Girl Least Likely to Marry
Page 18
‘No,’ Cassie repeated. ‘I’ve barely known him a month.’
‘I knew with Mason after a week,’ Reese said gently.
Cassie snorted—what a debacle that had been. ‘No,’ she said again.
‘Okay, then,’ Reese said. ‘Tell me what you’re feeling right now. Tell me what you were feeling just before you cried for twenty minutes. What you’ve been feeling since Tuck left.’
‘Well, it sure as hell isn’t love,’ Cassie said indignantly. ‘I feel…’
She petered out. Cassie didn’t usually do this sort of thing—talk about her feelings. Her feelings were generally pretty clear-cut. She didn’t even know where to start.
‘Go on,’ Marnie encouraged, moving closer.
‘I can’t concentrate, and there’s this pain in my…gut. I keep having these memories of our time together that won’t stop. I can…smell him when he’s not around. I can’t sleep—and I really, really need to sleep. I eat, but I can’t taste the food. I’m not interested in my research. I…I can’t even think straight any more.’
Gina, Reese and Marnie looked at each other. Gina winked. Reese grinned. Marnie got the giggles. Then they all laughed.
Cassie glared at them. ‘What?’ she demanded.
‘That is love, silly,’ Reese said.
Cassie blinked at the utterly ridiculous statement. ‘No.’ She shook her head.
No one had ever called her silly in her life, and she certainly wasn’t going to let Reese get away with it when she’d just made possibly the most absurd statement she’d ever heard.
‘I’ve just rattled off a list that sounds more indicative of a brain tumour than anything else and you tell me it’s love? That’s silly.’
She looked at Gina and Marnie, who were nodding their heads in agreement with Reese.
‘You have all the symptoms,’ Marnie agreed.
‘Which you’d know, if you spent more time reading fiction and watching romcoms instead of reading astronomy textbooks and watching science fiction,’ Gina added.
They were serious. Deadly serious. And she believed them. If there were three better experts on the subject anywhere in the world she’d be surprised, and they’d never steered her wrong before.
‘This is love? I thought love was supposed to be wonderful? This doesn’t feel wonderful,’ she said, looking earnestly at each of her friends, wanting them to tell her they’d made a mistake. ‘It feels awful. It…sucks.’
Reese laughed. ‘That it does.’
‘So I’m not going crazy?’ she asked, still shaky over her loss of control.
‘Nope,’ Reese assured her.
Cassie’s chest felt tight both in relief and dread. What the hell was she going to do now? Her mother had pretty much spent her life regretting falling in love with her father.
‘How do I stop it?’ she asked.
Reese shook her head. ‘I’m afraid it’s terminal. But it is manageable. And I promise you can live to a ripe old productive age.’
Marnie hummed ‘The Wedding March’ and Cassie stared at her. ‘I have to marry him?’ she squeaked. ‘That didn’t work out so well for my parents. They barely speak to each other.’
‘No.’ Gina sighed, glaring at Marnie. ‘Just…be with him. In whatever way that works for you both.’
‘Compromise,’ Reese agreed. ‘You’re two smart cookies. You’ll work it out. Just listen to your heart.’
‘But I…’ Cassie’s head was spinning. First she’d been sideswiped by her libido and now a foreign emotion was taking over her sensibilities. ‘I’m ruled by my head. I’m not ruled by my heart.’
‘You are now, hon,’ Reese said. ‘You are now.’
The next morning Cassie found herself ensconced in Reese’s car, heading for New York. She had no idea what she was going to say to Tuck when she got there. She just knew she’d lain awake going over and over it in her head.
The thought that it could really be love she felt for Tuck was still a foreign notion, but her friends were right. Whether she accepted the premise or not, the answer to her conundrum seemed to be Tuck. Being with Tuck.
And it was only logical to do something about it. To put that part right so her life could fall back into the order she liked and respected.
Reese chatted about her plans for the future with Mason and other inane topics, for which Cassie was thankful, and eventually the miles were gone and Reese had weaved through the New York traffic to deposit Cassie outside her cousin’s apartment.
Reese pulled up and dialled Tuck’s apartment number on her phone. His gruff. ‘What?’ confirmed he was inside.
‘Good—you’re home. I’ll be there in a sec,’ Reese said pleasantly, and hung up. She turned to face Cassie. ‘You’re up,’ she said, then dragged her in for a big hug. ‘Remember,’ she said, ‘three little words will get you everywhere, okay?’
Cassie nodded, even though she still couldn’t quite believe this horrible affliction was love. But then they were out of the car and Reese had sweet-talked Cassie past Tuck’s doorman, whom she seemed to know quite well, and Cassie was in the lift to the penthouse apartment before she could blink.
