She was pedaling down the trail through the afternoon shower before Jack could get a word out, making him race to catch up with her. “What’s the matter?” he shouted back. “You afraid of getting wet?”
Instead of answering, she just kept pedaling furiously, up the hill toward an open-sided building that he could now see. He was relieved at how playful she was today; more like her regular self.
After he’d told her about her father last night, he’d worried that her holiday would be spoiled. But it hadn’t happened. She’d been pensive last night. Well, not all night. His heart raced as his mind replayed their lovemaking. Then this morning, she’d seemed chipper as ever. He wasn’t fooled into thinking the news hadn’t mattered, but felt that maybe it was something she needed to know. And he sensed that she was working on putting it behind her.
Jack was soaked by the time he pulled his bike in under the roof. “I still don’t understand why you are so afraid of getting—”
Just then an enormous bolt of lightning flashed down at the shore, bringing a clap of thunder that sent him almost to the open rafter above him.
“Holy cow!” he exclaimed. “That’s enough to scare the stuffing out of a man.”
“Told you.”
“You didn’t tell me anything. You only said to pedal fast.”
Cassie just gave him a look as she sat down on a picnic bench and began to untie her sneakers. “If I tried to explain things to you, we’d still be out there.” She pulled off her sneakers. “You know how you lawyers are. Always asking questions.”
“I thought we had an agreement to be nice to each other this holiday,” he said. “I don’t see where cracking lawyer jokes counts as being nice.”
“I’m not telling any lawyer jokes.” She pulled off her wet socks. “I’m just giving you the facts.”
He shook his head. There was no winning an argument with this woman.
“Hey.” She wrung out her socks. “You can’t tell me that you guys don’t badger a person to death with a zillion dippy questions.”
“We’re trained to seek the truth.”
“Sure.”
Cassie leaned back against the table part of the picnic unit and grinned at him—her well-shaped, muscular legs stretched before her, her elbows back on the table, enhancing the smooth rise of her breasts. Too bad this shelter had no walls. He sat down next to her.
“As an example,” he said, “your feet are still wet.”
“Yeah?” Her emerging frown lines did nothing to mar the beauty of her face. “And you think I don’t know that?”
“Well, you took your shoes and socks off but you don’t have anything to dry your feet with. So they’re still wet.”
“So what?” She wiggled both feet. “It’s a pleasant kind of moist. With the wet shoes on, it was a clammy, unpleasant kind of wet.”
“You rationalize very well.”
“I cut through nonsense very well.”
Jack smiled as he looked out over the lake. Ornery as a rat terrier. She’d been that way from the day they first met. And he hoped she would never change.
“Man,” he said, looking at the sheets of water pouring off the roof. “It’s really coming down now.” And multiple lightning flashes told him it was a hell of a storm. “Damn thing came up awful fast.”
“It’s a lake squall,” she murmured, staring out at nature’s show. “That’s how they usually work.”
Through the rain they could see the lake surface boiling, with waves jumping high. Dark clouds hung out just at the horizon, serving as a counterpoint to the spectacular flashes of lightning. “Mother Nature puts on quite a show.”
“It’s a lot more enjoyable when you’re watching from someplace safe.”
“There’s that,” he agreed.
He turned away from the lake spectacle to look at Cassie. She wasn’t big and loud, nor did she give off huge sparks, but in her own way she was quite spectacular herself. The wet T-shirt now clinging to her body certainly demonstrated that.
He shifted his feet, causing his shoes to make a squishy sound. Maybe it would be more comfortable to take the shoes off. He did a toe-to-heel on one, and then the other, before pulling off his socks.
“Well?” Cassie said, watching him wiggle his own feet.
“Much more comfortable.”
“Told you.”
He nodded and they watched the rain some more. It was hard to be certain, but he thought it was starting to ease up a bit. He did remember Cassie telling him that these lake squalls seldom lasted long. He pulled off his shirt.
She turned to look at him.
“Hey,” he said. “If it works for my feet, it should work for the rest of my body.”
Jack dropped the soggy shirt on the table behind him; Cassie kept on staring. “Boy.” He waved his arms about. “That feels much better.”
“Hmm.”
“You ought to try it.”
“Cute.”
That wasn’t quite how he would describe her smile. Cassie’s grin was more like the one Miss Moorehead had given him back in third grade, the time she’d told him to come up and take his snake out of her desk drawer. Nature seemed to have given the female of the species a highly suspicious attitude.
“No, seriously. I was just thinking of your welfare.”
“You’re a true gentleman.”
“I know you just hate that clammy kind of wet feeling.”
“Not quite as much as I’d hate flashing my breasts at strangers coming up the trail.”
He looked back out toward the lake and saw that the storm had passed over them, moving off to the east. They were left with a heavy drizzle that was obviously the tail end of the storm.
“Well, what do you want to do now?” she asked.
“My pants are wet,” he replied.
She stared at him with her big brown eyes. They were pretty as a fuzzy puppy, but damn near unreadable. You could tell if they went hard or real soft, but hardly anything in between.
“Cold and clammy.” He shook his head. “Very uncomfortable.”
