Scurry proved useless, however, because when she returned from the linen closet he was standing in her small living area, stark naked.
Cassandra focused on his face. “What are you doing now?” she demanded.
He lifted his arms away from his lean, muscled body. The benders didn’t seem to affect his fitness level. “Shortcut. I’m naked. Now you.”
She threw the towel at his chest, but his reflexes were off and it fell to the floor after briefly catching on the impressive erection he was sporting. “I thought too much booze made that impossible,” she muttered.
He looked down at himself, palmed the thick flesh, then sent her a grin. “Hung like ‘n elephant. Did I tell you that?”
“Only every time you’ve been drinking.” Except this was the first time she’d seen the evidence for herself. Oh, and he had a nice ass, too, she noticed, as he turned and headed down the short hallway that led to a half bath on the left and her bedroom on the right. She trailed his slow-moving figure, then had to yell out, “Left, left! You want to go left,” as he veered into her bedroom.
Oh, fine. There was an attached bathroom there, too, complete with a shower.
But he didn’t make it that far. Instead, he found her queen-sized mattress and fell on it, faceup. One of the cats tiptoed over and settled on the pillow around his head, just like a coonskin hat.
“My comatose Davy Crockett,” she said, aware he’d sunk into drunken dreamland again. Resigned to an unexpected overnight visitor, she reached for the covers to pull them over his nakedness. Her gaze snagged on a thin strip of fabric tied with a clumsy knot around his left wrist. Watery bloodstains marred the white material.
Her stomach flipped. A high whine rang in her ears and her spongy knees had her sinking to the mattress. She lifted his hand into her lap. His fingers were curled in relaxation, the skin warm, the callused palm scratchy under her thumbs. The bandage—
“Wha’?”
Her gaze jumped to Gabe’s face. He was awake again, and staring at her.
“Your wrist,” she said. “How did you get hurt?”
His gaze flicked down to the bandage and he looked at it, obviously bemused. Not alarmed. Alarmed was her.
“Accident.” It was the first nonslurred word he’d spoken that evening.
Her alarm level rose. “What kind of ‘accident’?” When he didn’t respond, she shook his hand. “What kind of accident, Gabe?”
The same kind of “accident” that had led her to find one of his cars with a garden hose trailing from tailpipe to window? The same kind of “accident” that had led him to take a hunk of rope and coil it into a noose that she’d caught him tying from a beam of his backyard gazebo? She swallowed.
“What kind of accident?”
He frowned, as if thinking back. “Box cutter.”
Box cutter. Box cutter.
“Gabe.” She wanted to shake him, slap him, scream for mercy, but all she could do was say his name and hold tight to his hand. “Gabe.”
He smiled, as charming as any angel seeking entrance into hell. It was obvious the discussion of the bandage and the box cutter was already forgotten. “Is so true, Froo’ Loop. I so want to do you.” Then he slipped his hand from hers so he could roll to his side and drop back into sleep.
Cassandra came to a hasty stand, then stepped back, putting space between herself and the man she’d been trying to save for the past two years. I so don’t want to do this anymore. I so can’t do this anymore. Because there was no longer a way to fool herself that there wouldn’t come a day when she couldn’t rescue him.
Backing up, she kept her eyes on his sleeping form sprawled across her bed. The cat at his head was snuggled against the nape of his neck now. The other two were draped across his limbs—one on his arm, one over his thigh—keeping him close like she’d always wanted to. Gabe was where she’d always imagined him in her deepest, darkest, most secret fantasies, but it was going to be a one-time, no-touch night.
It had taken her two years to grasp the truth, but now she knew that if she let him any closer to her heart his self-destructive bent was going to make her collateral damage.
Meaning it was past time for Cassandra Riley to rescue herself.
Two
The family you come from isn’t as important as the family you’re going to have.
