by PJ Adams
Her head was a raging mass of emotions, most of them contradictory. How dare Billy interfere with her life like that? Since when did he have any say in, or even influence over, who she saw and what she did with her life? If he wanted to play the protective father, how about he’d tried playing that role ten years ago when Cassie’s mother had been bed-ridden with her MS and Cassie had been skipping school and working God knows how many jobs just to keep things together?
“You don’t want to mess with Billy,” she said. “He’s never been one of the good guys.”
All those thoughts in her head, and being protective of Denny was the one that had risen to the top first. She hadn’t expected that.
“I know,” he said. “I knew his reputation when I took his money, but I’m not the guilty party Brady makes me out to be. Yes, it was me who brought in Billy and others like him. Our business was sinking, and Brady had been hiding it from me. When I realized how bad things had gotten I stepped in. I should never have brought Billy in, but I was only trying to save something Brady and I had set up when we were still in college.”
So that was somewhere halfway between what Denny had first told her, and the way Brady had subsequently spun things. Maybe she’d never know just who was to blame for their company sinking and bad money being sucked in, but that halfway story was as good as any version she’d heard yet.
“You know Brady’s jealous of you, don’t you?”
“Jealous? Of me? Brady was the one who made things happen. I’d have got nowhere without him. He was a brother to me.”
“That night at Saco Cabins, when Brady and his thugs caught up with us and you slunk off with your tail between your legs...” She had to dig. Why did she always have to keep poking at him like that?
“Oh, that night. Yes?”
“He said something. Said you always got the girl, but pretty soon they would see through you. There was a lot of anger in that. He was fit to explode. I’d say years of resentment. You were the one with the charm and the ideas, the one who got the girls and created multi-million pound software products that had Facebook and Google banging on your door. Is that right?”
“For sure. But–”
“And Brady was always there in the shadows, picking up the pieces.”
“He was the fixer. We used to joke about that all the time. He even called my office the Playroom. I could just play around with ideas all day long and he would turn it into product. He was the real brains behind it all. Sure, I made the sparks, but he was the one who discovered fire and learned how to exploit it.”
“And did you ever tell him that?”
The silence said it all.
“Like I say: jealous.”
“He’s really that pissed at me? I mean, I know he’s pissed about the money, but... it goes back further than that? I mean... how did I not see that?”
“Maybe you never moved beyond seeing the two of you as you’d been, and so you couldn’t see how you’d become?”
More silence.
“Maybe,” he said, eventually.
“Maybe you should talk to him, Denny.”
“Maybe you should talk to Billy.” And he didn’t have to add that perhaps she’d never moved beyond seeing Billy as he’d been, and so was unable to see what he’d become. Didn’t have to say that at all.
“You want to meet up sometime?”
“Sure,” he said quickly. “I’d like that more than anything.”
“Then maybe we should.”
3
Turned out Denny had been holing up in a motel just outside Portsmouth, on the New Hampshire coast. Just an hour out of Boston, where Brady and Billy Ray were based, and maybe an hour and a half from the White Mountains. Out of the way enough to make it hard to track him down, but not far off an equal distance between the two places he had unresolved business. It was almost as if he’d been just sitting there, waiting for her to call him.
She sat in the window seat of a coffee place at Attitash Mountain Resort, just a few miles down the road from Saco Cabins. The place was just starting to come to life for the coming winter. At the moment it was still hikers going up on the ski lifts, but there was snow already higher up the mountain, and everyone was saying it wouldn’t be long before the slopes started to open.
She’d got here early, and taken up residence in this seat with the view out over the parking lot and the highway. She’d see Denny coming long before he saw her. She didn’t know whether that was simply to give her the upper hand with him or because trouble always seemed to follow closely on his tail and at least here she’d have a good chance of seeing it coming. Maybe some of both.
She cradled a large latte in both hands, occasionally dipping her head to let the steam warm her face.
She would be calm. She would resist that destructive urge to start picking away at him as soon as they started to speak.
She was here to give him a chance.
He pulled up in the Lexus convertible, right next to the station wagon Cassie had borrowed from Sally to get here. Was he aware he was parking next to her? She knew far better than to see it as an omen: that the two of them would always be irresistibly drawn together. The guy had just picked a space close to the coffee place so he wouldn’t have to walk far.
Stupid thoughts. Why was she thinking like this, picking everything apart? How was it that he could unsettle her so much, without even trying?
He was wearing skinny jeans, a brown leather jacket artfully distressed around the collar and cuffs, and wraparound shades to cut out the winter glare and look cool in equal measure.
When he reached the entrance to the coffee-shop he paused and surveyed the tables until he spotted Cassie. He even had the decency to look a little nervous as he approached.
She looked up at him, coolly, and indicated the seat across from her with a nod of the head. No kiss or hug; only a brief half-smile in greeting. As he sat, she moistened her lips, and then said, “So tell me, Denny. That night... were you going to kidnap me, or were you just going to rely on your smooth-talking charm to deliver me up against my will to my father?”
