Dirty Sexy Knitting

by Christie Ridgway

  “We tarped our entire backyard,” a woman said. “We don’t want it to start sliding. The moment I heard them predicting a slow-moving storm, we got out all the plastic sheets we’ve been storing since last year.”

  Juliet looked over at Cassandra with a little alarm and she remembered the other woman had only moved to this particular eco-system just a few months before.

  “It’s the slow movers that scare those built on bluffs,” she explained. “Enough rain over a long period of time saturates the ground and causes it to shift. But even a small amount of precipitation can make burnt-out areas precarious.”

  “And if it turns out to be a hard rain, we worry about flash floods and debris flows,” the woman who tarped added.

  “It’s not just about sunscreen anymore, Toto,” Juliet murmured.

  Cassandra patted her on the shoulder as she passed. “You’re good, up where you are. Nikki and Jay will be fine at the beach house.”

  “How about you?” Juliet asked. “You and Gabe are in that canyon.”

  “Hay bales and sandbags for us,” she said. “To channel potential water and debris. If it’s an issue, Gabe will take care of it.”

  If his hangover would let him, she added to herself. But that thought didn’t worry her. If he was lying in bed and nursing a headache, she at least knew where he was.

  The group on their yarn crawl arrived next. Despite the crummy weather, they were cheerful and enthusiastic and Cassandra helped who she could, though most of them were content to nose around the shop on their own or plop down on the couches and work on their project du jour.

  “Let’s forget the rest of the LYSs on our list,” one woman suggested. “The traffic will be a bear.”

  They entered into a debate about the idea of abandoning their little yarn shop tour when the bells on the door rang out again. Digging through a bin at the rear of the store, Cassandra knew something was up when their discussion pe tered into silence.

  “Gabe.” Juliet’s voice, full of . . . shock?

  Her heart pounding, Cassandra turned. Oh. Oh, God.

  In the drama and the deluge of the night before, his new cut hadn’t registered. There was a quarter-inch of black hair left, so short that the bones of his skull and the lean angles of his face were highlighted. Along with the greenish, morning-after pallor of his face, and the whiskers he hadn’t bothered to shave, he looked like a walking corpse.

  Nikki breezed in the door behind him, took a look, then did a double take. “Eek,” she said. “Casting call for the new zombie movie?”

  Gabe didn’t flicker an eyelash. “Cassandra, can we talk a minute?”

  No, her instincts answered for her. But she didn’t get a chance to express them before Gabe had her by the elbow and was hustling her into the shop’s back room.

  There, she pulled free from his grasp and backed up against the now-less-cluttered countertop. “What’s going on?”

  He rubbed his hand against the back of his neck. “First, uh, thanks for the ride home last night.”

  “Do you need help collecting your car at the Beach Shack?”

  “No.” Annoyance crossed his face. “I don’t just come to see you when I need something.” When he rubbed his neck again, she felt his weariness.

  I was thinking about Maddie, she heard him say in her head, his voice raw. I’ve been thinking about Maddie all day.

  No. She’d fall to pieces if she let her mind go in that direction. For once, she had to hold her emotions close and tight. Stiffening her spine, she steeled her voice, too. “So what’s the second reason you’re here?”

  “I’m going away today.”

  She stared at him. Going away? She’d expected the apology. She’d anticipated moodiness, a grim attitude, a return to his prickly distance. For God’s sake, she’d seen him walking down the highway last night as if it didn’t matter whether he lived or died!

  But going away?

  “I don’t know when I’ll be back,” he continued. “I didn’t want you to wonder.”

  “Wonder . . . what?” She was still waiting for the words to sink in.

  He shrugged, then looked away. “I don’t know. Where to send the rent checks.”

  An inappropriate laugh bubbled up from her belly. “The rent checks?”

  He glanced up, glanced down. “Yeah.”

  “We’ve been friends for two years and you think I’d be wondering about the rent checks?”

