So, shit, he never realized how much it hurt to get hit like that. He held a hand up to his burning cheek. “Why the hell did you do that?”
She went to slap him again and he caught her hand, bewildered. “What is wrong with you?”
“You have no idea,” she spat out.
It was a struggle to keep her from hitting him again and he wound up just putting his arms around her in a bizarre parody of a hug, holding her so tight to his body she couldn’t get a hand free to lash out at him again. But it didn’t turn him on. Sex was the last thing on his mind. She was shaking so hard, he thought she might be sick.
“Shh, stop,” he soothed. “Stop, Andrea.”
“My name isn’t Andrea,” she managed to get out through her wild squirming.
He put his mouth to her ear. “So what is your name?”
But she didn’t answer. Finally, she just sagged against him, as if the went left her sails or something.
“If I let you go are you going to talk calmly about this?”
“Are you going to hit me?” she shot back over her shoulder, stunning him.
“Hit you?” He let go of her immediately. “Christ, no. Of course not.”
Hitting a woman was inconceivable. For as long as he could remember, that lesson had been drummed into him, by his mother, his maternal grandfather, hell, even his old man would never stoop so low as to hit a woman and he had run through women like water back in the day.
“Has someone hit you, Andrea? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“I’m not telling you anything. And stop calling me Andrea. I can’t stand it anymore.” Her hands went up to block her ears and she crumpled to the floor, so unlike the cool Miss Prentiss he barely believed it was the same woman.
“Okay,” he conceded, crouching down beside her, gently taking her hands from her ears, holding them though they were ice cold. “I won’t call you that anymore.”
She took a deep breath and then seemed to come to herself, looking around blankly. When she rose to her feet, he followed her, letting go of her hands as she tugged them away. After that comment about hitting her, he felt as if he should tread lightly, it was so outside his experience.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice.
“There’s no need to be sorry, Andr—”
She looked up, embarrassed at his sudden stumble. “I don’t know why I said that. You can call me whatever you want. What does it matter anyway?”
Her real name was the least of his concerns right now. “I would never hit you. I would never hit a woman. That’s so wrong.”
She nodded dully. “Of course. Of course.”
God, she didn’t believe him. What did that say about where she had been?
“Whoever hit you was a sick bastard.”
“I didn’t say anyone had hit me,” she responded in a way that made him think it was automatic.
“You don’t have to say anything. I just want you to know, to believe, I would never lay a hand on you or any other woman in violence. I swear it to you.”
She said nothing. It had come out too formulaic, too Boy Scout–like anyway. He needed to make her understand.
“My mother will swear it to you,” he added urgently, desperate for her to believe him.
She gave him a small smile. “And a mother always knows, doesn’t she?” she said obliquely.
“Oh sweetheart.” He pulled her to him, rubbing her back, ridiculously gratified that she put her head on his shoulder.
“The worst monster I ever knew had a mother who loved him. Still does, for all I know. Thought he could do no wrong. How he felt about her I was never quite so sure. But we all come in this world the same way, Evan, the monsters and those of us trying to stay out of their way.”
He wanted to kill whoever had left her like this. And it wasn’t a metaphor. He wanted to kill him. With his bare hands.
And by God, he would.
“Not quite the cool, collected Miss Prentiss now, am I?” She was echoing his thoughts.
“Well, you’re not an uptight, prissy ice queen.”
“Is that what you thought of Miss Prentiss?”
It was eerie the way she talked about herself in the third person sometimes.
“No. I thought she was wonderful. And I think the girl in front of me is even more wonderful still.”
“I’m not surprised you don’t want to have relationships with women. They’d be stalking you for life, you’re so sweet.”
He hugged her tighter and buried his face in her hair. It was an open question who would be stalking whom for life here.
Chapter Seven
Tommy O’Neal watched Cassie Bailey drive the speedboat into the boat house next to her father’s grocery store.
“Why do you let that little slut jerk you around?”
