by Linda Seed
The shower in her Airstream was the size of a phone booth, so using one that was big enough for her to turn around in was a luxury. She sang as she soaped up.
Brian didn’t pack too many things for the move to his mother’s rental place. After all, his own house was just a thirty-minute drive down the coast from Cambria, and he could always go back to get anything he’d forgotten.
He packed one suitcase with a few changes of clothes, some books, his laptop, and some basic grooming supplies. He also packed some things for Thor—kibble, a dog bed, a leash, and some chew toys. He brought the camera and tripod he used for his YouTube videos, because he couldn’t stop working just because his house was being repaired.
On his way up the coast, he stopped at a grocery store and picked up some essentials: beer, Cheetos, frozen pizza, Cap’n Crunch, and milk.
Yes, the whole thing sucked. Yes, he hated having to ask his mother for help. But in the end, he had to admit that he’d probably survive. Otter Bluff had a stunning ocean view, and he was getting it for free—if you didn’t count the list of chores his mother expected him to do.
He’d prefer to be home, of course, but things could be so much worse. The cost of rental housing on the Central Coast was astronomical, and he didn’t want to spend that on top of what he’d already be putting into the repairs on his own place.
Avoiding that expense almost made it worth having to ask his mother for the favor.
He pulled up at Otter Bluff just after five p.m. as the sun was beginning its descent toward the water. The smell of salt air and seaweed hit him with its pleasant tang as soon as he opened the car door. Just beyond where the street ended, waves crashed into the bluffs and seagulls wheeled overhead.
He grabbed his suitcase and his bag of groceries and went up the front walk. Thor, happy to be out of the car, peed exuberantly on a bush.
His mother kept the spare key in a fake rock hidden amid an array of real rocks in the front garden. Brian hunted around for a rock that looked too perfect, found it, and grabbed the key from underneath.
He put the key in the door, opened it—and immediately sensed that something was wrong.
The first clue was that the lights were on. The kitchen, in particular, was ablaze with light from the overheads and the pendant lamps that hung over the granite-topped island.
The second clue was the array of round metal pans in graduated sizes lined up on the countertop.
The third and final clue was the sound of singing coming from down the hallway. “Like a Virgin,” it sounded like, though the singer was off-pitch enough that he wasn’t completely certain.
“Hello?” he called tentatively, putting his bags down on the floor as Thor began sniffing the carpet, the sofa, and everything else he could reach.
The singing continued unabated.
He went down the hallway and poked his head into the master bedroom. The door was open, as was the door to the master bathroom. Steam billowed into the room from the bathroom, and Brian could smell the scent of shampoo and Dial soap.
As he stood there wondering who the hell was in his mother’s house and whether there’d been some sort of mistake, the water turned off and he heard the shower door squeak open. Seconds later, a woman emerged, a towel wrapped around her head like a turban, another towel around her body, tucked in just over her breasts.
She was still singing.
“Like a vir—”
In the middle of the word, she looked up, saw him, and screamed. But she didn’t just scream. She also leaped into the air, her feet scrabbling at nothing, her face a mask of horror and surprise.
“Wait. I didn’t mean—”
“Shit! Shit! Oh my God! What are you doing? Who are you? Shit!”
The woman pulled the towel tighter around herself, as it had threatened to fall when she’d let go of it in surprise.
“I’m Brian.”
“What are you doing here? Get the hell out! I don’t have any money! I don’t have any valuables! I’m calling the police! I have a gun!”
She obviously didn’t have a gun—at least, not on her. Where would she have concealed it?
“I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding. This is my mother’s house. Are you a renter? She said the place was empty. Did she get her dates mixed up?”
Cassie had been so terror-struck by the man in the bedroom doorway that she’d immediately assumed a fight-or-flight posture, preparing to hit him with a lamp or flee through the bathroom window.
But now that his words were sinking in, she began to understand what was happening.
She was the intruder here, not him.
“Your mother’s house? Your mother is Lisa Barlow?”
“Yeah. She told me there was no one here. But here you are. Are you a renter?” he asked again.
The simplest thing would be to tell him yes, she was one of Lisa’s tenants. Then he would blame himself for the mistake and leave.
And then call his mother and tell her exactly what had happened.
No. She couldn’t have that.
“Uh … I’ll just step out of the room while you get dressed,” he offered.
“I don’t have any clothes,” she said. “Well, I do, but they’re in the washing machine.”
He blinked at her. “All of them?”
“Yes.”
He looked confused. She didn’t blame him.
“Well … my mother keeps some things in the closet in the spare bedroom. It’s locked, but …” He pulled the house keys from his pocket and dangled them.
“Oh. That would be great.” Cassie nearly wept with relief.
Ten minutes later, Cassie was sitting on the sofa in the living room wearing an expensive pair of linen pants that were too long for her and a black cotton crop top that bared an inch of flesh at her midriff. Cassie had never met Lisa Barlow, but judging from Brian’s age, she had to be in her fifties, at least. The crop top was unexpected.
