Chapter 12: Finding Forever: Chapter 11

Fern’s gaze travelled to Lennox, wondering if she would find the answer to Cade’s isolation in this unknown entity. He was big, had a couple of inches in height on both Cade and Gideon. She couldn’t quite tell because of the bushy black beard, but he seemed to have the same Hawthorne hotness as the rest of them. He was wearing dark blue jeans, a blue T-shirt that revealed his heavily muscled arms, and thick-soled worker boots. He looked like someone who’d just stepped off a construction site and Fern wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he was doing manual labor somewhere.

Lennox lifted his head and made abrupt, unnerving eye contact with her. His brows lowered, and his head tilted as if he wasn’t sure what to make of her, but he released her gaze as abruptly as he’d snagged it and his eyes drifted over to Beth. Something painful convulsed in his face, and he removed himself from the tight huddle with his brothers and sister, to step toward Fern and Beth.

“Elizabeth Anne Finch!” he boomed, making both women jump.

“Nox,” Gideon began a little uneasily. But Lennox ignored him and swooped toward the two women standing on the outskirts of all that familial affection. He wrapped his big, brawny arms around the tiny Beth and lifted her off her feet. Beth gave a muffled squeak against his chest, which morphed into a giggle.

“Fuck,” Gideon muttered in exasperation, stepping toward them to extricate his wife from the bear hug. “Back off, you numpty, you’re smothering her.”

“Gideon, it’s okay,” Beth assured him with a laugh, patting her hair back in place.

“You and me, we’ve got some talking to do, lass,” Nox told her, and she smiled and nodded.

“Later, okay? I’m just really happy you came today. Your brothers and sister have missed you.”

Something unspoken passed between them, leaving Fern mystified, but the full force of Nox’s gaze swung back to Fern a moment later.

His eyes narrowed as they swept over her face and body.

“You’re the Lambert girl?”

Fern gulped and nodded wordlessly.

“Hawthorne,” Cade said, the first time he’d spoken in nearly five minutes and all eyes immediately went to him.

“What?” Lennox asked.

“She’s a Hawthorne now.”

“Saying a thing doesn’t automatically make it so,” the other man corrected mildly and Fern found herself nodding in agreement—that’s exactly what she’d been thinking this entire morning so far—until Cade’s censorious gaze latched onto her.

“For all intents and purposes, Fern is a Hawthorne for the next three years, and she’ll be treated accordingly.”

Lennox’s eyebrows elevated nearly to his hairline and he lifted his hands, palms up, in surrender.

“If you say s⁠—”

“I do,” Cade’s unequivocal assertion cut his brother off.

Lennox stared at Cade’s face for a long moment, something flashing between the two men that snagged Fern’s breath and created a strange tension within the entire group.

That tension was broken when Lennox lowered his still upraised hands and dipped his chin in brief acknowledgment.

“Then so it shall be. Welcome to the family uh⁠—”

“Fern,” Cade interjected and Lennox’s beard twitched, while the smallest of smiles lifted the corners of his lip.

“Welcome to the family, Fern.”

Fern nodded.

“Welcome back to the family, Lennox.” Her pointed retort, quiet, yet tart seemed to startle the man. Nox’s head canted as his eyes took on an assessing gleam while they once again scanned her face for God knew what.

He broke out in a full-on grin and nodded appreciatively, before bursting into waves of appreciative laughter.

“Not quite the tentative little mouse you appear to be, are you?” He hooted, dropping a heavy arm around her shoulder and reeling her in for a tight one-armed hug, after which he held her tucked into his side.

“Call me Nox. Y’know that if I’d been here, I would probably have been the one you wound up trapped within unholy matrimony?”

The comment deeply unsettled Fern, and she jerked her head up at him in shock. The thought of marrying anyone other than Cade had never occurred to her and—attractive though he was—she found the thought of a union with this man slightly repugnant.

Solely because he wasn’t Cade.

“I don’t… I doubt…” Her helpless gaze fluttered to Cade and she was startled to find him staring at his brother with something close to animosity roiling behind that placid gaze. Nobody else seemed to notice it. They were all laughing at Nox’s off-color comment.

