She reminded herself that she was in charge; it wouldn’t hurt to be a presence, let him know she was keeping an eye on him. He didn’t have to know that management was checking out the worker and not the job. Or the downright dastardly thoughts swirling around in her brain. She’d surely go to hell for improper thoughts.
She rounded a corner and stepped into Room Twelve. Giving the bed a skittish look, she headed for the bathroom and found herself frozen in the doorway.
He’d taken off his shirt. Oh lord, he’d taken off his shirt. He was dressed in nothing but low slung jeans, tight over his butt, worn so thin in spots she swore she could see skin. The muscles in his back bunched and relaxed as he reached across the tub with his funny looking knife, laying down more grout, working it into the crevices and working his muscles at the same time. He’d taken off the bandana and his hair curled wildly around his shapely head, looking virile even after the day it’d been through. His back was smooth, brown and smooth, V shaped, tapering down to a small waist from shoulders wider than they had any right to be. He was a fine looking specimen and every mother in the world would hate her for her lascivious thoughts. She was already feeling warm, but she’d best get used to it, because hell was even warmer.
She must have made a small noise–a moan…a groan…a sigh? He straightened and turned, raising a brow in a silent query. His well developed chest was darkened with crisp black hair that converged and arrowed down his abdomen to disappear beneath jeans that were just as low slung at the front as they were at the back. Sunny reminded God that strength of character was big in His book and to give her a little help.
“Just checking progress,” she managed to get out. “How’s it going?”
“About done, another fifteen minutes maybe. You got something else needs doing?”
Sunny’s strength of character failed her; the images his words conjured were not fitting for a lady of her years.
“No, you can quit for the day when you’re through here. Just making my rounds.” She smiled weakly.
* * * *
He watched her carefully. He saw her lick her lips, the tremble in her hands. The way she wouldn’t meet his gaze. The way her white shorts emphasized the tan of her slim legs, the hint of hardened nipples pushing at her thin top. A part of his own anatomy hardened in response.
“Sunny,” he said softly and closed the distance between them. He cupped her neck, gently rubbing her cheek with his thumb.
“Don’t…you shouldn’t…”
“Why not?” he asked softly. “I want to. Because you’re my boss?”
“It’s not fitting. I’m too old.”
“Why would you say that? I could say I’m too young, but I don’t think I am.” He tightened his hand, pulling her toward him. “In many ways I’m older than you, Sunny. Pray God you never find out why.”
“I can’t…”
He moved closer, drawing her gently into his body. Every muscle he owned went on high alert. He had never wanted anything as he wanted this woman. He pressed his mouth to hers, felt that sexy lower lip quiver and couldn’t resist stroking it with his tongue. Her hand came up to clasp his wrist and reluctantly, he pulled back.
“Can’t…or won’t, Sunny?” he said softly. “You know it’s there, it’s been there since we met. Something special, something we shouldn’t throw away on a ‘just because.’ It’s not been long, I know, but I’ve wanted to do this since I first set eyes on you.”
“It’s too soon,” she almost gasped. “I…you confuse me…I have to think…”
“If I let you think, you’ll think yourself right out of it. Won’t you?”
She shook her head slightly, staring into his eyes. When his mouth covered hers again, she made no resistance. Her hand tightened on his wrist even as he felt her body soften. She molded herself to him as if she’d been doing it forever. He didn’t try to hide his need; he pushed his aching erection against her soft stomach and rotated his hips. The rush of desire tingled through his body and he muffled a groan as he caressed her, running his hand over her shoulders and trim waist, to rest finally on her hip.
Abruptly she pulled away, looking panicked.
“We’ll talk,” she blurted. “Tomorrow. We’ll talk tomorrow. I have to go now. I’m needed downstairs.”
Cas rubbed the hand that had touched her against his thigh as he watched her retreat–and it was a retreat. He had finally faced his own fears and mostly overcome them. It seemed Sunny had some fears of her own. His challenge would be to make her see they were formless. She would have to accept him for what he was. To do that, he would have to be honest with her, hoping she would still want him when she knew the truth.
