Chapter Twelve
It was as if Cassidy had lost all her common sense. Well, not quite all of it: she still knew better than to let Emily in on anything. That was something, at least. And she made sure she and Will weren’t seen by anyone in town, either, because that could get back to Emily and because she didn’t want too many people to know about her humiliation when Will eventually left.
But when it was just the two of them together? When Will came by the diner midmorning and midafternoon every day, helping her with the chores and then stealing a little time alone in the back room? She seemed completely unable to remember that this was all temporary, that it was just a diversion for him while he was away from his real life. Instead, she—well, she let herself feel happy. She teased him and was teased in return, she relaxed into his touch, and she trusted him not to hurt her.
It was like being back in high school. Kisses that seemed to mean something and that lingered, hands teasing beneath clothing without ever removing it, senses heightened not only by proximity and desire but also by the need to not get caught, to stay aware of who might come into the front room of the diner. It was intoxicating, and it made Cassidy feel like she was truly alive instead of just trudging through the motions.
At least she knew better than to make any plans. Everything was completely in the moment, for both of them, and that made it easier. Until Thursday night, more than a week after Cassidy and Will had started whatever it was they were doing, when Cassidy got home from the diner to find Will and Emily in the great room by the fire. They each had a cat on their laps, and Cassidy took a moment to think about pet hair on Will’s dark pants or claws sinking into his dress shirt. But he was a grown man, and he could afford to have his clothes cleaned or repaired as needed. Master Furbottom had always been Penny’s cat, so it was nice to see him finding a new companion. Not that he should get used to Will, Cassidy quickly reminded herself.
Emily looked up, smiled a greeting, and said, “Riva’s having a sleepover tomorrow night after the dance. I can go, right?”
Cassidy’s brain stuttered. A sleepover. Emily out of the house, leaving Will and Cassidy unchaperoned. “Did you ask Will?” She refused to look in his direction.
“He said he didn’t know the rules, and I should ask you.”
Cassidy could feel his eyes on her, knew he was just as aware of the extra significance as she was, and tried to look calm as she nodded. “Okay. Sleepover. Sure.”
“I’ll go right to her place after school. Seth’s going to the dance with us, but not as, like, a date-date, so we don’t have to do all that meet-the-parents stuff, do we?”
“I’ve met Seth quite a few times, Em. So has Will.”
“Oh. Yeah. So it’s okay if he goes to the dance with us? Riva’s mom says she can drive both ways.”
“I’ll call her tomorrow to confirm, but that sounds fine.” She still couldn’t bring herself to look at Will.
“Excellent.” Emily smiled happily at Will. “See? I told you it would be okay.”
“Doesn’t hurt to check,” he said mildly.
“I’m going to call Riva,” Emily announced, and then she was gone.
Cassidy fought against her stupid instinct to escape. She wanted to be with Will. God, her body ached for him. Being alone with him, somewhere other than the dingy back room at the diner, being able to undress him, undress for him. She absolutely wanted it, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t terrified by the idea. Could she really afford to get closer to him? Didn’t she have enough heartbreak heading her way already?
“We could just have dinner,” he said gently, and she jerked her gaze in his direction. He raised an eyebrow at her. “I’ve honestly never had a woman look quite so alarmed by the thought of spending time alone with me.”
“No, it’s—” But she didn’t have the words to explain. Or she had the words, but she knew they’d lead to reassurances and promises that she didn’t want to hear because they’d seem empty. She was sure Will didn’t plan to hurt her, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen all the same. “It’s been a while,” she said with a shrug she hoped looked nonchalant. “That wasn’t my alarmed look, it was my do-I-remember-what-to-do look.”
He didn’t seem completely convinced. “Like I said, we can just have dinner. You remember how to eat, right?”
“I want more than dinner,” she said, and it was true. She wanted much more, way too much more. “I mean, if you do.”
