Before That Night: Unfinished Love Series: Caine & Addison, Book 1 (12 page)

Another long pause. Then a slow: “I promise.”

He’d heard the struggle in her voice as clearly as he’d heard the acceptance. “One day,” he rumbled quietly. “One day, you’re going to trust me enough with your secrets…when you finally figure out that I’m not going anywhere, and that I can be every bit as patient and stubborn as you are.”

This time, there was no pause when she replied to his affectionate, albeit slightly ornery vow. “Tonight.”

He froze, and held his tongue so she could finish saying what he hoped she was saying.

“I’ll tell you everything tonight, Caine.”

“I’m holding you to that.” He glanced at the caller ID photo of her on his screen. “Dammit, I hate that I can’t kiss you right now, sweetheart.”

“Me too,” she breathed raggedly.

For as much as her lies drove him crazy, her truths…they could steal the floor out from under him.

He took in a lungful of oxygen to stop himself from putting an APB out on her butt right that instant. “I’ll see you at four-thirty. You can tell me then whatever that busy brain of yours is planning on how to deal with David. And we’ll save your secrets for
after
my shift. Something tells me I’m going to need to not be in uniform when you do.”

She neither confirmed nor denied his educated guess.

But she did ask him to stay on the phone for a bit longer while she waited for the kids to finish school.

By the time he hung up the phone, he knew a little more about the Addison that no one else knew, and he felt like he was holding a small gift in the palm of his hand—something that she didn’t give to very many people.

Just a tiny bit of her trust.

And it humbled him.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

SEVERAL HOURS LATER
,
even though he was the one with the gun and badge, Caine felt utterly defenseless as he dropped one knee down to the ground inside of Joe’s Diner.

As sweet little Kylie hugged the heck out of him.

“Thank you for saving Addison, Caine,” she said gravely, her voice far too old for her young age. “We’ve been hearing Shirley and Joe talkin’ ‘bout what happened.”

The tight, shaky teenage hand gripping his arm in a silent echo of thanks was another arrow to his chest that reminded him just how much he cared about these two kids, and their big sister. “I just gave Addison a little assist, pumpkin. That sister of yours was getting ready to whup that creep’s a—err,
butt
.”

Both Kylie and Tanner’s twin expressions of grim wariness and fierce awareness of the situation—so much like the one their sister had worn last night after David ran off—burrowed another hole into his heart.

God, these kids were incredible. Just like their sister.

After ruffling Kylie’s hair and double-thumping Tanner’s back once more, Caine headed on back to the small lot behind the diner where he knew Addison parked that historic parade float she called a van.

He checked out all the possible points of entrance and weaknesses in the area, and though she’d probably beat him with a bat if she ever found out, he planted one of Max’s top-of-the-line tracking devices under the back bumper of her van. He couldn’t possibly get anything like this officially approved by his captain for a stalking case, but even if he could, he’d still pick a Spencer security gadget over anything department issued. There was a reason why Max and Gabe would undoubtedly become a huge success if they ever went through with the security business they wanted to start up.

With that taken care of, he went back in the diner to go kiss the hell out of Addison before he headed out on patrol.

Truth be told, he was a bit surprised that it was nearly eleven at night when he got the call from dispatch he’d both been expecting, and dreading.

An indignant and belligerent David was back at the diner demanding to see Addison. According to the intel they were getting, he wasn’t armed, but he was waving around the restraining order paperwork in utter disbelief.

Hell and damnation, the crazy ones always made him ten times more wary. Their instability was without a doubt, the most dangerous weapon in their possession.

Joe, Shirley, two cooks, and apparently three other kitchen workers—double their normal staffing numbers—had all been there to keep David from being able to see, let alone speak to Addison.

By the time Caine got on site, David was long gone. He took off before the officers could get there to arrest him.

And so had Addison.

After making sure Marco was getting the statements they needed to keep building a rock solid case against the ticking time bomb, Caine went back to his car to turn on his tracking device.

Within minutes, he tracked her van to Lakeview Ridge, but not anywhere near her Aunt Bernadette’s address. He found the van parked in one of the obscured temporary loading zone stalls at the south end of the country club grounds, just behind the golf clubhouse.

Caine approached the van cautiously, and shined his flashlight into the window, to reveal and empty driver’s seat.

Maybe she had the same worries you did about the van.
The idea of Addison ditching the very conspicuous van made him nearly break out into a cold sweat. He had no way of tracking her if that was the case.

Just then, the thick curtain separating the front seats from the rest of the van flickered with movement.

Caine circled the van and hovered his trigger hand over his sidearm. “Addison? It’s Caine. Come on out, honey.”

Silence.

A horrifying, sickening mental image hit him all at once. What if David already found her. What it he had her in there. What if she was hurt…or worse.

He rapped his flashlight on the side door. “Addison, sweetheart. I need to know you’re safe in there. Because I’m imagining the worst right now. If you don’t open the door in the next five seconds, I’m breaking in.”

Mentally, he started the countdown while he ran through all the scenarios of what else might be going on.

God, what if the van was wired for explosives. The guy was crazy, but was he that crazy?

At the four-second mark, the door opened slowly.

Caine froze in shock over what he saw.

“Tanner? Kylie? What’s going on?”

The kids were sitting huddled in the middle of an air mattress laying atop the flattened rows of seats in the rear of the van.

He peered inside to make sure David wasn’t in there with them.

