by Bella Andre
“He wasn’t my date,” Cassie protested. But no one seemed to hear her.
“You’re not being fair, Rory.” Ashley put away a wine glass in an upper cabinet. “We all know how hard life can be in the public eye.” There were no superstar actors or singers in their immediate family, but there were several of each among their cousins and their spouses. “Besides, I thought he was great with Ruby.” It was a massive compliment from Ashley, given what a tool Kevin’s father was. Being a great parent was at the very top of her list of positive male attributes. “He seems like a natural father, which is especially impressive given that he’s only had custody of Ruby for three weeks.”
Rory handed the pan to Turner to rinse, then began scrubbing the bottom of another. “What do you know about Cassie’s guy, Turner?”
“He’s not my guy!” Cassie said. But again, it was as though they had aimed the mute button at her. Her lips were moving, but none of them were listening to a word.
“You know I keep my nose out of the Hollywood gossip columns as much as possible,” Turner replied. “The only thing I know for sure is that his work is good.”
“We all know that,” Rory said. “But I’m not talking about the fact that his latest thriller was a mind-bending triumph. You must have heard something about his personal life. Does he party? Is he a spotlight hound? Is he all about fame and fortune? Or is he just in Hollywood because that’s where the work is?”
“Like I said, I don’t know the guy very well. We’ve been at a few of the same industry events, but we never met until tonight, and I don’t remember him dancing on the tables, or anything like that. Just that he had a different woman on his arm each time.”
Rory scowled. “I knew something was up with that guy the minute I saw him.”
“Enough!” Cassie gripped her kitchen towel so tightly that the seams started to separate. “He’s staying in my cabin, not marrying into the family. So what does it matter how he chooses to live his life?”
“Are you honestly trying to say you didn’t notice how his eyes followed you all night?” Rory asked. “Every word you said, every move you made, he didn’t miss a thing.”
No matter what Flynn had just said to her on the sidewalk, she still found it impossible to believe he could be interested in her. “You do know who he’s been dating, right?” Cassie said to Rory. “I’m sure you can find your copy of the latest swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated if you need a reminder.”
Rory turned from the sink. “Don’t underestimate yourself, Cassie. So what if he was dating a model? He clearly isn’t looking for one now.”
Even though she’d just insisted Flynn wasn’t interested in her, she had to nail her brother with, “Thanks for the compliment.”
“You know what I mean. You’re not a bikini model, but you still look perfectly fine.”
“Again,” she said with a shake of her head, “you really know how to boost a girl’s confidence.”
He threw up his soapy hands in defeat. “All I’m saying is, I want to know more about the guy since he’s clearly interested in you.”
“And all I’m saying is that he’s come to Maine to spend time with Ruby out of the spotlight, not to find a new girlfriend.” Cassie loved Rory. She was also more than a little concerned about the fact that he hadn’t quite seemed like himself this year. But that didn’t mean she was going to let him walk all over her. “You and Dad embarrassed me tonight by acting like you need to protect me from him. What’s more, even if he is interested in me, I don’t need any of the men in my family puffing up their chests and beating them in a show of dominance. Because I’m more than capable of looking out for myself.”
Lola and Ashley both clapped at the end of her soliloquy, while Rory and Turner wisely kept their mouths shut as they finished doing the dishes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Silence had never been so silent before.
The following day, after Flynn dropped Ruby off with Beth, he had headed with his laptop to the library.
The red brick building just off the Village Green in the center of Bar Harbor was impressive, both inside and out. Libraries had always been Flynn’s secret getaway spots. In Los Angeles, where people loved to work in cafés with headphones on, he far preferred working at the public library. Fortunately, the Los Angeles Central Library was so enormous he could always find a quiet corner to himself.
At last, he was able to dig into his screenplay today with no interruptions. He should have been elated to get back to his normal life, if only for a few hours.
But he already missed Ruby so darn much.
She had been happy as a clam about spending time with Beth, giggling the moment they’d walked through the front door. Flynn, on the other hand, had hung around the house far longer than he needed to, worried that Ruby might start crying or fussing when she realized he was going to leave. He might never have left at all if Beth hadn’t given him a hug, told him everything was going to be just fine, then pretty much pushed him out the door.
At the polished wood table, instead of focusing on the draft of his screenplay, he checked his phone again, in case Beth was trying to reach him. Of course there were no messages. After raising seven children, there was likely nothing she couldn’t handle when it came to babies.
Okay then. It was time to get to work. He had only two and a half hours left until he picked up Ruby, so he’d better make the most of them.
Unfortunately, within ten minutes of reading through his partial script, he was dismayed to realize that the words on the page rang false—almost as though he was reading someone else’s work.
Maybe because…in many ways, the past three weeks had turned him into someone else?
Before Ruby had come into his life, he hadn’t had to care about anyone but himself. Sure, he had friends and women he dated, but each of them was best at looking out for themselves, scrapping for whatever piece of the pie they could get.