He did that thing. The thing where his jaw sagged and his mouth fell open and Cassie could almost hear the workings of his brain as he realized that whatever he said now he was only ever going to dig himself in deeper. How was it so easy to talk circles round him before he’d even said a thing, and why – God, why? – did she always have to start out so aggressively?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Really. I’m nervous, and I don’t quite understand why I’m meeting you here and giving you another chance, and so I’m doing that whole starting out defensive thing before you’ve even had a chance to say a damned word, and I’m... Well, I’m still doing it. Or a variation of it. I–”
He was smiling. Laughing even.
“I’d forgotten just how beautiful you were,” he said. “Which isn’t to say I’d forgotten what you look like, before you say anything. But memories... you don’t always believe memories when you’re clinging to them and reliving them over and over, do you? You think memory is exaggerating, dressing things up. And–”
“And you’re doing it now,” she said. “That talking thing, where you just babble on like I was. Why are we like this?”
“Because it matters.”
She took a sip of her coffee. “Shall we just be quiet for a minute?” she said. “Imagine we’re still doing the nervous small talk thing, but in reality just skip it. That kind of thing?”
He nodded, said nothing, and when the waitress came over he pointed at what he wanted and smiled.
Outside, a big SUV had pulled up and now a family piled out, all clad in Day-Glo puffer jackets and beanies and big hiking boots. The sky was a soft, powdery blue with a dusting of white clouds, and the waitress came back with Denny’s coffee and Cassie realized she was still doing it, the nervous jabber, even if it was confined to her head for now.
“So,” said Denny, eventually. “I’m glad you called.”
&
nbsp; “Do you know how you make me feel?” She seemed physically incapable of just giving a guy a break today.
He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. This was sensitive Denny, the one who got her. Not the smartass swindler and conman he could sometimes be.
“That night when you just showed up at Pappy’s Lobster Bar out of nowhere. You looked like you’d stepped out of a movie screen and then it turned out you didn’t just have the looks but you had the charm and the brains, too. And what I thought was, He’s just too good to be true. Why would a man like that even look at me once, let alone twice?”
“I’ll tell you,” he said, taking advantage as she paused for breath. “I walked in that night out of the storm and as soon as I saw you, my breath was taken away. You’re beautiful, for sure, but pretty quickly I discovered also that you’re smart and funny, and you have more balls than anyone I’ve ever met, and I mean that in the best possible way. You want to know why a man like me would look twice? A man like me is nothing in comparison, not even worthy to stand in your shadow. A man like me had fallen head over heels in love in that very first instant.”
In love... her brain skipped that bit for now. Filed it away for future reference. She couldn’t deal with that right now.
Instead: “But it was too good to be true, wasn’t it? You didn’t just turn up from nowhere by chance, did you? You knew I was there. You’d come looking for me so you could turn me in to Billy Ray to try to make up for your bad debts. So what was it to be? Kidnap me, or just lie to me until you could trick me into meeting up with him somehow?”
He looked down, as if he was gathering himself to find the right words. Then those steel-gray eyes flashed up, instantly trapping her in his look. “I don’t know,” he said. “I hadn’t got that far. I tend to improvise and work things out as I go along. That always used to frustrate the Hell out of Brady. So no, I didn’t know what I was going to do. And after I’d set eyes on you I didn’t care any more. That moment changed everything for me.”
He stopped, and they fell into silence again.
Cassie didn’t know if she believed him and his smooth talk, but at least he did the words nicely. And maybe, if she didn’t entirely believe him now she was somewhere on the way to doing so.
“I felt like a punchbag,” she said. “Knocked every which way.”
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded, took another sip of her coffee, looked out of the window.
“I really am sorry.”
There were more automobiles parked outside, and the place was starting to fill up now. Hikers down off the mountain and needing to warm up; others taking a break before they tackled the trails.
“What’s your plan?” she asked.
“You mean the plan where I stop Brady and his armed hoodlums from trying to track me down and convince him that he doesn’t have a beef with me, and then after that I start out all over? That plan?”
She nodded, fighting off the smile he seemed to so easily conjure up in her.
“Well, I’m not just doing nothing out in Portsmouth,” he said. “I’ve been talking to a few people, developing some ideas. I figure if I’ve built one multi-million dollar business up out of nothing and then trashed it I should be able to do something similar again, right?”
“And, you know, the armed hoodlums intent on tracking you down?”
He shrugged. “I haven’t quite worked that one out yet,” he said. “You said I should talk to Brady, but I’ve already tried that. He’s mad at me. He isn’t ready to listen to reason, just yet. I’ll deal with him, though. We go back a long time: you don’t just forget all that, even when you end up ten million dollars in debt and you blame each other.”
She nodded and raised her cup again, but the remains of the coffee had gone cold.
When she put the cup down, her hand brushed against his... her knuckles skimming briefly against the back of his hand.
