Carolina Moon

longer, but I’m both.” He shouldered his rod and met J.R.’s eyes. “Plan to keep being both. If it’s all the same to you we’ll take my car. Make better time.”
    It was a struggle, but J.R. bit back words he knew would hang ugly between them. He managed a thin, humorless smile. “We’ll make better yet if you put on the siren and drive like a man instead of an old lady.”
    Relief eased some of the weight from Carl D.’s heart. “I might could do that, part of the way.”
    Cade was working hard to control his own temper, to watch his own words. Every time he thought about what a foolish, reckless risk his sister and Tory had taken the evening before, fury stormed inside him.
    Lectures, threats, recriminations would have released some of his tension, and would have gotten him nowhere. He wasn’t a man who indulged himself in idle directions. He knew exactly where he wanted to go, and simply had to choose the best route for getting there.
    Speed wasn’t a priority, so he bided his time.
    He hadn’t indulged in a lazy Sunday morning for quite a while. The best way to begin one, in his opinion, was to keep Tory in bed as long as possible. That was a simple matter of pinning her down and nibbling however, wherever he liked until she got into the spirit of the thing. And had the added benefit of smoothing out some of his own raw edges.
    He fixed breakfast because he was hungry and he’d come to the conclusion Tory considered the morning meal well met if she had a second cup of coffee. He steered conversation into casual lines. Books, movies, art. They were fortunate to share tastes. It wasn’t something Cade deemed essential, but rather a nice, comfortable bonus.
    He imagined she didn’t think he noticed how often her eyes skimmed over to a window, and searched.
    There was nothing he didn’t notice. The nervous hands she tried to keep busy, the way she would stop, go still, as if straining to hear some change in the rhythm of sound outside. The way she jumped when he let the screen door bang when he came out to join her as she tended her flowers.
    How many times in his life had he come across his mother working in her garden? he wondered. He was just as unable to judge the direction of her thoughts as she weeded and plucked.
    How tidy, he mused, how precise both women were about the chore. Kneeling, wearing hat and gloves as they worked the bed, filling a basket with ruthlessly pulled weeds and spent blossoms.
    And how furious both would be if he voiced the comparison.
    Throughout the morning, Tory’s voice, her face, stayed utterly calm. And that alone infuriated him. She wouldn’t share her nerves with him. Still kept part of herself closed off and separate.
    His mother, he thought again, as he loitered on the porch and studied Tory’s bent head, had kept part of herself closed off and separate. He could do nothing, had never been able to do anything, to reach his mother.
    He would damn well reach Tory.
    “Come on, take a ride with me.”
    “A ride?”
    He pulled her to her feet. “I’ve got some things I need to see to. Come along with me.”
    Her first reaction was quiet relief. She would be alone. She could lie down, shut her eyes, and try to sort through the turmoil swirling inside her head. A few hours of solitude to shore up the wall and chase away the shakes.
    “I have a dozen things to do, too. You just go ahead.”
    “It’s Sunday.”
    “I’m aware of the day of the week. And tomorrow, oddly enough, is Monday. I’m expecting some new shipments, including one from Lavelle Cotton. I have paperwork—”
    “Which can wait till Monday.” He stripped off her garden gloves as he spoke. “There’s something I want to show you.”
    “Cade, I’m not fit to go anywhere. I don’t have my purse.”
    “You won’t need it,” he said, as he pulled her to the car.
    “That’s a statement only a man could make.” She snarled as he all but dumped her in the car. “Well, let me go brush my hair, at least.”
    He plucked off her hat, tossed it in the backseat. “It looks fine.” He slid behind the wheel before she could make another excuse. “Gets a little windblown, it’ll just be sexier.”
    He picked up his sunglasses from the dash, put them on, then shoved the car in reverse. “And yeah, that’s another statement only a man could make.” He turned onto the road, punched the gas. “You look pretty when you’re annoyed.”
    “Then I must be gorgeous right now.”
    “That