Theirs to Keep (Tangled Hearts Trilogy #1)(29)

There was so much worry in his voice that her heart melted. She pulled up his hand that was still tightly entwined with hers, and she kissed the rough palm. Then she turned to Cade and met his lips softly with hers.

“I understand perfectly.”

“And what do you think of the idea?” Cade asked.

“I think it’s something I want more than I can possibly describe,” she whispered.

There was such relief in both their eyes that it weighed down on her, crushing in its intensity. Cade wrapped his arms around her, holding her so tightly against him, his lips pressed to her temple, that she could scarcely breathe.

He vibrated against her, so much nervous tension leaving him in waves that she shook with it.

She waited until he loosened his hold before drawing away so she could capture them both in her view. What she had to say next made her just as nervous, perhaps more so simply because she ventured into the unknown. Into the black hole of her past, a giant, yawning abyss that frightened her just thinking about it.

“What’s wrong, baby?” Merrick asked gently. “What are you thinking?”

She inhaled sharply through her nose. “I don’t know what I can give you…physically. You both know what happened to me. I know what happened to me. And yet I can’t remember it. I’d like to say that since I can’t remember it, it can’t hurt me, but I’m nervous and a little scared. Not of you,” she rushed to say. “Never of you. But my mind is already obviously protecting me. Who’s to say what else might happen if those barriers are breached?”

Cade pressed another kiss to her temple and then carefully smoothed her hair behind her ear with coaxing gestures.

“We aren’t in a hurry, honey. We’ve got all the time in the world. What do you say we take it one day at a time. See what each day brings and face it together.”

She relaxed, breathing in a huge sigh of bone-melting relief. “I say that’s a wonderful idea.”

Merrick leaned forward to touch his lips to hers. “Cade’s right, baby. We’ve got nothing but time. We’ll get there. But for now, all we want is you with us. No guilt for taking anything we give you. No hang-ups over letting us take care of you. We’re working as a unit. Together. Just the three of us.”

She smiled and nodded her acceptance. “You’ll let me continue helping out in the office and come to the workouts?”

“Hell yeah,” Cade was quick to say. “I like having you there with us. I sure as hell don’t want you going to work for someone else.”

At the very mention, Merrick scowled, his face going dark. “Of course I want you with me. You’re part of this. Part of us, Elle. I like having you there when I finish. I like seeing you sitting there outside the ring. But I want you there as mine. Not pretending to be with Dallas. I want you to be mine. Which means, hell no, as Cade said, we don’t want you working anywhere else. Call us selfish, but we want you with us, with one of us, at all times.”

She laughed, her heart soaring. “I have no intention of working for anyone else. How could I anyway? I have no driver’s license. No birth certificate. No Social Security number. I officially don’t exist.”

Cade sobered. “Eventually we’re going to have to conduct a thorough investigation into your past, honey. You need to know that. Sooner or later, we’re going to have to find out who you are.”

She went silent but nodded slowly. “I know,” she finally said. “Maybe one day I’ll be ready. For now, I just want to be…happy…and not worry about what lies in my past or what scary thing lurks around the corner.”

“I think we can arrange that,” Merrick said, his lips easing into a smile. “Now what about that yummy dinner you promised us?”

She laughed. “Is that all you ever think about? Food?”

He pretended to give it careful consideration. Then he grinned. “Yeah, pretty much. Sex and food. That’s it for most guys, baby.”

Her heart lightened. Cade relaxed against her. The awkwardness was over, and perhaps now the hard part began. Making it work. Pushing it from the realm of fantasy and fiction into real life.

Could they make such a relationship work in reality?

There was only one way to find out.

Chapter Seventeen

WHEN ELLE WALKED INTO THE kitchen the next morning, she felt self-conscious, and it was automatic to be shy and reserved instead of finding that comfortable routine they’d settled into over the last several months.

But things had changed. Yesterday, they’d taken a giant leap. She couldn’t say whether it was forward or not. Who knew what the future held? In order to effectively have a future, one had to embrace and come to terms with one’s past.

It would be so easy to shut her eyes, shake her head and refuse to allow any part of the past in. A huge part of her didn’t want to remember. She wanted to start over. In so many ways, her life had begun the day Cade and Merrick found her.

And it wasn’t to say that she had nothing or was nothing without the two men. But in those awful few days between the time whatever horrible thing had happened to her and when Cade and Merrick had found her, she’d been desolate and hopeless.

They’d given her strength. And faith that she wasn’t consigned to that fate forever.

She never wanted to feel the utter devastation that she’d endured when she’d awakened on the riverbank, cold and shivering, her mind a blank and filled with only one thing.