When he realized that she was watching him, Cade slammed the brakes on his emotions… hard. His face and eyes went blank in an instant and he stepped forward, to close his hand around Fern’s bicep and gently tugged her toward him.

“You’re making my wife uncomfortable, Nox.” His voice was mild, but there was an undertone of frost lurking just beneath it.

Nox immediately dropped his arm, and put some space between him and Fern.

“Fuck, I’m sorry, little mouse,” he sounded sincerely contrite. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“Uh… you didn’t,” the people-pleaser in Fern immediately appeased, even though she hadn’t liked his assertion that the brothers were interchangeable in this marriage deal. She wouldn’t have wanted Nox, not even if she’d met him first that night at the gala.

Cade was the one who made her feel safe and protected. She wasn’t sure how she felt about his brother, who was a little too loud, too brash, too much.

Cade’s hand was still loosely wrapped around her upper arm, so big his fingers could encircle her bicep and meet with room to spare. She inched her way closer to her husband, liking the shelter he provided, but he noticed the movement and dropped his hand, leaving her feeling a little woebegone at the loss of his impersonal touch.

The interaction between Nox and Fern had been left behind in the wake of the excited chatter among the other three siblings as they raced to catch up on so many months apart. Only Fern and Cade still stood at that waypoint, staring at it each other wordlessly.

“I wouldn’t have,” she told him beneath her breath, and his brows lowered as he bent his head toward her in an attempt to hear what she’d said. She stood on her toes and she repeated her words.

He didn’t lift his head, merely tilted his jaw toward, bringing his mouth perilously close to touching the sensitive skin below her ear as he asked, “Wouldn’t have what?”

“Married Nox.”

He put some distance between them as he sought her eyes, his gaze narrowed on hers and his lips curled a little cynically at whatever he saw there before he leaned toward her again.

“Why not? One brother is pretty much the same as the other. Nox or me, it wouldn’t have mattered. We’d still have Lambecrete and you’d still have our protection for the next few years.”

Fern hated that his words wounded her, hated that she flinched in response to them… hated that it probably reflected in her face and sounded in the soft, startled inhalation of breath.

This time she was the one who drew back to look at him, but once again his face was schooled into that hateful, unreadable mask.

“Would you have preferred if it was him?” she asked, knowing she shouldn’t. Not when she wasn’t emotionally prepared to hear his reply.

He shrugged, the unconcern in the gesture staggering in its utter dismissal of Fern as anybody of significance in his life.

“You and I don’t suit, Nox would likely have made you a better husband. It would’ve been easier.”

“Easier for you?”

“Yes.”

This was a purely transactional, business relationship. Feelings had no place here. And yet, Fern’s eyes stung, her throat felt swollen, and her nose burned as she fought back the incipient tears. She ducked her head, refusing to let him see the humiliating truth in her eyes. Not wanting to make things awkward for any of the rest of them either. She felt like an unwanted obligation, easily and eagerly foisted off onto the next person. And the fact that he would’ve been happy to simply see her parceled off to his brother instead, hurt more than it should’ve.

His hand came up to her chin and he tilted her head upward, forcing her to meet his gaze.

“Why does that upset you?” he asked, voice gruff, eyes confused and concerned. “This is just business, Fern.”

Which was exactly what she’d just been thinking. Fern jerked her head back, forcing him to release her.

“It doesn’t hurt me. Not at all. Just pregnancy hormones and all that. I got caught up in the intense emotion of your family reunion and all that.” She strove for carelessness and failed miserably. He looked unconvinced. Of course, he did, she hadn’t even been the slightest bit convincing.

“Anyway, let me uh— get to know your brother then… my almost-husband. Maybe we can organize a straight swap if you guys are so interchangeable. Would that suit you better?”

His gaze transformed into a glare and his jaw tightened.

“I’m afraid we’re stuck with each other for the duration,” he said between gritted teeth and she gave him a tight smile.

“Too bad, Nox looks like a good time.”

His nostrils flared, and she tossed her loosely braided hair, before determinedly stepping away from him and toward the patio doors through which the others had disappeared.

