unfathomable relief of knowing Maxim has been rescued. I give up. I can’t stave off the sobs that wrack me right in the middle of the bar. After Mama and Tammara and so many losses, I had braced my heart for another, but one I wasn’t sure I could handle. To lose Maxim before I ever really even had him would have devastated me. I may have no right, and he may not even want to see me, but I’m already devising a plan to find him, to go to him. To hug him and kiss him and slap him across the face for putting me through that hell.
“You okay?” Mena asks softly, sliding a glass of whiskey toward me. “Kimba told me about Maxim.”
“Yeah, I just . . .” I struggle to evict the words from my throat, to pull myself together, but I’m distracted by the coverage on the large screen mounted over the bar.
LIVE from DFW International.
Dallas?
Two tall, dark-haired men emerge from a private plane, coming one after the other down a short bank of steps. A swarm of reporters closes around them. Shock rips through my body. How could I have been so blind?
I’m a fool and Maxim is a liar.
Warren Cade, dressed in his tailored suit and wearing his usual privilege like a mantle, grins at the circle of cameras and microphones. Beside him is a man who, now that I see them together, looks exactly like him. Maxim is a younger, more casually dressed version of his father with his longer hair, Berkeley sweatshirt, and dark jeans. Little dots of blood show stark leaking through the square bandage on his forehead.
“Mr. Cade,” a reporter calls.
Both men look toward the camera, the same patina of arrogance stamped on the handsome set of features.
“Um, Maxim Cade,” she says with a chuckle. “Sorry. How’s it feel to be back in the States after such a harrowing adventure?”
Impatience flashes in those peridot eyes I thought I knew so well.
“Uh, great,” he says, pushing a shoulder through the crowd.
“And you were scheduled to go to the Amazon next,” another reporter shouts at his back. “After such a close call, will you be rethinking that?”
Not breaking stride, his long, lean legs taking him closer to the luxury SUV waiting on the tarmac where his father stands, he glances over his shoulder and shoots the crowd that pirate’s grin. “Hell, no. I’m still going. Why wouldn’t I?”
Too many emotions roil in my belly. Too many thoughts whisk in my head. Betrayal. Fear. Relief. Something tender, an unopened bud that I crush before it can fully open.
“That’s him?” Mena asks, her eyes fixed on the screen as Maxim climbs into the vehicle behind his father.
“No,” I say, blinking dry eyes and knocking back her whiskey. “I don’t know who that man is.”
32
Maxim
“I wanted to thank you for everything, Dad,” I say, sipping the water served with the elaborate meal my mother had our chef prepare. I haven’t been in this house in years, and wasn’t sure I’d ever return.
“No need to thank me, son.” My father takes a bite of his steak and points to me with his fork. “Coming home where you belong is thanks enough.”
I stiffen, knowing where this is going and how it will end. This détente will be short-lived because, as much as I appreciate my father’s assistance, I can’t give him what he wants.
“Yes,” Mom rushes to say, her look bouncing between my father and me. “So good to have you home. We’ve missed you, haven’t we, Warren?”
My father sips his red wine and nods. “I hope this last incident got all this Greenpeace shit out of your system. Cade Energy needs you.”
His words fall into a vat of tension-laced silence. I finish chewing and carefully place my fork on my plate. “I’m not working for Cade Energy, Dad. You know that.”
His jaw ticks, the muscle flexing along his strong jawline. My jawline. My cheekbones. My eyes. My face.
My stubborn will, 1.0.
I’ve never admired and resented one person so simultaneously as I do my father. When he looks down the table at me, I know he feels the same way.
“You ungrateful fool,” he says through clenched teeth. His fist slams the table, clanging the glasses and silverware. My mother jumps and closes her eyes, resignation in every line of her body and on her face. “I rescue you and your conservationist friends. I fixed your stupid boat. I fly you home, and what do you give me