CHAPTER EIGHT | CASSIDY
“So just to be clear,” I said. “This is not a date. Right?”
“Relax,” Brady’s face broke into a smile, and he nudged his shoulder into mine as we walked down the narrow sidewalk towards the restaurant. “It’s dinner. You can call it whatever you want.”
Ok. So, I’m on a ‘not-a-date’ with my ‘fake-fiancé.’ Got it.
When Brady stopped by my parents’ house earlier and casually asked me if I wanted to ‘grab a bite,’ I figured he meant splitting a pizza and a couple of beers at Rusty’s Tavern. But when we pulled up to a cozy little restaurant built on the glistening waterfront of the Connecticut River, “grabbing a bite” started to seem a lot more like “going on a date.”
“Anyways,” Brady said, “I figured I had to take you somewhere nice, once I saw how dolled up you got for me.” He grinned playfully, then his eyes roamed down to the little black dress that I was wearing. Granted, it wasn’t exactly a “pizza and cheap beer” kind of dress. Actually, it wasn’t the kind of dress I’d usually wear anywhere.
The neckline was cut low, the hem was cut high, and the thick black fabric fit snug around all of my curves. It was the kind of dress that put my best assets on display… which was exactly why it had been relegated to the back of my closet. Until tonight. I had slipped it on because some wild part of me wanted to see if Brady would notice… and some even wilder part of me wanted to see if he’d respond.
Welp. He had noticed, alright. And now it was obvious that I had gotten dressed up for him.
“I didn’t get ‘dolled up’ for you,” I insisted, even though the bright pink glow spreading across my cheeks suggested otherwise.
“Whatever you say, Ladybug,” he smirked. Then he bent down and whispered: “Either way, you look stunning.”
I felt a shiver and a jolt of white-hot heat rattle through my body at the same time.
The butterflies swarming in my stomach quadrupled when we stepped inside the restaurant. Dim candlelight flickered across the exposed brick walls. Soft jazz music played in the background. Tinted glass windows at the edge of the dining room overlooked the sun setting on the Connecticut River.
Yep. This was definitely a date.
We were seated at a round booth at the edge of the dining room. The booth’s tufted velvet bench curved around the small table, which meant we were sitting side by side rather than across from each other. We were close; close enough that when I inhaled, my lungs filled with his aftershave. And that probably meant we were close enough that he could hear how heavily my heart was beating in my chest, too.
There was something so intimate about it all -- the dim light, the soft shadows, the jazz music, the round booth that forced us to sit closer together, the privacy of the long white tablecloth that draped over our legs…
“Good evening, Mr. Hudson,” a waiter said, startling me out of my thoughts. He bowed his head at Brady, then he turned to me: “I hear that congratulations are in order?”
My eyes went wide and I bit my bottom lip. I glanced nervously across the table at Brady, begging for a cue.
“Good news must travel fast,” Brady said without missing a beat. He flashed me a reassuring smile, then grinned up at the waiter.
“It does when you’re a local hero, Mr. Hudson,” the waiter said. “While you take a moment to look over the menu, I’ll bring you a bottle of champagne to celebrate, compliments of the house.”
I watched the waiter weave his way back through the maze of tables towards the kitchen.
“You still can’t say it,” Brady said.
“Still can’t say what?”
“That I’m your fiancé. You looked like a deer in the headlights when the waiter mentioned it.”
I sighed. Brady was right: I was reluctant to spread the news that we were engaged.
“Maybe that’s because you’re not really my fiancé,” I reminded him.
“Ouch,” Brady smirked.
“I’m just trying to minimize the damage,” I said honestly. “The more we dig ourselves into this hole, the harder it’ll be to climb back out when it all blows over.”
“Who says it has to blow over?”
“Come on, Brady,” I said. “We both know how this is going to end.”
“How is it going to end?” there was a slight smile on his lips, but his eyes were narrowed. Then he added: “That’s a serious question. We still haven’t discussed our game plan.”
He was still smiling playfully, but I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eye. Instead, I stared at the tablecloth.
“This just needs to last until my mom--” I couldn’t finish that sentence. I squeezed my arms around my waist and tried to resist the involuntary shiver that rattled down my spine. Then I felt something warm land on my shoulder: Brady’s hand. He gave me a gentle squeeze.
“Well considering how your mom is gonna beat this thing and be around for a few more decades,” Brady said encouragingly, “Maybe I should have thought a little harder about what I was committing to.”
I took a deep breath. I wished that he was right, but we both knew that if that was truly the case, I wouldn’t have been desperate enough to stage a fake marriage in the first place.
“Anyways. I was hoping we could do it quietly,” I said. “Annulment. Irreconcilable differences. That kind of thing.”
“You thought you could get rid of me that easily?” Brady smiled.
“Not at this rate,” I sighed, leaning back in the booth. “Now that half the town knows we’re getting married, we’ll owe them a better story than that. Maybe even a scandal: I’m the grieving wife, you’re the cheating husband with a wandering eye…”
“Pfft!” Brady reeled back in protest. “And damage my reputation as the ‘local hero’?! Not a chance!”
“Local hero,” I laughed, shaking my head. “When did you go and become a legend on me, Brady Hudson?”
“Maybe you would have noticed, if you ever paid any attention to me,” Brady said playfully. There was a hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and I found myself tracing my tongue along the edge of my own lips, wondering how his mouth would feel on mine.