His smile was an irresistible mix of sweet and sexy. “I could probably be persuaded.” He swung to his feet, one easy, unrushed move, and kept his gaze locked on hers as he crossed the room toward her. “What do you say?” he murmured, and he leaned past her, his body close enough for her to smell him, feel his warmth, sense the electric charge of him dancing through the air. She heard the door snick shut behind them, and then he was in front of her again, just standing there, watching her. “Want to persuade me?”
She liked him like this, cocky and teasing and bold. “You think I can’t?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.
“I know you can,” he replied. “And I really, really hope you do.”
She eased a little closer and tucked her fingers just inside the waistband of his pants. Still a layer of shirt keeping her from touching his skin, but she felt his abs tighten anyway. “Not the right time,” she said reluctantly.
He moved so quickly. One moment she was flatfooted on the ground, starting to step away from temptation, the next she was on her tiptoes, Will’s strong hand on her lower back pulling her up as he claimed her mouth with desperate, perfect hunger. She let herself give in and felt her need wash over her, driving her even closer to his welcoming body.
And then the bastard pulled away, his hands firm but gentle on her waist as her body tried to follow his. “Not the right time,” he reminded her. Damn him and his teasing smile and the way his eyes danced. Damn him for still having his self-control while making her lose hers. And mostly, damn him for making her care, for thawing a heart that would have been so much safer if it had stayed frozen.
“Right.” She tried to sound unconcerned. “Okay, then.” What next? Well, what did she generally do almost immediately after getting home at the end of the day? “I’m going to check on Casey.” No time to ride, but just seeing him and Finnegan together again was a treat. “And then bed, so maybe I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“At the diner? Yeah, I’ll come by.” He stepped a little closer. “And then after…”
But he wasn’t going to trap her again. “Dinner sounded good,” she told him. “Maybe we should have dinner.”
His smile was lazy. “I’ll ask Marion to put something together.”
She slipped out of the room before she said anything stupid and strode toward the barn like she was on a mission. She should have been tired after a long day, but Will helped with prep, Seth was there for dinner service, and more importantly, her body was singing with adrenaline or whatever the hell it was that it released as soon as Will came near. She didn’t know the science of it, but she knew the effect all too well.
Her common sense was still talking to her. Don’t get attached, don’t get excited, don’t think this is anything other than convenient for him. She could hear it, but it was just the drumbeat, the percussion of reality that had kept her marching in step for her whole life. Now, maybe for the first time, there was a melody soaring above the dull thuds. Take a chance, let yourself dream. Say yes. Say yes.
And she was doing it, she realized, leaning over the wooden fence and watching Casey amble toward her for his nightly neck scratching. She was saying yes to every damn question Will asked her. But she let the beat of her common sense, the beat of her strong heart remind her: he wasn’t going to be asking her for much more. Once he had his daughter’s trust and affection, he wouldn’t need Cassidy. He’d go back to the city, and Cassidy would be all alone. There’d be no one left to say yes to. No one left at all.
…
“The thing is, I think I could run this place, now,” Will said as he wiped down the tables at the diner Friday afternoon. “I’m not saying I’d do it as well as you do, but I could get by. So…”
“So?” Cassidy prompted from behind the counter. She sounded like she was ready for a fight, but that was just her way. She was always ready for a fight, but that didn’t mean she’d insist on having one. Not always.
“So I don’t understand why you can’t find someone to train. A partner, even, if you wanted. It sounds like you worked a normal amount back when Pippa was taking half the shifts, so if we—you—could find someone else like that, you could have a normal life again.”
“The kind of people who are willing to work for minimum wage may not be the kind of people who stick around long enough to get trained. And they may not be able to learn as quickly as you do.”
“So pay more than minimum wage.”
She didn’t say anything, but he could tell by the intensity of her floor-scrubbing that he was on thin ice. “You can’t afford to pay more than minimum?” he tried. “If you paid more, you wouldn’t have enough profit to live on?” Jesus, even with the hospital bill paid for, she was still that broke? He had to be careful with the next part. Especially careful because they had plans for that night, and he didn’t want to say anything to get in the way of that.