Cassie blinked, a slight smile growing on her lips. He used to think women’s wisdom was an acquired thing. His daughters were showing him that that wasn’t true.
“Of course, you have it worse,” he said solemnly. “I’m only wearing my shorts. You have your shorts, shirt, and bra. That means more of your body is wrapped in cold, clammy stuff.”
The ripples in Cassie’s cheeks indicated she was fighting for control. The snickering indicated she had a ways to go. He wrapped her in his arms.
“You’re very cruel,” he said.
“I thought men liked that.”
This time he had no trouble at all reading her eyes.
“Let’s go back to the room,” he murmured.
“And get these wet, clammy clothes off?” she asked, all innocence and passion.
“That’s right.”
Her arms went around his neck. “And get comfortable.”
“Very comfortable.”
They kissed. Long, but not long enough. Long enough so that he was gasping for breath but not long enough to be satisfied. Long enough to awaken all the devils of his passion, but not long enough to ease their hungers.
“Let’s go back to our room.”
Her eyes were open wide, the pupils swimming in a sea of white. For a moment, he wasn’t even sure that she’d heard him.
“Cassie, I—”
“Last one there is a rotten egg.”
She was up and gone before the words had registered in his brain, leaving him sitting there hugging air. Damn. That woman went from passionate to playful quicker than one of these Lake Michigan squalls.
She was almost out of sight down the path. He pushed himself up, grabbed his shirt and shoes, and hurried to his bike.
They were lying in bed, both on their right side, spooning. Skin against skin. Warm and cuddly as kittens in a basket.
Cassie’s travel clock on the bedside table said it was almost three-thirty.
It had been such a pleasant evening that they’d turned off the air-conditioning and opened the windows before they’d gone to sleep. Now, she lay there listening to the earthy blend of Jack’s breathing and day birds discussing how they should greet the coming dawn.
Like in the Dickens novel she’d had to read in high schoolit was the best of times for her, it was the worst of times.
Cassie wished that she could lie in his arms forever; and she wished the day would come so that she could get home and back to the normal life of her business, her family, and her sports teams.
She was deliriously happy, she was gut-wrenchingly scared. She wanted to sing, she wanted to cry. She was hungry enough to eat a bear, she was nauseous.
And her period still hadn’t started.
She wanted to scream. And if Jack hadn’t been wrapped around her, fast asleep, she would have.
The missed period was her agony and her hope. Hope that she could finally say that she was a complete woman.
But agony sat there in the dark reaches of her heart, like a man-eating tiger ready to spring out. Was her missed period something to talk about or something to carry as a silent secret?
Her clock blinked: 4:01 a.m. She wasn’t going to get any more sleep. She might as well get up and do something.
Her body went into a warm glow. Actually they could both do something—something that a man and a woman could enjoy together. She toyed with awakening Jack but he was sleeping so nicely. They could wait another hour.
Another hour to lie here, quiet and still, like a mouse at a convention of alley cats. But, given the way they were entwined, that was the way it had to be. And he was sleeping so comfortably that she didn’t have the heart to wake him up. So she would just lie there and worry.
Well, not really worry.
Yeah, she was late. But it wasn’t that unusual. It had happened before. Her period would start sometime today, she was sure of it. It had to.
Chapter Twelve
“Ease up, boss lady. The big guy’ll be just fine.”
Cassie stared at Burt, leaning on the frame of the doorway to her small office. Big guy? She wasn’t aware that there was anything wrong with Jack, especially since she’d just left him early this morning.
“What are you talking about?” she snapped.
Burt shuffled his feet and glanced back out into the store, as if he was looking for help. “Ollie,” he replied, turning to face her again. “I’m sure your father took good care of him.”
Cassie just stared at him.
“Hey, your dad likes dogs, right?” He twisted his lips into what he must have thought was a comforting smile. “He’ll be just fine.”
What in the world had inspired this stupid conversation? “Of course, he’s fine,” she retorted. “I just talked to my father not more than ten minutes ago.”
Now Burt stared at her.
“We—I got back early this morning and didn’t have time to pick Ollie up. Sam’s going to bring him home tonight.”
“Well, there you go.” He shrugged, looking around again. “Like I said. Nothing to worry about.”
“I never was worried.”
“Well, you’ve sure been grumpy today.” Burt wiped a hand across his mouth. “And when you’re grumpy that means you’re worried about something or other. Leastways that’s the way it usually works.”
Cassie could feel all her worries come bubbling up. Emotions that had been churning for days stood poised to explode. “I am not grumpy.” She stood while Burt shifted from one foot to the other. “I might be a little tense, seeing as we need to do a complete inventory by the end of the week. I have a meeting with a guy from the state tax commission. And I have to put in a new hot-water heater at home.”
She smiled at Burt, taking a perverse joy from the little worry lines forming on his forehead. “Aside from that, I’m feeling just as loose as a goose.”
“That’s good,” he mumbled.
“So if you come in here again—” her voice was rising into the shouting range, but she didn’t care “—and call me grumpy, I’ll rip your heart out and nail it to the front door!”