  More than friends. She thought of his mouth on her throat, her breasts, of his hard palm stroking over her hips and down her thighs. She thought of how he slept curled around her at night, the fingers of one hand twisted in her hair and the other nestled between her thighs as if they were each the power charge the other needed. “For God’s sake, Gabe.”

  His hands came out in a placating gesture. “No need to get emotional.”

  “I can see that.” Another laugh bubbled from some deep, bitter place. “It would be so inconvenient.”

  Then she couldn’t get away from him fast enough. Her footsteps sounded loud against the hardwood as she hurried from the back room.

  “Hey . . .” he said, but she ignored him, rushing into the main area to take her place behind the cash register. Now there was something solid between herself and the man who strode in her wake, frustration wafting off him like brimstone.

  “Say good-bye to Gabe,” she told Juliet and Nikki, ignoring the other customers in the shop. “He’s going away indefinitely.”

  “Before your birthday party tomorrow?” Juliet asked, looking between the two of them.

  She threw up a hand. “Before the rent checks are due. Imagine that.”

  Gabe’s frown was fierce. “Jesus, Froot Loop . . .”

  “Sorry.” She made a face and threw a look at her sisters. “I’m not supposed to get emotional.”

  Bristling, Nikki glared at Gabe then marched over to Cassandra’s side. “I’m going to kill him.”

  “Don’t bother,” she muttered. “I bet he’s got that covered.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Gabe demanded.

  Too late, she remembered she was keeping her feelings close to her chest. He’d warned her not to let them out, and as much as she’d hated to hear him say it, it was exactly the caution she should heed. For her dignity. For her secrets.

  “Never mind,” she said, turning her attention to a stack of receipts.

  Gabe wasn’t having it. He bellied up to the counter and reached across to grab her chin, lifting it so their gazes met. “Explain yourself.”

  “You don’t want me to say. I don’t need to say.”

  His fingers tightened.

  She grabbed his wrist and forced it away from her face, shaking with everything she didn’t want to feel. “I don’t have to tell you that you’ve been daring that death wish inside of yourself for as long as I’ve known you.”

  “Death wish,” he muttered. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Gabe, I caught you with a noose. You still have a hose hooked up to the exhaust of that very embodiment of a death wish that you call your classic Thunderbird.”

  “You’re overreacting. I was just playing with that rope. And that car thing was months ago. It’s just that I haven’t needed that hose again.”

  “You were walking in the middle of the dark, rainy highway last night, Gabe. Last night.”

  He pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes. “I can’t do this.”

  “Yeah. Run away. That’s been working out so well for you.” She couldn’t help the sharp edge to her voice. “Or you could try facing your feelings this time. See if that helps.”

  His hands dropped, and he stared at her from bloodshot eyes. “This is coming from you?”

  She waved her fingers. “Don’t try to make this about me.”

  “Why not? Because you’re always so excellent at expressing your emotions? Facing your feelings?”

  She frowned, knowing it was his own pain that was ca
using him to turn on her. “Well, I am.”

  “Did you tell your mother you wanted her home for your thirtieth birthday? Or let’s go back further. Did you ever tell her that you didn’t want to be Judith and Cassandra but Mom and daughter?”

  Okay, it always surprised her to find out that he’d been listening all this time. But it ticked her off, too. She sucked in a quick breath. “Gabe—”

  “If it’s so easy to lay it all on the line, then let’s see you do it, Froot Loop. Let’s have you spill every one of your home truths. Like, why don’t you tell your sisters you contacted your father and met with those adopted sons of his?”

  Nikki sucked in a sharp breath. Cassandra shot a look at Juliet, but she was harder to read.

  “Did you?” the other woman asked, her voice quiet.

  “Yes.” Cassandra turned her attention to Gabe. “Happy now?” Then she swung back to her sisters, determined to get it all out. “And I met with him, too. Dr. Frank Tucker. And he . . . and he . . . well, he accepts the two of you, but he has doubts whether our DNAs would match. He’s not sure I’m your sister.”