“I always paid attention to you,” I said. My voice came out low and soft, like I was telling him a secret. I guess in a way, I was. I had always noticed Brady Hudson. He had been my first crush… he had made me feel things that I had never felt before. And then we had gotten older and drifted apart...
“Is that so?” his grey eyes pierced straight into me, holding me hostage in his stare. “Did you have a little crush on the boy next door?”
“No.” Yes. My cheeks were on fire and my heart was pounding so hard in my chest that it could replace the percussion section of a marching band.
“Come on, Ladybug…”
“Maybe,” I admitted.
He smiled and looked away. Did I just make Brady Hudson blush?
Before either of us could say anything, the waiter was back with the champagne.
Getting lost in Brady’s deep grey eyes had made me feel drunk, but when the waiter interrupted us, I immediately sobered up.
Why the hell did I just admit to having a crush on Brady?! I cringed, biting down on my bottom lip.
“I’ll give you another moment to look over the dinner menu,” the waiter bowed politely, then he scurried off again.
“We should toast,” Brady said. He raised a glass of champagne, and I did the same.
“Ok,” I said. “How about… to growing up together.”
He gazed at me thoughtfully, then he smiled and leaned in a little bit closer. In a low voice, he said: “To being all grown up.”
He clinked his champagne flute against mine as his eyes wandered down, inspecting my neck, shoulders, chest…
I blushed and took a sip of champagne.
“Speaking of being all grown up,” Brady said, shifting back in the booth. “I feel like I’ve seen more of you this past week than I have in the last five years. What have you been up to lately?”
“You mean besides watching my mom fight cancer?” I asked, sounding a bit more bitter than I meant to. “Because that’s pretty much been a full-time gig for the last five years.”
“Besides that,” Brady said.
“Ok, let’s see…” I scrambled.
“Do you still teach?” Brady asked. “Second grade, right?”
“I’m surprised you remember that,” I blushed. “But uh… no. I stopped teaching full-time so that I could be around more for my mom when she was diagnosed with cancer. I still work as a substitute teacher during the school year, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my mom’s treatments or--”
“Ok, I’m making a new rule,” Brady announced. “For the rest of the night, you aren’t allowed to use the words ‘cancer’ or ‘treatment,’ or anything else related to that.”
“Sorry,” I blushed. “I know you don’t want to hear about it…”
“It’s not that I don’t want to hear about it,” Brady said. “But I want to hear about you, too.”
I blinked a few times. “What about me?”
Brady cocked his head. His brow wrinkled.
“What do you do when you’re by yourself? When you don’t have to worry about anyone else, and you can be totally and completely selfish?”
My skin tingled and I bit down on my bottom lip.
“You know what I’m talking about,” he continued, his voice getting softer and slower. “It’s the end of a long day, and you can finally let your hair down and relax…”
There was a coy smile on his face, and a suggestive spark flashed in his eyes.
“Are you…” I blinked, “Are you asking me if I… touch myself?”
Brady pressed his lips together in a smile and his grey eyes twinkled again.
“I was thinking something more along the lines of ‘eat an entire pint of ice cream’ or ‘binge-watch old TV shows on Netflix,’” he said playfully. “But if you touch yourself…”
“I didn’t say that!” I insisted, but my voice was wavering. Under any other circumstances, I would have been mortified. But for some reason, I just felt… turned on. Brady’s smirk was proof-positive that he thought about me as a woman. He knew I was all grown up, and he knew what my body was capable of. Knowing that Brady was thinking about me that way was enough to make my skin tingle and my panties wet.
“Are you going to save room for dinner, or are you just going to keep chewing on your lip all night?” he smiled. His eyes teased me, daring me to lean closer…
Why do I want to kiss you?!
Brady’s body felt like a magnet, drawing me closer…
“Speaking of self-pleasure,” I said firmly, snapping out of the daze and forcing my attention back to the champagne, “You should probably consider getting reacquainted with your own hand. Our little ‘happily ever after’ is going to turn into a horror story, if my mom finds out you’re still going home with random girls from the Firehouse 56 fan club.”
“That’s fine with me,” Brady shrugged indifferently. “I can be a one-woman man.”
“Really?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“You don’t have a great track record,” I shrugged. “I’ve known you for… what, twenty years? And you haven’t had one long-term relationship with a woman.”
“What about my relationship with you?”
“This is a limited engagement,” I reminded him.
“So, tell me what’s off limits,” he said.
I made the mistake of meeting his eyes again, and this time I couldn’t resist the magnetic pull that I felt, drawing me closer towards him.
His hand disappeared, slipping under the tablecloth. Then I felt his warm palm land on my thigh under the table. I sucked in a deep breath and my insides clenched as his fingers gently prodded my thighs apart.
I knew I should push his hand away, but I couldn’t. My head was spinning and there was a gasp of air caught in my lungs. His fingers traced my skin and left behind a tingling trail of desire.
Everything about this was a bad idea, and I knew that the closer Brady’s hand got to my soaking wet panties, the closer we were to a point of no return.
I spread my legs further apart, welcoming his touch. I closed my eyes and drifted closer towards him, taking in a deep breath of his scent.
“Have you made a decision?” the waiter’s voice caught us both off guard and I let out a little gasp. My body went rigid in the booth and I reached for the menu, hurriedly trying to pick something -- anything -- from the menu.
But as much as I tried to regain my composure, my heart was still racing at a million beats a minute. And that was partially due to the fact that, despite the waiter towering over our table, Brady’s hand was still slipping further and further up my thigh under the tablecloth...