In the last year it had been relatively better. He’d wake up with a raging hangover, in his own bed or on his own couch, a note left nearby informing him of his car’s location. Yet one aspect of his benders had always remained the same. He never remembered getting drunk and he never remembered how he got to the beach or to his bed—for which he’d always been grateful.
It was the whole damn point, after all. To forget.
But this morning he didn’t feel so full of gratitude, because he had a bad feeling, a very bad feeling, about where he’d spent last night.
Steeling himself, he took a quick inventory. All right, he was naked. And, yep, he was in between rumpled sheets. Opening his eyes the merest slit, he checked out the animal at the end of the bed.
Damn it, he hadn’t made a mistake. The yellow-orbed pet was none other than one of Cassandra’s cats.
Which meant he was naked in Cassandra’s bed.
Of course, Gabe didn’t really need the visual clues. Now that his brain was getting into gear, he registered it was her scent that was surrounding him, the lemony freshness of the lotion she used on her skin and the sweeter, more flowery fragrance of her shampoo that often drifted through the air as her waterfall of rippling brown hair moved.
The stuff was a mystery to him—its perfect waves and its silky-looking length that, when she was naked, would flirt with the crease at the top of her round ass. Not that he’d ever seen her naked.
He’d just thought about it a lot.
Groaning, he threw his forearm over his eyes to hold back the image in his mind. This was Cassandra he was thinking of, who was kind of like a nun, and kind of like a sister, and the closest thing to a friend he had in his whole, fucked-up little world.
Because he honored all that—a half-dead man like himself had to honor something—not once had he come on to her like his libido always urged him to.
Except now he was naked in her bed.
And as usual, he had a big gaping hole in his memory. How many days did it go back? Two? Five? It wasn’t something he usually bothered to calculate, other than to be glad that time had passed.
Still, it didn’t mean he’d actually made another entry in the long list of his life’s mistakes, did it?
The sudden sound of rushing water caused his arm to drop and his eyes to pop open. A shower noise, but he knew this place, owned it as a matter of fact, and the shower was in the attached bathroom. The door to it was ajar, the light inside was off, and he’d know if Cassandra was that close.
Then, in the periphery of his vision, something moved.
Oh, no. Oh, God.
There was another shower; he knew that, too, because he’d installed its rainwater showerhead with his very own hands last summer. It was situated outside, against the side of the house a few steps from the pool, and that’s where his hostess was making her morning ablutions.
Probably so she wouldn’t wake him; Cassandra was courteous like that.
And if he had an iota of her good manners, he wouldn’t be using the angle afforded by the half-opened mirrored closet door to gawk at her wet body through the bedroom window.
She was naked now, too.
With her head thrown back, her eyes closed as she wet that length of spectacular hair, there was nothing to hide the most amazing pair of breasts he’d been trying not to think about for two long years. It wasn’t as if anyone could ignore them—and her sisters teased her about nature’s bounty all the time—but on only a very few occasions had Gabe allowed himself to even glance at the abundance of female flesh below her clavicle.
And now here that flesh was, for his secret, private viewing, the pale globes that would spill out of his palms and the hard, pink nipples that pointed toward him in invitation. There was all the rest, too: the taut sweep of her abdomen, the tight swirl of her belly button, the cluster of soft brown curls that matched the warm brown on the top of her head.
There was liquid soap in the cups of her palms. Where would she take those lucky bubbles first? Gabe moved a hand in the direction of his hard-on, ready to—
He groaned, fisting the top sheet in his wandering fingers and rolling away from the reflection in the mirror.
What the hell was he doing? This was Cassandra he was a minute from masturbating over. Cassandra, who, it bore repeating, was kind of like a nun, and kind of like a sister, and the closest thing to a friend he had in his whole, fucked-up little world.
And yet with all that in his head, he rolled to look at her reflection again. His heart slammed once, then stopped. Shit.
