Free Cade: Fire And Ice: A Second Chance Hockey Romance by Jessica Lake, Alana Hart

properly and feeding us nutritious food, I know my mother was on some level aware of the fact that without me Jacob, David and Baby Ben would have nobody to look after them.
    I took a twenty dollar bill out of the sixty-eight dollars that made up my latest paycheck from my part-time salon job and, after making sure the boys had eaten lunch, headed off to the grocery store to buy dried beans and frozen vegetables for soup. When I was finished shopping, a black Lexus pulled up next to me in the parking lot and the driver's side window rolled down. A pretty, middle-aged woman smiled up at me.
    "Ellie Hesketh?"
    I nodded.
    "I'm Jane Parker, Cade's mother."
    Oh God, what the hell did she want? She must have seen the credit card bill, the one Cade had paid for me at the hospital when I was too loopy on painkillers to protest. My immediate instinct was to run away. I think Jane Parker saw it, too, because she reached one manicured hand out of the window and touched my arm gently.
    "You're not in any trouble, Ellie. I thought we could talk?"
    I was seized with anxiety. Nice ladies like Jane Parker, the kind who drove nice cars and wore twinsets, generally didn't have anything to say to me. What did she want? I couldn't just flee.
    "Uh, OK."
    "Hop in."
    I walked stiffly around to the passenger side of the car and got in.
    "Are you hungry? How about some coffee and a cupcake at Ritchies?"
    Ritchies was North Falls' version of a fancy coffeehouse. I'd never been, but all the popular girls at school seemed to have Ritchies cups permanently affixed to their hands.
    "OK."
    My voice was very low, barely audible, and I hadn't been brave enough to look Jane Parker in the eye yet. She drove us to Ritchies and ordered me a cupcake and a coffee while I waited at one of the small, wooden tables filled with dread.
    "You poor thing, don't look so nervous," she said when she sat down, putting a vanilla cupcake piled high with thick, pink frosting down in front of me.
    Instead of cramming the whole thing into my mouth at once, which is what I wanted to do, I forced myself to peel the wrapper off slowly and take a series of small bites so Mrs. Parker wouldn't see how hungry I actually was.
    "So. I hear you are close to my son, Cade?"
    I sat in front of her, nodding and completely clueless as to how to handle the situation. She was wearing a necklace made of pearls so shiny they almost looked like they were glowing.
    "Do you like it?"
    I felt my cheeks begin to burn. "Um, yes. It's beautiful," I stammered through a mouthful of cupcake.
    "They're South Sea pearls - my husband bought them for me three years ago for our anniversary."
    I'm surprised I didn't explode with awkwardness right there in the middle of Ritchies. I wasn't a girl who went to Ritchies. I didn't belong. I also wasn't a girl who talked to well-groomed older women about their pearls while we ate cupcakes. I just wanted it to be over.
    "I can see that you're uncomfortable, Ellie. Can I call you Ellie?"
    "Yes," I mumbled, inhaling the sweet, buttery scent of the cupcake and taking another bite.
    "Please, relax. I just want to have a conversation with you. Woman to woman."
    Was she making fun of me? I looked up at Jane Parker's face but I couldn't read her expression.
    "OK."
    "Do you care about my son?"
    The tingling in my cheeks got worse and I started fidgeting with the cupcake wrapper, unable to do anything more than nod in response. I prayed Cade hadn't told her about what we'd done in her husband's car.
    "That's good to hear. We're a little concerned right now that Cade might be losing focus. I know it might be difficult for you to understand - you're both so young, after all - but I hope you can see things from our perspective."
    Cade's mother was so different from my own. I was dazzled by her beautiful clothing and her seemingly kind, maternal manner. She was right about eighteen being very young, too. Definitely too young to discern the difference between genuine concern for me and