Dad for Charlie & the Sergeant's Temptation & the Alaskan Catch & New Year's Wedding (9781488015687)

by Stewart, Anna J. ; Sasson, Sophia; Carpenter, Beth; Jensen, Muriel

  Cassie seemed to get that but smiled, anyway. “My brother and sister are flying in overnight, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to stay with one of them until I go home.”

  His mother seemed appeased. “Good. Well, I should go. I left a casserole in the refrigerator for you for tomorrow’s dinner.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” Grady walked her around the front to her car.

  “I like the armoire,” he said to his mother’s back.

  She turned and gave him a knowing look. “You didn’t like it until you saw that she liked it. And how do we know she didn’t say that just to get in good with us?”

  Rain fell in sheets beyond the protection of the overhead deck, and the night air was perfumed and cold. “Mom, that’s paranoid and completely unfair. I’m sure her bank account is fifty times larger than mine. What reason would she have to ingratiate herself with you to get to me?”

  In a sudden loosening of her severity, his mother patted his cheek. “Because you’re such a sweetheart and, according to ET, she hasn’t had a lot of luck with men. That meltdown suggests she’s troubled about her life, and you are like a stockade wall.”

  A stockade wall. Tall timbers lashed together to form a barrier, their tops hacked to a point to prevent a breach. He wasn’t sure that was flattering.

  She gave him a quick, strong hug. “That’s how it felt to me when you came home from school to help me with Dad. Like we were safe behind you.” She pushed him back. “Now, go inside. I won’t bother you again unless you need me. Or want to invite me to dinner, or come over to put up the pergola for me like you’ve been promising.”

  “I painted it, didn’t I?”

  “Last July. And you did such a lovely job that it should be in my garden and not my garage.” She smiled sweetly then hurried to her car. She took a few minutes to get settled inside, then started to back up.

  Grady watched her turn around, keeping a careful eye on his basketball stand; he’d replaced it twice already thanks to her lack of skill in Reverse. He waved her off and ran back inside.

  Cassie sat at his breakfast bar, her veil of hair shining under the overhead light, soft, weary blue eyes looking up at him as he walked into the kitchen. She appeared fragile suddenly, not at all the athlete who’d raced across the airport tarmac with him, who’d put up with the chilling rain and his unwelcoming mother.

  “You look about to fall asleep,” he said, helping her off the stool. “Come on. I’ll show you to your room then I’ll get your bag.”

  “I can get my things,” she said, stifling a yawn. “In my job, sometimes it’s expedient to be waited on. But, here, I can fend for myself.”

  “You can do that tomorrow. Tonight you need some sleep.” He pointed her into the foyer and up the stairs.

  “You get your hardheadedness from your mother, don’t you?” she asked over her shoulder. “I’m sorry if my being here upset your homecoming. She seemed very disappointed that you weren’t alone. She really doesn’t like me.”

  They stepped up onto the fir-wood floor of the bedroom. “She thinks you’re toying with me for selfish purposes. I kind of like the notion, so I didn’t try too hard to set her straight.”

  “Grady.”

  “Okay, I did try. You’re right, though. She is a hardheaded woman, but that’s helped her a lot in her life. And she’s a great person, when she’s not acting like a mother bear.”

  “You’re lucky to have someone care that much about you.” She turned her attention to the room. It was a big space with lodge-style furnishings that looked like they hadn’t been disturbed since they’d been placed. “It’s beautiful up here. Thank you. I’ll try not to get too comfortable.”

  He went to the small bath in the corner and reached in to flip on the light. “You might want to get comfortable. I’ve been thinking about Jack’s and Corie’s situations and, much as I’m sure either one would love to have you, Jack and Sarah are in the process of packing to move to a house nearer the assisted-living facility, and Ben’s got a great condo, but it has only two bedrooms, and he’s bringing home two kids—a boy and a girl. So you’d probably end up on the sofa.”