—RING LARDNER
The couch was lumpy and the cats disloyal, so Cassandra woke up early and alone. She suppressed the urge to call her sisters. Juliet was in Hawaii on her honeymoon with Noah and early in California was even earlier on the island of Kauai. Her other sister, Nikki, claimed she wasn’t a stay-in-bed person, but Cassandra imagined her snuggled next to her fiancé, Jay, at their Malibu beach house and decided against disturbing their morning.
She sat up, already fidgety. With her sisters happily happy-ever-aftering and with herself sworn off Gabe-detail, she lacked something to focus on. Someone.
Cassandra was the kind of person who needed a project.
From the basket beside the small coffee table, she picked up a sock she was knitting, but found herself staring at the four needles instead of manipulating them. With a sigh, she put the piece aside and headed for the kitchen, refusing to give in to instinct and check on the still-slumbering Gabe.
He was fine. And his status was no longer her concern anyway.
A steaming pot of herbal tea was on the countertop when the first of the bedroom’s occupants made an appearance. Gray-striped Moosewood.
Each of her cats had picked its own name. Moosewood, because that was the title of the vegetarian cookbook he’d settled on after she’d gotten him warm and dry. Breathe had found her spot on top of the reminder printed on Cassandra’s lavender-colored yoga mat. Ed had marched in circles then landed on one of the odd missives mailed to her from an ex-boyfriend, the once nice-enough yet now apparent deep-end-diver Edward Malcolm IV.
Cassandra opened the back door to let out the cat for a short, supervised wander. Warm air wafted across her face and she could already smell the sunshine in the air. It was going to be one of those days. May had its gray, June had its gloom, and April could be iffy in SoCal, but the rest of the year made up for it in summerish splendor.
December 25 was notorious for the kind of temperatures that made new sweaters and plush robes impossible to wear. And there were many other glorious moments in “winter” that could seduce anyone into swallowing whole the California dream. This March morning was clearly one of those.
Her phone rang. She crossed the room to snatch up the cordless receiver. The number on the display was unfamiliar. The voice calling out “Hello? Hello?” wasn’t.
“Judith!” Cassandra exclaimed, greeting her mother, who had always insisted on being called by her first name. Her mother, who though she might not be the warmest of parental units—despite the fact that she was Cassandra’s only parental unit—must today have tuned in to her maternal radar. “Judith, where are you?”
Static made several long syllables unrecognizable. “. . . on a sat phone,” Judith Riley concluded.
“Great,” Cassandra said, though the location could be somewhere in South America or in Somalia as far as she knew. The older woman had been bouncing around the world for over a year and there didn’t seem to be any particular logic to her route. “And you’re well?”
More static cut in again, obscuring her mother’s reply.
“Terrific.” Cassandra crossed to the sliding glass door to let the cat back in, hoping she hadn’t just expressed approval for an invasion of intestinal parasites or the appearance of a scaly rash. Her gaze caught on the wet clothes piled in a heap on the patio deck a few feet from the door.
Damn. Gabe’s stuff. Last night, she’d forgotten to rescue it—but she was finished with taking care of the man and that included his clothes, too. Still . . .
Stepping outside, she tucked the phone between her ear and shoulder to pick up his wet shirt. A quick toss landed it on one of the painted metal ga
rden chairs to dry.
“And how are you?” Cassandra’s mother’s voice suddenly sounded so clear that she started, turning to see if somehow the woman had been magically transported from Timbuktu or Turkistan.
She laughed a little at herself and turned back to bend down and retrieve the crumpled pair of sodden jeans. “I’m okay. But Gabe . . .” She swallowed the rest of the story.
Judith Riley had chosen to conceive a baby without even using a willing bed partner in the process, because it was important to her to prove that women did not need men. Not to make a baby. Not to raise a child. Not to lead a fulfilling life.
She was right, of course. Cassandra would never say it wasn’t so. But she had to wonder why biology compelled people to partner up if there wasn’t some advantage to it.
