“That’s because men love what they are attracted to, and women are attracted to what they love. Women have had to catch the eye of their pursuers since the beginning of time. Men, on the other hand, need things like status, money, or influence to woo their mates.”
Jake took a wayward lock of Cassie’s hair and tucked it behind her ear. “What was it that Dylan had?”
“Dylan had words; words that sounded like poetry and music. I misunderstood charm for sincerity. I am trying to learn how to tell insincerity from genuine goodness.”
Jake felt his cheeks grow hot and was immediately grateful that she could not see it. He didn’t need to mentally review his behavior with women and more specifically with her to know she was talking about him.
Cassie cleared her throat roughly, and Jake’s attention snapped back, “I’m sorry, Jake. I never intended for you to take that personally. I can feel how awkward this topic has gotten for you, so I’ll drop it. Just know … you are one of the reasons I think my picker is broken. You have not turned out to be exactly what I thought you were, and my confidence where guys are concerned is a little unsteady.”
Jake laughed, despite the sting he felt at her words. He grappled for a way to turn this exchange more comfortable. “The sheriff assured me you are perfectly safe in your apartment tonight, but I got the feeling you don’t trust him much either. Are you going to be okay?”
“I see what you mean about small-town politics, but I’d have felt better if you let him hear the recording.”
“It wouldn’t be proof of Carter’s presence here tonight. All we know, for sure, is that Carter strongly suspects you recorded him. Ed will believe nothing but hard proof, and we don’t have that yet.”
“There’s something else, Jake. I can hear it in your voice. You aren’t sure you want to get Carter in trouble.”
“Oh, I don’t mind Carter getting what he deserves. I guess I just wonder how much of that I should feel guilty about. Plus, I don’t want to bring any more of Carter’s focus to you. He and I were friends a long time ago. If I talk to him, he might just need to hit me, and then no one else has to get hurt.”
“First of all, I think it’s too late for that. Second, you cannot blame yourself for Carter’s present troubles, no matter what role you played in his past.”
Cassie’s voice was too blunt on his conscience, especially when she turned her arctic eyes on him. “What do you have to feel guilty about?”
“A lot, actually. Too much …”
Jake ran his hands absentmindedly through his hair, drawing away from this topic of conversation. She seemed to sense his reluctance and took his elbow again, turning him toward the ascending stairs. “Jake, could I ask you for a favor? I’m sure those cops took care of that snake but could you go up and see if there is anything or anyone up there that I should know about?”
Jake grimaced, removed her hand from his arm, and held it firmly.
“I appreciate the vote of confidence Cass, but you’re coming, too.”
Chapter Sixteen
“Jake,” Cassie whispered from the doorway of her apartment. “Is it safe?”
She heard the slight scrape of his boots on the carpet, and her heart automatically seized with the sound.
“Cassie, unless I am moving in or you’re moving out, you’ve got to come make sure yourself. Take my hand,” he said softly. “I’ll talk you through it.”
Jake kept up a running commentary as they inspected every corner of the small studio apartment. He explained in great detail where everything was located, and she affirmed nothing had been disturbed. He offered to empty her laundry basket onto the floor to check the bottom, but Cassie blushed and told him she could dig through her laundry herself.
After both she and Jake were satisfied with the search, she heard him sink onto her small love seat. Cassie folded her long legs crisscross beneath her and sat on the floor at his feet.
“Thank you for the verbal tour. It helped a lot. I may even be able to sleep here alone tonight.”
Jake was silent before her, and she heard the sound of a yawn escaping involuntarily. “It’s late and I’m fine if you want to go, it’s just that I’m finding the sound of your voice very …” Cassie broke off thoughtfully before she found the description she was looking for. “I find it very … giant redwood.”
“Very what? Did you just say my voice sounds like a tree’s voice? I know my ears aren’t as good as yours, but I am pretty sure trees don’t have voices.”
“Not sounds like a tree. Feels like a tree.”
“That’s actually less helpful. I don’t know how a tree feels either, or how it compares to a voice.”
Cassie laughed ruefully. How could she explain this to him? A sighted person’s world was filled with so many colors and images, she wasn’t sure she could make sense of this for him.
“No, Jake, just listen. If you go to a redwood forest in California, it feels like strength. The smell is of ancient earth and wood. The sounds are of hushed reverence. The air is steady, warm, like your favorite blanket wrapped around you.” She paused listening for his response, but he was quiet. “The sound of your voice, here in a room full of questions, feels like those trees.”
“Cassie, do you have any memories of what things look like?”
The question was so sidelong that Cassie thought she could feel its weight on her cheeks. He was asking her more than what she remembered from her sighted life. He was asking her to bring him into her present one.
“I have flashes of shapes, light, shadow. It’s kind of like waking up from a dream and only grasping at the memory of what it had been.”
“Do you have dreams?”
“Of course I do.”
“Do you dream in picture, or just sounds and smells? Do blind people have dreams like regular people?”
Cassie laughed, and she heard him move down onto the floor in front of her, taking her hands in his. “If I let you touch my face, will you see me in your dreams?”
Cassie yanked her hands out of his and folded them in her lap.
