by I. T. Lucas
As her fingers entwined in the delicate chains, her breathing became shallower, and her feminine scent flared. “They are not real gold.” She shook her forearm, jingling the five bracelets on her left wrist. “And neither are these. I hardly ever buy real jewelry.”
For some reason, Onegus didn’t think it was because she was frugal. Gold jewelry wasn’t that expensive, and Cassandra could definitely afford it. Maybe she had something against real gold?
“Why is that?”
She shrugged. “I like variety, and costume jewelry usually has more creative designs.” She lifted her hand and wiggled her fingers. “Only the rings are real gold, but as you can see, they are devoid of precious stones. I chose them for the intricate designs.”
“Beautiful.” He didn’t look at the rings. Instead, he gazed into her eyes.
She smiled. “Yes, you are.”
The waitress stopping at their table disturbed the intimate moment. “What can I get you, folks?”
Tearing her eyes from his, Cassandra looked up at the girl. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t have a chance to look at the menu yet. Could you give us a few more moments?”
“Certainly. In the meantime, can I get you something to drink?”
“I would like your chilled mint tea,” Onegus said.
“I’ll have the same.” Cassandra lifted the menu, hiding her beautiful face from him. “On second thought, I’ll have the cucumber juice.”
19
Cassandra
It was a cowardly move to hide behind the menu, but Cassandra wasn’t ready to bare her soul to Onegus yet. Maybe she would one day tell him why she didn’t buy precious jewelry for herself, but it wasn’t going to be today or tomorrow or even a month from now.
Maybe not ever.
She thought of real jewelry as gifts of love, not something a woman bought for herself—an engagement ring, a diamond bracelet for an anniversary, a necklace for her birthday, and so on. If she told him, he might take it the wrong way.
So yeah, a successful, independent woman shouldn’t wait for a man to buy those things for her, provided that she really wanted them, but Cassandra didn’t crave possessions for their own sake. Unless they were gifts, an expression of love, gemstones were meaningless to her. She could enjoy cubic zirconia just as much as she would a diamond for a fraction of the cost.
Not that she was into that either. Pure metals, gold and silver, or imitations of them were her thing.
But that was beside the point. She couldn’t tell Onegus any of it because it would sound as if she expected him to buy her expensive gifts, and she would never do that. If the time came and he proposed, she would love a beautiful engagement ring, but she wouldn’t expect anything extravagant. She wasn’t after his money. She was after everything else—his heart, his soul, and his body.
Those were much more precious than any gifts he could ever buy her.
“Have you decided what you want to have?” Onegus asked.
She hadn’t even read through the selection. “It’s difficult to decide.” She moved the menu aside to peek at him. “What do you recommend?”
“Pretty much everything once you get over the weird substitutes. For starters, I recommend the warm rosemary butternut squash dip with radicchio, or the winter butter lettuce and endive salad. For an entree, I like the forbidden black rice bowl. The southwestern-style enchiladas are also good.”
As she glanced at the menu again, it finally dawned on her that it was a vegan restaurant. “Interesting choices.” She looked up at him. “Josie, my boss’s wife, is vegetarian. I need to tell her about this place.”
“Before you do that, you need to sample the offerings.”
“Of course. I’ll take the salad and the enchiladas. If I don’t like them, you can eat them.” She lifted her hand to summon the waitress.
When the waitress arrived, Onegus ordered for her and then added three more appetizers, two main courses, and two juices.
“Are you that hungry?” Cassandra asked when the woman left.
“Vegan food is not very filling.”
“Then why did you choose this place? I’ve seen you demolish a filet mignon the size of a loaf of bread, so I know that you are not vegan.”
“I’m not, but my boss is, and this is one of his favorite places. It’s also close to the building I currently work in, and it has a nice outdoor patio.”
“Who’s your boss? An uncle? An older brother?”
“My cousin is the head of the family business in the US. I don’t have siblings.”
That reminded her of his mother, and that she was about to meet her at the wedding.
“Isn’t it difficult for your mother to be so far away from her only child? She must be lonely.”
“My mother is never lonely. She’s surrounded by extended family, and we talk on the phone quite often.” He winced. “She used to call me every day, but I’ve negotiated it down to no more than twice a week.”
That was bad. Onegus’s mother sounded like one of those tiger moms who were possessive of their sons. She wouldn’t like sharing Onegus with another woman.
“Did she give you grief over it?”
“I’m a busy man, and I can’t drop everything because my mother is bored and wants to chat. We had a long talk, and in the end, she understood that it wasn’t because I didn’t love her or didn’t care about her, but because I held an important position, and I couldn’t afford to spend hours on the phone.” He folded his napkin and put it aside. “My mother is a strong-headed woman, and she can be unreasonably demanding at times, but she’s smart and accomplished, and I have a lot of respect for her.”
Fortunately, Onegus’s mother lived in Scotland. Cassandra had a feeling that if the woman lived anywhere near her son, she would have been a major pain in her backside.
“Did you tell her about me?”