He was long past humiliation when he thought of his past, but if she pushed him away because of it that would indeed be a humiliation. He wanted to tell her about Hannah, the only person besides his mother he had ever loved. It was rather pitiful, to be in his twenties and have only loved two people in his whole life.
He thought he was about to add a third.
* * * *
Cas lingered in reception before going back to his cottage to clean up for supper, leaning against the counter, flirting with Martha. Martha talked a lot and even she admitted it was mostly nonsense, but she never gossiped about things she considered serious. Gossip could be fun or it could be hurtful, she’d told him once and she tried not to be hurtful. She knew how to keep a secret. A person saw a lot working in the hotel business, and she’d learned to keep her tongue between her teeth.
“You work here long, Martha?” he asked idly.
“Lord, honey, I’m a damned institution.” Martha laughed. “Started working here when Mr. Will was in charge. All wet behind the ears and big eyed from some of the goings on. Honey, you wouldn’t believe it.
“I remember the night Hank Logan come storming in, looking for his wife. He said he just knew she was holed up in a room with someone. He couldn’t figure out just who, but he was wanting to search every room in the place! Well, even back then I was a mite feisty…” She patted her hair and gave Cas a smirk, “…and I told him he’d do no such thing. We weren’t a damn sleazy motel where you rented a room by the hour and I took offense at his insult.”
“What’d he do?” Cas asked, enjoying himself hugely.
“Started hollering up a storm, calling her name–Honor, it was, don’t that beat all?–and I called Mr. Will. He come, along with Jim, and calmed Hank down, convinced him Honor wasn’t here. Turned out she’d gone the next valley over to visit her mama, but I always did wonder why he thought she’d be here. Heard she gave him a piece of her mind when next she saw him. I expect he was sleeping on the couch for quite a spell.” She shook her head and laughed. “It’s like a soap opera sometimes, living in a little town like this. And then a hunk like you comes along and perks everything right up.”
He grinned at her. “Do my best, ma’am. I do ‘perk’ real well.”
“I just bet you do. If I were younger…”
He sobered. “You think age makes a difference?”
Martha looked at him shrewdly. “You got a particular reason for asking? You aren’t planning on sweeping me into your arms and taking me away from it all, like that Calgon, are you? I have to warn you, Jon might have something to say to that.”
“I like and respect Jon too much to be stealing his woman,” Cas teased. “No particular reason for asking, just seems like some people think they’re too old for some people…”
“Some people are still living in the dark ages.” Martha sniffed. “Even an old bird like me knows you take love where you find it and enjoy the hell outta it. It don’t come too often, not the real stuff, you gotta grab it and go with it.”
“Some people need to hear that more than others.”
“I’ll make sure it gets around,” Martha replied dryly. “Sunny giving you a hard time, darlin’?”
“She won’t give me any time at all,” Cas muttered.
“Well, I can’t blame her.�
��
Cas straightened up, feeling hurt.
“Oh nothing to do with you, honey. It’s just her mama was a complainer and when her daddy took up with that retailer–did you know all the companies now have pretty young women to do the selling for them? I swear every traveling salesman now is a female. Those there companies are bound and determined to get their stuff sold. Sneaky devils, that’s what I think.
“Anyway, Jim and Sunny had just married, and her mama carried on like a fool. Moaning and groaning about how Andrew run out on her, how she’d gotten too old for him. Why no one woulda thought anything about it if she’d kept her damn mouth shut! Fine looking woman, was Sara Graham, but not a lick of common sense. Sunny, thankfully, takes after her daddy in that department.
“You mind me now Cas, when it comes your time of life when men get to acting foolish, you remember what I say. You stay put and fight through it and don’t be throwing away what it took you your whole life to build. Andrew Graham learned that the hard way. By the time he got over his little fling, Sara was dead. Folks say she died of a broken heart. Myself, I think it was that ovarian cancer she contracted,” she added sarcastically.
