Cade and Gavin already sitting at the booth—on the same side of the table. They had their noses buried in their menus, two dark heads bent side by side.
She slid into the booth across from them. “What looks good?”
Gavin slapped the plastic menu on the table and jabbed his finger at a picture of pancakes with dollops of whipped cream on them in the shape of a happy face. “Pancakes.”
“Really?” She wrinkled her nose. “Since when do we eat whipped cream for breakfast?”
Cade raised his menu to cover his face. “Don’t look at me. I’m having a breakfast burrito. Your mom knows best, Gavin.”
Gavin’s lower lip trembled and Jenna felt as if she’d just shot down the Easter bunny. Who was she to nix whipped cream after what she’d just put her son through?
She blew a kiss to Gavin. “Are you getting those with chocolate chips?”
He nodded and bounced in his seat.
Cade peered at her over the top of his menu. “When you go all out, you go all out.”
“Hey, if you can’t have whipped cream when you’re on the...road, when can you have whipped cream?”
The waitress came back and plopped a coloring book and crayons on the table in front of Gavin and took their order.
Jenna wrapped her hands around her coffee cup and inhaled the rich aroma from the steam curling up to her nose. “One sip of this and I might feel halfway human again.”
Cade downed his orange juice in a couple of gulps and shoved the small glass to the edge of the table. “You did an amazing job back there in Lovett Peak. I was too late, and you handled yourself well.”
“I’m not sure what would’ve happened if you hadn’t come along in that car. They’d put the word out that I had something to do with—” she glanced at Gavin, his tongue lodged in the corner of his mouth as he scribbled red across the page “—Marti. D-do you think I’m wanted or whatever?”
“For questioning, maybe. The police have no evidence.”
“She was in my house. I left in a hurry. And they can plant evidence. You should know that.”
“I do.” He ran his thumb along the ridge of her knuckles. “I’m just sorry you do.”
“Don’t be sorry. I had to learn fast, and it’s kept us alive.”
“And happy? What about happiness?”
She jutted out her chin. Did he think she needed him to be happy? That she’d fall apart the minute he left?
“Every time I look at Gavin I’m happy. It’s a different sort of life, but it’s our life.”
“I can see that.” He tapped Gavin on the head. “He’s a great kid—friendly, happy, fearless.”
“Ah, it’s that fearless part you like, isn’t it? A chip off the old block?”
Cade grinned and scratched the sexy stubble on his chin. “With any luck at all, he’ll be an engineer or an accountant. I’d like that, too.”
“Maybe he will do a one-eighty. People do that, don’t they? Choose the opposite path of a parent.”
The grin melted from Cade’s face, and now his stubble gave him a menacing look. “I guess I didn’t. Followed in my old man’s footsteps to a T.”
Jenna’s hand jerked and her coffee sloshed over the rim, splashing her fingers. “What are you talking about? You and your father are complete opposites. You’re responsible and honorable. He wasn’t.”
Cade gazed over her shoulder, his dark eyes clouding over like the sky outside the window. “My father left his family, and so did I.”
His words twisted a knife in her gut. Is that what he believed?
Shame washed across her body like a heat wave. Why shouldn’t he believe that? She’d been flinging the accusations of abandonment at him ever since she’d jumped in his hot rod.
“It’s different.” She dragged the tip of her spoon through the coffee puddling in her saucer. “You didn’t have a choice. You left for our own safety.”
“He didn’t have a choice, either.” His lips twisted.
“Your father was a criminal, Cade. He left you, your brother and your mother because the Feds were closing in on him.”
“Like I said, he didn’t have a choice.”
The waitress interrupted them with a clatter of plates, and Gavin looked up from his coloring to squeal over the whipped cream face on his chocolate chip pancakes. Jenna might have to pay by enduring hyperactive behavior from him until he crashed, but the look on his wide-eyed face was worth it.
Had to grab pleasure where you could find it.
Gavin poked Cade in the shoulder. “Look, look.”
“I see.” Cade suspended