“Yes, Jake, blind people dream. For me, I dream in pictures. I don’t know how accurate those pictures are, but I see in my dreams.”
“What about a person who has never had their sight. Do they dream like that?”
“I don’t know, Jake. What makes you so sure that you dream like regular people?”
Cassie stiffened as Jake leaned toward her and gently took her hands again. She felt her fingers tremble in his grasp, but she did not pull back from him this time. “What are you doing, Jake?”
“What do you see in your mind when you look at me?”
Cassie felt his eyes watching her reactions. Truthfully, she hadn’t formed a picture in her thoughts; she was avoiding that. The more she let her guard down with him, the more difficult it was to trust her judgment. She had not formed concrete impressions of him on purpose. It was easier to forget when he was gone, if she never really looked at him.
When she didn’t answer him, he pressed her further. “Do you imagine what color someone’s eyes are, or their hair? Do you see something if I tell you my eyes are blue, but not blue like yours?”
“Jake, colors to me are associated with sounds, textures, and smells, not words like blue. I don’t know what that means.”
She could feel her temper rising with his probing, and the emotion felt more like panic than annoyance. He was too close; she needed the protection he offered her more than she needed his face in her mind tonight. She had to escape.
“It’s not something I can explain.”
“Try, please. I really want to know. Which is more powerful? Texture? Sound? Or smell?”
When he started rubbing the backs of her hand with his thumbs, she broke free of his calloused fingers and brushed her hair back from her face. If he was going to push, then she would make him see things he didn’t want to.
“Texture leaves the strongest impression. For example, my complexion is fairly smooth
, but when I was 11 years old I ran into a wooden post that was part of my father’s library. The carved edge of the post creased my forehead, and now I have a deep gash that feels to me like the Grand Canyon when I run my fingers over it.”
She lowered her head and pointed out the scar to him. Jake’s fingers slid lightly over the spot, and a part of her flinched as she felt the edges of the indention graze his skin.
“Cassie, I can’t see it, and I don’t feel anything either. There’s no scar, you are …” Jake’s voice faltered only momentarily before he lightly traced the edges of her features with his fingertips. “Do you remember that day we were all at the reservoir? I watched you on the dock before you went swimming. The sun was setting behind you and you were beautiful. Your lips, your eyes, your face. I’ve never seen anything more extraordinary.”
Cassie felt her lips involuntarily part as his fingers brushed over them, and she fought the urge to reach out and touch his. The soft, sultry murmur of his words pierced her, and she wanted him to keep his hands on her. “No face is perfect,” he teased reluctantly. “I’m sure you could find flaws in mine, if you looked.”
With the change in the tenor of his voice, Cassie reclaimed her senses, and leaned backward on her elbows. “Well, that’s what I mean; to me I am disfigured by that scar, and I picture it slashing across my forehead obnoxiously. I have no idea what the rest of my face looks like. I’ve been told I have a creamy complexion, pale blue eyes and auburn hair, but I don’t know what that means. What I know is my forehead has a giant crease in it.”
“I thought appearance didn’t matter to you,” he said in a terse retort. “What difference does it make if you have a scar?”
“Why are you so interested in this?” she snapped. “An old friend of yours is trying to kill you, and now me, and you want to talk about what people look like? I think you should tell me what happened in your past with Carter that makes him homicidal and you deserving of such hatred.”
Jake’s body moved away from her until she heard his voice drifting from his position, reclined on the floor beside her. “If we talk about Carter, then we have to talk about the past,” he mumbled. “I don’t like talking about the past. It has nothing to do with the present, and it’s awkward.”
Cassie tried not to smile at him but lost the struggle as she cleared her throat uncomfortably.
“If it has nothing to do with the present, then why is it so hard to talk about?”
“It was painful enough then, why make it worse by feeling it again?”
“Jake, strong feelings that are buried alive never die. Talking about them gives them their last breath before they fade into memories.”
“How many breaths have you given your memories of your ex-fiancé? Because it looks to me like every time you talk about it, you are just breathing new life into the pain, not letting it die.”
Cassie felt the corners of her mouth turn up sardonically as she stared deeper into his turmoil.
“It gets easier and easier to talk about Dylan without the emotion, and just see it for what it was. I trusted his charm, his sincerity, and his tenderness. I had never experienced a relationship before where I was so close to someone and I couldn’t trust their words. Blind people are very honest with each other because trust is such a large part of what we do for survival. Aside from my family and the people at the blind schools, I had little interaction with people who didn’t understand that. The cruel or insecure ones either avoid you or attack. You know who and what they are. Dylan was my first experience with someone who lied to me with such beautiful words.”
“No wonder you weren’t so friendly that night at Mcgoo’s. I must have sounded like another Dylan.” Cassie felt the air around them ignite with his confession. A part of her wanted to soothe it away, make a joke to break the feeling, but Jake kept talking. “I wasn’t like that before I was famous. I was actually pretty oblivious to my own charms before …” Jake broke off, and Cassie felt the name clinging to the air between them.
“Before your girlfriend was killed.”