“You think she influenced Sunny?” Cas asked, almost fearing the answer.
Martha snorted. “Like I said, she was a fool. Lots of reasons Andy went off. Her aging wasn’t the only one, if it were a reason a-tall. Her tongue might have been. Could of stuck in Sunny’s mind though. Lord knows her mama went on about it enough.”
Cas leaned back on the counter. “When you meet someone for the first time,” he said almost dreamily, “there’s always something that first attracts you. Eyes. Maybe the mouth. Could be anything. You get to knowing them, and everything fits together, they become who they are to you and you don’t see them physically so much. You see what makes them themselves, what’s inside them.
“Hannah was like that. When I stop and picture her, I see she had gray streaks in her hair and had gotten a little plump. But when I was with her, she was just Hannah, who loved me and who I loved back. And she was beautiful to me.”
“Honey, it’s good you had someone to love. This musta been back aways though. You been on the road awhile, I think.”
Cas looked down at his hands. “I tried to leave after he killed her. Took me awhile to finally do it.”
Martha’s body straightened in surprise. “What’s that you say? Who killed who?”
Cas stared into the distance, speaking without emotion. “She was my nurse, my mother, the only mother I’d ever known. He said I was too big for a nurse, she had to go. She pleaded with him. ‘Make me the housekeeper,’ she said. ‘I’ll do a good job. Just like I did raising this boy.’ He sneered at her, told her his son didn’t need any of her weak coddling. She caught his hand to plead some more and he pushed her. Hard. She fell and hit her head on the corner of a table. I tried to help her up…”
His eyes rose to meet Martha’s horrified gaze. “I did try. I managed to get her from the room, but she collapsed. She died on the way to the hospital, died of a clot in the brain. They called it an accident. Nothing was ever done to him. Nothing.”
“Cas, honey…” Her hand covered his and squeezed in sympathy. He nodded once and squeezed back.
“I’ve had mothers, I had two of them. If you’re talking to Sunny, you might mention that. What I want from her would not be called mothering.” He straightened up again. “Need to get home and cleaned up, Reese has planned an evening. Hope I survive.”
Martha followed his lead. “Lord, love us, honey, I hope you do too. That Reese can be a pistol ball, bless his heart. You watch your step now, I expect he’ll be hauling you off to the Carolina.”
“Is that good or bad?” Cas asked with a slight smile.
“Depends what you do with it, doesn’t it? That’s how it is with everything in life, it all depends on how you handle it. I expect you’ll do just fine, darlin’.”
“Me too,” Cas grinned. “I’ll be the designated driver.”
“There you go, you’ll do just fine. And I’ll speak to Sunny, I promise.”
“Appreciate that.”
Cas reached for her hand and gave it a smacking kiss.
“Oh my Lord,” Martha sighed.
Cas grinned again and turned to leave. As an exit, it wasn’t bad.
Chapter 9
Cas had finally invested in a new pair of jeans. Clay had had to special order them and the package had arrived today. There wasn’t much call for thirty-six inch inseams in Nevis; Clay had ordered several pair, just in case. “Now you’ll have to stay and put them to good use,” he’d told Cas. “No one else can wear them things.” It was Cas’s opinion that every soul in Nevis had a unique way of doing things. What was wrong with just saying ‘hope you’ll stick around’?
He’d forgotten how dark a blue a new pair of jeans could be. Clay considered stonewashed or prewashed to be new fangled and unnecessary. He’d ordered good, strong working jeans, just as Levi Strauss had originally intended them. They came out of the package stiff and smelling of dye and Cas had run them through the washer a couple of times before he put them on, hoping they wouldn’t chafe anything important. He’d matched them with his old white tank that now fit him like a second skin. He hoped this bar wasn’t too fancy, he wasn’t equipped to do fancy.