  * * *

  THAT WAS TRUE. She’d had no choice in Querida but to escape the press or let them intrude upon her reunion with her family. But she made a mental note to remember that even in moments of great distress, she had to plan ahead a little. Every step she’d taken so far would have been off a cliff if it hadn’t been for Grady.

  She had to smile. “Your mother would hate that.”

  “True, but she’d adjust. Look around, figure out if there’s anything you need that isn’t here, and I’ll go get your bag.”

  “Thank you. Grady?” She felt she had to say something about the meltdown. He had to be wondering. “The scene I made that ended up on television and probably all over the internet…”

  “Is nobody’s business but yours.”

  “I’m not like that—temperamental and hysterical and…”

  He grinned. “I don’t know. Yellow M&M’s, only dark, handsome men…”

  She gave him credit for the continued calm that so defined him, and that he could joke despite what his mother had revealed about her. “I just didn’t want you to think you ran off with a lunatic.”

  “Nothing to worry about. I took off with you because I wanted to. That part’s on me. I’ll get your bag.”

  As she heard his footsteps going down the stairs, she tried to shed her worries and focus on the quiet comfort his home offered.

  The large room was decidedly masculine. A king-size bed with big pillows and a brown suede bedspread and a simple iron headboard stood against the wall. Rustic wooden bedside tables held brass lamps that looked like lanterns. She went to the triple mirror on the wardrobe door. Inside the closet were four levels of shelving about four feet wide. The other ten feet of closet had nothing in it but a hanging rod with three empty hangers.

  She closed the doors then went into the smallish bathroom. It was white with a pedestal sink and a tall cabinet made of planks. It held several white and brown towels, paper products and other supplies.

  A walk-in shower with a sliding door looked serviceable. On the wall next to it, clear of furniture, was a two-dimensional, three-foot-wide carving of a pirate ship, sails billowing, Jolly Roger flying. She laughed lightly at that, thinking it seemed out of character with the rest of the house and what she knew of the man who owned it.

  “Ben gave that to me.”

  She turned at the sound of Grady’s voice.

  He stood in the doorway. “On my last birthday. He thought my life needed more adventure.”

  If they were in New York, she thought, finding herself completely distracted by him, she could get him modeling jobs. He was the perfect height, had a nice face with interesting planes and angles, and an easy look in his eyes. She could picture the camera’s tight shot of his face. For a Drakkar Noir ad, or one that featured a pair of Ray-Bans slipped down his nose.

  She drew herself back to the moment. This wasn’t New York. This was Beggar’s Bay, Oregon, and she had to stop thinking about work.

  He stepped aside to let her pass. “Doesn’t the life of a police officer provide you with enough adventure?”

  “It has its moments, but as Jack is always teasing Ben and me, mostly it’s about animal control and fairgrounds parking.”

  As she went to the bed where he’d placed her bag, she noticed for the first time the waist-high carved railing that ran across the room, affording her a view of the great room below with its vaulted ceiling and the magnificent windows that looked onto the dark night.

  She looked over the railing. “I had my back to this when we came up the stairs and I didn’t even notice it.”

  He showed her that the fold-out shutters expanded from either side of the railing and met i
n the middle. “You can close these for privacy.”

  “Great.”

  “Is there anything you need?”

  “I don’t think so. But, if I do, I can probably pick it up tomorrow.”

  “All right. I can take you wherever you need to go. I’m off two more days, then Ben and I are giving two weeks’ notice.”

  “Jack told me. You and Ben are going into business together. Private investigation, isn’t it?”

  “Right.”

  “That ought to give you more adventure than you need.”

  “It should.” He backed toward the door. “Sleep well. Just shout over the railing if you need anything.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Grady. I’m not sure what I’d have done if you hadn’t come with me. Somehow all the little details of running off escaped me.”

  “Happy to help. See you in the morning.”

  “Good night.”

  Finding her toiletries bag, she took a quick shower, slipped on a midnight blue, silk nightgown, a gift from a lingerie designer after a shoot that had earned her a very large order from Neiman Marcus, left the bedside light on, and climbed into bed.