He shook his head. “I don’t share my love life with my mother, and she doesn’t share hers with me. Are you going to bite my head off for not telling her about you?”
“No, I get it. We’ve just started seeing each other. But she’s going to see me at the wedding. How are you going to introduce me?”
He smiled, but the look in his eyes was indecipherable. “How would you like me to introduce you? My girlfriend? The lady I’m dating? My significant other?”
Perhaps there was tension between Onegus and his mother? His comment about not wanting to hear about her love life might have been a hint of that.
Not that it was a big surprise. It sounded like the woman wanted to dominate her son’s life, but Onegus wasn’t the kind who would allow anyone to control him, not even his mother.
Heck, maybe that was how he’d developed his resilience. It probably hadn’t been easy for him growing up.
“Any of those will do. You said that your father passed away a long time ago. Has your mother remarried?”
It occurred to her that Onegus’s mother might have eased up on the phone calls because she’d found a new man.
He leaned toward her. “I’ll let you in on a secret. She was never married, and she doesn’t even know who my father was.”
That explained it.
“Oh, wow. We have that in common.” Cassandra sighed. “I don’t think my mother knows who my father was either. That’s why she keeps making up stories about him. Or maybe she forgot who he was.”
Except, her mother was a sweetheart, and it didn’t sound like his mother was. But then Cassandra had always taken care of her mother, while Onegus had moved across the ocean from his. No wonder his mother felt neglected.
“Geraldine is a beautiful woman, and she looks incredibly young. How come she never married?”
Cassandra grimaced. “I don’t know. I could understand why she didn’t date when I was growing up, but I’ve been old enough to handle her having a boyfriend for many years, and yet she hasn’t brought anyone home even once.”
He arched a brow. “Perhaps she’s not into men?”
Cassa
ndra laughed. “Oh, she’s definitely into men. But unlike me, she’s all about casual hookups. She thinks I don’t know that she’s sexually active, and that I believe her outings are all about book club meetings and hanging out with her girlfriends. I’m just grateful that she’s infertile and can’t get pregnant again. With her memory issues, she would have forgotten about birth control. I just hope she remembers that pregnancy is not the only issue she needs to be worried about.”
Onegus’s forehead furrowed. “How do you know that she’s infertile? Did she tell you?”
“She didn’t have to. We used to live in a tiny apartment with only one bathroom, and until I got my first period, I never saw any of the feminine paraphernalia that’s required to handle monthly cycles. My mother no longer gets periods, and she can’t get pregnant.”
“Maybe she was very discreet about it and kept everything hidden?”
Cassandra shook her head. “I would have known.”
20
Onegus
Goosebumps rose on Onegus’s arms. Subconsciously, he’d known there was something odd about Geraldine, but with Cassandra’s latest revelation about her mother, the pieces had finally snapped into place.
Geraldine was an immortal.
He felt it in his bones.
Her youthful looks, the story of her driver’s license getting lost, and her never applying for a new one, the lack of menstruation, and the gentle currents sizzling underneath the surface, all pointed toward her being an immortal.
Then again, he might be jumping to conclusions because he wanted Cassandra to be a Dormant. Geraldine might have had her uterus or ovaries removed after a complicated birth or for any other number of reasons, her youthful looks might have been the result of good genetics, and her memory problems could explain the lost license and her inability to get a new one.
“What happened?” Cassandra asked. “You look even paler than usual.” She chuckled. “I’m dating Casper the friendly ghost.”
He was glad that the waitress arrived with their appetizers, and he didn’t have to respond. What could he tell Cassandra that wasn’t a lie?
“Is there anything else I can get you?” the woman asked.
“If you can bring out the main courses as soon as they are ready, I’d really appreciate it.” Onegus cast her one of his charming smiles. “I’m a little pressed for time.”
“I’ll check with the kitchen.”
“Thank you.”
Cassandra lifted her fork. “Let’s see if this tastes as good as it looks.”
He waited for her to take the first bite before attacking one of his three appetizers.
“Not bad.” Cassandra took a sip from her cucumber juice. “I might come back.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
For the next several minutes they ate in silence, but his reprieve didn’t last long.
“You haven’t answered my question yet.” Cassandra pushed her plate away. “Why did hearing about my mother’s infertility bother you so much?”
He affected an indifferent expression. “I was just reflecting on how similar our families are. You are an only child to an unwed mother, and so am I. Your mother looks incredibly young, and so does mine.”
If he managed to get Cassandra drunk during the wedding, she might not notice the other oddities about his family, but no matter how inebriated she was, she would notice that his mother looked too young to have a son his age.
She nodded. “Were you wondering whether your mother became infertile after having you?”
It seemed that his remark about his mother looking young had gone unnoticed. Cassandra was more interested in the infertility part.
“It has never occurred to me.”
“That’s because you are a guy, and men don’t think about stuff like that. But now that I've brought it up, do you think it’s possible that she never married because she couldn’t have any more children?”
