Cade
Cade sat on the couch looking at Bobbie. She had that crease she got between her eyebrows when she was worried and today it was deep. “Cade, why haven’t they called?”
“They will. They’ll call.”
“How do you know? What if something went wrong? What if they’re not ever going to contact us again? We have no way of contacting them…”
He got up and went over to where she was sitting in the chair. He knelt down next to her and reached for her hand. She gave it to him, albeit reluctantly. “We have to stay calm. Things will work out, I promise.”
“You can’t make promises like that, you don’t know.”
“I know because I’ll make sure it works out. This never would have happened if I’d known about him in the first place.”
Bobbie pulled her hand away from his and nearly knocked him on his ass as she stood up from the chair. “You know why I didn’t tell you.”
Cade stood up. Bobbie was only about an inch shorter than him. It was strange to him, still, to practically look any woman in the eye. “I know why you said you didn’t tell me. You blamed it on me. You didn’t want to ruin my life…interrupt it. But you should have given that option to me. It wasn’t your decision to make all on your own.”
“You were never here, Cade. You were busy starting up your business, running all over the country, and sleeping with a different woman every night!”
“Now you’re exaggerating. Yes, I was out of town a lot, but I was in town enough for you to tell me about this. And damnit, Bobbie! I wasn’t sleeping with a different woman every night back then. I wanted one woman and you knew that. You’re the one that said we couldn’t be together. You’re the one that pushed me away and then disappeared for a damned year.”
“I was busy growing our baby in my belly during that time. I’m sorry I didn’t keep in touch.” She spat at him.
Cade looked into her angry face, her dark blue eyes that held so much animosity toward him and he wondered how they had gotten here.
They used to be best friends. They hung out together, fishing and hunting. Bobbie was like one of the guys. Then one drunken night when they’d both had way too much whiskey, Cade realized she wasn’t one of the boys after all. Even drunk he remembered that night vividly…even fondly. Afterward, he actually thought that maybe at the ripe old age of thirty-one, he might be ready to settle down. But Bobbie had different ideas.
She started avoiding him. He would go up to their place and try to see her and she’d have her grumpy old father or one of her sisters come out and run him off. He tried for a lot longer than he’d ever tried with any other woman, but she was right about his business. He was just getting Travers Security up and running and he couldn’t sit around Blossom Hill while he was doing that. He was gone a lot and one time, a couple of months after that night, he came home to find out that Bobbie had left. Her family was tight-lipped about exactly where she’d gone. She was supposedly visiting some relatives that no one had ever heard of down in Louisiana. The Treagers didn’t have phones or computers so he had absolutely no way of getting a hold of her. By the time she came back to town almost a year later, he was completely over her and thankful that he’d dodged that bullet.
He stayed busy with his business and the ranch…and he did see a lot of other women when he was out of town. Occasionally, he’d run into her and they’d say an awkward hello, but that was it—or so he’d thought. One night a few years ago, he’d run into her at Benny’s. She’d had way too much to drink and he came up to her just as she was about to get into her daddy’s old truck and drive herself home.
“You can’t drive like that, Bobbie,” he’d told her, trying to take the keys clutched in her hand.
“What do you care?”
Cade stepped in front of the door of the pickup so she couldn’t open it.
“I care. I care about you and whoever else you might hurt driving in this condition. You can’t do it. Give me the keys.”
“Get out of my way, Cade. You’ve done enough damage to my life to last a lifetime.”
“What does that mean? What ‘damage’ have I done to you?”
“Nevermind,” she muttered. She looked like she had tears in her eyes. Cade was confused. It had been over three years since that one night they’d spent together. What was she still angry with him about? “Just get out of my way.”
“No. Give me the keys. I’ll drive you home.”
“No! I don’t want you to drive me home. I don’t want anything from you. You’ve done enough!”
“You keep saying that. What does that mean? What have I done, Bobbie?” That was when she collapsed into tears. She dropped the keys into the dirt and Cade let them fall. He caught her instead and stood there in the parking lot with her clinging to him and sobbing her heart out. She was talking every so often, but her words were incoherent. Cade let her cry it out and when she finally seemed to be catching her breath he held her back slightly and said, “Bobbie, please tell me what’s going on. You’re scaring me.”
She laughed, harshly. “Oh, well, forgive me. Forgive me for scaring you. I imagine you must be so much more scared than a young woman would be pregnant and all alone. Imagine feeling like your insides are being ripped open and having no one there to hold your hand. Just imagine going through all of that and still being alone when they ripped the child you’d just given life to out of your arms and took him away.” She was sobbing again but this time Cade wasn’t touching her. He had let go of her and was staring at her like she’d lost her mind. A child? She was pregnant? When? And why was she mad at him about it? He knew that was a stupid question. He knew exactly why she’d be mad at him about it, but at that moment his mind just wasn’t processing things too well.
“You had a baby?”