  “What?” Nikki and Juliet said together.

  “Oh, God,” Gabe muttered, his hand over his eyes. “Oh, my God. I am such an asshole.”

  “You won’t get an argument from over here,” Cassandra said. There was a high-pitched ringing in her ears. “But if you want me to lay it all out . . . there’s just one thing, okay? One last thing.”

  “Don’t—” he started.

  She talked right over him. “I’m in love with you, Gabe. No surprise, I’m sure, but if you’re going away, you can go ahead and take that with you.”

  “Oh, Froot Loop. Cassandra.” The fight had all gone out of him. “It’s no good. You can’t . . .”

  “Don’t try to tell me how I feel. At least give me credit for knowing myself.” And herself was all she’d ever had.

  “Look,” he said, his voice tight. “You know I can’t marry again. And I never want another child. But you deserve those things. It’s why I have to leave.”

  She heard herself laugh. “Don’t try to say you’re going away for me. We both know you too well for that.”

  Nikki crowded closer to Cassandra. “Shall I throw him out now?”

  Gabe’s gaze didn’t leave hers. “She has more to say.”

  “You’re right, I do.” Cassandra gripped the edge of the counter until her knuckles whitened. “Your friend Sammy said you called yourself a selfish SOB last night. Well, you’re right about that as well. You only think of yourself.”

  “Cassandra—”

  “Otherwise you’d know how it’s made me feel to find you half-dead from alcohol. You’d think how horrible it would be for me to see you return from one of your dawn-to-dusk kayak voyages with that look of disappointment on your face.”

  “Cassandra . . .”

  The sting of the tears in her eyes was nothing compared to the wrenching pain in her chest. “I’m sorry that you feel guilty for not being a perfect husband and for not having the perfect marriage. I ache for you that you miss Maddie so much. But none of that means you shouldn’t have realized how you hurt me, Gabe. How you hurt me when you expressed such unmitigated relief that we hadn’t created a child.”

  “Cassandra.” It was Juliet who said her name now, Juliet who touched her with a hand meant to comfort.

  She kept her focus on the tight-lipped man across the counter. “I get that we’ll have nothing, be nothing, make nothing together, Gabe. But would it really have been such a terrible disaster?”

  He pushed his hands through his nonexistent hair. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

  “I get that, too.” She turned away from him. “Because you’re too much of a damn coward to live again.”

  When silence was his only reply, she managed to get out the only two words left to be said. “Good-bye, Gabe.”

  Hearing his feet stride for the exit, she forced herself to look back. Seeing it would be believing it. He stilled, his hand an inch from the door’s plate glass, and she watched raindrops roll down its surface. He turned his head and caught her gaze.

  His voice was raw. “But if I could, Cassandra, I would want my life to be with you.”

  “It’s my party,” Cassandra Riley told her companions as she wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. “I’ll cry if I want to.”

  The pair on her couch didn’t look up, and the one near the overstuffed chair in her living room continued toying with a small ball of soft yarn. It was left over from the dress Cassandra had made to wear to the celebration-that-wasn’t, and she fingered the mohair-nylon-wool of the crocheted skirt wishing the April sky would take its cue from the blue color. Stanching another tear, she pressed her nose to the sliding glass door that led to her backyard. Beyond the small pool with its graceful, arching footbridge, the green of the surrounding banana trees, sword ferns, and tropical shrubs looked lush against the dark storm clouds.

  The rain hadn’t let up.

  And neither had Cassandra’s low mood.

  Thirty years old, she thought, feeling more wetness drip off her jaw, and she was all dressed up with no place to go.

  That wasn’t strictly true. Three miles away on the Pacific Coast Highway, at her little yarn shop, Malibu & Ewe, the ingredients for a birthday bash were ready and waiting. But a spring deluge had hit overnight and before her landline phone connection had died she’d been informed that the road at the end of her secluded lane was washed out. The narrow driveway beyond her place led to only one other residence.