He’d been as bad as any of them. Worse, even, because he’d built his current life out of lies about his past. He’d told himself it was everything he wanted—a glittering, celebrity-filled life that he could never even have dreamed about as a kid growing up in abject poverty in the middle of nowhere.
Now, however, when he looked at his Los Angeles life, it seemed so lonely. So pointless. So much like a treadmill that never actually went anywhere.
Life with Ruby certainly wasn’t easy. And he still wasn’t sure he had the faintest clue what he was doing.
But at least he was making a difference in someone’s life.
Looking at his screenplay again, he knew without a doubt that there was nothing he could do to fix it. He’d been a selfish bastard when he’d written these fifty pages, and that was that.
Flynn clicked on the file and dragged it into the trash.
He was behind schedule, but he’d still harbored hope that he’d get the screenplay in on time. He’d never missed a deadline before, but he’d definitely have to ask Smith and Valentina for an extension.
What the hell was he going to write about now?
Flynn’s brain had always meandered in dark and suspenseful directions. When he was a little kid, even on the nights when his father hadn’t been actively giving him nightmares, his overactive imagination had sent him spiraling down dark, deep holes. As an adult, it had been easy to turn those childhood nightmares into twisted scenes of emotional and physical devastation for his screenplays.
But now, for the first time in his life, Flynn didn’t want to spend the bulk of his time peering into dark corners and imagining the worst. He couldn’t get something Turner had said at dinner out of his head: I’m always happy when I can work on something my nephew and cousins’ kids can watch.
Flynn hated the thought of Ruby seeing one of the terrifying, violent movies he’d written. Surely she’d know that only someone with half a heart could have made up stories like that.
But how could he write anything else when he hadn’t ever known true happines
s himself, or a loving family dynamic like the Sullivans had?
Last night, Cassie’s family had laughed so easily together. They’d teased one another. They’d looked after one another. And Cassie’s father and brother were clearly hell-bent on protecting her from any man who didn’t pass muster. Which Flynn definitely didn’t.
Considering how much of his life he’d spent telling lies, he should have been better at continuing to lie to himself. But when it came to Cassie, there wasn’t any point.
Yes, he was fascinated by Cassie’s family.
But he was far more fascinated by her.
No woman had ever been further out of his league. He was well suited to actresses and models, women who knew how to put on a mask and wear it profitably. After all, that was exactly what Flynn had been doing his whole life.
Cassie, on the other hand, was as honest as a person could be.
Her smile was real.
Her beauty wasn’t painted on.
Her laughter came from her heart.
Even her business was wholesome and sweet.
He’d never considered writing a character like her, because he’d never known anyone like her. And as he sat in the silent Bar Harbor library and stared up at the vaulted wooden ceiling, he couldn’t deny that he desperately wanted to learn what made Cassie tick.
He wanted other things too. Things that involved stripping off her clothes and hearing her gasp with pleasure. Not just once, but again and again, until her voice was hoarse and her skin was flushed from his lovemaking.
Flynn knew better, though. Her father, her brother—they were both right about him. Just because he wanted her didn’t mean that he was anywhere near good enough for her, or even close to being the fairy-tale prince that she deserved.
No, he could never have her as his own.
But would it be so wrong to ask her to help him understand the joy, the light, the hope that she felt, so that he could find a way to put all of those things in a screenplay and, much more important, share them with Ruby as he raised her?
A flicker of excitement ran through him at the thought of basing a character on Cassie.
Particularly the part where it meant spending plenty of time with her to get things right.
He closed his laptop, slid it into his leather bag, then headed out of the library. If Cassie was game to help him one more time—even though he already owed her more than he could ever repay—the next time he came back to the library to write, he hoped to have a whole lot better idea of the story he wanted to tell.
Her candy-filled office was only a handful of blocks away. Though Flynn had assumed he’d feel claustrophobic living in a small town again, after nearly two decades of needing to drive everywhere—if you could call sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic with thousands of other bitter commuters driving—he found he enjoyed being able to walk from Cassie’s parents’ house, to the library, to her office, in only three tree-filled blocks.
He knocked on the door, then rang the bell when there was no answer.
Had she headed off to lunch with another guy? His gut clenched as he thought about her laughing over Irish food with some jerk trying to woo her into his bed. Flynn had a feeling she had to bat away men like flies.
Or was she simply elbow-deep in caramel or powdered sugar and couldn’t answer the door without washing off first? Working to push away the very evocative visions that created, he decided to try the knob.
No one would dream of leaving their door unlocked in downtown Los Angeles. In Bar Harbor, however, it seemed perfectly normal. Yet another difference between this small town and the one he’d grown up in, where no one was safe, even when their doors were locked.
“Cassie?” He called her name as he walked through the small entryway, then down the hall to her workshop. “It’s Flynn.”
“Flynn?”
He could hear panic in her voice and then what sounded like two voices hissing at each other.
“Wait,” she called. “Don’t come back—”
But it was too late, because he was already halfway through the door to the workroom. And for the second time, his mouth dropped open.
