by Stacey Keith
“No.” Cassidy opened the door. She grabbed Lexie’s books and followed her inside.
“Can we put them in the kitchen?” Lexie asked. “That way, we can look at them all the time.”
“Sure, honey.” Cassidy extracted the card from Lexie before she could read it. Her fingers were clumsy with the heavy paper. She pulled the note out, saw the signature, and froze.
“What’s wrong?” Lexie said.
Cassidy stared at the signature again just to be sure. Thinking of you—Parker.
The roses now seemed like poison.
“They’re from your dad.” She hated how unnatural that word sounded in her mouth. Parker wasn’t a dad. A dad was something else. She and Lexie rarely talked about him.
“Oh.” Lexie sat at the kitchen table and stared glumly at the flowers while Cassidy’s heart broke a little bit more for her. Oh, why wasn’t I smarter about this, Cassidy thought for the millionth time. If only I had…
Waited ’til Mason, she wanted to say. But if she’d waited, there would have been no Lexie. And life without Lexie was unimaginable.
She went behind her daughter’s chair, wrapped her arms around her and then rested her cheek on top of Lexie’s head.
“Why did Dad send you roses?” Lexie asked. “It’s not like it’s your birthday or anything.”
“I don’t know,” Cassidy answered truthfully.
“Do you think he knows about you and Mr. Mason? Maybe he’s trying to get you back.” Lexie carved tiny half-moons into the plastic tablecloth with her fingernail. “Maybe he’s jealous.”
To give herself something, anything, to do, Cassidy gathered Lexie’s long smooth hair into a ponytail and began to braid it. “Is that what you want, sweetheart? Do you want Dad to get me… to get us back?”
Lexie was quiet for a minute. She pressed more half-moons into the tablecloth. “Sometimes I go to my friends who have a mom and a dad…”
“And?”
“It makes me wish that I had a dad, too, to do stuff with.”
Guilt sharpened a hot knife and stuck it inside Cassidy’s stomach. “Grandpa does stuff with you.”
“I know, but I mean like Amy’s dad. Campfires and tents and stuff. A dad that takes you places and does dad things with you.”
Places like Disney World. Cassidy swallowed hard. She felt like the worst kind of monster. It was obvious what she needed to tell Lexie and just as obvious what Lexie’s reaction would be. It wouldn’t matter who was offering to take her to Disney World. Lexie’s answer would be the same. Yes. And even though the idea of spending time with Parker and Kayla and the whole Nolen tribe made Cassidy sick to her stomach, no way would she let her daughter go off with them and fend for herself.
She had to tell her. If Lexie found out that she’d kept Disney World away from her, she’d never trust her again.
Cassidy sat across the table from Lexie and turned the card over and over with her fingers. Memories came rushing back of Lexie as a newborn—the delicate, almost translucent fingers, the petal mouth, the peach fuzz hair. Her terror when the nurses just handed the baby over and wheeled the two of them out of the hospital. Her own dad waiting outside with the new car seat in the car, his face a mixture of grief and tenderness.
Now Lexie was old enough to ask questions. Now she, as Lexie’s mother, was left to make a terrible decision: Did she do the right thing or the convenient one? She handed Lexie the card and watched as Lexie opened it.
“It says ‘Please say yes,’” Lexie said, clearly puzzled. “Yes to what?”
“Disney World. Your dad wants us to go with him.”
* * * *
“He’s got that look,” Jasper said to Temple while they both stood grinning at Mason. “What do you think? Does he have that look to you?”
Mason banged around in his locker for the deodorant and waited for Temple to start in on him, too. Jasper had been on his case all morning.
“Hey, Hannigan! You throw that good when you’re getting a girl’s clothes off?”
“Yo, Hannigan! Little slow off the snap today. Legs aren’t tired from workin’ all night, are they?”
“Go ahead,” Mason said to Temple. “I know you’ve got shit to say. Just say it.”
