Cassie, Samson, and Ivan hadn’t even known what had happened at first. He’d been on the sidelines icing his knee and waiting to be taken to the emergency room, Samson was still on the playing field, and Cassie had been in the stands with the marching band, preparing to go out for the half-time show. The rumors had spread through the entire crowd before any of them had known, and by the end of the game, it’d all been hearsay.
According to their shocked and obviously upset mother, Samson and Ivan’s father and Cassie’s mother, Delicia Villalobos, had been taken away by sheriff’s deputies in handcuffs from the final football game of their senior year.
Later in the concourse, Mr. Villalobos had seethed. “You will never have contact with those boys again! Lo prohíbo! I told you—I told you they would be nothing but trouble to this family, them and now their father, too. Your mother has shamed herself with that hijo de puta! Never speak to them again, no visits, and no more boyfriend-girlfriend nonsense. They’re not welcome in the restaurant, either. If I find out you have had contact with them, I will not pay for your college tuition and I will not have anything further to do with you. No help, no job will come to you from this family. You have both brought shame to me! Those white boys have probably made you their whore already. And I know where you learned it from—your mother playing the whore with their father!”
Cassie’s face, pale with shock, had grown whiter with every hurtful word. Confusion showed in her eyes. “Papá, what are you saying? What happened? I don’t understand!”
“Your mother and that Cutter bastard were just put in handcuffs and carted off by the sheriff! Arrested on suspicion of fraud! She can rot in jail for bringing shame on this family.” Onlookers in the crowd wore various expressions of dismay and shock at the news because both sets of parents had always been avid supporters of the team and were trusted and well-respected members of the football boosters organization.
“What?” Cassie had gasped. She’d cast her gaze around at the bystanders and swayed on her feet. Samson had moved through the crowd to help her, but she caught a glimpse of him and held up a hand to stop him.
“No more!” her father had roared, his face red with fury as he caught her non-verbal communication with Samson. “You heard me! No more contact with any son of a bitch whose last name is Cutter. Ever! Or—or you will be my daughter no more!” Mr. Villalobos had then grasped his chest, panting as Cassie ran to him to catch him as he collapsed.
“Papá!” She looked up at the crowd. “Is there a doctor here? Someone call an ambulance!”
“You see? You see?” he’d ground out as he gripped his chest and panted. “You are killing me!”
Samson and Ivan, who was hobbling on crutches, had both moved forward, determined to help despite Mr. Villalobos’s cruel words. Cassie deserved better than to have everyone in the crowd, standing in shock, staring at her. It was obvious she didn’t know any more than they had at the time.
One of Cassie’s uncles had rushed forward and warded them both off. “I think your family has done enough for one night, boys. Go home and leave us alone to take care of ours.” He gave a curt shake of his head when they tried to speak. “No. If you have any respect, do as Jorge wishes and stay away from Cassie.”
“We didn’t do anything, Mr. Villalobos. I haven’t laid a hand on Cassie,” Samson said with barely controlled vehemence. “At least not the way her father thinks I have. We would never—”
Ivan knew Samson had kissed Cassie, but he’d never done anything like Mr. Villalobos had accused him of. Ivan had struggled to understand the connection between Cassie’s father’s accusations Mrs. Villalobos had been unfaithful to her husband with their dad. Ivan knew his dad worshipped the ground their mom walked on. It didn’t compute, but Mr. Villalobos had always had a volatile temper.
Noting the growing crowd, the uncle lowered his voice and said, “It doesn’t matter. Until we know what happened, and until he calms down, stay away. If this kills my brother, I’ll hold your family responsible.”
He and Samson had both pulled back at the man’s intensity, but seeing the distress in Cassie’s expression as she kneeled on the concrete in her marching band uniform and held her father’s head in her lap was the worst. As the uncle had stalked away, Samson had tugged his brother’s arm over his shoulder to help him walk.