His previously relaxed form stiffened beside her, and Cassie kept her features placid while he recovered. “How did you … who told you about that?”
“Your mom was worried that the stable fire had brought that pain filled past of yours out from where you had buried it, and she thought maybe I could help.”
“Help?” Jake snapped irritably. “Help by telling me some lame story about your own tragic past. Is any of that even true or were you just trying to get me to feel like you understand what it’s like to be hurt?”
Cassie closed her eyes and shook her head before gripping her knees tightly.
“No, Jake. I don’t talk about Dylan to very many people because it shows my weakness and makes me vulnerable. I trusted you with that part of me because I wanted you to know I could be trusted.” Cassie took a deep breath and she heard Jake moving back toward the love seat. “Jake, think about it. What’s worse, the memories of a girl you loved who will always love you, no matter what? Or knowing the person you loved and trusted is out there somewhere, choosing not to want or love you anymore? You see this loss as a great tragedy, which it was. But in your world you are still loved, wanted, strong, and heroic. In mine, I am a silly woman who fell for pretty promises and a nice body, but missed what a snake he was.”
Cassie sensed the pause in his escape, and the need he had to fight the truth of her words with every tortured syllable. Scrambling to her hands and knees, she went to where he sat, placing her hands on his knees. “Jake, her ghost is haunting you into being a ghost of yourself. This Casanova character that everybody thinks you are is not the man Melinda loved in the first place. You buried him beside her, and now you’re holding onto the pain of your past to keep from letting him live again.”
Jake’s body surrendered, defeated into the cushions of the love seat. Cassie heard his voice muffled as if he held his face in his hands. “Cassie. Why couldn’t you be like all the others? Accept the good-time Casanova. Don’t look beyond the smile and charm. Why is it so damn easy to let go with you?” he whispered huskily. “Melinda was not in love with me. She wanted the Hollywood actor all along.”
Cassie was silent, but her hand still rested on his knee and she held it more tightly.
“Melinda was beautiful, smart, and driven. She was too good for this one-horse town and, more than anything else, she wanted out. The night of the accident we had been arguing about the land grant. I was going to the federal courthouse in Carson City to file the paperwork the next week, and I had turned down a secondary part in a local movie that was shooting in the mountains.”
Jake’s voice was no longer distorted, and Cassie figured he had moved his hands out of his face. She reached out and took one of them, expecting him to pull away. His fingers tightened convulsively around hers, and she took a ragged breath.
“It was a graduation party and there was a lot of drinking and partying, but Melinda and I spent the whole night fighting. She told me if I didn’t give up this horse ranch business and take that part, she was breaking up with me. She said that my face was her best shot at a real life and she wasn’t going to shackle herself to Lindley because I was hung up on horses.” Jake’s voice had become distant with his memories, and Cassie imagined him picturing Melinda that night.
“I was shocked. I mean, I knew I didn’t look like Cousin It or anything, but I had never considered a life or career based on my looks until that night. When she started to leave with her brother, I knew he’d been drinking, I didn’t know he was drunk, though. Everyone assumed I had gone along to save Melinda from Carter, but the truth is … I was afraid if she left that night, I would be forced to choose between her and the mustangs. I went along so I could convince her that the life I had planned on the mountain, with her, was the best for both of us.
“She ignored me for most of the drive, and when the truck rolled off the road that night I was still trying to convince her that my skills as an actor and
model were worthless compared to what I could do here. I couldn’t save her, and getting Carter out of there only forced him to live with the loss of his sister, the blame for the accident, and the end of his dreams. Melinda was not the only one we lost that night. There were two casualties in that crash.”
“Three, Jake. There were three.”
Taking a deep breath, he leaned back.
“I was untouched that night, Cassie. The only casualty for me is keeping both her version of me and my version of myself fused for all these years so I can prove to her we could have had it all. Casanova keeps my relationships casual, easy, and I don’t have to think about the fact that the man I want to be wasn’t good enough for Melinda; that I will never be good enough for anything except Hollywood.”
Cassie was kneeling in front of him, and now she slid into the narrow gap to lean against his body. Jake shifted beside her and Cassie turned, placing her hands against his chest and sliding her palms until she touched his neck and jaw.
“I don’t know what you look like Jake, or whether your looks have anything to do with who you are, but I am fairly certain I have never pictured this Casanova. Men who can hide behind good looks don’t usually understand themselves well enough to care whether there is more that people might be interested in.”
Cassie took a shuddered breath, as his hands found her waist and slid onto her back. “I don’t care what you look like. I don’t care what those other people see, if you will trust me, I can tell you what I feel.”
Cassie trailed her fingers over the planes of his features, placed her hands on either side of his face, until she ran her fingers through his silky hair and felt it curl beneath her nails. She pulled it gently between her fingers and her mind formed a picture.
“When I was so sick all those years ago, my grandmother would sit beside me in the hospital doing cross stitch. I couldn’t see what picture she was making, the colors she used or the stitch she sewed. However, I could feel the tangled threads curling and silken on the back of the pattern. It was a beautiful picture in my sightless eyes, and your hair feels the same way. What color is it?”
Killing Casanova Page 12
