Need You Now (Love in Unknown)

Chapter 1

Twenty-three. It had taken twenty-three boxes, one large moving van, and three people to move her from Chapel Hill, North Carolina to Unknown, Texas, a hole-in-the-wall little town three hours west of Austin.

Melody Carr knew she hadn't had this many boxes when she left home ten years ago. She definitely hadn't had this many boxes when she moved from Brown University to the University of North Carolina a few years later.

"Little sister, where did you get this much crap?" Micah hefted a box of medical textbooks over the threshold of the apartment above their family's bakery. "I didn't have this much stuff when I moved last week and I was moving a five-year-old, too."

Melody made a face at him as she set her own box down. "I'm a girl. There's a line in the girl handbook that we're supposed to have a lot of stuff. At least I coughed up the money to have someone else move it all down here for me. We just have to unload. Plus, you barely lived in your apartment in New York. Someone was a workaholic."

"Mel-bell, you do not have room to talk." Gage Maddox, Mel's best friend, carried in an arm chair, his muscles straining beneath the cloth of his ancient James Maddox High football shirt. At well over six feet tall, Gage and Micah seemed to take up all the spare room in the bread-box-sized apartment. Of course, the piles of big brown boxes littered around the living room didn't help much. Mel couldn’t quite believe that her great-great-grandparents lived here during the first years of their marriage. It was fine for a single woman, but a married couple? There was not a lot of elbow room.

"That's different," she said. "I'm a doctor. We're workaholics by necessity."

Micah snorted. "And chefs aren't? I work just as many hours as you did, squirt, even if I didn't spend eight years going to school."

"Seven. I did undergrad in three years, remember?" She batted her eyelashes innocently. Mel had been blessed—or cursed, depending on how you looked at it—with a high IQ and a nearly photographic memory. As a result she’d had few friends, but school had been a cake walk. Despite her parents' desire for her to have the "high school experience"—whatever that meant—she'd graduated two years early with Gage's class. She’d kept the pace up straight through college and medical school and never looked back.

"How's your mom doing?" Gage asked when they went back down to the truck to get more boxes. Micah slipped into the bakery to check on their mother and his son, Jax, escaping the unseasonable warmth of the early spring day for a few minutes. Passersby nodded and greeted Gage, smiling politely at Mel. Most people in town probably wouldn’t even recognize her. She hadn’t had much time to visit in the last few years, between med school and her residency.

Micah and Mel had both moved back to Unknown with one purpose in mind: to help their mom. The sudden death of their dad the previous January had sent her into a tailspin and eventually landed her in the hospital three weeks ago with a bad case of dehydration and exhaustion. Emma Carr didn't like to admit it, but the bakery had finally become too much for her to handle on her own. Mel trusted her brother to handle the bakery, but she knew their mother would never tell him anything about her health, which meant Mel would have to step in too. So she quit her job at a clinic in Chapel Hill and she and Micah moved back, Micah’s son in tow. They were hoping taking care of Jax would distract their mother enough for her to leave the bakery in Micah’s more than capable hands.

Mel sighed. "She's doing all right. We keep telling her to slow down, but you know how stubborn she is."

"Mama Em's tough. I think she just got lonely once your dad passed. I see her when I can, but it's not the same as being with her real family." Gage nodded toward the old, red brick building that housed the bakery. Identical to all of the other buildings on the town square, it had been the home of Carrs’ Cakes since the late eighteen hundreds. Through the big front window, Mel could see her mother and nephew sitting with their heads together at one of the front tables. "Having you and Micah and the little guy around will be the best medicine in the world for her."

Mel hoped he was right. She knew her mom missed her dad, they all did, but even Ethan Carr wouldn't expect his wife to kill herself trying to run the family business on her own. Her mother was a retired school teacher. She wasn’t meant to run a bakery by herself. Grunting, Mel helped Gage pick up one side of a massive bookshelf and maneuver it out of the truck. "You are real family, doofus. How's life as police chief?"

"It's life." He shook his head. "Lots of paperwork and dealing with minor nuisances."

"Hey now. I remember when you used to be the minor nuisance." Mel smiled at him around the case. Bright March sunlight beat down on Gage, catching on the sandy brown hair that escaped his Texas Rangers baseball cap. She'd missed the comfort of being around someone she'd known all her life. "I even seem to recall perjuring myself on occasion to keep you out of one of those cells you throw people in now."

Gage laughed. "You never really perjured yourself. Bent the truth a lot, yeah, but no outright lies."