  Snuggling into a soft pillow, Cassie thought about what she would need in the way of clothing to survive the next week in this rainy world. But she fell asleep before a plan could take shape.

  CHAPTER THREE

  GRADY SMELLED COFFEE and something sweet. He wondered what was cooking. And who.

  He sat up in bed, expecting to see the simple beige wall from the B and B in Querida with its poor print of cowboys around a campfire. Instead he saw the lush conifers outside his window in Beggar’s Bay, a pewter-gray sky and local geese flying at a low altitude in a ragged vee toward the bay.

  He was home. He felt a weird sense of loss at the realization. Not that he didn’t love his home, but he’d had a really great time in Querida. He’d spent a couple of weeks there, helping Ben put up a play set for the kids, getting to know Corie, Jack’s sister, and helping Ben solve a few mysteries Corie was involved in.

  When Ben and Jack’s parents arrived in Querida to spend Christmas, it truly became family time. Then he had answered a knock on the door when everyone else was busy, and a supermodel had begun to introduce herself—then fainted dead away in his arms. Two days later she’d pleaded with him to run away with her. He had a rental vehicle and she didn’t, and her need to get away had seemed desperate.

  A supermodel. Cassidy Chapman was asleep upstairs in his loft. Or, based on that wonderful smell, maybe she wasn’t. He got to his feet, pulled on his jeans, yanked a Seahawks sweatshirt out of a pile of things still on the chair from his unpacking and went barefoot down the hall to the kitchen.

  He needed a moment to pull himself together. Cassie was working at the stove in a dark blue silky thing that skimmed her bare feet. Over it, she had pulled the sweater he’d lent her last night to get from the car to the house. She held a spatula, but her head was turned toward a television at the end of the counter.

  He finally opened his mouth to shout a good morning over the sound of the TV and then closed it again when he realized she was watching the infamous video of her meltdown. It had apparently made the morning news.

  On the screen was a sharp image of everyone involved in the shoot gathered on the grounds of a palatial country home with a pillared portico. They all pressed around Cassie, who stood in the middle in a fluttering red dress. Someone adjusted her hair while someone else seemed to be fitting something over her eyes as yet another person leaned in to make an adjustment to the neckline of the dress.

  Without warning, a scream was heard, the tableau erupted, the circle around Cassie freezing in place—except for that dedicated makeup artist with her hands at Cassie’s eyes. Cassie screamed again and grabbed the young woman by both wrists.

  The woman’s arms hung in Cassie’s grip with what looked like a spider in one hand and a tiny bottle in the other, her mouth an O of astonishment.

  “Stop!” Cassie’s voice was high and shrill. “I asked you to stop! Are you deaf?”

  For an instant both women stared at each other, then Cassie dropped the woman’s wrists, picked up the long skirts of her dress and ran.

  The video over, a female reporter appeared on-screen accompanied by a cohost and a beautiful dark-haired woman Grady thought looked vaguely familiar. They sat at a table in the studio.

  “I’m sure you all recognize Fabiana Capri,” the reporter said, “the spokeswoman for the new Tesla smart car, and Cassidy Chapman’s good friend. What do you make of that behavior, Fabiana?”

  The model, dressed in yellow, shrugged an elegant shoulder. “I’m not sure what happened,” she replied with a look of concern. “Cassie disappeared right after that and no one’s seen her or talked to her since. It could be that it had been a very long day for her. She works very hard, gives every job her all, in sometimes very uncomfortable circumstances. When we did the Sports Illustrated shoot, the temperature was 57 degrees and the water was freezing. I got to pose on a rock, but Cassie stood in cold water up to her knees for an hour before the photographer felt he’d gotten it right.”

  “Stars at Night,” the reporter said, “thought she might have been upset because she’d wanted the SI cover and you got it.”