A whap to the head couldn’t have knocked the grin off Temple’s face. “Not me, man. I’m just glad she left you in one piece.”
Mason sat down on the locker-room bench and pulled his jeans on. “Does everyone know at this point or just you assholes?”
Jasper munched cheerfully on an oatmeal raisin cookie. “Well, I haven’t told your mother yet.”
Mason thought about his mother and her stunned silence when he’d phoned her about finding Dad. That was a conversation he hoped to forget real soon.
Temple said, “It’s not every day our boy here loses his V-card.”
Now it was Mason’s turn to smile. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Livestock doesn’t count, Temple. You know that,” Jasper said. “Although to be fair, in a dark barn, it’s easy to see where a guy like Mason might get confused.”
Jasper deserved a punch for that, but Mason didn’t have it in him. Everything was going too well to hold grudges. He thought of Cassidy kissing him goodbye out on the porch, of waking up and seeing her asleep next to him, soft and warm as a kitten. He thought of the way she touched him, equal parts bold and shy, and how it drove him crazy to feel her come alive beneath him. And then he remembered that he was standing in front of Jasper, Temple and half the team, really.
The safest time to think about Cassidy was when he was alone.
“So when’s she coming to Dallas?” Temple asked, carefully rolling up his shirtsleeves.
“This weekend, if she can get away,” Mason replied.
“You better hope that she can,” Jasper mumbled around a mouthful of cookie. “You didn’t play like shit today. For once. And on no sleep, too, so extra points there. She might be just the kick in the ass we need against the Giants.”
All the way home, Mason thought about his upcoming game against the NFL’s other winning franchise. Then he thought about Cassidy. Someone behind him had to tap his horn because he’d gotten way lost in a daydream at the stoplight. If he could lure Cassidy here for a few weeks, get her comfortable with Dallas, he knew she would love it. Lexie, he didn’t worry about. One look at the pool and Lexie, like any other kid, would be a vocal recruit for Team Dallas. But Cassidy had roots in Cuervo. Family. And if his relationship with her kept going in this direction, maybe, just maybe, he could find a way to honor that. A way to keep a foot in both worlds.
As the iron gates to his estate swung open, he remembered that Ruth would probably be waiting for him with a dozen things to do. Sure enough, he saw her baby pink VW bug parked in the garage. Feeling like a kid going to algebra class, Mason trudged up the steps to the kitchen.
Ruth stood just inside the door, ready to pounce.
“You’re back,” she said crisply. The fuzzy sweater had a lapel pin today, a pink looped ribbon that Mason was pretty sure had something to do with supporting breast cancer research.
“Glad to see you, too.” Mason gave her a breezy smile and parked his rucksack on a chair. He opened the refrigerator. Cold air washed over him while he waited for inspiration. Maybe Keiko had bought doughnuts. Doughnuts were always inspiring.
“I suppose congratulations for finding your dad are in order.” Ruth tucked a piece of auburn hair behind one ear. She cleared her throat and flipped open her tablet.
Mason draped one arm over the refrigerator door. “Yep. Gone fishin’. I should’ve gotten the T-shirt.”
“Are you tired? Should I ask Keiko to make you some coffee?”
“You know, I should be tired, but I’m not.” He opened a piece of tinfoil containing leftover spareribs, sniffed at them suspiciously, and then
folded it up again. “Know what I want? Pizza. Do you want pizza?”
“You can’t have pizza.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re due at a charity dinner in an hour. You’d know that if you actually kept your appointments with certain members of your support staff instead of running all around hell’s half acre.”
“Ah, but what an acre,” he said, trying to joke his way out of Ruth’s bad mood. But in all fairness, he had been impossible to pin down lately. He wasn’t in the habit of sharing personal details with Ruth, so the veiled accusation of a woman distracting him just kind of hung there. Then it hung there some more. He pretended not to notice.
Mason closed the door to the refrigerator. “I know I’ve been a pain in the ass. I know it drives you crazy when I make it harder for you to do your job.”