"Well, someone had to have your back. Lord knows, those hideous parents of yours would have let you rot there." Mel grimaced. She couldn’t remember either Joseph or Olivia Maddox ever once showing up when their son needed them. Nine times out of ten, they’d been off at some fancy party in Austin or Houston when anything happened. It was her parents who were always there to take care of Gage. They were the ones who stood toe to toe with the old police chief and his weasel of a sidekick, Officer Shelton, when they tried to pin every piece of criminal mischief in town on Gage. The chief and Shelton had done everything they could to humble the son of the richest, most self-absorbed people in town.

"Not everyone could be Caine the Good," Gage said after greeting one of the old ladies who buzzed around town square, his voice full of affection for his brother. The Maddox boys might have acted like they were different, but deep down the bond between them never ceased to amaze her. "Being police chief's nothing compared to being mayor and a big shot lawyer."

Mel would have stopped in her tracks if they hadn't been climbing a narrow set of stairs. "Caine's back in town?"

"The Golden Prince never strays far from the kingdom, Mel. You know that." A sympathetic look replaced the humor in his silver eyes. "You didn't know he was in town? I thought someone would have said something last time you were home."

She didn't respond until they'd dropped the bookcase in one corner of the living room and her brother had gone back downstairs. When her father died, she’d come to town for two days, forty-eight hours that passed in such a blur, and she couldn't remember hearing that the older Maddox brother had moved back from Boston. Then again, everything about that time was a blur. She and Gage made an unspoken agreement ten years ago never to discuss his brother. "No, I didn't. Guess I didn't think too much about it. Or tried not to."

Caine Maddox. She closed her eyes, fighting back the tornado of feelings circling around her. Not in her wildest dreams had she imagined he'd be mayor of Unknown. He'd always been destined to be a big shot politician, but if he was the mayor she wouldn't be able to avoid him. The mayor was everywhere in a small town like theirs. She’d held onto some apparently futile hope that he would be in Washington or at least Austin, so that she wouldn’t have to feel this knot —part pain, part anxiety—every time she saw him or heard his name. She should have known a true Maddox would never stray far from the town his family founded over a hundred and fifty years ago.

"He never told me everything that happened, Mel, but I do know he's always missed you." Gage shrugged. “Can’t say I’d be upset to see you guys get back together.”

Mel narrowed her gaze at her best friend. "He might be your brother, but that doesn't mean you get to take his side on this, Gage. Whatever we had was a college fling. I'm here to start a new, healthy life in Unknown. And Caine has never been healthy for me."

Caine had been her hero as a kid, her secret crush as a teenager, and her first boyfriend in college. Okay, maybe boyfriend was the wrong word. Lover? Friend with benefits? Either way, when everything went to hell between them, she’d lost a big piece of herself. Since then, every man in her life took a piece of her heart and squashed it. She was done giving away pieces. She had a medical license, a shiny new job at the local doctor's office and hospital, and a wonderful family. She was starting over, and that meant no ex-boyfriends.

#

"Come on, Mr. Mayor. I know you think you're Superman, but even Clark Kent took lunch breaks."

Caine Maddox looked up from the pile of papers to see his little brother, Gage, lounging in one of the chairs on the opposite side of the desk. Blinking away the jumble of numbers, he glanced at the clock. One fifteen. Hell. Where had the day gone? He looked around his office. Oh yeah, it'd disappeared in a haze of bureaucratic business and balancing town budgets. "What are you doing here, Chief? Shouldn’t you be out writing speeding tickets and chasing teens out of the old mill?"

Gage scratched his nose with his middle finger, a not so subtle gesture of affection. "Took a day off. You are familiar with the concept, aren't you? It's something us small folk do every now and then."

Caine stood, stretching his cramped limbs. He'd gotten to his office in historic Town Hall at seven that morning and hadn't moved from his desk since. "Come on, then. Since you're a man of leisure, you can buy me lunch from Cocina."

The brothers walked out of the town hall together, heading east down Main Street, past the red brick buildings their great-great grandfather had commissioned over a hundred years ago when he helped build Town Square. Even as little kids, they'd turned heads whenever they were side-by-side. They were polar opposites in every way. The favorite and the rebel. That's how their parents saw them. They’d never bought into it, though. They were a unit. The Maddox boys. Partners in crime, as their grandfather used to say.

Most everyone in town had known them since they were born and didn’t hesitate to stop to chat as they passed. Caine did his best to charm them all while his brother stood beside him, polite, but silent. They’d grown up since the days of the rebel and the favorite. It’d taken time, but in the few years since they’d moved home, people in town finally accepted them for what they were; the politician and the protector.

Caine said goodbye to Mrs. Bailey, his old grade school teacher, and took in his brother's grubby clothes and sweat-stained hat. "So what have you been doing today? Doesn't look like you've been loafing around eating chips."