Cassie had taken the towel off her head, and her blond hair, still wet from the shower, hung over her shoulders, creating damp spots on the T-shirt. Thor had climbed up onto the sofa next to her, and she scratched behind his ears.
“Okay, so you’re not a renter.” Brian sat on a chair across the coffee table from her. “You’re … a baker?” He gestured toward where the pans were still lined up on the counter.
“Yes. I was just …. I was using the kitchen here because I have to make a wedding cake by this weekend, and I live in a trailer with a countertop the size of a breadboard, and the house here was just sitting empty, and I didn’t think it would hurt anything.…” She recognized that she was rambling, and she forced herself to stop. She wasn’t wearing a bra under the T-shirt—hers was in the laundry—so she folded her arms over her chest to hide the fact that she was feeling a little chilly.
“So you, what, broke in?”
“No! No, no. Let me back up. See, I work for Central Coast Escapes.”
“The property management company.”
“Right! I do the cleaning and some of the maintenance—odd jobs and such—and my boss told me there were no renters here this month. And I had a key, and I thought … Oh, God, please don’t call the police and have me arrested. Though you could. You really could. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean any harm. It will never happen again.”
She watched him as he took all of this in, and as she did, she thought that she’d seen him somewhere before. Had she met him when he’d been to the house on some earlier occasion? Had she seen him around town?
“You thought the house was empty, and you needed a good kitchen, and Otter Bluff has one. So you just thought you’d pop in and bake a wedding cake,” he summarized.
“Well, it sounds weird when you say it like that.”
Brian was utterly mesmerized.
When he’d come to Otter Bluff, he had hoped that maybe, if he was lucky, the former renters might have left some Cokes in the refrigerator.
Never in his wildest dreams had he ima
gined he’d get here and find a naked woman in the bedroom.
And a damned cute one, at that.
What she was doing wasn’t cool, obviously. It was a serious breach of her responsibilities as an employee of the property management company. And yes, he could get her fired in a heartbeat if he told her boss—or his mother—what had happened.
But somehow, he didn’t want to get her fired. He didn’t even particularly want her to leave. The sight of her sitting there all fresh and dewy from the shower, wearing his mother’s clothes and petting his dog, made him smile in a way he hadn’t smiled in quite some time.
“Okay,” he said after she’d finished her story. Just okay.
“What does that mean?” she asked. “What does ‘okay’ mean?”
“It means, I acknowledge that you’re not here to steal the TV and the silverware. You’re just here to use the kitchen.”
Until now, she’d looked mortified. Now, for the first time since he’d gotten here, she looked hopeful.
“Does that mean you’re not going to tell your mother?”
“For the time being.”
“Meaning, you might tell her at some point.”
“I might. I mean, if I go through the house and find that you’ve stripped the light fixtures or something.”
“I didn’t. I swear to God, I—”
“Then I won’t tell her.” He didn’t know why he’d made that particular promise. He should tell his mother. He should also call Central Coast Escapes and tell whoever was in charge over there. Clearly, it wasn’t okay that some random person was using his mother’s house for her own purposes.
But if he did that, this very cute, formerly naked woman would be mad at him. And that prospect didn’t seem appealing.
“But … why not?” she wanted to know.
“Maybe you’d better quit while you’re ahead,” he suggested.
Cassie had already transferred her clothes to the dryer, and now they heard the ding that indicated the cycle was done.
“I guess I’d better get dressed,” she said. “In my own clothes, I mean.”
Regretfully, he agreed. The crop top looked a hell of a lot better on her than it did on his mother.
The entire time Cassie was in the bedroom getting dressed, she racked her brain to remember where she’d seen this guy before. Because she knew she had. Did they go to the same coffeehouse? Had she seen him at the gym?
When she came out in her jeans and sweater, her damp hair pulled back into a ponytail, she gave him the clothes she’d borrowed, now neatly folded. “Thanks for letting me use these.”
“No problem.” He adjusted the glasses on his nose. “Not that any of this is her fault, but my mom should have told the property management company that I was coming. It was a last-minute thing. My house is being tented for termites.” He grimaced ruefully. “If this had happened six months ago, I’d have just stayed at my friend Ike’s place, but he moved, so …”
That was what did it. The name Ike. That was when it clicked in Cassie’s mind where she’d seen him.
“Ike. Your friend Ike. As in Ike and Brian.”
“Well … yeah.”
Oh, shit. Ike and Brian. She’d watched their show on YouTube. He was a celebrity. An actual celebrity had seen her in nothing but a towel while she was illicitly using a house that wasn’t hers.
She was horrified.
“Oh, God. Oh, God. You’re Brian Cavanaugh. From YouTube. Shit. Shit. I knew I knew you from somewhere. Oh, God.”
He looked at her with furrowed brows. “How does that make this situation any worse?”
“I don’t know, it just does.” She hurried into the kitchen and started gathering up her cake pans. “I just … This is … I’d better go.” She hurried out of the house with her arms full of pans.
When she was gone, he felt the loss of her. She shouldn’t have been here, it was true. But she’d filled the house with noise and light and color. Now that she was gone, it was just … a house.