The rest of the group had retreated to the small, open plan kitchen, crowding the space, everybody still talking at the same time. Gideon was precariously balancing several plastic containers, which appeared to contain different cuts of meat, in his arms, Beth and Kenny were amicably arguing about the best topping for pizza bread, while Nox was loudly and vociferously lamenting the lack of beer options.

“Still quite the outrageous snob, aren’t you, Nox?” Beth inserted dryly, as she shoved a couple of garlic laden focaccia loaves into the oven. “Wherever you’ve been hiding out hasn’t humbled you in the slightest.” Her head swung toward Gideon, who was trying to add one more container to the lot he already had stacked in his arms. “I think t-two trips would be prudent, Gideon—you already have… already have them sta-stacked too high.”

“Aah, and you’re still as bossy as I remember, Elizabeth Finch,” Nox countered good-naturedly, shoveling up a fistful of pretzels in his huge hand and stuffing a couple into his mouth. A few wayward crumbs dusted his out of control, lumberjack beard. He was nowhere near as urbane as his older brother, which was not at all what Fern had expected.

“It’s Elizabeth Finch-Hawthorne,” Beth corrected tartly. “Although I can understand how you’d forget that fact, since you couldn’t arse yourself to come to our wedding.”

A shadow of regret and contrition flickered over Nox’s face, and his shoulders slumped a little as he took the hit.

Gideon froze, his eyes flickering back and forth between his wife and brother, as if he wasn’t quite sure if the exchange had escalated enough to warrant an intervention or not. Fern cast an equally uncertain glance at Cade, who—for a fleeting moment—looked stricken as he watched the interaction between his brother and sister-in-law.

A frown flickered over his features before he spoke, the words cutting through the tension and a little ludicrous in their banality and complete lack of relevance to the topic at hand.

“Fern needs new clothes.”

All heads swung toward Cade at whom they gaped like he’d grown an extra limb, and then—as if they’d synchronized it—to Fern, who cringed beneath their stares. If she hadn’t seen the look of almost desperation in his eyes before he’d spoken, she would probably have melted into a gooey puddle of embarrassment right at their feet.

But somehow—despite the humiliating observation that had put her firmly in the spotlight—she couldn’t bring herself to be angry at him. Because she was on the cusp of understanding exactly why he’d done it.

He was their big brother, their protector, and their peacemaker. He didn’t like seeing them at odds with one another and he’d tossed Fern—who was just some random flotsam he’d picked up along the way and nowhere near as important as his real family—under the bus in the interest of defusing a possible volatile situation.

A hapless lamb sacrificed at the altar of familial harmony.

“Uh… Niall,” Beth began, her voice tentative, her ire at Nox seemingly placed on hold for now… which meant Cade had succeeded in his desperate diversionary tactics. “You c-can’t… you can’t say things like that. Fern luh-looks perfectly lovely.”

“She dresses like the nun the press seems to believe she is. And not because she wants to,” Cade negated, his voice curt and no-nonsense.

“Niall, you can’t tell a woman how to dress, come on, this isn’t the bloody eighteenth century,” Kenny retorted, waving her hand in dismissive disgust.

“Men—and their ridiculous hang-ups about our bodies—have been dictating women’s fashion well into the twentieth and even twenty-first centuries,” Beth corrected. “So specifically referencing the eighteenth century is an odd generalization.”

“Let’s not stray off topic, Beth,” Kenny told her. “You know what I mean.”

Cade’s eyes gleamed with satisfaction and Fern gave him a jaundiced look, even though she understood—more than he likely even realized—his motivation. Didn’t mean she had to like it though. In fact, she loathed being the center of attention and wished he’d come up with some other spur-of-the-moment distraction.

“I think you look absolutely beautiful, little mouse,” Nox said smoothly.

“If that were true, I doubt you’d be calling me a mouse every chance you get,” Fern said with a snort.

“It’s a term of affection. An endearment as it were…”

Fern rolled her eyes, recognizing that his over-the-top attention was mostly an attempt to get a rise out of his brother. Why he’d bother was beyond her. Cade didn’t care what anybody thought of her or said to her. Not really… Maybe if it reflected badly on him, as her dowdy wardrobe no doubt did, he’d bestir himself to care. But whatever Nox was trying to achieve here was doomed to fail.

