Baby Talk & Wedding Bells

by Brenda Harlen

  “And how did that work out?”

  “Not the way she’d planned. Of course, she didn’t know—no one knew—that he’d already hooked up with Avery by then. And since they’re happily married now, my mother considers it a win, especially since they’ve given her another grandchild. But she wants lots of little ones running around, which is why she’s turned her attention to me again.”

  Cassie popped a grape into her mouth. “And how do you feel about that?”

  “Well, I certainly can’t fault her taste,” he said.

  “I have a horrible track record with men,” she confided. “I tend to fall hard and fast and always for the wrong guys. Megan thinks that’s because I grew up without a dependable father figure.”

  “Because your dad died when you were young,” he remembered.

  “And because he was an Army Ranger who, even before he died, was gone a lot more than he was home.”

  “Do you remember much about him?”

  “Not really,” she admitted. “Mostly I remember my mom always being so excited when he was coming home. She’d make sure the house was clean from top to bottom, she’d buy a new outfit, spritz on her favorite perfume, cook his favorite foods. She’d even dress me up in my prettiest clothes and braid ribbons into my hair.

  “I loved my dad, but I didn’t know him. Even when he was home, he seemed so distant and unapproachable. Now I would probably say haunted, although back then I just thought he was grumpy. I didn’t look forward to him coming home, because I always knew he would go away again. And when he did, my mom would cry for days.

  “She was a true Southern belle,” Cassie explained. “Born in Savannah and accustomed to the attention and adoration that were her reward in the beauty pageant circuit. From what I’ve been told, my father fell for her, hard and fast. They had a whirlwind courtship and married after knowing each other only three weeks.

  “After he died, she dated a few other guys, but none of them stuck around for long. I think I was twelve when she met Ray—an Episcopalian minister, widowed, with two sons. Eric and Ray Jr.—we called him RJ. My mom was a widowed military spouse with two daughters. I think she had some kind of image of us being a modern day Brady Bunch.”

  “So you have a sister?” he prompted.

  She shook her head and wrapped her sandwich up again, her gaze focused on the task. “Had. Amanda was four years younger than me, and only ten when she died.”

  “What happened?”

  Cassie took a minute, carefully wiping her fingers on a napkin, sipping the sweet tea he’d poured for her. “She’d gone fishing with Eric and RJ—just out to the pond at the back of Ray’s property. They didn’t usually catch anything, but they would spend hours out there trying, anyway. Amanda loved to follow the boys around—” she shook her head, her eyes shining with unshed tears “—no, she loved to follow me around, to pepper me with questions about everything until I told her to get lost.

  “She wanted me to play some kind of game with her... I don’t even remember what it was...but I told her I was busy and suggested that she go bug the boys. So she did, and they gave her a fishing pole and let her tag along. And I stayed in the house, studying for a science test because I was barely holding on to an A-minus and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get a scholarship if my grade dropped.”

  “You were thinking about scholarships in tenth grade?” he asked, not just because he was surprised by the fact but because the anguish in her voice warned him where the story was going and he wanted to give her the option of a detour.

  “When you grow up with limited financial resources, you need to think about all other options,” she told him matter-of-factly. Then she fell silent for a moment before she steered the conversation back onto its original path. “So Amanda went off with the boys and I went back to my books, grateful for the peace and quiet.

  “It was a long time later before RJ came racing back to the house. Apparently Amanda caught a small sunfish and was leaning forward to pull it out of the water when she lost her balance and fell in. But she was a good swimmer, so the boys weren’t worried at first. They just watched the surface of the water, waiting for her to come up.” Her gaze dropped away, but not before he saw that tears were now trembling on the edge of her lashes.

  “Mom and Ray weren’t home, so I was the only one there when RJ came running back to the house. I jumped into the pond where they said she’d gone in, and I pulled her out of the water.”

  There was nothing he could say to ease the pain he heard in her voice, a pain he knew she still felt deep in her heart, so he only put his arms around her and held her tight.

  “Eric called 9-1-1 while I tried to remember the basic CPR I’d been taught in my babysitting course, but I knew she was already gone.”

  “I’m so sorry, Cassie.”

  “I was devastated.” The admission was barely a whisper. “But my mother...my mother never recovered from losing Amanda. I don’t know if she blamed herself for not being there or if losing both a husband and a child proved to be too much for her.

  “She started to drink, as if the alcohol might fill up the emptiness inside of her, and she didn’t stop. Six months later, she was dead, too—hit by a car when she was walking home from the bar one night.”

  And as horrific as it must have been for her mother to have lost that husband and child, he could not begin to imagine how much worse it had been for Cassie to have lost her father, her sister and then her mother. He wondered how she’d survived the devastation—and marveled over the fact that she had.

  “The police ruled it an accident, but I’m not so sure,” she admitted. “Maybe she was so drunk that she unknowingly stumbled into the middle of the road—or maybe she saw the headlights and wanted to make the pain go away forever.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that. He wanted to reassure her that no mother grieving the loss of one child would willingly abandon another, but he didn’t really know what her mother’s state of mind had been. Maybe she had been so focused on everything she’d lost, she couldn’t see what she had left.

  “Ray, regularly prone to fits of temper, was always angry after that. He was furious with my mother for leaving him—and for leaving him with another kid. He’d frequently used scripture not as a comfort but as a weapon, and after my mother died, it got even worse. I went to church every Sunday, and sat beside the boys as he pontificated about sin. But even at home, the preaching never stopped, and when the words stopped being enough to satisfy his rage...he started to use his hands.”

  “He hit you?”