  The model laughed. “I doubt that seriously. Last year she had the cover and I didn’t. But we’re all adults. We’re in competition for the big jobs, but you win some and you lose some. It’s the same in every business, even fashion.” She leaned forward, expression earnest. “What you should be talking about is the trust Cassie set up for poor women needing clothes and transportation so they can look for work.”

  The reporter ignored that. “But you’ve never imploded during a shoot.”

  “Sure, I have. I was just lucky enough that none of the crew sold me out to the press.”

  “Maybe when you grab the young woman doing your makeup and yell at her for not hearing you when she really is deaf, your adoring fans should know that about you.”

  Fabiana waited a beat, obviously straining for patience, then said, “In Cassie’s defense, the woman was a last-minute replacement because it was the holidays and the makeup artist who knows about…who Cassie’s used to working with, had already left to be with family in Alaska. Cassie didn’t know the woman was deaf. How many times have we all said that when people don’t respond to us the way we think they should?”

  Again the reporter let that go. “You said Cassie disappeared. Do you have any idea where she went?”

  Fabiana knew something; Grady could see it in her eyes. “I don’t, but I’m sure she’ll turn up in February to do the fund-raiser for Designers United Against Hunger.”

  Apparently a reporter’s instinct was as strong as a cop’s. “You hesitated there. You do have a clue where she is.”

  Fabiana smiled and shook her head. It was the smile she used in the Tesla commercial, capable of selling anything to anyone. “No. It’s Cassie’s life. She’ll come back to it when she’s ready.”

  The reporter thanked her and announced a station break. Cassie aimed the remote at the television and clicked it off. She groaned as she turned back to the stove.

  “Good morning,” Grady said. “I wouldn’t worry about that too much. Tomorrow some politician will say something stupid and they’ll forget all about you.”

  “Hi, Grady.” She glanced at him with a half smile and flipped a pancake. “I couldn’t find an apron to protect your sweater. Do you have anything?”

  Worried about her bare feet on the cold floor, he went to the thermostat first and turned up the gas heat. Then he opened the bottom drawer in the stove that held a barbecue apron his mother had given him that he’d never used. He handed it to her. She slipped her head through the neck hole and tied the strings behind her. Born to Barbecue was printed in rough red
lettering above a caricature of a man in front of a barbecue, his chef’s hat on fire.

  She looked down at herself and snickered. “Now here’s a look for the catwalk. Sit down. I’ll get you some coffee.”

  Two places were set at the breakfast bar. She’d found two placemats he never used along with dark blue cloth napkins stored in the same drawer.

  She poured coffee and brought him a cup. “This might be a little girlie for you. It’s Colombian coffee with dulce de leche flavor. I have a pound in my bag whenever I travel.”

  He took a sip. “Definitely girlie, but good.” It was wonderful to have coffee ready when he got up. Even girlie coffee. Since she clearly didn’t want to talk about the news, he observed, “You’re making pancakes?”

  “Crepes,” she corrected. “Fewer calories. I found frozen blueberries in the freezer, cooked them down with sugar and made a compote for topping. Is that all right?”

  He leaned his forearms on the bar and looked into her bright eyes. Her hair was pulled into a high ponytail. She looked remarkably fresh, if sad.

  “No,” he replied with a straight face. “I want the same old, dry fruity flakes and past-the-pull-date milk I always have in the morning.”

  “No!” She pulled a plate out of the oven. “Tell me you don’t really eat fruity flakes.”

  “I would, but it would be a lie. I’m sure they have nothing of nutritional value in them, but then, the bad guys don’t really care how trim I am, and I have a maple bar midmorning to keep up my strength.”

  If she thought that was a bad idea, she kept it to herself and brought him a plate of crepes and a steaming pitcher of compote. Butter was already on the bar. The aroma made him salivate.

  “You can cook, too,” he said in wonder, pouring blueberries on the crepes and passing the pitcher to her as she sat beside him with her own plate.

  “I grew up without a mother,” she said. “My father was gone a lot and nannies aren’t always good cooks. I loved my cooking class in high school, and I watch food shows. It’s amazing what you can pick up.”