“Yeah,” she said, wiping the snot and tears off her face with the sleeve of her shirt. “I had a baby. It was a boy and he had white blonde hair and big blue eyes. He weighed almost ten pounds. The little booger almost killed me…but I guess looking at the two of us, what else was I going to expect?”
“You’re saying he’s my baby?”
She snorted. “I’m saying you and I made him. But no, Cade, he’s not yours.” She started to sob again. “He’s not mine, either. He’s not ours. They took him. He’s gone and we’ll never see him again.”
“Again?” Cade was suddenly angry. Did he want to be a father? Not particularly. But did he want a child of his out there somewhere without a father? No way. How could she not tell him? “I never saw him to begin with because apparently this was your secret. You at least got to see him once. What about me, Bobbie? Did you think I might like to see my own child? Did it cross your mind that I might like to have a say in what happened here?”
“No. I didn’t think you would want any part of it, Cade. So I took care of it myself. Now get out of my way. I want to go home.”
“No fucking way do you get to drop this bomb and walk away. Where is he, Bobbie? Where is my son?”
“I told you, he’s not your son. I gave him up. I gave him to some lawyer and he took him to a new family. He’s gone, Cade. We’ll never see him again.”
Cade and Bobbie had spent that entire night arguing, crying, and arguing some more. The very next day Cade started looking for his son. At first, Bobbie didn’t want anything to do with helping him and then once she came around, Cade was so angry with her that he didn’t want her help. It took them almost a year to find any middle ground. By that time, Cade had been able to discover that Bobbie gave birth to their child at some kind of halfway house in Mississippi. The “adoption” had supposedly been handled by a lawyer but as it turned out, the woman that ran the halfway house had been arrested a year later on charges of kidnapping and human trafficking. She wasn’t adopting out the children; she was selling them to the highest bidder.
Now for two years Cade had searched for his son with every spare moment he had. Bobbie had done what she could as well, coming to Cade’s ranch several times a week to make phone calls and do internet searches. The police in Mississippi hadn’t been able to get any specifics out of the woman and even after she was locked up and Cade and Bobbie went to see her, she wouldn’t tell them anything. Their big break came just about six months before when Cade got a call from an attorney in California who said he had some information for him. Cade flew out to meet him and as it turned out, the attorney had been defending a man accused of being part of a human trafficking organization and that man had admitted to working with the halfway house in Mississippi. The man wanted to “confess” to the parents of the children he sold. Unfortunately, even though he was unburdening his guilty soul, it wasn’t a lot of help to any of the parents since the man had no idea exactly where the children were. He did have records in the basement of an old home that he gave the Cade access to and Cade had them all shipped back to his home. He and Bobbie spent hours sifting through them. They’d actually been instrumental in reuniting one young couple with their baby that had been taken two years before. But for weeks, they found nothing on theirs…until just about a month ago. Bobbie had pulled out the hundredth file she looked at and there on the front of the file was a photograph of a baby. He had white blonde hair and cornflower blue eyes and it said he was three weeks old and 11 pounds. He was also 23 inches long. Bobbie said she knew as soon as she saw him it was their baby. Cade couldn’t help but think that she was right.
Cade started the search for him using the information they had in that file. The “parents” lived in Mississippi at the time, but soon after the “adoption” they’d moved to a small town in Tennessee. Cade tracked them there only to find out that they’d moved again to Montana. Once he’d gotten to Montana, he found out they were gone again, this time with no forwarding address. He’d spent the time his team was in Lake Tahoe searching and interviewing people who might have known them and he’d finally found the sister of the “father” of the child. She lived in Wyoming and Cade had only spoken with her on the phone. She had acted stunned when he told her what happened and she’d promised him that she’d get in touch with her brother and get right back to him. That was over a week ago and Cade hadn’t been able to reach her since. He had finally gotten the authorities in Wyoming involved and now he and Bobbie were waiting for their call. She was pacing and Cade was sitting in the chair with his face in his hands when they finally did.
“This is Cade Travers.”
“Mr. Travers, my name is Milton Franks. I’m the attorney for Mr. and Mrs. Gleason, the couple who adopted your child.”
“They didn’t adopt our child. They bought him. They stole him.”
“That’s up for debate I suppose. The Gleasons have filed a restraining order against you and they’d like you to cease trying to contact them.”
“They have my child!”
“They don’t believe they do, Sir, and if you believe that’s so, then I suggest you retain your own counsel and go about this the legal way. Otherwise, you will be in violation of the restraining order.”
“You son of a bitch!”
“Goodbye, Mr. Travers.” The line went dead. Cade looked at Bobbie. She was staring at him with wide, blue eyes.
“What? What did he say?”
Cade didn’t answer her. He dropped the phone and headed into his bedroom. She followed him and watched him throw things into his green army duffel bag. “Where are you going?”
“Wyoming.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No. You’re going to get an attorney. Tell them everything. I don’t care what it costs, I’ll pay for it.”
“And what will you be doing out there in the meantime?”
He zipped up the bag and put it over his shoulder. “Getting arrested most likely.” He handed her his American Express card and said, “Save some money for bail.”