But, he realized with a start, this was actually more important to him. As much as he absolutely wanted to see Cassidy naked, he wanted to see her secure and happy even more. “When do you start thinking about closing the doors?” he asked gently. “You don’t love it, it’s not making much money, and it’s eating up all your time and energy.” They’d talked about this before. Not quite so directly, maybe, but he’d mentioned it, and she’d talked about—about being scared. “What does it give you? Security? Independence?”
Her eyes were wide in that way that always made him want to protect her. And then they narrowed in the way that made him want to shake her until she stopped being so damned stubborn. “This is where the aliens told me to wait for them,” she said. “They promised to take me away to a happy land of plenty, but only if the diner is open when they come back.”
So, that was that. “What if they come at night?” he asked lightly, turning back to his tables.
“It’s the chance I have to take.”
They worked on in silence. He’d asked her to open up; she’d refused. It was nothing new. Nothing that should surprise him.
Maybe if he were stronger, or better, or if he just didn’t want her so damn much, he’d put off their plans for the evening. There should be no physical intimacy before emotional intimacy, or something like that. But there was no way he was letting go of the chance to get her into bed, and really, maybe the physical contact would make the emotional trust more likely. Sure, maybe.
He finished the afternoon prep chores and dropped her daily deposit off at the bank on his way home, resisting the urge to slip a couple extra bills into the envelope. She’d already shown she was on top of her bookkeeping when she’d caught on to his payment of the hospital debt so quickly, and he didn’t like to think of the consequences of any attempts at charitable deception.
He got home and did a bit of work, trying to pay attention to emails and reports from New York when most of his attention was on the clock, counting down the minutes until Cassidy would be home. He made himself focus on the final details of the Achterberg deal, at least, and then called Trevor to review it all. It was tempting to let the conversation expand into more personal issues, and maybe get a bit more insight from Trevor to help figure out what was going on with Cassidy and the damn diner, but Will resisted the urge. Cassidy was his. His problem, his challenge, and, hopefully, his reward. He didn’t want to share any of that, not even with Trevor.
Marion stopped by the library on her way home for the night and went over the dinner she’d put together for them, and at the time she’d dictated, Will dutifully took himself to the kitchen and started pulling dishes out of the fridge. There was a clay baker in the oven sending out tantalizing scents of chicken and rosemary, and there was a salad, several side dishes, a couple nice wines—a good meal, even by city standards. He shouldn’t have been entertaining fantasies of sweeping it all aside and laying Cassidy down on the linen-covered table.
His phone buzzed on the counter, and he thought about ignoring it: eight o’clock on a Friday night was after business hours, surely. Not that he’d ever really considered limiting his business activities to certain hours before, and Cassidy wasn’t even home yet. He lifted the phone reluctantly and read the text that had arrived.
It was from Cassidy.
On my way back. Em is with me. Don’t ask.
He stared at the phone. Em was with her? Em was with her. What the hell?
Not that he’d been happy to get rid of his daughter. Not at all. But…
Damn it! He looked at the table. White linen and candles? It hadn’t seemed like much when it had just been Cassidy and him, but thinking about Emily made the dining room feel like a scene from a romantic movie. At least there were no scattered rose petals.
He worked quickly, clearing the table and setting the salad on the sideboard, yanking the tablecloth off and stuffing it into a cupboard. What else? The wine? He stuffed both bottles into the fridge, then pulled one back out and searched for the corkscrew. He could stand to relax a little.
Emily was coming home. Now that the first wave of surprise and alarm was gone, he wondered why. It was almost nine, so she should have been at the dance. Cassidy’s message had sounded more exasperated than panicked, so probably there was nothing too serious, but it was hard to tell from a text. What could go so wrong with a dance and a sleepover?
He didn’t have any idea. Or, more accurately, he had lots of ideas, but no way to know which of them were more or less likely. Was it normal for Emily to come home early from this sort of thing? Was it possible she’d gotten into some kind of trouble and been kicked out of the dance? If she had gotten in trouble, would he be expected to do something about that, or could he let Cassidy take care of it? Was he a coward for even considering the possibility, or was he just being prudent?