CHAPTER EIGHT
At the sound of Flynn’s voice, Cassie jumped away from Lola so quickly that half a dozen pins pricked her.
Her sister had been measuring and draping muslin for the past half hour. Pieces of the thin fabric were pinned over Cassie’s body, so she wasn’t exactly naked. Unfortunately, though Lola planned to sew a liner for the dress next, at this point they were still working on the nearly see-through material that would make up the pattern for the dress—and with the sun shining through the window from behind Cassie, she had a feeling the fabric was likely transparent.
What was doubly unfortunate was that the bra and panty set Cassie wore was pretty much see-through too.
“What are you doing here, Flynn?” Her voice was both breathy and squeaky.
“What my sister means,” Lola said, her voice laden with humor, “is hello, it’s nice to see you again.”
Cassie had made the mistake of doing one too many Google searches last night, so she knew that Flynn hadn’t dated just one model. He’d dated several. Worse still, the word super was usually printed in front of the word. Which explained why he hadn’t stopped staring at her since he’d walked in.
This was probably the first time he’d ever seen a normal female body.
At last, he dragged his gaze away from her mostly naked skin and smiled at her sister. “It’s nice to see you too, Lola.” Too soon, he turned his focus back to Cassie. His eyes were dark and unreadable as he said, “I figured your hands must be sticky, so you couldn’t answer the door.”
“No.” The word came out a squeak. “I haven’t started work yet.”
Though she was practically flushing neon with mortification, he still didn’t turn to leave. Instead, he said, “I haven’t started working yet either. I need to talk with you first.”
Couldn’t he see that she was dying of embarrassment here? “Maybe after Lola and I are done, we can figure out a time to talk.”
“Actually,” Lola cut in, “I have everything I need, so you guys can talk now.”
In one deft move, her sister pulled a few pins from the muslin and whipped the fabric from Cassie’s body. Which left her standing in only her bra and panties and the heels she’d put on so that her sister could accurately assess the length of the dress. Thankfully, at this point, Flynn turned his back like a gentleman.
“I’ll have something for you to try on in a couple of days, Cass. I hope to see you and Ruby again soon, Flynn.” In a flash, Lola was gone.
Cassie scrambled for her clothes, tripping over her heels. The first thing she could easily reach—a thin white apron—was next to useless without jeans or a T-shirt to wear beneath it. She nearly cried out loud with relief when she wrapped her fingers around denim.
She’d never been the most elegant woman in the world, but she hadn’t been this uncoordinated either. First, her toes got stuck in the leg of her jeans, and then she tried to stick her head through an arm of her shirt.
By the time she was fully dressed again, she was a flustered, sweaty mess. Her hair must be a halo of frizz around her head. And she was panting as though she’d just sprinted around the block.
After shoving her hair into a messy ponytail and taking a few deep breaths, she finally found her voice. “You can turn back around now.” After he did, she said, “What was it you needed to talk about? Ruby isn’t having trouble at my mom’s, is she?”
“I texted to ask if everything was okay five minutes after leaving your mother’s house, and she sent me a picture of Ruby laughing. I figure that’s her way of saying I should stop worrying. It’s not easy, though. I know spending some time apart from me is good for Ruby, but…” He ran a hand through his hair. “I can’t stop worrying that something bad will happen to her if I’m not watching over her every second.”
Cassie couldn’t help but fall just a littl
e bit more for him when she saw such love in his eyes as he talked about Ruby. “I’m sure everyone feels the same way the first time they leave their little one with a babysitter.”
Clearly uncomfortable with the conversation, he bent to pick up a pin from the floor. “Does your sister make a lot of your clothes?”
“Only for special occasions.”
“What’s the special occasion?”
“I’m up for an award.” When he looked impressed, she held up a hand. “It’s nothing big, like the Oscars or Emmys that you must be used to. Once a year, there’s a nationwide contest for best new confectioner, and I lucked out and made the finals, which happen to be just down the coast in Portland next weekend.”
“I very much doubt luck had anything to do with it. You don’t give yourself nearly enough credit, Cassie.”
Though it was almost exactly what her brother had said last night, she brushed Flynn’s comment aside. “I doubt I’ll win, but it’s still a huge honor to be a finalist.”
“Could I see what you made?”
“I had to courier it to Portland for the ceremony.”
“How about a picture, then?”
She shouldn’t be nervous about showing it to him, but her heart was pounding a little faster when she scrolled through the pictures on her phone to show it to him. She had created a three-foot-by-three-foot heart out of fifty different kinds and colors of homemade candy. The overall effect was that of an impressionist painting, brushstrokes of pastel colors across a candy canvas.
He stared at the picture without saying anything for the longest time. “You made this out of candy?”
She licked her lips. “Yup.”
He stared at her as though he couldn’t believe she was telling him the truth. “It’s beautiful, Cassie.”
His praise sent warmth shooting through her. “Thank you.”
It was long past time to continue layering in the dozens of candies for the Town Hall structure that the mayor’s office had commissioned for their annual block party. She turned to wash her hands at the sink, then put on the white apron over her clothes.
