Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (20 page)

Chapter Twenty Five

Autumn

As Cade said goodbye and started to leave, I
felt the anger and irritation rising up inside me, beyond what I could take.

I’d made a meal I knew that he would hate, not
necessarily to keep him from eating dinner with my family, but at least to get
a reaction out of him. The fact that he’d spent the whole meal complimenting my
cooking, telling me how delicious it was, just made me more irritable.

“Mom,” I said, as Dad and Tuck left the
kitchen to go do whatever other things they had in mind
—
probably watching TV for Dad and some video
game for Tuck
—
and Mom finished loading the dishwasher. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
She raised an eyebrow and I thought that she might say something, since she was
smiling at the same time.

“See you in a bit, then,” she simply said. I
hurried out of the kitchen and around to the front of the house and spotted
Cade taking the last few steps to his car.

“Cade!” I tried not to call out loudly enough
for my brother or my dad to hear me, but loud enough that Cade would. “Cade!”

He turned round and looked until he saw me.
“Hey, what’s up?” I crossed the yard to catch up to him and shook my head,
boiling in anger.

“What’s up? What’s up is you making fun of
me!” I poked him in the chest. “I know for a fact that you hate salmon
croquettes
and
peas and carrots, and
I know I am not nearly a good enough cook to be the one person to make either
of those things well enough to make you like them!” I scowled up at him.

“I wasn’t making fun of you,” Cade he, holding
up his hands to block me from poking him again. “I figured you’d probably made
the dinner on purpose, and I also figured that it wouldn’t be good manners to
make a stink about it.”

“You could at least have just acted neutral,”
I insisted. “You made me feel like…” I took a slow, deep breath and exhaled
sharply.

“Made you feel like what?” He leaned against
his car and looked at me steadily.

“I don’t even know why my parents invited you
for dinner in the first place,” I said.

“Because your dad likes me,” Cade said, and
the playful tone in his voice only made me angrier.

“He wouldn’t like you very much if he knew
you’d had sex with me and then lost interest in me completely,” I told him tartly.
“He wouldn’t like you very much if he knew how much of an asshole you’re
being.”

“How am I being an asshole?” Cade scowled at
me.

“How?” I stepped away from him and moved
towards him again. I didn’t know if I wanted to punch him or kiss him. “How are
you being an asshole?” I looked back at the house, hoping that no one heard me
other than Cade.

“You slept with me. You-you made me think you
were interested in me, and then as soon as you got what you wanted…” I felt my
eyes stinging and swallowed against the tight feeling in my throat.

“You think that a one-night stand is all I
wanted from you?” His voice was low, cutting right through the blood roaring in
my ears. “Autumn.” He smiled slightly, shaking his head. “Why would any man on
the planet only want one night with you?”

“Titan…” I bit my bottom lip and shook my
head. “It’s not important. What is important is the fact that you suddenly
stopped paying attention to me and started avoiding me.”

“Autumn.” Cade put his hands on my shoulder
and I felt a rush of heat that had nothing at all to do with anger. He took a
quick breath, and I felt myself taking a breath right there with him. “I’m
still interested in you. I’m torturing myself over it.”

“You are?” He smiled wryly and nodded.

“The only reason I’ve been avoiding you and
not paying as much attention to you is because I promised your father that I
wouldn’t get involved with you.”

I stared at him. “But you got involved with me
already,” I pointed out. “It-it wasn’t until after we’d had sex that you started
to back off.”

“You’ve been avoiding me, too,” he countered.

“Because you were turning me down and pushing
me away,” I told him. “I thought… I figured… I might as well get on with my
life.”

Cade chuckled. “And making a dinner you knew
I’d hate was totally moving on, right?”

My cheeks burned with a blush. “That was
petty, but you…”

“I like you, Autumn,” he said, interrupting
me. “I like you a lot. I would love to spend time with you, but I can’t. I
promised your father that I wouldn’t get involved, and then when he noticed us
getting too close, he had a chat with me.”

I groaned, leaning against him. “Really?” I
felt rather than saw Cade nodding. “Of course he would.”

“I really do want to get to know you better, see
where this can go,” he told me. “But I can’t afford to lose this job. I have to
make sure your dad knows I’m not getting distracted, and I have to honor my
promise to him.”

I closed my eyes and breathed in the smell of
the farm, mingled with the scent of Cade’s sweat, his cologne, his deodorant.
It was so weirdly comforting, I didn’t want to pull back.

“So the only reason that you’re avoiding me is
because you don’t want to get fired?”

Cade laughed quietly. “I’d say that’s a pretty
good reason, wouldn’t you?” His hands felt strong on my shoulders, and he began
rubbing my back just a little bit. “After all, if I’m dating you and I have no
job, I doubt that would help my standing with your parents.”

I laughed in spite of myself. “That would be
funny, except for the fact that it would also suck,” I said. I pulled back from
his chest unwillingly, looking up at his face. “So you really like me?”

He looked into my eyes for a long moment and
then leaned in, closing the last distance between us. He brushed his lips
against mine, and for a second, I didn’t even know what to do; I was stunned at
the fact that he was kissing me at all.

Cade’s hands fell from my shoulders and slid
down to my waist, and I shifted my body up against his as he deepened the kiss.
I reached up and wrapped my arms around his shoulders, breathing in the smell
of him, sliding the tip of my tongue along his lips until he opened his mouth.

I had no idea how much time passed between us
as we began kissing more and more hungrily. My body heated up, tingling all
over, and I could even feel myself starting to get wet as I got more and more
turned on by the moment.

I wanted to pull Cade around the house, I
wanted to throw him onto my bed… Hell, I wanted to climb into either his car or
mine and just make love with him right then and there. If I had to, I might
have even taken the risk of having sex with him right there in the grass in
front of the house.