Ruth peered at him above her bifocals. “It is a girl we’re talking about here, right? The reason for your disappearing act?”
Mason stuck his nose in the pantry. Chips. The gross kind made out of something healthy and non-fatal. He grabbed them anyway. “I’m seeing someone,” he said, basking once again in the warm glow of thinking about Cassidy. “She lives in Cuervo.”
Ruth looked like a woman burning up with curiosity but too buttoned up to show it. “Does this girl have a name?”
“Cassidy.”
“Should I be making arrangements for her to race to Dallas tonight?”
Mason imagined Cassidy in his car, in his bed, in his hot tub. “I’m working on it.”
Ruth sighed. She slid her stylus into the plastic holder on the side of her tablet. “We have a problem then.”
Mason stopped chewing. “What problem?”
“Three months ago when you committed to this charity dinner, you told me to line up a date for you. Remember? ‘Find someone for me to go with,’ you told me. So I did.”
No. This couldn’t be happening. Not now. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“Anna Barstock. You remember her, right? She’s the new Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. Her agent is flying her to Dallas tonight. Oh, and there’s something else.”
Mason plowed both hands in his hair, hating himself for not having paid attention. Hating himself and already wondering how he was going to explain this to Cassidy. He’d just found her. How could things have gotten fucked up so soon? “What can you possibly say that would make this any worse?”
Ruth made a face like she’d sucked a lemon. “The press will be there.”
Chapter Thirteen
The funny thing about panic, Mason realized, was that it wasn’t funny at all. Panic made you sweat, which sucked when you were wearing a tux. It also made your mouth dry.
Idling in front of the downtown Hilton in his Porsche 918 Spyder, he cranked up the air conditioning and peered through the windshield, searching for his brand new publicity-hungry date du jour, Anna Barstock. There was a cadre of rumpled, unshaven men with cameras lurking by the hotel’s entrance, which meant Anna’s PR agent had gotten up bright and early to notify the press.
Mason leaned closer to the passenger side, ready to whip the door open so Anna could get in fast and they could drive the hell away from this nightmare. Even if Cassidy didn’t see the thousand photos that would soon flood the airwaves and clog up every online newsfeed, she had friends who would show her. He could depend on Cuervo for that much.
No matter what he said, now or later, in person or on the phone, all she would remember was that mere hours after she’d slept with him, there was a new woman on his arm. And if that didn’t qualify as an emergency, he didn’t know what did.
Maybe I should call Jasper, he thought. Jasper would know what to do. Did he have time? Mason loosened his stranglehold on the steering wheel to check his watch. He forced himself to think. Okay, what would Jasper tell him to do? Jasper would tell him to face this mess head on. He would tell him to call Cassidy the minute he arrived at the charity dinner and explain everything, even if there were tears or frigid silences. Jasper would tell him—
“Oh, shit.” A sudden paralyzing fear came over Mason when he spotted Anna making her grand entrance on the steps of the hotel. All he could see were rows of white teeth, her flirtatious “Who, me?” red carpet pose, her killer outfit, which looked like it had been spray-painted on a Barbie. Any other time, he would have been gawking, but now all he could think was she’s not Cassidy.
Even that puzzled him. He’d never been so far gone before that he couldn’t appreciate a pretty face. And Anna’s face—Anna’s everything—had the power to inspire a whole lot of appreciation. Yet he found himself strangely neutral. It felt as though he’d dated Anna before, a whole slew of Annas. But they were all surface. Cassidy’s waters ran so much deeper.
Anna did the one-leg-forward, hand-on-hip model thing while the paparazzi salivated behind their flashbulbs. She had her boobs in some kind of sling that zigzagged around her ribcage like a bandage and left her midriff bare. Mason pictured Cassidy’s face when she would inevitably see it and a fresh wave of terror washed over him. He didn’t want to upset her for all the same reasons any man hated upsetting the woman he loved—as in, there would be hell to pay. But God help him, there was more to it than that. He didn’t want her to be hurt.