The Carolina Moon was situated on the outskirts of town, at the top of a hill that seemed to go straight up. It would be hell to negotiate in the winter; a person would have to have a strong thirst to attempt it. Reese waved Cas’s concerns aside. Reese drove an old army jeep, scratched and battered, just the thing he said with a laugh, for navigating the ups and downs of life in Nevis. He admitted it got a bit chilly in the winter months, but since he seldom stirred from the inn, it wasn’t a problem.
“The roads here are why we all have four by fours,” he said. “Only problem is, you have to watch out for the kids. They use this road for sliding. Ain’t nothing strange to come round a corner and have a kid on a toboggan running at you. Keeps you on your toes. Anyway, the kids are long in bed when the Carolina really gets to rocking.”
The jeep bounced around an S-shaped curve, the engine whining as it pulled them up the steep incline, and Reese wrestled it to a halt in the small parking area.
There was nothing fancy about the Carolina Moon. It was long and thin, built of wooden planks that looked to be warping, with a shingled roof split by two skinny stove pipe chimneys, one at each end. It huddled against the land rising behind it, camouflaged by the surrounding pines except for the blaze of light that burst out whenever the door was opened. If there were windows, they were so well covered they were invisible. “Used to be sort of a club house for the runners,” Reese told Cas as they found a table.
“Runners?”
“Moonshine runners. Took pride in their work, those boys did. Had themselves a party here every time they outrun the revenuers. Lots of partying here.” He laughed. “You know, don’t you, those boys were the beginnings of NASCAR? Got to bragging about their cars, which one was fastest and such like, and took themselves down to a beach to prove it. Had themselves some races and people liked to watch, and the rest is history. You see him?”
He pointed at a magazine cover under glass hanging on the wall behind the bar. “That there’s Clyde Benis, one of the best drivers in God’s green acres. Never was caught by the law, and never lost a race he run on the sand either. It’s just pitiful what’s happened to that name these days. Damn grandson of his just got himself arrested for dog fighting. Dog fighting! I ask you, Cas, if that ain’t a comedown.” He shook his head in sorrow. “You just don’t never know.”
“What can I get you boys?”
The feminine voice had Reese looking up in delight.
“Stacy! You sweet thing, you. It’s been too long. I’ll have the usual. You, Cas?”
“I told Martha I’d be the designated driver, and I’m not used to drinking. I’ll just have a cola.”
“You got
it, honeybunch. Where’d you find him, Reese? I might take him home with me.”
“You wound me, Stace. You mean you’d throw me over for another man? My heart is broken.”
Stacy threw back her head and laughed. She was a buxom woman, built big and strong, but all in proportion. Her jeans were skin tight as was the cut off tank top losing the battle to cover her generous breasts. Dark roots proved her hair wasn’t the platinum blond it claimed to be. Her makeup was heavy with an emphasis on the eyes, and those big hoop earrings could be considered weapons if she swung her head hard enough. She hoisted her tray and told Reese it would take a better woman then her to break his hard heart. Then she sashayed away to get their drinks.
“It’s a fucking damn shame,” Reese told Cas. “That asshole husband of hers got himself in -carcerated for money laundering. That’s one fine woman going to waste there. She won’t divorce him and she won’t cheat on him. Damn.”
Cas shook his head in commiseration. He sort of knew how Reese was feeling. He took a long look around the room as they waited for their drinks.
It was a big room with a wooden bar at the far end. The continuity of one long wall was broken by the entrance door. Its twin on the opposite wall evidently led to a pool room. He could hear the crack of pool balls above loud voices and even louder music. Country music of course. He’d never really cared for most of it.
He tried not to listen to music at all. It stirred something in him, something he’d rather not deal with. Sometimes a certain voice, a certain turn of phrase, the way the notes were put together, would bring back memories of his mother singing her love to him. It was funny, Jose was never there, only his mother. What should be happy memories were tainted by her leaving, and leaving him to his father’s loving care.
Their drinks arrived. Reese paused in his flirting long enough to tell Cas to drink up, they were supposed to be having fun. “Ask one of them little cuties over there to dance. There’s a whole table full of them.”
Song of Life Page 7