Tommy glanced sideways at his cousin Patrick, a year older and about one hundred I.Q. points stupider. “Cassie’s none of your fucking business, Pat. Remember that.”
He held his palm open for the five hundred bucks Pat had collected from the bet Tommy had placed and Pat handed it over sullenly. “I’d say what she needs is a hard fuck up against the—”
The words were swallowed in the constriction of his fleshy throat as Tommy grabbed his cousin’s collar and jerked tight. “What did I just say?”
Pat gurgled a little and nodded and Tommy released him, stuffing the hundred-dollar bills in his jeans pocket. “Get lost.”
Pat looked sullenly toward the boathouse. “You going to come by Rita’s tonight? She’s got some great dope.”
“No.”
Tommy crossed the dirt road and entered the beat-up old boathouse that sat next to Bailey’s Grocery Store just as Cassie was tying down the boat and nimbly jumping out. She looked up. “Oh. It’s you. What do you want?”
“Stop flirting with me, Cassie. It’ll go to my head.”
“Ha ha. You’re hilarious.”
Cassie Bailey was all long tanned legs and high full boobs and yards of shiny golden hair. He ached just to look at her, by which he meant his cock throbbed and his palms sweated and his heart, such as he had one, beat a hell of a lot faster. He knew it was just lust, but he couldn’t shake it. He’d been in whatever he was with Cassie Bailey since he had come to live with his cousin’s family, finally thrown out by his worthless old man, six years ago.
“Since your tits are spilling out of that top and your shorts barely cover your pubic hair, I take it you were delivering groceries to that asshole Reynolds.”
She shrugged, a little smile on her makeup-less face. Girls like his cousin Pat’s Rita slathered on the mascara and foundation and lipstick and didn’t look half as perfect, half as glowing, as Cassie did from just the effects of the wind and the sun. “I was delivering groceries, yeah…among other things.”
He took a deep breath. He was getting really good at controlling his emotions around her. He always had been around anyone else but she used to be able to push his buttons with the most casual of comments. He could hold it off now. Not that he didn’t feel as if his head might explode at the casual reference to her giving it to Reynolds.
Even though he knew she was lying.
“Reynolds must have the staying power of a rabbit, then, since you’ve barely been gone long enough to make the round trip out to his island.”
She glared at him, putting her hands on her hips, and he could feel his glance unwaveringly riveted to the tiny waist and strip of tanned skin at her navel. “Are you spying on me, Tommy O’Neal?”
He smiled. “Why would I waste my time doing that?”
“You tell me!” She huffed by him and he caught her elbow lightly, pulling her into the vee of his legs. Though she went unresistingly, she continued to glare at him. “What do you want, Tommy?”
Christ, what didn’t he want from her? But he wasn’t going to beg her for it. He had half the girls in the town sucking his dick whenever he felt like it. For whatever reason, girls had always been dragging h
im into bed with them at the slightest encouragement. He didn’t need Cassie Bailey.
But she was different. She always had been. Since that first day in town when he had gotten the crap beaten out of him for not allowing one of the older boys to take his lunch money and she had pushed through the crowd and stopped the fight, just a tall skinny girl with long blonde braids and more guts than he had ever seen in full-grown men. He had been fascinated by her as she toted him along to her father’s store and climbed on a stool to get the first-aid kit, scolding him to hold his head up so his nose wouldn’t bleed more than it had to. Fascinated and more than half in whatever with her from that very first moment.
Although he consoled himself through the years since that he must just want to get into her pants.
“Maybe I don’t like to see you throwing yourself away on an asshole like that, Cassie.”
“Funny. He said the same thing about you.”
So she had seen him. Tommy clamped his jaw shut, the better to keep from giving away how much that disturbed him. She watched him all the while, big blue eyes fastened on his face, until he said casually, “I’m surprised he even knows who I am.”
“I told him you said he was gay.”