She’d turned. Now it was her wet back and ass he was offered, and on either side of her waist, he saw four bruises, each the size of a fingerprint, standing out on the creamy skin of her hips. Fingerprints right in that place where the back of a man’s hands would be tickled by the ends of her lustrous hair. Right where a man would grip a woman when he was holding her steady for hard, eager thrusts.
He looked down at his fingers, then groaning again, once more turned away from the image of the woman who he feared he’d plundered in this very bed. Had he really?
The hangover goblins went after his brain with more wicked glee and he welcomed the brutal pain.
Still, over their manic nail-pounding, he knew when Cassandra came into the bedroom. Obeying his first, cowardly instinct, he faked sleep. But then one of her damn cats, the yellow-eyed devil that had been at his feet, pounced on his naked back with force, claws unsheathed.
“Yaaah!” He shook the damn thing free of his skin, twisting and sitting up at the same time, so that when he was finally de-felined he was left facing another pair of big eyes.
Blue.
Cassandra’s big, blue eyes, the surrounding dark lashes still spiky from her shower. A short flowered robe was belted around her waist. In the vee of the lapels was the deep cleavage of her centerfold-worthy rack.
He jerked his gaze back to her face. It was flushed, but that might be due to the mug she carried, its steam curling in the air. “You’re awake,” she said.
“Just now,” he replied, his voice sounding as if he’d swallowed gravel. He made sure he kept his body angled away from the closet door so she wouldn’t notice that she’d unintentionally provided him with a peepshow.
“Sorry about Ed,” she said, nodding to the cat that was sitting on his haunches, one leg rising as straight as a middle finger while he tongue-washed his black-and-white fur. “It’s just that he loves you, you know.”
“Yeah. The free acupuncture session sends just that message.”
She didn’t laugh. Instead, she approached the bed, not getting too close, but close enough to set down the mug on a paperback sitting on the bedside table. The book was titled Veggie Cooking for Carnivores. The contents of the mug emitted a stench one degree off crap.
“That’s for you,” she said, quickly backing off.
She wasn’t acting like herself, which made him even more jittery. But her beverage habit was her usual. He sneered at it.
“I’m not drinking some tuber you dug up in the backyard and then steeped in hot cat piss,” he said. “Instead, when I come over to your shop for the usual break time this morning, I’ll double the size of my latté we both pretend you don’t drink down every time I turn my back, Froot Loop.”
That lit the fire in her eye. She looked like the old Cassandra when she slammed her arms over her chest. “You know I detest that nickname.”
“Since when has that stopped me?”
“I thought after last night . . .”
Oh damn, oh damn, oh damn. He cleared his throat. “Last night . . .”
“Admit you owe me now, Gabe.”
For the bruises he’d put on her backside? For the sexing he couldn’t recall?
“What, uh, what is it you want, Cassandra?”
She looked away. She never looked away from him. For as long as he’d known her, she’d been in-his-face, on-her-toes, up-in-his-business. When he was in the blackest of black moods, she’d call h
im over to fix her refrigerator or help eat her dinner or, once, zip up the back of an incredibly slinky cocktail dress.
He’d pinched the metal tab between his thumb and forefinger, keeping her an arm’s length away as he nudged it upward. Still, he’d breathed in a new perfume he’d never smelled on her before. He’d told her he hated it.
When what he’d hated was that she was wearing it for some man other than him.
“About that ‘usual break time’ thing we’ve gotten in the habit of sharing. I think . . . I think starting today I’d like a little distance, Gabe.”
He stiffened. That was his line! No matter how many times she called, no matter how many meals they shared, he was always careful to keep a certain reserve. Cassandra was too damn nice to be saddled with the walking black shadow that he knew he was 99 percent of the time. But what had he done to put her off a simple, uncomplicated coffee break?
Those bruises lit up like neon in his mind’s eye. “Froot Loop.” His throat felt strangled. “Did I . . . somehow hurt you?”