“Come on. We’ll find a way to get in touch with her.”
“But you heard her dad.”
Samson had looked determined. “We’ll find a way.”
But they hadn’t. And soon they’d had bigger worries, like why their dad and Cassie’s mother had been hauled away in handcuffs from the ticket stand where they’d been working their service hours selling tickets to the game. They’d been counting the money before turning it in the president of the booster club when the sheriff had shown up and arrested both of them for embezzlement and conspiracy to commit fraud while members of the community had stood by in shock.
Their parents’ actual crimes were eventually sorted out. But the drama unfolding that night, the anguish in Cassie’s eyes as she’d been publically berated, the shock on everyone’s faces—those memories and the hurt had scabbed over but never healed properly.
She’d tried to call them that night and the next day they’d spotted her sweeping the front parking lot at Rudy’s with a heavy push broom—something one of the men or the bus boys normally did.
They’d tried to talk to her at school, but one of her cousins was always around, and when they’d succeeded and asked her how she was doing, it must’ve been reported to her father because the next day she was at the restaurant, washing down the outside of the big metal dumpster with a handheld scrub brush.
Feeling bad for inadvertently making her situation worse, they’d left flowers for her in her locker. The next day they’d spotted her with bandaged hands and fingers. After demanding to know what had happened, the cousin had finally had mercy and told them Cassie’s dad had set her to work in the restaurant flowerbeds, pulling weeds, and when that hadn’t taken long enough, he’d put her to work pulling weeds in the grassy area behind the restaurant where he could keep an eye on her from his office—all without any gloves to protect her hands. And then he’d set her to scrubbing the floor mats in the kitchen area with bleach and boiling hot water.
With teary eyes, the cousin, Josie, had said, “Guys, she can barely write today. When he saw her bandaged hands this morning, the band director told her she could sit out of band practice. She has a band contest coming up, and she said she couldn’t afford to not practice. I know you’re concerned, but you’ve got to stop, okay? With her mom in jail, she’s got no one at home to take care of her. Maybe…maybe after graduation, once she leaves for school, you can get in touch with her. She cries all the time. She misses her mom—and you, I suppose—and she’s hurting.”
Samson had seemed to deflate as he listened to Josie. “All right. Just…just tell her I…tell her…” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat to try again, but she stopped him, compassion in her eyes.
“I’ll tell her. And I swear I won’t tell anyone I talked to you. You need to understand how it is in our family. The men rule with an iron fist. The women obey.”
Samson’s jaw had clenched. “Are they abusive? If they are—”
“No. But…you can see they have other ways to punish besides fists and belts. He will ease up on her if you’ll stay away from her.”
Thus had started a painful period of Samson’s life, and Ivan’s as well, with the rest of the fall proceeding into the holidays and Christmas vacation, and then the spring dragged forward into preparation for graduation.
After surgery and physical therapy, his knee had been declared as healed as it was going to be, which meant no sports, and so no football scholarship for college, and he certainly hadn’t been able to follow Samson into the Army.
“Ivan?” Cassie laid her hand on his arm, bringing him back to their conversation in the present. “Are you okay?”
<
br /> Nodding, he said, “Just remembering how it was back then.” Why avoid the truth, at least a small part of it, any longer? “I could blame the day-in-and-day-out routine of work and life, and that it made me feel better to believe you were okay, off pursuing your dreams. But I did Google you a few years ago and found out you were married to a guy you were way too good for, and then I had to stay away. If I’d known you were single again, I would’ve…” Don’t scare her off. “I thought you wanted out of here as much as we did after graduation.”
Her knuckles popped softly as she twisted her hands together. “At first I did. But it wasn’t the town so much as certain people, Ivan. I know you hated Divine back then because everyone seemed to turn on your family, and mine. But the friends like Hank and Jack, who remained, and all the good people in Divine make up for a few bad apples.” She breathed softly for a moment and then turned in her seat to look directly at him. “And what would you have done if I’d been available when you looked me up?”