“What’s going on here?” Ellen marched through the door and took up a position between the two of them, as if to keep them from fisticuffs. “They could hear you guys bellowing up in Three Oaks.”
“We weren’t bellerin’,” Burt snapped. “We were just discussing as how Cassie weren’t grumpy.”
Ellen looked sharply at Cassie, then put her hand on Burt’s arm and tugged him toward the door. “Come on out back and dust the shelves.”
“The hell I will.” Burt went out with her, but then paused and looked back over his shoulder. “And I ain’t doin’ the windows, neither.”
Cassie just threw her pencil down on the desk and leaned back in her chair, closing her eyes. This thing had to be settled before she went out of her mind.
What was she going to do if she was pregnant? What would Jack want to do? Things had been going so well between them lately, but that would have to change if she was pregnant. Would he be happy or angry or—
No, she realized. He would accept responsibility. Whatever his true feelings, he would keep them hidden and accept responsibility. He would do the right thing by her. Which would be almost worse than him ranting and raving. How could she bear being the recipient of him doing his duty? And how long would it be before he began to resent her, began to feel trapped by her?
She would rather be alone.
About a hundred years later, when five o’clock rolled around, Cassie took a spin up South Bend Avenue to the supermarket to pick up something for dinner and check out the drugstore.
As she pulled into the parking lot, she noted with satisfaction that it wasn’t too much more than half full. That meant she’d be in and out like a bunny, which was good. Samantha was bringing Ollie home around six-thirty and she didn’t want them waiting around outside. She needed her big, fuzzy Ollie. Needed him to bring things back to normal in her life.
Cassie parked her truck, hurried across the lot, and then dashed through the supermarket like a cartoon character. She picked up a package of stewing meat for herself and a package of Yummy Cuts—chunks of dog food that were colored to look like beef—for Ollie. The food was made by a local firm and it was even wrapped in the same butcher-shop paper that they used for her meat. Darn stuff smelled horrible but Ollie loved it.
The drugstore was right next to the supermarket and she hurried in, walking the aisles and looking for the pregnancy-test kits. She knew that there had to be a zillion of them. They were always advertising the darn things on TV. Always.
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
“Yes, I—” Oh, man. It was a high-school boy—all smile, ears, and acne. What had she done to deserve this? “I’m looking for aspirin. A big bottle. The biggest and strongest you got.”
“Yes, ma’am. Aisle nine, to your left.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem, ma’am. We’re here to help.”
Cassie smiled and turned away. If that kid said “ma’am” one more time, she would have mashed his nose and tied it in a knot behind his head.
She found the aspirin, a hundred million varieties of it. Closing her eyes, she picked a box, then stepped out into the main aisle and checked both ways before hurrying off to find the pregnancy-test kit.
“Anything else, ma’am?”
Cassie screamed and did a five-foot vertical leap. “What the hell are you doing sneaking around on people?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“And quit calling me ‘ma’am.’ I’m not your mother.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
His smile had faded to dust but he was standing his ground. Cassie wondered if she could get him a military burial after she killed him. He deserved nothing less.
“Anything else you need, mmm—
“Vitamins.” Cassie snapped the word out before the kid took flight. He sounded like a damn helicopter. “Just plain o
ld vitamins.”
“Aisle sixteen, right, mmm—”
“Thanks.” She turned to find the vitamins but stopped and looked back. “Don’t you have anything to do? Stock shelves, sweep the floor, chase little boys away from the girlie magazines?”
“Oh, no. This is what I do, mmm—” He swallowed hard. “I help people find things.”
Swell. Cassie stared hard at his name tag. “Do me a favor, Carl. Don’t help me.”
“Yes, mmm—”
Cassie checked out the ceiling fixtures and held her breath. If she hung her little helper up there in the rafters, everything would be just fine. He would never be able to bother her again.
“Say—” his voice was filled with a joyful eagerness, enough to send shivers up and down her back “—are you related to Fiona Scott?”
Cassie closed her eyes. In her next life, she was going to live in some metropolis, like Tokyo or Mexico City. Someplace where every other person and their cousin wouldn’t know her or her family.
“She’s my sister,” she mumbled, hoping that Carl would take his little nugget of information and run away, clutching it to his heart.
“She taught my oldest sister’s little boy.” He stood there, smiling like they were real buddies.
“Thanks for your help, Carl.”
“He really liked your sister,” he said. “He said she was the best teacher he ever had.”
“Go away, Carl—” Cassie kept a pleasant tone in her voice “—while you can still walk.”
Carl didn’t say anything in reply. His smile flickered but didn’t go out. He gave her a thumbs-up signal for A-okay, before hurrying off.
Cassie counted to ten, quickly glanced around for the ubiquitous Carl, and then hurried down the aisle to her left. She’d suddenly realized that the pregnancy-test kit should be with the feminine hygiene products.
That hypothesis proved true and, after another quick check to see that no one was following her, she snatched up the package closest to her and didn’t breathe until she was safely home.
She carried her load into the kitchen, left out the package for Ollie and her pregnancy kit, and put everything else in the refrigerator. Then she picked up the kit and, frowning, began reading the instructions.
A Father's Gift Page 20