He had tossed that out casually, just to needle her. It said enough about her inexperience with men that it seemed to bother her. He doubted Reynolds was gay, although that would be nice as far as he was concerned. He didn’t know what Reynolds’ deal was, why he didn’t take Cassie up on what she was obviously throwing his way. Maybe he was just a nice guy.
The asshole.
“He wanted to know if you wanted a date with him.”
Tommy laughed, which seemed to disappoint her. She scowled. “What? Do you?”
He tugged her closer in yet another repetition of this relentless dance of theirs. “I’m not exactly on the fence with my sexuality, Cassie. But if you want me to prove it to you, I’d be more than happy to.” He could feel her light breath at his neck as he leaned in to her to whisper that in her ear and he slid his hands carefully around her waist. His erection roared into force and he held the rest of himself rigid, knowing he had zero control where she was concerned. Zero control and absolute control, both at the same time. So while he was aching for her, he wouldn’t make any move on her. No real move on her anyway.
Like tugging that flimsy top down and taking one of her pearl-pink nipples in his mouth and sucking, hard. He knew they were pink only because she had flashed him once in anger and he had cherished the memory, sick fuck that he was.
She didn’t move away. It was as if once she realized he would let her set the pace, she relished frustrating him, keeping him near but nowhere near enough.
She took a breath that sounded shaky and, God help him, she pressed her lips to the crook of his neck. In automatic reaction, he pulled her a little closer, close enough for her to feel his erection against her flat, smooth stomach. They had done this a few times before, gotten this close, and if she followed her usual pattern, she would pull away in a huff any second now.
He waited.
“You get hard just holding a girl in your arms, Tommy?” she asked in a little voice, stepping closer.
He held off a groan and looked down at her, more turned-on by just this slight contact with her than he was when he was jamming his dick into any other girl.
He wanted to say something snappy or full of bravado or even disgustingly coarse. But all he whispered was, “I get hard just looking at you, Cassie. Thinking of you.”
Lame. Oh Christ, so very very lame.
“Why? I know you’re screwing anything in a skirt in this town. Even that disgusting Mrs. Rafferty.”
Eliza Rafferty, a highly sexed thirty-something divorcee who gave head like a pro, wasn’t what any red-blooded male, himself included, would exactly call disgusting. More like soft-core porn material. But he neglected to defend her to Cassie. She meant nothing to him. Less than nothing.
And Cassie meant…
But he couldn’t put it into words. Couldn’t say it. Didn’t even know what he meant.
“Aren’t you?” she prodded.
“Aren’t I what?” he asked, dazed.
“Screwing other women.”
“Cassie.” He leaned in to kiss her and she jerked her head back.
Tommy O’Neal stared down at her through those dark black eyelashes, his deep blue eyes glittery, his hands light and restless against the bare skin of her midriff. And his reputedly huge penis hard against her stomach.
The jerk.
He did sleep with everything that moved. Always had. While he was trailing after her, pretending to be her friend, he was kissing every other girl in their class and then more than kissing and way beyond just their school.
The jerk.
The gorgeous jerk. He’d been the most beautiful boy she’d ever seen. Bleeding and scrapping and tough, but with those big blue eyes and high cheekbones and black curls. Beautiful. Though if she had ever called him that to his face he would have been horrified. He was so proud back then. Still was probably, but he hid it better. And his betting and undoubtedly not-quite-legal other extracurricular activities kept him from being as poor as he was in those days.
She had a crush on Evan Reynolds. Of course she did. What girl wouldn’t? He was rich and gorgeous, a romantic figure all alone on that island of his. But as much as she flirted with him and mooned after him, it was a crush like you’d have on a movie star.
It was different with Tommy. She dreamt about Tommy. She felt jittery when he was close. Depressed when he wasn’t.
And deathly jealous. So jealous there was barely a girl in town she didn’t hate for having been with him.
Pushing him away at the thought, she stepped out of his arms. “Go find Mrs. Rafferty or one of your other groupies. I’m not interested.”