Her mother’s thoughts never wandered in such a direction, however. So her daughter didn’t share with Judith about the man in her bed—even though Cassandra had decided that once she booted him out of it she was turning her back on him, too.
Instead, she changed the subject as she threw his jeans over another chair. “Do you have your arrival date set for next month?”
She thought the silence on the other end was due to the shaky connection. But then she heard her mother’s slow “Weeell . . .”
The space under Cassandra’s heart hollowed. “You’re not coming back for my birthday.” No question mark necessary.
“I have an opportunity to get into Tibet. I met someone who . . . It doesn’t matter. I’m sure you understand that it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Cassie.”
Her mother hadn’t called her Cassie since she was in kindergarten. She tilted her head toward the blue, blue sky. “I’m only going to turn thirty once in this lifetime, too.”
“Yes, yes. But the Dalai Lama—”
“Judith, the Dalai Lama isn’t even in Tibet. He lives in exile in India.”
“Well, of course you’re right about that. But you don’t really need me there, do you? You’ve met those two new friends of yours, Nancy and Jenna—”
“Nikki and Juliet. And they’re my half sisters, remember? The sperm donor whose specimen was used to impregnate you was the same their mothers used to conceive.”
“Even more to my point. You’ll have family on your big day.”
Family. What Cassandra had always wanted, though her mother had never before conceded the benefit of one until given the chance to visit the place where the Dalai Lama wasn’t. “I was looking forward to you meeting them, Judith.”
“And I will,” her mother declared. “Not next year, but maybe the one after that—”
“What? I thought you were coming back for my birthday, then coming back for good in six months.”
“Plans change, Cassandra. You should learn to be more flexible.”
Blinking against the sudden brightness of the sun, Cassandra lowered her head. Gabe’s soggy boxers were in her line of sight and she nudged at the cotton with her toe, revealing something beneath them. With another nudge she uncovered what they’d been hiding. There, the leather water-stained, was his wallet. She reached for it.
“So when shall I expect to see you again, Judith?” she asked, straightening.
“I’m not sure. There’s Tibet, and then maybe a quick trip to Hong Kong, followed by visiting some new friends in South Africa . . .”
“I see.” She squeezed Gabe’s wallet in her hand, noticing the heft. He carried more than a debit card and his driver’s license.
“I’ll pick you up some lovely gifts. How does that sound?”
Like a piss-poor substitute for her mother’s presence on her thirtieth birthday, but Judith Riley had never been one to worry about someone else’s expectations or needs.
“What are you going to do to celebrate?” Judith’s voice came through loud and clear again, and lighter, too, presumably because she’d broken the bad news.
“I don’t know now,” Cassandra said. “I had been hoping we’d have a few days together. You know, stroll along the beach, hang out at the shop, maybe lunch with my sisters on the actual day.”
“You should do something special for yourself. Buy something you’ve always wanted. Have an experience you’ve been dreaming about.”
Cassandra’s thoughts shifted instantly to Gabe. Gabe in her bed. Without curbing the impulse this time, she strolled back into the house and took the short hallway to look at him through her half-open bedroom door. He was belly-down on her sheets, his head buried in the pillow, the covers riding low along the edge of his hips.
Above them she glimpsed the upper curve of his taut butt, the long valley of his spine, the tangle of his too-long black hair. It was always either too long or too short. He’d let it go until it brushed the tops of his shoulders, then he’d visit some mysterious barber he called “Sammy” who left nicks on his scalp from the brutal clip of a razor.
She suspected he liked the pain.
And yet she still wanted him.
“Do you have something like that in mind, Cassie?” her mom said in her ear.
Cassandra had had Gabe in her mind and in her fantasies since he’d walked into Malibu & Ewe one day two years before and told her he’d bought the building that housed her little yarn shop. He’d bought the café/fish market across the parking lot, too. There were other properties in the Malibu area that were now his. He hadn’t been particularly friendly, but that hadn’t mattered to her.