I had to crack open this can of worms. “I’d have done everything I could to make you happy.”
“What…what about Samson?”
He turned into the crowded parking lot at the Dancing Pony, and Samson parked beside him.
“Let’s ask him.”
Cassie’s eyebrows popped up, but she turned to the door when Samson opened it, stepped back, and held out his hand to her. She paused, looking back and forth between the two of them. Ivan smiled, trying to encourage her.
“I won’t bite, Cassandra, unless you ask me to,” Samson said with a hint of a chuckle in his voice. “If you’ll come inside with us, we can talk.” Ivan couldn’t see Samson’s face above the door, but he appreciated his brother’s intuitiveness and her trust in them as she allowed Samson to help her to her feet.
“You’ve never been in the Dancing Pony, guys,” she said with a chuckle. “It can get noisy sometimes.”
“That’ll be fine cover for our conversation, then,” Ivan said.
Two giant-sized bouncers greeted Cassie at the door like a friend and nodded to him and Samson.
“Mike, Rogelio, this is Samson and Ivan Cutter. We’ve just come from our high school reunion.”
Mike, the more gregarious of the two, said, “Ethan mentioned it to us earlier, and Hank called and reserved some tables for your group from the reunion in the area you usually sit in. Violet and Bunny are also here with their men.”
She grinned and said, “Fantastic! I haven’t seen Bunny and Joseph since their wedding.” Ivan knew from talking to her that Violet’s wedding was the following weekend.
They entered the dimly lit interior of the nightclub and guided her to the reserved group of tables, close to the dance floor. They helped her into one of the tall chairs and then maneuvered their seats so she could see them both at once without craning her neck or having to look back and forth between them.
“Thank you, guys,” she said, tenderness in her voice. “Things have been bumpy the last few weeks, especially between you and me, Samson, but it’s nice to sit and talk, like we used to before everything went south in high school, without worrying I’d get in trouble. I think one of the worst things about that time was not being able to talk to you.”
“I missed it, too.” Ivan sat back and rested his arm on the table. “The time gets away from you, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. Nowadays it’s unimaginable, but back then he controlled everything in our family, either directly or indirectly. I’m sorry that’s how it was for us.”
“That’s not an apology you have to make, chiquita.” Samson said and then smoothly changed the subject. “Remember the three of us sitting together in the corner booth at Rudy’s, years ago, when it was run by your grandfather?”
Her cheeks flushed, recalling the way her grandfather, the original Rudy, had kept his eagle eyes on her anytime he saw her with them, as if expecting her to do wrong. “Of course. My Uncle Rudy is running the family restaurant now. He bought out my dad and all the other uncles and runs it his way now. I was glad to see him take charge of it. I think customers liked the change, too. Do you remember how my dad used to yell at the waitresses and hostesses when we were too slow or made mistakes? Even the customers would get embarrassed for us.”
Ivan had vivid recollections of the grumpy bastard’s poor people skills. It had amazed him the restaurant had always done so much business since the manager was so lacking in congeniality. He listened as Cassie babbled on, her cheeks flushing when she finally fell quiet.
Once the waitress had delivered their drinks, Samson took her hand in his and looked down at it. “Are you nervous?”
Ivan stroked her other hand, which was resting on the table, and felt the tension building inside him lessen when she wrapped her hand around his and squeezed.
She turned her sweet mahogany eyes to him and then settled her gaze on Samson and nodded. “I’m not sure why. I wish I could read your minds and know what you’re thinking. It’s like anticipating the first kiss on a first date.”
Samson lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles and then slid his hand down her outstretched forearm to her elbow. Ivan barely heard her sharp intake of breath over the music as his brother wrapped his hand around her upper arm and used it as leverage to reel her in as he leaned toward her. She licked her lower lip a moment before he laid his lips on hers. Ivan watched her in fascination, the rise and fall of her chest as her breathing accelerated and she lifted a hand to grip his shoulder, her fingers not able to find purchase because he was too big.