By the time he heard the front door open, he’d finished his first glass of wine and started on another. He thought for a moment, then poured one for Cassidy. She didn’t have to drink it if she didn’t want to.
He got to the front hall and arrived just in time to see Emily’s legs disappearing at the top of the staircase. Cassidy was still standing by the door, looking exhausted. She saw the glass of wine in his hands and reached for it with both hands, like a desert traveler who’d spotted an oasis. The movement was overdone just enough to let him know she was being funny. Whatever had gone wrong wasn’t all that serious, then.
“Boy trouble,” she told him with a glance up the stairs. Their fingers brushed as he handed the wine over, and he gave his own furtive look at the staircase before bending and kissing her gently.
“Seth?” he asked as he straightened. “What’d the little bastard do to her?”
“He likes Riva,” Cassidy said. “He wanted to go to the dance with Riva, not Em.” She grimaced, then took a gulp of her wine. A Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru probably deserved a little more savoring, but he wasn’t going to let himself be distracted by that.
“Shit. Did Riva know?”
Cassidy gave him an appraising look. “That was my first question, too.” She handed the wine glass back to him and reached down to pull off her shoes, then straightened and reclaimed the glass. “Sounds like she didn’t. Seth told Riva tonight at the dance, Riva freaked and told Em, Em ran to the diner and told me. Big drama.” She sniffed the air. “I’m planning to give Em a bit more time to calm down, and then I’ll talk to her again. I’ll remind her that it’s not Riva’s fault, or Seth’s fault, either. It sucks, but she can’t lose a friendship over it. That’s my plan. Sound okay?”
“Sounds great. I’m flattered you’re asking.”
Another sniff of the air. “What smells so incredible? Is that rosemary?”
“Uh, yeah. Chicken. It looks pretty good.” He trailed after her as she started toward the kitchen. “So this thing with Emily—it’s not a big deal?”
“It’s her first heartbreak, and she feels like her best friend betrayed her. It’s a big deal. But she needs some time on her own, I think, and if I’m just sitting around anyway, I may as well be eating delicious-smelling chicken, right?”
“I can’t argue with that.”
He pulled the chicken out of the oven, and they sorted through the side dishes, making up plates for themselves in companionable silence. He got to the table enough before her that he was able to pull her chair out, and was rewarded with a shy, rueful look. “Not quite the night we had planned, huh?” she said.
“There’s no rush,” he replied, ignoring his body’s screaming objections.
“Isn’t there?” She took another gulp of wine, then started hacking away at her chicken. “School’s out in two weeks. There’s nothing keeping you in town after that, right?”
Nothing keeping him in town. Well, no, there was nothing about the town itself that would hold his attention. But he didn’t think that was what she was saying, exactly.
Before he could clarify, she shook her head in an almost angry way. “Sorry. That’s nothing we need to talk about. So, yeah, Em’s a bit upset, but once she cools down, she’ll realize it wasn’t Riva’s fault. Penny was always big on feminine bonding, and I can remind Emily of that if I have to. Sisters before misters, and all that.”
“Sisters before misters,” he mused. “Literally, with you and me.” Then he froze, his forkful of roast carrots halfway to his mouth. “That does sound like Pippa’s philosophy. She was all about female bonding.”
“Sometimes, yeah.”
He set his fork down on his plate and picked up his wine glass instead. “I met her through a friend of mine,” he said. His brain was whirling, piecing things together as he spoke. “Alicia van Eldritch—she was a friend of Penny’s, too. They were pretty close for a while.”
“I think I might have heard the name,” Cassidy said with a shrug. Then she frowned at him. “Why are you thinking about that now?”
“Alicia and I ended up dating for quite a while, after Pippa left. Several years, off and on.”
