Love Irresistibly (FBI/US Attorney #4)(65)
She peered at him, appearing surprised. “I’ve never said that to anyone. Not even Ford.”
“Why tell me?” he asked huskily.
“I don’t know . . .” She studied him, then shrugged, deliberately teasing. “Maybe I just wanted to talk. And you happened to be here.”
“I feel so used.”
She laughed, just like he’d hoped. And when she curled closer to him, he felt it—that same tightening in his chest. He looked down at her, turning more serious. “I’m sure, more than anything, your parents just want you to be happy.”
Brooke nodded, as if mulling this over. “Well, and I am happy, obviously,” she said, almost as an afterthought. She changed the subject. “What about your parents? Are they in Chicago?”
It was a perfectly innocuous question. Cade started with the easy part. “My mom lives in Scottsdale. She got married after I graduated from college and moved shortly after that. It was kind of weird when she got married, because it had always been just the two of us, but I’m happy for her. Kent, her husband, is a good guy.”
He paused, falling silent for a long moment before something drove him on. “Do you remember that night we met at Bar Nessuno, when I showed up late?”
Brooke nodded. “You said you’d had a strange day.”
“The reason I was running late was because my sixteen-year-old half brother, who I didn’t know existed, showed up at my office out of the blue.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, wow.”
“That was basically my reaction at first.”
“How did you not know he existed?” she asked.
Certainly a fair question, so Cade thought about where to go from there. He’d avoided talking about Noah for so long, it wasn’t easy to know where to start. “I’ve only met my father once. My mom got pregnant when they were in high school and he bailed on us. I was ten when he finally decided to show up. He came to my house, and I was furious with him for not being around. But then we went out into the yard and played football, and it was good. Really good. Like, suddenly there was this person I barely knew who fit into my life so perfectly.” Cade’s tone turned dry. “Of course, it was all an illusion.”
“What happened?” Brooke asked.
“When we’d finished playing football, Noah—my father—asked if I wanted to go to the Bears game with him the following weekend. He never showed up that day. Or any other day afterward.”
Cade lay there, debating, before he continued. “I know the exact moment I pushed him away. It was when I called him ‘Dad.’ I saw the panic in his eyes, and I think, deep down, that a part of me knew right then that I’d blown it. For years, I wished I could go back and change that one moment, wished I could tell myself to keep it in check, and just not care so much. Because in the end, I was setting myself up for a huge disappointment.”
After a pause, he looked at Brooke. “I’ve never told anyone that before.”
She held his gaze. “What made you tell me?”
He pretended to think about that. “Maybe I wanted to talk, and you just happened to be here.” When she smiled, he reached over and pulled her closer, their naked limbs tangling together as she rested her head against his chest.
Tomorrow morning he would undoubtedly start to sweat, big-time, thinking about why he’d decided to share more about his past with Brooke than he ever had with anyone else.
But right then, with her lying in his arms, he wouldn’t change a thing.
Twenty-four
SAFE TO SAY, Friday was not a banner day for Sterling Restaurants.
Brooke spent the majority of her afternoon in her office with Keith, Sterling’s VP of security, who’d received an anonymous call earlier in the week from a woman claiming to work at one of the restaurants at the United Center. She’d told Keith that the general manager of the restaurant had been stealing from the company for the last few months by voiding out cash sales from the point-of-sale machine at the end of the night.
At first, both Brooke and Keith had been skeptical.
“Dave’s been with Sterling for seven years,” she’d said, referring to the general manager in question. “He and Ian golf together all the time. He wouldn’t steal from the company, let alone a friend.”
“Could be a disgruntled employee or ex-employee trying to make trouble,” Keith had said.
“We’ll find out soon enough.” They’d agreed that Keith would conduct an immediate internal investigation and report back to her.
And now they knew.
“I’d really hoped this one would go the other way,” Keith said. Even the normally unflappable VP of security looked dejected after filling Brooke in on the results of his internal audit. Bottom line: the allegations against the general manager appeared to be true.
Brooke sighed, a mixture of frustration, anger, and disappointment. Firing some random homophobic jerk she’d never met was easy, but she knew Dave Lyons—he was a senior-level employee whose wife she enjoyed chatting with every year at the company holiday party. “I’ll talk to Ian and bring him up to speed. He’s going to be crushed.”
“For what it’s worth, I think Dave is in trouble financially,” Keith said. “I’m hearing rumors about a gambling problem.”