Satisfaction was in Samson’s eyes when he released her from the kiss, not leaning away from her. She sat there with eyes still closed and lips parted for a couple of seconds before blinking and smiling at him. “Wow.”
“How are your nerves now?”
“Better. You’re still a fantastic kisser,” she replied with a giggle before looking at Ivan. “I still don’t know what you want, though.”
“You,” Ivan and Samson both said in unison. Ivan stroked her hand with his thumb as she stilled her fidgeting and met Ivan’s gaze. She blinked a few times. Drew her brows together, shook her head, and then squinted at him.
“Did I just hear you right?”
Samson glanced over and caught his eye and grinned. Ivan gave her hand another squeeze to draw her attention and said, “Why are you so surprised? Samson has told me that you’re friends with several ménage groups, so I know it’s not that you’re shocked.”
“Uh…Actually, yeah I am.”
“Why?” Samson replied in a growly voice.
Snorting with wry humor, she looked between them and said, “Because you don’t know what all you’d be giving up, by wanting a ménage…with me.”
Samson gave her a crooked grin before brushing her hair back from her cheek. “All I can see is what I’d be gaining, honey. What would we be giving up?”
She took a deep breath. “You both know me well enough to know I’d never go for a fling. But if we committed to a ménage, there are things you’d give up that the men in the other ménage groupings have.”
“Such as?” Ivan asked.
“I’m assuming you want all the sexual trappings that go along with a ménage. I’ll be fifty years old in a couple of years, and…I have, or will soon have, issues that come along with aging, and I can’t have any more children.” As she spoke, her cheeks grew more and more flushed, and when she mentioned children, her voice broke. “Neither of you are a father yet, and you’re bound to want kids…and I can’t give them to you.”
“Hey,” Samson said in a soothing voice. “Cassandra, we want you. I want you. Ivan wants you.”
“But I’m not…” Her eyes darted around, as she seemed to search for the right word and then placed her hand against her abdomen. “Whole. I’m not whole anymore, which was the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back,’ according to Bill.”
“What happened?” Ivan asked, taking her hand in his again, sympathy warring with protectiveness at the mentio
n of Bill’s name.
“I had problems with my…cycles, which made sex a hit or miss thing, and it caused a lot of tension between us. On a visit to my gynecologist they discovered some…problems and…I had to have a hysterectomy. Bill acted as though they were removing my femininity with my uterus and said that was the last straw and he was done.” It was obvious from her hesitation and the dark flush in her cheeks she wasn’t used to talking about female health issues with a man, much less men. Where had Bill been all their married life?
Ivan could only imagine the stress of running a fledgling business, having a health scare, and her husband walking out on her when she should’ve had his support as she recovered.
Her hand in Ivan’s grasp had grown cool with her agitation, and Samson took her other one again and said, “Are you okay? Did everything turn out all right?”
“Oh yeah,” she said with a shrug since they were both holding her hands and wouldn’t let go. “I was fine once the surgery was behind me and I’d recovered. I have scars, but they’re practically invisible. It’s embarrassing telling you all my private medical stuff, but you need to understand I’m in early menopause. I’m on hormone replacement therapy, and you’re interested in a woman who is past her prime. If I were a couple of men looking for a woman, I’d want her to be a young woman who’s still limber and flexible. Someone who can have kids…who doesn’t have to worry—”
Samson said, “No one else but you will do, Cassandra. I hate that you see yourself as old and past your prime. That’s not the woman I see when I look at you.”
She smiled and kissed his cheek. “You’re seeing me with rose-colored glasses, Samson. What I show the world. The toned, teenaged girl is long gone.” Her chin wobbled with the last words, and Ivan’s heart ached for her.
How Cassie Got Her Grind Back [Divine Creek Ranch 23] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 8