She shook her head. “No. Of course not. It’s just . . . things are different for me now.”
Now? Different now? He closed his eyes. That meant they’d done it, right? Inhibitions annihilated by too much alcohol, he’d gone ahead and seduced Cassandra, who had been on a self-selected celibacy kick as long as he’d known her.
It was the only thing that had stopped him from refusing to let her leave the house that night she’d worn the tight dress and the new perfume.
“Cassandra. I’m sorry—”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.” One of her hands fluttered. “But last night . . .”
“You came and got me. You’ve done that before.” He knew that, of course. Those times he’d been left in his place with the handwritten notes telling him where to find his car—those notes had been written by Cassandra. Yet neither one of them had ever acknowledged her past good deeds.
She smiled now. On the right side of her full lips was just the tiniest of dimples. It flickered. “Those other times didn’t end quite like this time.”
“Right.” He wanted to talk about exactly how “this time” had ended. And begun. The middle part, too. He definitely wanted to have her tell him all about the middle part. But wouldn’t that be worse than the seduction itself? Wouldn’t admitting that he didn’t recall a moment of their time together only add insult to injury? He thought of those eight bruises on her perfect ass and wondered what that flesh had felt like against his palms.
“So . . .” Her brows lifted over those beautiful eyes of hers.
“So . . .” he repeated stupidly, then remembered that she’d asked for distance. It was the least he could do for her.
It was something he should be eager for himself. He should be eager to go back to his house, to his solitude, to the darkness that he’d fall into with a bottle of booze when the pain got to be too much. Still, he lingered between Cassandra’s sheets, frustrated by the perplexing holes in his memory.
Ironic, wasn’t it? After all the drinking to forget, he was finally wishing he could remember everything.
Three
The great advantage of living in a large family is that early lesson of life’s essential unfairness.
—NANCY MITFORD
It was as if fate had put its stamp of approval on her fresh life plan, Cassandra decided, when she turned into the parking lot of Malibu & Ewe and saw her sister Nikki standing outside the shop. Besides the birthday party, there was another item on her new agenda, one that required her younger sister’s cooperation.
A paper cup of coffee in hand, Nikki waited for Cassandra to unlock the door and then followed her inside, proceeding directly to the sliding back doors where she rolled up the sunshades that were lowered each night. Cassandra stowed her purse in the back storeroom, then joined the other woman as she stared out the glass at the wide view of the blue-gray Pacific, the light from the summer-warm sun carving gold discs in its breeze-roughened surface.
Her yarn shop, perched on a bluff above one of Malibu’s south-facing beaches, had a wide back deck that held chairs convenient for knitters who liked to work with the open air on their faces. For those who wished for more shelter, a grouping of sand-colored couches was placed at the center of the store. The walls were stacked with bins holding yarns and lined with racks displaying needles and other knitting and crocheting accessories.
Cassandra turned to Nikki. “Do you want to finish your coffee outside? Or I can brew some organic herbal tea—” She broke off as her sister mimed poison by arsenic, free hand clutching her throat, her tongue lolling, her expression tortured.
Rolling her eyes, she shook her finger at her sister. “Be careful, your face might get stuck that way. And wouldn’t that make for some lovely wedding memories.”
Nikki instantly prettied up, and a smile sparked in her bicolored eyes, the trait she shared with their older sister, Juliet. “Which reminds me. Jay and I finally found a photographer we can agree on. So what’s your vote: Should we risk bad luck and take pictures of us dressed for the ceremony before the ‘I dos’ or should we go old-school and make everybody wait for the reception to start while we do one of those interminable photo shoots?”
“Don’t buck tradition,” Cassandra said. “But serve some tasty hors d’oeuvres for your guests to nibble on until you’re ready to join the party.”
Nikki beamed. “Excellent suggestion. Since I’m on such close terms with the chef planning the menu—”
“Since you are the chef planning the menu, you mean.”
