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“I’m supposed to watch you, so I can tell Spencer how you’re settling in.”
“You mean spy on me. I figured.”
“I had to do it.” She pushed her chair away from Rory’s. “I had to go through your bags. I didn’t have a choice.”
“You’d get another black mark.”
Cadence’s head was lowered, and she spoke to her lap. “I should tell them Zack stayed here, that you go running everywhere at night. I don’t want to do it.” She looked up. “I won’t tell if you don’t say anything about the panic attack, about me not wanting to bond, about me telling you the truth now.” There was an edge of fear in her voice again. “You could do it and it would maybe clear your mark but—”
Rory cut her off. “We won’t do that. We’ll be our own little family and take care of each other.”
“I’ve never really had a family. My parents didn’t care about me, gave me money to leave them alone. I don’t know why you’d want to be my family?”
“Because our dad didn’t care about us either,” Zeke said. Nothing further from the truth. They were quiet while Cadence digested that.
“You still make me nervous,” she said eventually, her voice steadier, almost back to her prickly cactus self.
He grinned at her tear-streaked, flushed face. “I’ll try not to make any sudden moves.”
/> At least none that she needed to worry about.
Chapter Eight
The sweet smell of hickory wood fire and barbecue made Rory’s stomach growl as they arrived at the playing field for the social, but the press of people, the capering of kids shouting and chasing each other around, made Cadence hunch in on herself.
Zeke had promised they wouldn’t leave her alone at the party. She couldn’t fault him for it. He was the only one of the Sherwoods to regularly take a long-term deep-cover role. Everyone else for the most part played themselves with necessary modifications for safety.
In the last few years he’d been a beard-wearing art-dealer, graying at the temples, arrogant and aloof, and a rare-wine broker, mysterious, impatient and sporting a British accent. No doubt once they’d finished here he’d go back to playing a character part with disguises and tics that marked him out as different to the real Zeke.
One of the reasons he’d been so keen to do this job was that despite the operational cover story, Zack Woods was Zeke Sherwood. There were no put-on attitudes or costumes, there was minimal acting required. He got to play a slightly toned-down version of himself.
And the real Zeke Sherwood was a good man with a generous heart.
As they stopped at the edge of the gathering to let Cadence gather her courage, Rory knocked into him, letting her shoulder brush his arm, her hip briefly graze his thigh. It was a shorthand way of expressing her joy at having him close, her appreciate for his consideration He put his hand to the back of her neck and gave her a playful shove, but since he didn’t let go she stumbled and bounced against him.
“Careful,” he said, grinning down at her.
“Quit it,” she groused, foxing annoyance, and squirming out of his grip. She needed to get him alone to tell him she was going to go hit up HQ like she’d planned. It would be safer for only one of them to go missing.
“Are you girls going to dance with me tonight?” he asked, tipping his chin towards the band setting up on a small stage.
“No chance,” Rory said. “You’ve got two left feet.” No chance because she might forget to play her more or less real-life part of fractious little sister if she let go on a dance floor with him. There were too many ways the flirty rhythm of their bar-top dancing history could leak out and wreck their cover.
“Cadence, don’t hang me out for bonding meat,” he said with a groan.
“I have a headache,” she responded, without half a glance his way.
“Crash and burn,” Rory said, laughing. She made a sizzling sound and waved a hand about. “Fragile male ego all over the road.” That got Cadence to smile at least.
“Fragile male ego walking,” Zeke said, flatly, as he strode past them towards the food, and that made Cadence laugh.
The food, oh the food. Macy knew food. People likely wanted to stay at Abundance just for the barbecue socials. Now that Rory wasn’t tense from standing in her corner and eating alone, she sank into the food. She ate ribs and Zeke had steak, Cadence had a burger and it was all lip-smacking delicious.
They ate at a table set with a red and white checkered cloth under a string of winking fairy lights while the band played country music, and in the mild night air, with a full belly and Zeke chowing down not arm’s length away, Abundance was a good time and she was content.
She’d been on worse assignments where her role was to be ultra-glamorous, where she barely ate a thing, where her function was to make entitled rich men feel more important and suffer the contempt of their anxious trophy wives. Where she was more of a pretty decoration with intent to deceive than a secret weapon set to discover the truth.
Tonight’s truth was no challenge so far. Cadence was indeed a spy, but a reluctant one, Macy could make a fortune if she bottled her barbecue sauce back in the real world and Zeke was bond bait in three, two, one.