The paparazzi were asking questions now, shouting over one another. “Anna, over here!” a photographer in a Yankees cap yelled to her. “How long have you been dating Mason Hannigan?”
“We’re just friends.” Anna peeked coyly over her shoulder so they could snap a few million photos of her backside. Mason could tell there was a lot going on there and all of it trouble.
But now he was even more worried. “Just friends” was a dog whistle. “Just friends” meant there was a whole bunch more to the story, and now the press would tear itself to pieces trying to find it.
He had to get her into the car before she could say anything else that would bury him. Even if it meant ten thousand deer-in-the-headlight photos that would look exactly like what they were, which was him trying to sneak a gorgeous, scantily clad woman into his car.
Mason took a fortifying breath. He took another. He opened his car door, got out and then strode calmly around to the other side. As he held Anna’s door for her, the press turned its relentless, unblinking eye on him and lobbed the same million questions his way. He ignored them, focusing instead on Anna slinking down the stairs in her spiked heels.
“A Porsche 918 Spyder?” she said. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Well, he had to hand it to her. At least she knew a thing or two about cars. He sprinted back around to his side and dropped into the seat. He liked it when the door closed and the world became just his again.
Well, his and the woman who was going to murder his relationship.
He floored it before the paparazzi had a chance to surround the car. The interior smelled like her perfume, roses or gardenias or something else grown in a hothouse. Her presence here seemed so wrong. He ran one hand through his hair and wondered if Cassidy would ever speak to him again. He just had to call her. Explain.
Beg for mercy.
“Wow,” Anna said. “Nice wheels.”
What was he supposed to say? He didn’t want to risk looking at her, but he didn’t want to appear rude either. After all, she’d done nothing to deserve it. “Thanks.”
“So these babies are limited edition, right? Amazing that you can still get 887 metric horsepower out of two electric motors. I mean, who ever heard of a plug-in hybrid that could do that?”
Mason glanced at her in surprise while she popped open the glove box. “You clearly like cars,” he said.
“If you don’t mind my asking, what did you pay for this beast—upwards of a mil, right?” Without bothering to wait for an answer, she plowed ahead. “First real money I made modeling I bought a new car for everyone in my family. My brothe
r wanted a Porsche Carrera GT and that’s what I got him.”
“That’s one hell of a gift.” Mason found himself relaxing a little. Cars were safe territory. Her generosity impressed him. “What do you drive?”
“I don’t. New York, remember? If I did have a car, though, I’d get the new Tesla. Having a car in Manhattan is a fucking nightmare. Besides, I’m never more than a cab ride away from anywhere I need to be.”
Mason pulled up to a stoplight. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see four guys in the car next to his craning their necks. One of them let out a whoop and then four camera phones were simultaneously thrust out of the window. Before Mason knew what was happening, Anna had popped her seatbelt and was practically straddling his lap, mugging for them.
“Jesus Christ, what are you doing?” he yelled, trying to get her back in her seat.
“What are you doing?” She pushed back a handful of blond curls, sat down, and gave him an injured sniff. “Hello? Model here. Aren’t we supposed to be fame whoring right now? I thought that was the point.”
Mason winced. He hated that term. And he hated having to explain why there was a giant stick up his ass. But what else could he do? Anna was looking for the very publicity he was trying to avoid. “I just need you to chill, okay? It’s complicated.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and stared pointedly out the window. “I’ll tell you what you need,” she muttered. “You need my foot up your ass.”
“Look, Anna, please don’t be mad. I’m in a new relationship. It’s an important relationship. And she’s not like you and me. She’s a regular person. So when she sees these goddamn photos—”
“Your girlfriend doesn’t know you’re out with me tonight?” Anna looked at him as though he’d grown a second head. Of course, that would actually be assuming he had a head to begin with. “You’re ten kinds of stupid, aren’t you?”
“I really am.” Mason sped toward the overpass where most of the office building windows glittered with light. “I screwed up and all I want to do is fix it.”