He knew for a fact that wasn’t so. “My mother has a full life. I don’t think she’s interested in sharing it with a man.” That was true in regard to a human male, but he was sure she would be overjoyed to find a true-love immortal mate. In fact, if she found her one and only, she might even give him a little brother or sister.
“That’s my mother’s excuse too. But sometimes I think that her infertility is my fault, that it happened to her because of my birth. According to Geraldine, I was born a big baby, almost ten pounds. She’s a small woman, delicate, fragile, and delivering a huge baby like me might have caused complications that resulted in the removal of her ovaries. Geraldine denies it, but what if she just can’t remember it? Or worse, what if the memory problems are the result of the mental trauma of losing her ability to have more children rather than a head injury? I might have singlehandedly ruined her life.”
Was that why Cassandra took such good care of her mother? Because she felt guilty?
“Oh, Cassy.” He reached for her hand. “That’s a lot of what-ifs, and I’m sure none of them are true. Your mother adores you, and she regards you as the best thing that ever happened to her.”
She let out a breath. “I know. But it kills me that I don’t know for sure. I’m always torn between wanting to find out the truth about her past and respecting her wishes. I bet a private detective could have found out everything in a few days, and it wouldn’t even cost me an arm and a leg. But if I hired one, the guilt would be even worse.”
“I might be able to help you with that.”
She arched a brow. “How?”
Roni could find out everything about Geraldine Beaumont in less than an hour, but telling Cassandra about his in-house hacker was not advisable.
“One of my cousins is married to a guy who works for the government, and he has a pretty high security clearance. I could ask him to run your mother’s name through the database and see what comes up.”
Letting out a breath, Cassandra closed her eyes. “I don’t know about that. It’s still snooping into things that my mother prefers to remain private. And it doesn’t matter that it is you doing the digging, if you are doing it for me.”
21
Margaret
“That’s us.” Leon stopped next to a house that was nearly identical to Wendy’s.
“It’s nice,” Ana said without much conviction.
Margaret thought that it was beautiful. It looked brand new, and it had rosebushes in the front yard.
“Ready?” Bowen grabbed one side of her wheelchair, Leon the other, and together they lifted her over the stairs.
Once they set her down on the porch. Leon turned to Bowen. “Can you get the door?” He swung Ana into his arms.
Laughing, she wrapped her arms around his neck. “Carry me over the threshold, my love.”
As he did, Bowen cast Margaret a tentative smile, and for a moment, she hoped that he would pick her up and carry her over the threshold as well. Instead, he put his hands on the wheelchair’s handles and pushed her through.
Well, it was better than nothing.
Besides, they hadn’t pledged their lives to each other like Leon and Ana had done. They weren’t even officially a couple yet.
Or were they?
Despite voicing his intentions, most of the time Bowen was reserved with her. They’d gone out on a date and shared a few passionate kisses, but she didn’t feel like his, and he didn’t feel like hers.
Maybe she just didn’t know what to expect. Her marriage had been a disaster, so that wasn’t a good example. After that, she’d spent nearly two decades in a ‘free love' community, where there had been no couples. Her only examples of what a loving couple was supposed to be like had been observing Leon and Ana, and now also Vlad and Wendy, Stella and Richard.
Her relationship with Bowen wasn’t anywhere near that close, that loving, or that passionate.
Perhaps now that they had no more secrets between them, their relationship would flourish.
Emerging from the bedroom a little flushed, Ana waved a hand
around the living room area. “This house is almost identical to Wendy and Vlad’s. I like it, but it needs some redecorating.”
Margaret had never lived in a house that nice. The one she’d shared with Roger had been okay, but she hadn’t been allowed to make any decorating choices. Not that she’d been allowed to choose anything else. Roger had ruled over her with an iron fist. She couldn’t do anything without getting his permission first, and if she’d dared to disobey, there had been consequences.
Shaking the bad memories away, Margaret shifted her focus to the furniture in the house. If it were up to her, she wouldn’t change a thing.
Besides, she and Bowen would be staying with Ana and Leon only temporarily. Once the cast was off, they would move into a house of their own.
But what if things didn’t work out between them?
What would become of her?
Perhaps she could get a job in the clan’s sanctuary for rescued trafficking victims like they had discussed. If the position came with lodging, that would be a good plan B.
Ana paused her inspection of the living room to glance at her. “What do you think? Should we make it look a little more contemporary? I’m not a fan of all these boring earth tones. It’s so nineties.”
“I think it’s gorgeous as it is. But if you want to decorate, go for it. It’s your home.”
Leon opened the fridge. “We need to get groceries.” He looked at Bowen. “We can get some on our way back from the meeting.”
“Right.” Bowen cast a worried look at Margaret. “Are you going to be alright?”
She smiled. “Of course. While you are gone, Ana and I will unpack and put things away in the closets.”
“I almost forgot.” Anastasia slapped a hand over her forehead. “Wendy said that Syssi and Amanda are going to stop by tomorrow. Is there anything in the fridge that we can serve?”
Leon shook his head. “Make a list. Bowen and I will get everything you need on our way back from the meeting.”