Cassidy squinted at him, and he could see her following his line of thought. “You think Penny didn’t tell you about Emily because she was being loyal to Alicia? You think she would have kept that information from you just to protect Alicia’s relationship from an awkward surprise baby?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
Cassidy didn’t answer right away. Finally, she set down her knife and fork and said, “Shit.”
“That means yes?” he guessed.
“It’s just—it’s so typical. She’d get an idea in her head, and that’d be the end. She wouldn’t reconsider, wouldn’t see—she wouldn’t even notice—” Cassidy took a deep breath as if she realized she needed to steady herself, and when she started speaking again, her voice was quieter, but no less intense. “I didn’t go to school. I never left this town. A few years after Emily was born, I had the chance to spend a winter in Texas, working for Roddy Turner. He’s a trainer—a horse trainer, a total legend—and I couldn’t go. I’d spent all my school savings on the diner, and all the money from the diner went to supporting the family, and I couldn’t—” She broke off and drained her glass. “She was so busy being noble about Alicia van Eldritch that she forgot about her actual sister’s damn life.”
He had no idea what to say, and she was so lost in her own thoughts he wasn’t sure she would have heard him anyway. “And all along, she could have called you,” she whispered, and finally she looked at him. “It would have been so much easier if you were a monster, and she and I were being all heroic by keeping Emily away from you. But—” She broke off, staring at her empty wineglass, and he quickly refilled it. Another gulp, and she took a deep breath.
“I love Emily. I’m glad she’s in my life, and I would give anything—anything—to make her safe and happy. But to think that I didn’t have to give things up? That you didn’t have to lose all those years of Em’s life, all just because Penny had some insane sense of loyalty to some random woman—”
“I’m sorry,” he said gently.
“For what? For dating a woman who was friends with someone you used to sleep with?”
“I didn’t mean it as an apology. I’m just—sorry. I wish things had gone differently for you. I wish your sister had made a different decision, or at least changed her mind after Alicia and I broke up.”
For a moment he thought she wasn’t going to accept his sympathy. Her body was tense, as if she were about to stand up and stalk off. But then her shoulders dropped and she speared a chunk of potato with only a little more force than necessary. “This is not what I was hoping to be doing tonight,” she said, then stuffed the potato in her mouth.
Which reminded Will of his previous response, and her reaction to it. School would be out in two weeks, and he’d be leaving. That was what she thought. Hell, maybe it was what he thought, too. He certainly didn’t plan to live in upstate New York for the rest of his life. But that didn’t mean he was planning on having only two more weeks with Cassidy. “I think you should close the diner for a couple days and come to the city with Emily,” he said. “We can set up tours at some of the better schools, and you can both see what they have to offer. I think you’ll be impressed, but if you aren’t, we’ll try to figure something else out.”
She wouldn’t look at him. Maybe she’d figured out how easy it was for him to read her expressions and was deliberately keeping him from seeing what she thought. But she didn’t keep him waiting for long before she nodded. “Okay,” she said, and it sounded like she was agreeing to her own execution. “We should do that. What days will work best?”
“It’s not a trap. You’re not committing to anything. If you and Em don’t think the schools are a good fit, we can walk away. Okay?”
Another jerky nod. “Of course. You’ll tell me when we should go? The more notice the better, I guess, so I can put a sign up at the diner.”
She seemed calm, now, detached. As if Emily’s future education wasn’t something Cassidy was worried about, and the thought of leaving Lyonstown wasn’t a big deal. “I’ll get someone to set up appointments at the schools,” he said, and received another nod, this one smoother.
She still wouldn’t meet his eyes, though, and when she stood up, her movements were too quick. “I’m going to check on Em,” she said, turning and leaving too quickly for him to object even if he’d wanted to.
Will leaned back in his chair and looked at the food left on Cassidy’s plate. Having a nice dinner had been his compromise plan for the evening, the activity he was willing to settle for if sex wasn’t going to happen. But apparently he wasn’t even going to get the dinner, not with any company.
He took a bite of chicken and then a sip of wine. It really was an excellent pairing. But somehow, that didn’t seem like much of an accomplishment, not when he was enjoying it alone.