He let her go easily and shrugged. “That’s your story and you’re sticking to it, eh?”
“Shut up.” Grabbing an oversized sweatshirt from a hook, she slipped it over her outfit. Putting up with Tommy’s smart remarks about throwing herself away on Evan Reynolds was one thing. Getting the same similar disapproving look from her dad for wearing such a skimpy outfit to deliver groceries was another. Ever since her mom had died when she was little, she and her dad had been pretty tight. Hardworking, quiet and not very demonstrative, Greg Bailey nonetheless loved his only daughter. Cassie knew he did and knew he wanted the best for her too.
Well, that made two of them, even if she for one had no idea what that was. “You better get lost, Tommy.” As much as her dad wouldn’t approve of her crush on Evan—if he even noticed it, that is—he was livid at the mere sight of Tommy O’Neal hanging around Cassie. Always had been. He seemed to be convinced Tommy planned to leave her pregnant and unwed or some such Lifetime movie thing. No danger of that. For one thing, Tommy was famous for never doing it without a condom. And for another, he was famous—in her book anyway—for never doing it with her.
Unwed and pregnant! Hell, she’d probably go to her grave a virgin at this rate.
“I mean it, Tommy. You’re not my dad’s favorite person, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Yeah, I have, but maybe he should start paying a little more attention to the rich guy who lives out in the middle of nowhere that his daughter has the hots for. Maybe he ought to be chaperoning you or delivering the groceries out to that damn island himself or something.”
“Maybe he doesn’t care because Evan’s rich.”
“Bullshit!” Tommy snorted.
Cassie took the side door into the grocery store, noticing her dad behind the counter talking to a beautiful, older blonde lady.
She glanced quickly at Tommy, who had followed her in despite her warning, but he wasn’t paying any attention to the woman. Luckily, beautiful as she was, she was too old even for a male slut like Tommy apparently. Although her dad was paying an undue amount of attention to the fancy woman, flashing one of his rare smiles.
“S
o do you know my son?” the woman was asking.
“Sure. Of course I do, Mrs. Reynolds.”
“Please, call me Amanda. Mrs. Reynolds is not my favorite term of address. I just kept it after the divorce because I wanted to have the same name as my son and my ex-husband wouldn’t let me change his name, the horrid man. Of course Evan Evans wouldn’t have really worked anyway.”
The woman laughed, an attractive titter that seemed to captivate Cassie’s dad. He hadn’t even noticed his own daughter was in the room.
“I’m back, Dad.”
“Oh Cassie, come here. I was just mentioning you to Mrs., er, Amanda here.”
Was her dad actually blushing? God. How ridiculous.
The woman turned her megawatt smile their way. “Oh, you must be Cassie. My goodness, how very lovely you are, my dear. You better keep an eye on her around my son, Greg,” she added in a playful aside. “As wonderful a boy as he is, he is a Reynolds man.”
“Just what I was saying,” Tommy muttered, drawing her dad’s attention for the first time.
“Is there something you wanted, O’Neal?”
“Me? No. I was just, ah,” he grabbed a tube of toothpaste from a shelf, “shopping.”
“Well, get on with it, then.” Her dad turned to Amanda Reynolds. “Your son isn’t who I’m worried about,” he added with a wry look.
“Oh I can see why,” she responded in a conspiratorial whisper. “I was always glad I never had a daughter. So much trouble trying to keep them out of one lothario’s way or another, isn’t it? Evan’s half sister was a little terror on that score. My ex-husband certainly got his comeuppance trying to keep her in line, although she’s recently made a very nice match.”
Her ex-husband this. Her ex-husband that. How pathetic. The old gal was so totally still in love with the guy. Two seconds of conversation with her and it was obvious. Cassie had a weird sense of parallelism for a second—Gosh, she wasn’t as obvious as that about Tommy, was she?—before she remembered to be indignant that her dad and this woman were talking about her as if she wasn’t even there.
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