Tuck was standing on the other side of it, waiting for the lift doors to open. If Reese thought she could come to his place and blast him over some imagined slight to one of her closest friends—well, she could just turn around and walk away again.
Cassiopeia Barclay had made it more than clear she didn’t want him in her life.
The lift dinged, the doors started to slide open and he opened his mouth to let loose his tirade. But it died on his lips as Cassie stood before him.
‘Cassie?’
She looked just as he remembered. Terrible fashion sense, carelessly tied back hair, no bra, dark frowny eyebrows, small serious face.
And his heart leapt, hungry at the sight of her.
Cassie didn’t move for a while and the lift doors started to slide shut again. Tuck took two strides, slamming his hand up high on either side of the shutting doors, wedging his body in between.
He looked big and blond and scruffy, and his pheromones filled the lift—as lethal to her system as cyanide gas. Her chest filled with the same pain and fullness she hadn’t been able to define until Reese had given it a label.
Love.
So it was true. She did love him. Her cells recognised it—they practically buzzed with it. She was suffering a terminal condition and the worst part was the cause was the only cure.
The lift doors succumbed to Tuck’s unrelenting hold and jerked open again. ‘What do you want?’ he asked.
She gulped at the hardness in his voice. ‘I’d like to…talk to you.’
‘If you’re here because you’re all horny again, you can forget it. I’m not your own personal plaything.’
Tuck walked away from the lift because he knew he was being a hypocrite. If she so much as looked at him with sex in her eyes he knew she could use him six ways to Sunday and he’d be more than a willing partner.
Just thinking about it gave him a raging hard-on.
Cassie’s legs sparked into action as the lift doors started to close again, and she walked into a spacious apartment dominated by the light filtering through massive windows at the far end through which she could see the Manhattan skyline.
‘No. I haven’t come for…’ She faltered. It seemed so bald to speak it aloud. ‘It’s about something else.’
Tuck headed for his kitchen. He grabbed a
heavy glass tumbler from a cupboard and held it beneath the spout of the fridge’s ice dispenser. Three cubes made a satisfying clinking noise. The bottle of Scotch which had copped a fair amount of misuse this last week sat on his kitchen bench, almost empty, and it was satisfying to pour the last of its contents over the ice.
He threw back half of it immediately, the burn sucking his breath away. But it was preferable to the burn that had taken up permanent residence in his gut. ‘You want a drink?’ he asked.
Cassie shook her head. ‘No. Thank you.’
They looked at each other across the room. ‘Well?’ Tuck said eventually as the silence stretched.
‘I came to tell you…’ She stopped. Those three little words seemed pretty bald, given the way they’d parted, but Reese did know her love stuff. ‘To tell you that I love you.’
Tuck almost choked on his next, more measured sip of Scotch. They were the words he’d longed to hear a week ago, but the lack of emotion behind them was startling.
‘You love me?’ he said. ‘Just like that?’
‘Well, no,’ Cassie said, taking a few more steps further into the apartment. ‘I’m not good at this. I didn’t know that was what it was…this thing. But Reese said—’
Tuck’s short, bitter laugh interrupted her. ‘Ah, Reese—all loved up and eager to see everyone else loved up as well.’
Cassie frowned. ‘No. That’s not how it is.’
‘Well, how is it, then?’
‘I can’t think or concentrate any more. My research means nothing to me…’
Tuck shrugged. ‘So this is about your work? Thinking about me interrupts your work? Which brings us back to that libido of yours again. All right, then,’ he said, slamming his glass down on the counter, reaching for his belt, undoing it, slipping it through the loops. ‘Let’s go. Can’t have your sex-drive getting in the way of important cosmic research.’
Cassie stepped back, horrified at his suggestion. ‘No. I’m trying to tell you…’ Tuck pulled his shirt over his head. ‘I’m not very good at this stuff.’
His hand was on his zip. The teeth parting seemed loud in the building silence between them. Cassie covered the distance between them, placing her hand on his to halt any further attempts at stripping.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to do this logically, to keep this all straight in my head, and you’re not helping.’
Tuck could see desperation shimmering in her blue-grey eyes. It wasn’t something he was used to seeing. Could she be telling the truth? No matter how badly? Dared he even hope?
‘I don’t care what’s in your head,’ he said, poking his index finger at her forehead. ‘I don’t give a crap about logic.’ He needed to know she felt something. ‘I only care what’s in your heart.’ He jabbed the same finger into the centre of her chest.
The jab wasn’t hard, but Cassie felt it right down to her spine. It stirred unfamiliar feelings. Helplessness. Inadequacy. She wasn’t used to feeling like that. Tears welled in her eyes.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, shaking her head as the first tear spilled over. Her nose started to itch and her throat felt as if it was being strangled from the inside. ‘I don’t know what’s in it.’ A sob came from deep in her chest and more tears fell. ‘I’ve never felt anything inside it before so I don’t know how it works.’