He fed Thor and set about the job of unpacking his things. When he opened the refrigerator to put in his groceries, he noticed a large bowl covered in plastic wrap. He lifted the wrap and peered at the contents, taking a sniff.
Cake batter.
Interesting.
Chapter 3
Cassie thought about concealing what had happened, as it didn’t show her in the best light, but once she got home, she thought, screw it. Lacy, one of her sisters, was sitting at the kitchen table in their parents’ house, and Cassie couldn’t resist spilling everything.
Why not? It wasn’t as though Lacy would judge her. Their mother? Yes. Their oldest sister, Jess? Certainly. But Lacy would find the story amusing and would probably have a nugget or two of useful advice to offer.
When Cassie came in through the back door, having dropped her stuff in the trailer, Lacy looked up and smiled.
“Hey, you. You missed dinner, but there are still some leftovers in the fridge.”
That was one nice thing about living in her parents’ backyard—any time she didn’t want to fend for herself, all she had to do was cross the lawn to get a home-cooked meal. She went to the refrigerator and peered inside.
“How was your day?” Lacy asked.
“I’m glad you asked. It’s a story.”
“Ooh. I love stories.”
Cassie pulled a casserole dish out of the refrigerator, put it on the counter, and got a plate out of a cabinet. “Are Daniel and the kids here?”
“He took Danny and Caleb to the movies. Some Pixar thing. Mom’s in the living room with Trevor. She can’t get enough of him.” Lacy had been married for five years, and in that time, she’d managed to have three kids—all boys. The youngest, Trevor, was just eight months old.
“Ooh, I’ve got to go in there and pinch those cheeks,” Cassie said.
“Whose? Trevor’s or Mom’s?”
“Very funny.”
“Anyway, you’re not going anywhere until you tell me the story. I need a good story. All I ever hear about these days is Minecraft and SpongeBob. I’m tired of SpongeBob.”
“All right, all right. Keep your pants on. Just let me get this heated up first. I’m starving.”
Cassie spooned some casserole onto her plate and put it in the microwave. When it came out, she grabbed a fork and brought her plate to the table. She sat down across from Lacy and took a bite—her mother’s ground beef and cheesy pasta bake. It had always been one of Cassie’s favorites.
“Okay,” she said, finally ready to launch into it. “First off, I have to tell you that I did a thing. A thing that wasn’t strictly … well, you know. Legal.”
Lacy’s eyes grew round. “What illegal thing did you do?”
“I might have just … you know. Used one of the rental houses without permission. Otter Bluff. You know the one on Marine Terrace with the blue siding and white trim?”
“What do you mean you’ve been using it? Have you been sleeping there?” Lacy sounded horrified.
“No! No, no. I’ve just been using the kitchen.” She explained her situation—she had a wedding cake to produce by Saturday and no kitchen to bake or decorate it in. She described the wonders of the kitchen at Otter Bluff, which had just been sitting there, empty.
“It was the perfect plan!” Cassie threw her hands into the air for emphasis. “I was going to clean up, leave the place spotless, and leave before anyone knew I was there!”
“But …?” Lacy asked.
“But, a guy showed up. In the bedroom. When I was getting out of the shower wearing nothing but a towel.”
Lacy let out a guffaw. “Okay, wait. Who was the guy? And why were you taking a shower if you were only there to use the kitchen?”
Fair questions.
“The guy was the owner’s son. She told him he could use the house, but she didn’t tell Central Coast Escapes, so our records showed that it was empty. And I was in the shower because Elliot, my asshole boss, made me go clean one of the hou
ses in Seaclift Estates, even though it was supposed to be my afternoon off, and I got dirty and sweaty, and I stank.” Cassie ate some more of the excellent casserole as Lacy absorbed the information.
“Well, that must have been awkward.”
“And,” Cassie added, “the guy? He’s kind of famous. I watch him on YouTube.”
“Oh, jeez. That’s—”
“And,” Cassie went on, “I was washing my clothes, so I didn’t have anything to put on. Other than the towel. I told you it was a story.”
“You did,” Lacy acknowledged. “You did say that.”
“So, to summarize,” Cassie said, “a famous guy saw me almost naked and has my future in his hands, because if he tells anyone what I did, I’m going to get fired and maybe arrested. And—oh, damn it, I just realized. I left my cake batter at Otter Bluff.”
“ ‘I left my cake batter at Otter Bluff.’ Someone could make a country-western song out of that,” Lacy observed.
“It’s not funny! Now I’ve got to start all over on the cake, and I’m never going to finish it by Saturday. Especially since I don’t have a kitchen. I can’t do it here. You know how chaotic it gets with everyone coming and going. A wedding cake takes concentration. Jeez. This is bad. This cake was supposed to launch my new career.”
“You can use our kitchen,” Lacy said.
“You’ve got three kids under five.”
“Fair point.”
“Thanks, though. I’ll have to figure something out.”
“You could go over there and ask for the cake batter,” Lacy said. “At least then you wouldn’t have to start from scratch.”