The Cain Casey Series

taking the time to think just about me and saying a prayer that I’ll be safe and happy. When I was seven and I cried for you, it’s the one thing that got me to stop crying and made the pain go away. Her telling me that you were thinking about me made me believe it. Does that sound like she’s been bad-mouthing you all this time?” His voice sounded as cold as the weather they had flown into.

“You love Cain a lot, don’t you?”

“Do you make a habit of asking unnecessary questions? You have to know the answer without me saying anything, right? Maybe it’s all this open space out here. It makes you fish for something to talk about so you can forget you’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“You don’t act like a child, and you sure don’t sound like one.” You let too much time pass, Emma. He’s lost to you forever. And to think Cain did it by talking you up. Emma was sure when Hayden had figured out she was the only topic his beloved Cain ever lied to him about, she looked that much worse. She could just imagine how much discomfort and anger Cain had buried to say anything nice about her.

“Mom says the uneducated grow up to be prey. If you want to learn to be a hunter, then you have to be smarter, quicker, and stronger than everybody else.”

“Is that what Cain is to you, a hunter?”

“Cain is a god to me.”

“And what are Hayden’s thoughts? All I’ve heard from you is what Cain thinks.”

“Why reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to. There’s plenty we don’t agree on, and we know what those things are. What I talk to my mother about is no one else’s business. I’m not a puppet, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Emma squeezed his knee again and smiled. “I do worry about you, Hayden. I don’t want Cain to drag you into something you might think you have no choice in.”

“Ah, it was the family business that drove you out here to this boring town. Save your worry and your pity for the times you need to pacify yourself for abandoning us. You were so worried it took you four years to check on me? I’m overwhelmed, and I shudder to think if you hadn’t cared for me. I’d have never seen you again.”

Emma was shocked, not only by his command of the English language, which was astounding, but by his cool, detached delivery. Any trace of the sweet boy who had picked flowers for her was gone, and she was left only with the memory of him. She would be fortunate if he didn’t hate her forever, because he would never forgive her.

“Hayden, relax and look at the lake.” Mook spoke up from the front seat of the Tahoe he’d rented at the airport. He knew the kid could slice and dice a person without ever laying a hand on them. Looks weren’t the only thing he’d inherited from the Casey clan. As his guardian, though, Mook took it upon himself to guide Hayden when he veered toward unacceptable or rude behavior.

Emma removed her hand and prayed the tension in Hayden would relax a bit before they got to the house. She didn’t want to add to the list of wrongs her mother kept well tallied in her head. From the time she had come home, she had tried to fit into the role her mother expected as a way of atonement, but she was finding the righteous road wasn’t so easy to walk. With the baggage she’d brought home, every time she stumbled, she dug deeper to find the woman her mother wanted.

Carol Verde wasn’t the most forgiving of women, so Emma found herself stumbling a lot. She was supposed to have had the life Carol hadn’t been able to achieve. Instead she had run off, found Cain, and brought Hayden into the world. That was not the life Carol had missed out on, and she found it abhorrent that her daughter had chosen such a path.

Carol hadn’t been thrilled to open her home to the boy, no matter what it would accomplish, and Emma’s father had just shaken his head at what she had arranged to do. Her parents had only met Cain once, but Ross respected Cain for never abandoning Hayden. Whatever happened or didn’t happen in the coming week would occur without his help.

Emma rode the rest of the way in silence, looking out her side of the car and remembering happier times when she didn’t know all she had learned about Cain. She recalled the terrified faces of those escorted to the office of the pub when she worked there. She didn’t know who the men were or what their fear stemmed from, but after those meetings they disappeared. For so long her love had shielded her from realizing how Cain made a living, but the day came when it wasn’t enough to make her stay.

Once she had left, though, when her longing for Cain almost overwhelmed her, she liked to relive those first years.

Fourteen Years Earlier at Emma’s Apartment

“Thank you for dinner tonight.” Emma stood in front of her apartment door and gazed up at Cain, hoping to get her to bend and kiss her before they parted.

“You’re welcome. Maybe we can do it again tomorrow night?”

She watched as Cain put her hand on the wall and leaned in closer. “I’ve seen you with about ten different women in Erin Go Braugh since I started working there. What makes me so special?”

“I like talking to you, Emma. Trust me. If I just wanted sex, I would’ve turned on the charm by now and we’d be done.” Cain moved her other hand to the other side of Emma’s head, effectively trapping her in a human cage.

The deep voice was getting closer, and Emma battled herself not to lift her own hands and run them through the thick black hair. “That confident in yourself, huh?”

“Most of the time I go with what I know. That way I’m seldom disappointed, so yeah, I’m that confident. Let’s say seven tomorrow night?”

“I’ll be ready. And thanks for telling me you like spending time with me. That means a lot.”

Cain leaned down and kissed her softly. “You’re welcome again. Thanks for wanting to talk to me. That means a lot to me.”

Emma remembered their courtship as a slow process that ended with her falling so in love with Cain that she thought the world would end if they ever parted. She’d never wanted for anything, especially Cain’s time and