In the succeeding months, she’d refused to let him get away with his short responses and his stiff attitude. She’d wheedled, she’d charmed, she’d outright lied about needing the occasional repair so that she could get him into her shop and out of whatever black hole had sucked him down.
They were friends now. She was convinced of it when he told her about this funky little place on his property that she was welcome to rent when the apartment building she lived in went condo. He gave her a deal on the monthly cost and she cooked him as many healthy dinners as she could coax him into accepting.
Friendship wasn’t all she wanted, though. She’d always known that on some level.
Could joining him in that bed be the birthday gift her mother was suggesting she should give herself? They’d never kissed. They’d never really touched, except for those drunken times he didn’t remember, when she scooped his sorry ass from some seedy place and dragged him home.
And yet every inch of her flesh ached to be stroked by him. She wanted his hard mouth on hers, even though 99 percent of the time she’d be risking whisker burn from his five-o’clock shadow that was from the five o’clock three days before.
Yearning rushed like heat across her skin.
“Cassandra?”
She’d forgotten all about her mother, and she started at the sound of her voice. “Yes, yes, I’m here.” It came out so loud, she saw Gabe twitch, and then begin to stir.
Cassandra stumbled back from the doorway, and she bobbled the wallet she was carrying. It flew out of her hands to land on the floor, the two edges opening. Inside, in one of those protective sleeves, was a photograph.
“Are you thinking about your celebration?” her mother asked.
“Yes,” Cassandra said slowly. “Right.” She retrieved the wallet from the floor, staring at the small, plastic-covered rectangle the whole while. Two people were pictured. A slender dark-haired woman with a sleek, short bob. There was a child leaning against her leg, her long hair just as dark as her mother’s—and Gabe’s.
Funny, she’d never pictured them in her head. Cassandra had never imagined what Lynn—his wife—had looked like, or Maddie, his five-year-old daughter either. Maybe he had trouble keeping their looks in mind, too. The plastic over their faces was worn away, as if he’d run his thumb over their features countless times, trying to memorize them.
Or trying to bring them back.
Closing her eyes, she snapped shut the edges of the damp leather. She could never compete with that. She could never snag his romantic attention, not when he was
so devoted to the ghosts of his wife and daughter who had died at the hands of a drunk driver three years before.
She’d always known that at some level, too, which is why she’d settled for being his friend. But it wasn’t working for her anymore. It wasn’t enough.
So she had to turn away from him.
She had to turn toward her future.
“I’m going to throw myself a big bash, Judith,” Cassandra said, making a sudden decision. “I’m going to open the shop and have the best damn thirtieth birthday celebration I can put together.”
“Good idea,” her mother enthused. “Invite everyone. You know they’ll all come.”
“Right,” she agreed. Except one someone. But that wouldn’t matter. While she might include Gabe on the guest list, she promised herself it wasn’t going to break her heart if he didn’t attend.
Gabe Kincaid woke to the familiar: the Death Valley dryness of his mouth and tongue, the pounding at his temples as the hangover goblins used their mallets to knock nine-inch nails into his brain, the last wisps of a sexual dream that left his body hot and his cock erect.
He shifted his legs, noting a warm weight across one ankle. Opening his eyes, he stared, astonished, at the creature draped over his lower limb. It blinked back at him, its yellow eyes wide.
Not the pussy he’d been fantasizing about.
Shutting his eyes again, he breathed deep and tried regrouping. In the last three years, he’d come to consciousness in a variety of places under a range of circumstances. Once, he’d found himself on the beach at Zuma, surrounded by surfers who’d paid him no attention as he’d rolled over and yakked up ninety-proof who-knew-what. Another time, he’d come awake inside a yellow cab parked in the lot of a local bar. Apparently he’d told the driver to leave him in the backseat with the motor running until the meter ran up to the four-hundred bucks he had in his pocket.
Dirty Sexy Knitting Page 2