“Yeah, and since this chef-slash-bride isn’t doing anything but wedding junk until we’re back from the honeymoon at the end of June, I think I can figure out just what will keep the complaints down.” Then Nikki looked out the window, glanced over at Cassandra, turned oceanward again.
Frowning, Cassandra put her hand over the anxiety starting a little flutter in her middle. “Everything okay? Are you and Jay . . .”
“Blissful,” Nikki said, “with the exception of us both nearly regretting this whole-hog wedding thing. What was I thinking?”
“That you couldn’t say no to Jay, who decided he wanted the traditional June tie-the-knot date as well as all the attending hoopla and over-the-top trimmings.”
“Show-off,” Nikki agreed with affection.
“Which might describe you, too, having bagged the biggest bachelor in the greater Los Angeles area.”
“Oh, and there’s that.” Nikki grinned. “Go me.”
But Cassandra knew her sister better than she would have thought possible when she’d taken the first step on the journey to find her family several months ago. “There is something wrong, though.”
Nikki’s gaze slid sideways again and she bit her bottom lip. “Jay and I heard about last night at the Beach Shack.”
As if killed by a clean shot, the flutter in Cassandra’s belly died, leaving her insides cold and empty. Ignoring her sister’s worried look, she hurried away from the back doors to busy herself at the register. She had to flip it on, didn’t she, and straighten pencils and . . . and . . .
“The woman was Sammy Dennison,” Nikki said. “Jay heard that the two of them ran into each other at that bar on Ocean Boulevard, and then they moved on to the Beach Shack.”
“Oh.” So Sammy was a woman. Cassandra shrugged her stiff shoulders. “She’s his barber.”
“How long had he been missing this time? Two days? Three?”
She gave another shrug, unwilling to admit she’d calculated it to the minute.
Nikki looked as if her older sister didn’t fool her, however. “Well, the point is, Cassandra, that it doesn’t seem as if he was holed up with the barber all that time. Word is that none of his lost days include him doing anything more than bending elbows with a female companion.”
There was no reason to feel relief. Especially when it was embarrassing that anyone thought she might be hurt or even the least bit bothered by the idea of Gabe slee
ping with some other woman. “What he does is none of my business.”
Nikki gaped. “Huh? Who the heck do you think you’re talking to? I’ve been along on at least two of your let’s-get-Gabe’s-drunken-ass-home adventures. I think you’ve earned a place in his business.”
“Not anymore. I’m done with that. I’m done with being his Mother Teresa and his Florence Nightingale and his . . . his . . .”
“What exactly are you to Gabe, Cassandra?”
“Nothing.”
Nikki shook her head. “What exactly do you want him to be to you, Cassandra?”
“Nothing.”
“Froot Loop—”
“Don’t call me that!” It was a stupid nickname that Gabe had given her and she’d vowed to put him out of her life. But from the stubborn expression on Nikki’s face, Cassandra knew she was going to have to come up with a powerful distraction.
Lucky for her, she had one.
“Nik,” she said. “I’ve got something to tell you as well.”
“Don’t think you’re going to get out of—”
“I want to meet our father,” Cassandra said quickly. “Dr. Frank Tucker. I want to meet him as soon as possible.”
Her sister’s jaw dropped. With careful movements, she balanced her coffee cup on the register’s counter, then looked over to meet Cassandra’s gaze. “We discussed this before,” she said, her voice tight.
“I know. But let’s recap. At first you said ‘no,’ and then at Thanksgiving you agreed to let Juliet approach him.”
“But then Juliet’s bitch of a stepdaughter, Marlys, spilled the story to the tabloids. ‘Celebrity Plastic Surgeon Fathers Three Malibu Babes.’ We figured he hated the publicity just as much as we did, because we didn’t hear from him following the media blitz. And then we all agreed to table making contact until some unspecified future date.”
“Check your calendar,” Cassandra said. “It’s some unspecified future date.”
Dirty Sexy Knitting Page 3