"Nah. You know I can't sit still, even if you pay me." Gage's eyes flickered to the side and he shoved his hands in his pockets. "I've actually been helping the Carrs do some moving."

Caine had met Micah Carr the first day they’d walked into Unknown Elementary. All the other kids had treated Caine like a foreigner, a rich kid set loose amongst the peasants. Not Micah. The baker's son walked up to the son of the millionaire and invited him to play catch. They'd seen each other every day from then until the muggy August day when, at thirteen, his parents had shipped Caine off to a stuffy boarding school in New York. Caine had seen Micah whenever he could on his infrequent breaks, but they'd drifted apart after Caine went to college and Micah moved to New York. When Gage told him Micah was coming home, Caine had seen it as a chance to get his best friend back.

"Micah get more boxes in?" Caine knew his brother had spent the previous weekend helping Micah and his son, Jax, move back into the Carrs' house.

They walked into the small Mexican restaurant and grabbed their usual turquoise table on the second floor, well away from the town busybodies.

Gage looked down at the table, tugging at his ear where an earring had been ten years ago. "Not exactly. I may have left out a detail or two when I told you about the Carrs the other day. Micah's not the only one moving back."

Caine frowned. His brother couldn't mean what he thought he meant. But there was no other answer. "Mel?"

"Yeah. She's living over the bakery. Think she said something about taking over the practice for Doc Booth."

“Left out a detail or were too chicken-shit to tell me?” Caine’s eyes narrowed at his brother. He might have been buried under work for the last few months, but usually his secretary kept him up-to-date on the comings and goings in town. That meant Gage must have said something to her.

Melody Carr, the proverbial "one that got away." Even her name made his heart do a little back flip. Part of him wanted to hate that, but he couldn't. Every woman he dated, he inevitably compared to Mel and none quite measured up. He’d seen Mel at every stage of her life. Grubby little tomboy, awkward teenager, beautiful co-ed. Best friend’s baby sister. What was she like now?

How could his brother not have told him she was moving back? "Did you give her any warning that I'm in town or did you blindside her, too?"

"Hey, if I wanted to blindside you, I would have let you run into her." Gage tossed a chip at him, hitting him squarely in the forehead. "But, yes, I told her you're back."

"And?"

Gage chuckled. "Jesus, man, are we in junior high again? Do you want me to pass her a note during math class?"

"You know how things ended with her. I just want to know how she reacted." He threw the chip back, agitation growing. It probably broke some sort of rule in the Brother Handbook to ask Gage to spill details about Mel, but he needed any advantage he could get. "Was she angry? Scared? Happy?"

He seriously doubted Mel had been happy to hear he was back. God, everything had been such a mess the last time he saw her. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d kicked himself over the years from what a sorry little shit he’d been back in college. Too focused on having fun and thinking about himself to see what was happening with Mel. Caine still hated to admit it, but Ethan Carr was right when he told Caine to stay the hell away from his daughter.

The worst part of all was that it had taken Caine so long to realize that he’d felt more for Mel than just a casual interest. After spending so much time with her growing up, he took their sexual relationship for granted. Sure, he’d felt bad about sleeping with his best friend’s sister, but beyond that, she’d just been another girl. At least he’d done a damn good job of convincing himself that she was just another girl. Now, he knew better.

"Happy? Not really. Sorry, but I think annoyed might be the best fit." Gage took a drink of the Coke the waitress sat in front of him. "Honestly, she didn't seem all that interested in seeing you again. She may have mentioned wanting to start a new life, which means nothing from the old life. That means you."

He could understand that. The last time he’d seen Mel, she'd been standing in the living room of the Carrs house, big hazel eyes wet with angry tears. Even now, he could almost feel the stiffness of her spine as she stood her ground against him. Mel's intelligence had only ever been surpassed by her stubbornness. He doubted that much had changed. "I can't just let her go without trying, Gage. There’s too much between us for me not to at least try.”

As Mel's best friend, Caine knew his brother understood her better than anyone. "I know. I'm just warning you, it's gonna be an uphill battle. And don't expect me to help your cause. I'm staying out of this. Way, way out."

"Fair enough." Caine nodded, sipping his iced tea. It was bad enough he'd asked his brother to keep his relationship with Mel a secret from Micah all these years. When Caine moved home six years ago, he’d expected his brother to be pissed at him, but Gage’s first trip home from Austin, where he was working as a cop, proved otherwise. Gage would stand by him to the bitter end, but Caine couldn't ask him to run interference now. "Just don't tell her anything. I don't want her to have time to dig her heels in."

He needed every advantage he could get. For the first time in years, he felt excited and energized. Being with Melody Carr had always been a challenge, but she was worth the work.