“Cade is right,” Fern said, her fingers plucking at a pleat on her ill-fitting, ugly skirt. “I do need a new wardrobe. I led a—I suppose you could call it—sheltered life before now. I didn’t choose my own clothing. I hate these skirts and blouses, they make me feel like a frumpy spinsterish schoolmarm in a made for television western. I’m not sure why he dragged you all into this though…”

“I figured Kenny or Beth could go shopping with you or something,” Cade muttered, tugging at his collar. “I thought maybe starting from scratch on your own would feel uh overwhelming.”

She stared at him, mouth agape, heart stuttering in her chest, because—while she hated the attention—his reasoning was so thoughtful. Almost—dare she say?—sweet.

And then he ruined it by following the words up with, “And I doubt you’d have the first clue what to get anyway. Your emotional growth has been so stunted that, left to your own devices, you’d probably replace the nunlike shit with the wildly inappropriate scraps of nothing adolescents wear these days.”

She stared at him in horrified affront. What a truly awful thing to say. Yes, she’d been sheltered to the point of imprisonment, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know what she liked or disliked. And Cade certainly didn’t know her well enough to have drawn such an authoritative conclusion about her emotional growth. Especially not when his own emotional intelligence was so clearly undeveloped.

She was tempted to call him out on it, but was too acutely aware of her surroundings to do so now. She didn’t know any of these people, they were his people. Once again, she was the outsider, the least loved one in the room. It wasn’t her place to speak out.

Gideon whistled, a long, drawn out sound that drew all eyes to his face.

“Duuuude,” he said, on a soft inhalation, less containers in his arms after he’d taken his wife’s advice and offloaded a couple onto the counter. “And you were doing so well, man.”

Cade blinked at his siblings, all of whom were expressing some form of outrage, before he diverted his what did I say? glance back at Fern, who was still striving to hide her own feelings of affronted hurt and chagrin at his thoughtless words. She was, however, surprised and gratified by her in-laws’ equally horrified response to his comments.

“I just meant she might need some guidance or something,” Cade said.

“Fuck, just stop Niall before that hole you’re so assiduously digging takes you clear to the other side of the planet,” Nox muttered, his voice wry.

“Why do you all call him Niall?” Fern asked. “I thought he preferred Cade.”

Fern was desperate to deflect the spotlight from her and—since it was his horrid comments that had thrust that unwanted attention onto her—she felt just petty enough to shift it firmly onto her thoughtless husband.

The question dropped into the room like a lead balloon…

Or maybe like a flailing dying snake, one that was writhing on the floor right in the midst of the group, but nobody dared approach it for fear of envenomation.

Fern, whose gaze hadn’t left Cade’s face, felt a dull swirl of panic in the pit of her stomach at the instant frigidity of his gaze. She’d clearly stepped into a minefield here, one she hadn’t even known existed.

“Whoa, little mouse, plunging right in there with the hard questions,” Nox said after an appreciative whistle.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked,” Fern immediately and sincerely apologized, panicking as she studiously avoiding Cade’s lethal glare.

She wasn’t usually so impulsive… She’d learned that keeping her head down and her mouth shut was usually the best way to avoid nasty repercussions. She couldn’t allow her emotions to dictate her every response like this. It was too dangerous, the outcome too unpredictable.

“Now hold on a second,” Beth said, head tilted as her eyes bounced from one face to the other. “Why is that a hard question? I’m curious too now. Do you really prefer to be called Cade? Why didn’t you say so?”

Cade—Fern ascertained after slanting a quick glance at him—looked seriously pissed off with that dark glower and those thinned lips.

“It doesn’t matter, my name is Niall Caden Hawthorne. I’m fine with either.”

“And now I’m thinking m-maybe that’s not true,” Beth said astutely. “What is it with you Hawthornes and misnaming people? Is it some kind of weird, rich people, power trippy thing?”

Kenny had been studying Cade’s face closely throughout the entire back and forth, eyes narrowed in concern.

“Niall?” she prompted in a concerned whisper.

