doorframe into the laundry room. “As long as I don’t throw in the towel?”
“Something like that,” she said with a smile. “But you didn’t have to do that. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever lived with a guy who offered to do anyone else’s laundry, much less did it without being asked.”
It was hard to unlearn patterns you learned as a kid. Travel light. Do your own laundry, wash your own dishes, be helpful if you can. He remembered all the times he offered to do the dishes, or mop floors, or fold laundry, trying to make himself useful so when he fucked up, lost his temper, got into trouble, he wouldn’t be passed along to the next relative. It hadn’t worked; enlisting was basically his best bet after he turned eighteen. He shrugged. “They were there, needing to be washed. It didn’t make any sense to do a half-full load of my own stuff. Unless you’ve got some special secret towel washing method I don’t know.”
“Open door, insert towels, dump in detergent, hit start.”
“That’s what I did.”