I pulled back, and Cade began kissing me again
before I could even say anything. The feeling of his lips against mine, the
taste of my cooking on his tongue, and the heat of his body against mine were
almost too much to resist, and I let the kiss go on for what felt like an hour,
as my hands wandered over him, and his hands trailed all over my body. I
shivered against him, almost too turned on to care that my parents could walk
out at any moment.

Clarity came to me, and I broke away from
Cade’s lips. “I-I have to go inside,” I told him. I didn’t want to; but I knew
that if I didn’t pull back and go back to my own place, if I didn’t let him
leave, I was going to end up doing something that I might regret.

“Just go home,” I told him, trembling from the
intensity of my arousal as I stepped away from him and back towards my parents’
house.

Dad was in the living room, watching TV with
Addie, and Tuck was nowhere to be seen. I felt hot all over, little cold
tingles threading through my nerves. “I think it’s time for my little girl to
have her bath,” I said, as naturally as I possibly could.

“Getting to be about that time, eh?”

I smiled at Dad and gathered up my daughter
from her playpen. I kissed the top of Addie’s head and snuggled her close.

“I think I’m going to make it a quiet night,”
I told my father. “Get a nice bath with my little girl, put on a good movie,
fall asleep on the couch snuggling her.”

“Sounds idyllic,” Dad said. I nodded and
carried Addie outside.

Cade had already left. I could still feel my
heart beating fast in my chest, and the heat in my veins. I walked around to
the guest house, murmuring nonsense to my daughter, and thought about the
incident with Cade. I couldn’t deny the fact that it was harder than I would
have ever thought to just get over him and move on with my life.

I started up a bath for my daughter and tried
to put the kiss out of my mind, but I couldn’t. “How’s my little girl tonight?”
Addie cooed at me. “Did you like your dinner?” I almost laughed to myself; I’d
been so irritated at how Cade had reacted to the sabotage meal I’d made for
him, but it was funny in retrospect.

I started bathing my daughter, trying to think
objectively about Cade. But it was impossible. I couldn’t be objective about
him.

You tried moving on from him, and that obviously didn’t work.
The kiss had been everything
—
everything
—
that our first kiss, that our first tryst
together, had been. I wanted him, but there was nothing either of us could
really do. He’d promised my father that he wouldn’t get involved with me.
You need to move on, even if you can’t.
I dried Addie off and opened up Netflix on my TV, to start looking for a
suitable movie for Addie and me to watch.

I had no idea what to do with myself. I wanted
Cade, but I didn’t want to make him lose his job with my Dad. I didn’t know if
I could make myself take the risk of getting involved with him, not with Addie
to think about.

I put on
Charlotte’s
Web
and tried to put the idea of having anything more to do with Cade out
of my mind. I knew it was impossible, but I would have to try, at least until
the end of the season, when Cade was no longer my father’s employee.

I snuggled close to Addie on the couch. I
kissed the top of her head, and tried to watch the TV. I was in an impossible
situation and wasn’t even entirely sure how I felt about the subject of that
impossible situation.
We just have to
wait. If I wait, then maybe I’ll figure out how I feel, and figure out how to
make something happen.

Chapter Twenty Six

Cade

I pulled into the parking lot outside of the county
fairgrounds, feeling jumpy and a little paranoid, but excited all at the same
time.
What you’re doing is crazy. But
what else can you do?

After Autumn and I had kissed, I hadn’t been
able to get her off my mind at all, no matter how much I tried. I’d managed to
find her alone one afternoon, and we’d agreed to see each other
—
secretly. I hated that I was lying to Bob
Nelson, but the damage had already been done.

I locked up my car and started looking around.
Autumn had agreed to meet me at the entrance of the fairgrounds, with Addie in
tow. She had told her parents that she was going to take her daughter
—
freshly a year old
—
to the fair, but not that she was going with
me.

It wasn’t a work day, so I wasn’t breaking any
rules or doing anything during time that belonged to my boss. I tried to tell
myself that I was fine, that what I was doing wasn’t all that wrong. I still
couldn’t help feeling a little guilty about the promise I’d made, that I had
already broken.

I shook off the feeling of guilt and looked
around. I spotted her at the entrance, holding Addie, looking around for me,
and I smiled to myself. She looked absolutely beautiful: her hair pulled back,
in a pair of jeans that fit her like a glove, and a shirt that clung to her
curves. I hurried to get to her, looking around a bit to make sure I didn’t see
anyone who might rat on me to Bob.

“Hey,” Autumn said, smiling at me as soon as I
came up. “Feel like your heart is going a hundred miles a minute?”

“Definitely,” I said. I looked at Addie. “Hey,
little bit of nothing. How are you?” She gurgled blissfully.

“Good!” I glanced at Autumn.

“She’s up to four words,” she told me proudly.
“She can say ‘Ma,’ ‘Dad,’ ‘Good,’ and ‘Tuck.’”

“Clever little girl,” I said, reaching out to
give Addie’s hair a quick ruffle. “Just like her mama.”

“So, you want to check out the fair?” I nodded
and leaned in to give Autumn a quick kiss on the cheek. I took her free hand,
and we walked towards the gate, where the box office sat.

“Two adults, one baby,” I told the teenaged
girl behind the glass.

“Babies are free,” the girl told me. “Can I
see her hand?” Autumn extended Addie’s hand through the little gap in the
window, and the girl pressed a butterfly stamp on the one-year-old’s hand.
“Twenty-five for the two adults,” the girl added.

I took cash out of my wallet and the girl
ripped off two wristbands from a sheet, handing them over to me before counting
out the money. She gave me a five in change, and I helped Autumn with her wristband.