Two heaving sobs joined the first, squeezing through her rib-cage, and she tried to breathe and talk but for once in her life she didn’t seem able to do two things at once. ‘All I know is it’s big and deep and messy.’ Her face was screwed up, and her words were forced out between sobs. She wasn’t sure she was being remotely intelligible. ‘And murky. And it threatens to derail everything I know about me and the world around me—’
She stopped then, because she was crying too hard to talk and breathe, but she fought for control because whatever the words that were spewing out of her mouth in an inarticulate mess she needed to say them.
‘And it scares the hell out of me because it’s something I don’t seem to have any control over. And you know how much I need to have control. I feel like I’m going cr…cr…crazy.’ She sobbed-hiccoughed. ‘And I can’t go there again…’
She broke down for a moment, emotion overwhelming her.
‘And now I’m cr…cr…crying, and I never cry. I’ve tried to make my head rule my heart…like it always has…but my heart’s just not listening any more. It wants what it w-wants, and none of the other stuff m-matters. It’s only you that matters.’
Cassie collapsed against his chest, dissolving into more tears. She’d said it. She’d said what was in her heart. She had no idea if it had made any sense—hell, she’d hadn’t had a clue her heart had so damn much to say—but it was out now.
Tuck pulled her close as she cried, his heart flying in his chest. ‘Shh,’ he soothed. ‘Shh.’
But it seemed to go on unabated, and he just stood there and held her and let her cry. For a woman who didn’t cry she was giving it a good whirl.
But then she had years to make up for.
When it seemed to settle he smiled down at her. Her eyes were red, her neck was all blotchy and she was sniffling. She’d never been more beautiful. He kissed her hard on the mouth.
‘Now, that was from the heart,’ he said as he pulled away.
Cassie wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or not, but he was grinning down at her, and when he said, ‘I love you too,’ she finally relaxed.
‘You’re not going crazy,’ he said, looking down into her tearstained face, because he understood how much that prospect terrified her. ‘You’re just getting in touch with your emotional side.’
‘I don’t like my emotional side,’ she said, and sniffed.
Tuck chuckled. ‘That’s okay, because I love it.’ He kissed her again. ‘We’re getting married,’ he said. ‘Soon.’
Cassie blinked. That she hadn’t expected. ‘Why?’
‘Because that’s the next logical move when you’re in love,’ he said, dropping a kiss on her nose.
‘Isn’t that a little rushed, though?’
‘Sure—for some. But I reckon we both know what we want, and after years of not knowing, I don’t want to waste any more time.’
‘But there’s so much we need to talk about,’ she said. ‘What about Antarctica? What about that family you want?’
‘Cassiopeia, I’m not going to stop you from going to Antarctica or pursuing any part of your career.’
Cassie’s heart leapt at his words. ‘But…you seemed hesitant about it last time…at the apartment…the night you left.’
‘Of course.’ He smiled, his hands cradling her cheeks. ‘Six months is a long time. I’m going to miss you like crazy. But I’ll survive.’ He kissed her long and slow to punctuate his commitment.
When he was finished he dropped his hands.
‘As for a family—I don’t mean we have to have one straight away. We’re young. We’ve got time. And it doesn’t have to be a traditional family. We can adopt. We can foster a kid from the system. We can get a surrogate. And you don’t have to give up work. You have me, and I’m going to make a freaking great dad. My job is portable and we have the means.’
Cassie’s head spun. ‘You have this all worked out, don’t you?’
Tuck nodded. ‘I do. All you have to say is I do too and we’ll work it out. When it makes sense to be together, why delay?’
Cassie couldn’t fault his logic. And logic she understood. ‘I do,’ she said.
‘Damn straight you do,’ Tuck muttered against her mouth, before swinging her up into his arms and introducing her to his bedroom.
* * * * *
Look for Gina’s story in
MAID OF DISHONOR
Coming soon
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ONE
Saskia Bloom flicked her dark fringe out of her eyes and peered through her vintage glasses at her laptop screen before madly scribbling notes on the yellow legal pad under the mouse.
“I’ll eat my shoes if you’re even a day under forty,” she mumbled at the photo of a guy grinning inanely back at her from the Dating By Numbers website.
Undeterred, StudMuffin33 kept on smiling, as if the dauntingly athletic profile was so appealing any woman would let the age-fib slip.
Favourite Movie: The Fast and the Furious
Collects: surfboards
Who’d Play You in the Movie of Your Life? Jason Statham
Looking for: an open-minded lady with a twinkle in her eye
Good lord.
Mouse hover and click.