“Fuck, this is… it’s ridiculous.” He ran an irate hand through his hair, looking more flustered and uncomfortable than Fern had ever seen him before. He clearly hated being the center of attention like this. More comfortable lurking on the sidelines, being the silently protective big brother. “Fern doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about, okay? You’ve all be calling me Niall for the last two decades, it’s fine.”

“Only for the last twenty years?” Beth asked, her eyes wide. “But what did they call you before that?”

“We called him Cade,” Nox said, his voice quiet, eyes somber.

“I don’t under⁠—”

“Beth, drop it, please,” Cade said a soft gentleness in his voice that belied the murder in his eyes when he looked at Fern. “It’s not important. Let’s get the food going, aye? I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m starving.”

Gideon who’d remained quietly watchful throughout the entire uncomfortable, fraught exchange, cleared his throat and remembered his role as host, as he urged everyone to grab a drink and follow him out to the patio.

His siblings all complied, with Cade—after a final glower at Fern—trailing behind the rest. That left Beth and Fern in the kitchen.

“That was so…” Beth took a deep breath and shook her head before saying, “Bizarre. It was bizarre, right?”

Fern nodded, her stomach in knots because she’d clearly upset Cade. She’d unwittingly ventured into forbidden territory and she didn’t know what pitfalls awaited her there. “I shouldn’t have said anything,” she fretted. “It’s none of my business.”

Beth patted her arm reassuringly. “Nonsense, they can’t all be calling you an honorary Hawthorne one second and then turning on you for unearthing one of their unhinged family secrets. And why is it such a taboo topic? How can you call someone one thing for the first thirteen years of his life and then just switch it up for no good reason? I love my husband and I’m fond of his siblings—well I’m still on the fence about Nox—but the Hawthornes can be a bit strange. I’m willing to bet good money that this has something to do with their father. The Old Man can be manipulative and sneaky and just… a lot.”

Fern noticed that once her shyness wore off, Beth didn’t stutter much at all and she was happy that at least one of her new family members liked her enough to relax around her.

“I met him a few days ago,” Fern murmured, her fingers still restlessly tugging at the pleats of her skirt. “He was kind to me.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty damned fond of the bossy old tyrant too… but he needs to be kept in his place, or he tends to overreach. When you do get to know him better, do not let him run roughshod all over you. He’ll respect you if you don’t. And don’t let Cade either for that matter. They need you, never forget that.”

“Not anymore,” Fern said. “They pretty much got what they wanted from me already.”

“You’re still Cade’s wife, and he should damned well respect you for however long this arrangement lasts. Make sure he does. Or I’m gonna have to kick his butt.”

Fern’s lips lifted in a small smile as she imagined the softly-rounded, vertically disadvantaged Beth taking on the six-foot-tall, ripped Cade. The image was ludicrous and yet, because she was certain Cade would never physically hurt a woman, she imagined Beth could do exactly as she’d threatened. It was a gratifying, somewhat alien feeling, to know that someone was so firmly in her corner.

“I will. And Beth? Thank you.”

Beth grinned up at her. “Anytime… and just so you know, I’d love to go shopping with you. Just name the date and place.”

A shy smile blossomed on Fern’s lips as soft, comfortable liquid warmth flooded into her chest at the other woman’s words. She felt her cheeks pinken and wasn’t quite sure how to react.

“Are you sure?” she asked awkwardly, unused to people wanting to spend time with her. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to disrupt your schedule or anything. You must be really busy? And you… I mean you don’t have to just because I’m married to Cade. I wouldn’t want you to…”

“Fern, stop,” Beth implored with a light laugh, holding up a hand to halt the cringeworthy flood of words. “Firstly, I would love to go shopping with you and get to know you better, and that has nothing to do with your marriage to Cade. Secondly, we’re never too busy to shop, Fern. This is a lesson you’ll soon learn. And Cade is going to have to arrange a driver for us. We’re going to do nothing but point, pay, and leave it to our hapless driver to do the carrying for us.”

Fern giggled, her affection for her new sister-in-law growing by the minute.

“That sounds lovely. I can’t wait.”

Beth gave her an unexpected, fierce little hug, before shoving a salad bowl into her hand and ushering her out into the yard to join the rest.