  She wouldn’t be partying over there, even if the owner would let her through the doors. Even if he was inside his bat cave.

  Though they’d been lovers for four weeks, he’d dumped her yesterday, hard. She suspected that following their public scene he’d immediately headed someplace where he could indulge in another of his self-destructive benders without anyone’s interference.

  “That means we’re alone, kids,” she said over her shoulder. “Isolated.”

  All she’d never wanted by thirty.

  She’d made contact with her donor sibling sisters because she wanted the family ties her sperm-inseminated, single mother had always eschewed. Cassandra had forged a real relationship with Nikki and Juliet now, but there was trouble on that front, too.

  So here she was, all by herself again. Lonely.

  The rain picked up, drumming harder against the roof and all three “kids” jumped. She’d taken them in last year during a torrential storm and they probably remembered what it was like to be wet and muddy and barely clinging to life.

  She couldn’t blame the cats for being spooked. Besides being brokenhearted, Cassandra felt a little twitchy herself. She wiggled her toes in her warm down slippers and rubbed her arms to smooth away her chills. Dark was approaching, the weather wasn’t abating, and with the road gone already, she had to be on the lookout for more evidence of mud slides.

  Blinking back another round of self-pity, she scrutinized her backyard once more. At the rear was the first of the narrow flights of steps that led to the other house farther up the Malibu canyon. A creek ran through the northern end of the property, very picturesque, but if its banks overflowed, then water would come gushing down those stairs, just like—

  Oh, God.

  Just like it was doing right now.

  She stared at the widening wash of muddy runoff tumbling Slinky-like down the cement steps. This wasn’t good.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen on her birthday.

  Or ever, for that matter.

  Thumping sounds from the direction of her front porch caused her head to jerk around. Floodwaters behind her and what—who was on her porch? Her heart slammed against her chest. The cats jumped to their feet and rushed toward the front door.

  Surely only one person could get them moving with such haste. They loved him, though he pretended not to care.

  Could it be . . . ?

  She crossed the room, a
lmost beating the kids in the impromptu footrace. Their tails swished impatiently as she grasped the doorknob, then twisted and pulled.

  In the deepening dusk, the visitor was just a dark figure in a sodden raincoat, a wide-brimmed safari-style hat shadowing his face and leaking water at the edges like she’d been leaking tears a few minutes before.

  Cassandra’s heart smacked in an erratic, painful rhythm against her breastbone. Yesterday he’d walked away from her and she’d doubted if she’d ever see him again.

  The figure pushed aside the open edges of his long coat. The sleeve slid up, reminding her of the bandage he’d wound around his cut wrist just a few weeks before. She knew the skin was healed there now.

  His hand appeared pale against the blackness of his clothes. She saw the gleam of something metallic shoved into the waistband of dark jeans.

  Oh, God.

  She’d known he was in a bleak mood yesterday.

  I was thinking about Maddie. I’ve been thinking about Maddie all day.

  But even after the many times she’d rescued him off barroom floors, even after the numerous occasions he’d gone missing for days at a stretch, even after the skydiving and the hang gliding and the dangerous ocean voyages, not to mention that walk down the middle of a dark, rainy highway just two nights before, her mind couldn’t fathom . . .

  “Gabe?” she whispered, her gaze lifting to the face beneath the hat’s brim. “A gun?”

  With one hand he took it from his waistband, with the other he pushed her into the living room. Cassandra stumbled back, surprise locked in her throat along with her breath. The front door slammed and he pushed off his hat. It hit the floor with a plop, causing Ed to skitter away.

  She gaped, tears shocked away. “Reed?”

  The dreadlocked man didn’t smile. “Your ‘sort-of brother,’ isn’t that what you said? That was your mistake. Trying to insert yourself into other people’s families.”

  Nineteen

  In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future.