“Are you kids okay?”

Tanner stared at him in silence, bravery painted all over his young face, even as his eyes looked seconds from filling with tears.

“Addison went to the bathroom,” said Kylie quietly, eyes fixed on his hand as he finally moved it away from his sidearm. “This is the one we go to if the cleaners are still in the diner when one of us has to go real bad.”

Caine felt a pain hit him square in the solar plexus over that info.

...Which quickly shot up to his heart when he heard the soft gasp from behind him. Pivoting, he made sure to lower his flashlight so as not to blind her.

“Caine.”

He studied Addison’s scared, exhausted features and tempered the cocktail of overwrought emotions coursing through his veins as best he could. Even as every protective, possessive cell in his body was silently
raging
against whoever or whatever was responsible for every painfully beautiful decorative element he’d surveyed inside the van...each detail clearly Addison’s way of making her two siblings as loving a home as she could manage.

Caine pinned her to the spot with a deadly serious look. “We’re not waiting until my shift is over anymore. Tell me everything, Addison. Right now.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

ADDISON NODDED
, but before she got right to the spilling-her-guts part, she motioned the kids back in bed. “We need to drive somewhere else first. Can’t park anywhere on this property after eleven unless you’re registered as an overnight guest. The security here is really tight.”

Caine frowned at her. “What do you mean? Then how do you and the kids normally sleep here?”

“We don’t. I park in the lot behind Joe’s diner every night. The only times I come here normally is from eight to twelve every morning during the weekdays when I go to my part time day job as a senior citizen companion for Bernadette Blumenthal, the eighty-year old grandmother of seven who everyone from her doctors to her dog groomer call Aunt Bernadette, at her insistence.”

She shut the van doors and then did a slow double take then. “Wait a minute, come to think of it, how
did
you find us here?” They were nowhere near the residential buildings on site.

For the first time that night, Caine lost a little bit of the ultra-intense, always-on-the-job Swat Team Ken Doll veneer.

…And became the even-more-intense, effing-screw-the-job Caveman Caine in the blink of an eye.

“I put one of Max’s security devices on your van earlier today.”

“You
lo-jacked
me?”

Both his hands flattened against the back of the van, on either side of her face. “Yep.” That single gruff, matter-of-fact word was charged with a thousand kilowatts of undiluted alpha male energy.

Why wasn’t she more upset about this?

Oh right, because he was doing that orbiting her to near-orgasm with just his eyes thing. Lord have mercy. That blistering hot look was
exponentially
more effective when he was in uniform.

His gaze locked on her eyes as he slowly slid two calloused fingers down the side of her neck until it rested gently on the thrumming pulse point near her throat. “Then where, pray tell,” he growled, in a voice as rough and shimmery as coarse silk, “did you park last night after I followed you here?”

Rather than answer, she closed her hand around his wrist. “That won’t work on me. You won’t be able to gauge if I’m lying by checking my heartrate.”

One brow raised up slightly. “No?”

She shook her head. “No. Because around you, my heartrate basically goes haywire anyway.”

His eyelids slammed shut as if he were praying for patience. When they opened again a few long moments later, to reveal a burning hunger that scorched her to the core, sure enough, her heart began beating triple time in her chest. “See?” she said weakly.

He took in a deep, frayed breath, then slid his hand into her hair to lightly cup the back of her head. “Answer my question, Addison.”

Wow, good move. Way more proactive than the pulse point thing. Because holy hell, there was no way in the world she was able lie to him now.

“I drove around here for about an hour just in case David had followed me, and then I exited out of the east entrance that goes right to the freeway. I made sure no one was behind me for several miles before I got off the freeway and went over to the most secure twenty-four hour parking garage I could find.”

He stared at her long and hard before he moved to open the van door back up again. “Pack everything up. And I mean everything. I’ll go talk to security to give us some extra time.”

Addison felt her throat start to close up in fear. Even more fear than she’d felt last night. “Y-you’re taking the kids from me?”

It was every nightmare she’d had for the past twenty-two months juggernauted into one wrecking ball shattering her heart into a thousand jagged pieces.

Her stomach dropped to the ground and her legs all but gave out from under her.

His gaze snapped back to hers in shock and gripped her arm to steady her when her stance faltered. “What?
No.
Of course not. You three are coming to my place as soon as my shift is done in a half hour. You’re never
ever
sleeping in this thing again,” he growled the latter sentence like a violent vow. “Get everything into my car. Don’t leave anything behind; we’re going to leave the van in the underground parking lot at the station.”

Though his expression remained unreadable, his voice gentled as he cupped Addison’s face. “I just need to get some paperwork in so I’m the primary on your case, then we can finish talking at my apartment after my shift.” His gaze was firm, resolute. Filled with a thousand reasons to trust him. “I won’t let anything bad happen to you and the kids. I promise you that. You believe me, right?”

She did.

…Despite what history had taught her over the years on this very subject.

“Kids, let’s get everything packed up,” she said by way of answer, which finally prompted Kylie and Tanner to heed Caine’s orders. She knew them, they would’ve darn well sat there like stubborn lumps on a log otherwise.

And that fact was the reason why her unprecedented trust in Caine came with something just as surprising.

Hope.

She had hope. In Caine. In the universe not being a complete asshole for a change.

Because she didn’t want Kylie and Tanner to have to live in a reality where the one and
only
person they felt they could trust was her.