That touch was like electricity surging through her.
All those nights alone, remembering and dreaming. Longing for that contact, for the effect his touch had on her. All of that, focused in one brief touch.
She sat back, heart racing, all concentration gone, and then he reached out and put that hand on hers.
His skin was warm, smooth, his touch light but just firm enough. Sometimes the lightest of touches can pin you in place so much more surely than a tight grip, and that’s how she felt then, with his hand on hers.
“What are we going to do?”
As soon as she spoke those words aloud she understood their significance. What are we going to do? She was back in that place where, without quite realizing how, she couldn’t see a future without him in it.
It was exciting. She’d never been in this kind of position before. More than anything, though, it scared her. The more she got to know Denny McGowan, the more she understood that, while he might well be good at heart, a dominant streak of his personality was roguish. He twisted the truth to suit his plans. He manipulated and misled people. He had an uncanny knack of alienating dangerous people and then vanishing. Under any kind of scrutiny at all, he was not a good catch.
But when did logic ever come into this kind of thing?
That hand on hers tightened just a little, for just a moment. A touch that was probably meant to be reassuring, but instead reminded her of his strength. Of that night at the cabin when he’d picked her up off the ground, carried her inside and thrown her onto the bed. When he’d stripped her, pinned her arms above her head, forced himself between her legs. Pinning her down with his body weight, he’d driven deep inside her, pulled back, thrust once and she was there...
There in that place where her whole body thrashed from side to side as orgasm took her, an explosion of heat and sensation and electricity and then... that thing, that strange thing where she briefly blacked out with the intensity of it all...
“You okay?”
All that, just from his touch, from that brief squeeze.
“Yeah,” she said. “Yes, I am.”
Almost idly, his thumb was caressing her, working that hollow between the base of her thumb and the side of her hand. She’d never known that was such a tender, sensitive spot, and all of a sudden his touch felt so intimate!
“What you thinking?”
That was another thing he did: ask stupid questions like that. He’d asked that question to her at least a couple of times before and he’d never had the answer he must have been hoping for. Didn’t he know it was dangerous to ask a woman what she was thinking? Especially a woman you’ve misled and double-crossed and somehow still made fall in love with you?
Right now, though... “I’m thinking of how I feel when you’re sliding inside me. When you take it real slow.”
“Yes?” That touch, just a little firmer as his thumb stroked that tender spot.
“Somehow you hit that point where I think that’s it, I can’t take any more, and then you just keep on pushing. It’s not so much a size thing... You’re fully in, but then you just push, and somehow you’re pressing deeper, and you’re grinding hard against me. I’d never felt anything quite like that before. That’s what I was thinking, just then when you asked. I was thinking about that feeling. About the combination of surprise and being so full and just... Oh. My. God. That.”
“That’s good,” he said. Smiling. Clearly flattered, and – by the way he shifted in his seat – clearly turned on, too.
“So what are you thinking?” His turn. She’d never dared ask him what was in his head before.
“I’m thinking about how my breath just stops when you get that look in your eye,” he said. “The light catching the blue of the iris so it looks like a glinting jewel. The smile in your eyes. The intensity in your look when you’re turned on. And I’m thinking about that moment when I press just a little bit harder–” and he pressed with his thumb “–and I see your mouth open in a perfect ‘O’, and your eyes widen, and I know you’re real close to the edge.”
She reache
d across with her free hand and trailed a red finger-nail along the back of his hand. She could see the hairs pricking up in response to her touch.
“Touching you just like that,” she said. “Just running my fingernail across your skin.”
He shifted again.
She moistened her lips and, when he was still watching, ran the tip of her tongue across her lips again.
“That thing with your stud,” he said.
She nodded. The tongue stud. The contrast between hard metal and the soft, fleshy wetness of her tongue. Running around his ear, down his neck; dragging along the underside of his shaft until it hit that sensitive spot just below the head – first the stud, then the tip of her tongue.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked.
“I hope so.”
“You think we should get out of here?”
“I do. Only I’m not sure how easy it’ll be to stand with any decency.”
“Will-power,” she said, and stood.
He had to stand, too, and the bulge in his pants was unmistakable. He should be thankful for tight jeans, keeping things more or less in place down there.
“Let’s go,” he grunted, and they headed across to pay.
4
Outside, Cassie paused on the wooden deck. Steps led down to the parking lot, but now she touched Denny on the arm to slow him down.
Deep breath. The air had such a bite to it! She’d forgotten how it got here in the winter.
“This isn’t going to be easy,” she said, and now she had his full attention. “I know we’re right in the heat of the moment here and we’re going to maybe pull over in some trees or maybe get all the way back to Saco Cabins and it’ll be all about hungry, desperate need, but that’s just now, you understand? That’s just something we’ve got to do. But then, after that... it’s not going to be easy, Denny. You lied to me. You left me. And I don’t know how I’m ever going to trust you even half as much as I need you. You understand that?”