  “Not just me,” she said quietly, then shrugged. “Although I was the usual target.”

  “Did you tell anyone?”

  “Who was I going to tell? I had no one. My father, my sister, my mother...they were all gone.”

  Listening to her talk about the experience, he couldn’t even imagine what she’d gone through, how she must have felt. He only knew how he felt right now—furious and impotent—and he knew that if he could, he would go back in time and use his own hands on her stepfather.

  “Please tell me that somebody did something,” he implored.

  “I spent a lot of time at the library when I was in high school,” she reminded him. “And there’s not much that gets past Irene. She took me to the hospital so there would be a documented record of my bruises, which prompted interviews by the police and family services. Of course, Ray had alternate explanations for my injuries—not the least of which was that I was absentminded and clumsy, never paying attention to where I was going and walking into things.

  “The police officer who came to talk to Ray was sympathetic to the twice-widowed father trying to raise a teenage stepdaughter who wouldn’t listen to anything he said—as Ray described the situation. Family services took a slightly harder line, offering counseling and insisting that he take
an anger management course.”

  Braden was incredulous. “They didn’t remove you from the home?”

  “He was a minister—a pillar of the community.”

  He shook his head. “Sometimes the system really sucks.”

  “Sometimes it does,” she agreed. “But the next time he knocked me around, Irene insisted on taking me to church for the Sunday service, and she wouldn’t let me cover up any of the bruises. After the service, she met with the church elders, who later suggested that Ray might benefit from a change of scenery and offered him a position in Oregon.”

  “They should have offered him a position in the chaplain’s office at Central Prison.”

  She managed a small smile. “He might have preferred that. In his eyes, losing the church in Charisma—where both his father and grandfather had preached before him—was a harsher punishment than being behind bars.”

  “Not harsh enough,” Braden insisted.

  “So Ray went to Oregon, RJ and Eric went to live with their maternal grandparents and I was supposed to be placed in a group home.”

  “Why a group home?”

  “Because not many foster parents want an angry and grieving teenager living under their roof,” she explained. “But I got lucky. By some miracle, a woman came forward for consideration as a foster parent and she was willing to take in an older child. A few days later, I was placed in her care.”

  And though Cassie didn’t mention the woman’s name, Braden knew—and he realized that he had severely misjudged Irene Houlahan.

  Chapter Twelve

  Cassie enjoyed the time she spent with Braden and Saige at the Butterfly Farm, but she was glad to go home alone at the end of the day. She’d poured her heart out to him—told him things that she’d never told to anyone else. And she suspected he’d done the same when he’d revealed the personal details of his marriage.

  Somehow, the sharing of confidences seemed more intimate even than the physical joining of their bodies. As a result, she needed some space and time to think about everything that had happened on the weekend—and how to categorize their relationship. Were they friends? Friends with benefits? More?

  Did he want more?

  Did she?

  She had yet to answer that question in her own mind when he called Wednesday afternoon while she was still at the library.

  “How about dinner at my place tonight?” he suggested.

  “What are you making?”

  “Shrimp and grits,” he told her.

  “Mmm... I haven’t had shrimp and grits in...years,” she admitted.

  “Is that a yes to dinner?”

  “That’s a definite yes.”

  “What time do you want to eat?” he asked.

  “I finish at four today, so anytime after is good,” she told him.

  “Our usual dinner time is six, so we’ll stick with that,” he decided. “Do you want us to pick you up?”

  “No, I’ll drive myself so that you don’t have to drag Saige out again to take me home.”

  “Okay,” he relented. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  “I’ll see you tonight,” she confirmed, and disconnected the call.

  “Who are you seeing tonight?” Megan asked curiously from behind her.

  Cassie sighed. “There is absolutely no privacy around here.”

  “What do you expect in a public library?” her friend teased.

  “Good point,” she acknowledged.

  “So?” Megan prompted. “Was that the very handsome and rich Braden Garrett on the phone?”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  “And what is the plan for tonight?”

  “Dinner.”

  “At his place,” her friend mused.

  Cassie frowned. “How long were you listening?”

  “Long enough to know that shrimp and grits are on the menu,” her coworker admitted unapologetically. “But the real question is...what’s for dessert?”

  Of course, that inquiry made Cassie remember the night she hadn’t offered Braden any dessert, when his craving for something sweet had led to him kissing her—and the kissing had led to her bedroom.

  “Well, well, well.” Megan folded her arms on the counter and grinned. “The man is certainly doing something right if that dreamy look in your eyes and the flush in your cheeks is any indication.”

  “It’s not the big deal you’re making it out to be,” Cassie protested.

  “But the two of you are...dating?”

  “No.” She wondered how her friend would respond if she said, “just sleeping together,” but decided the shock value of the revelation wasn’t worth the plethora of questions that would inevitably follow.

  Her friend arched a brow. “Having dinner together sounds like a date to me.”

  “I’m having dinner with Braden and his daughter.”

  Megan ignored the clarification. “And you and Braden have really hot chemistry together.”

  Cassie shook her head. “I never should have told you about that kiss.”

  “The way the temperature soars whenever he’s around you, I’m thinking there’s been more than that one kiss.” Which proved that she’d been keeping a close eye when Braden visited the library to return books he’d borrowed and check out new ones.

  “It doesn’t matter how many kisses—” or how much more than kisses “—there have been,” she told her.

  “I’m just happy to see that you’re putting out—I mean, putting yourself out there,” Megan teased.

  Cassie felt her cheeks burn. “I think I’m going to call him back and cancel.”

  “Don’t you dare,” her friend admonished.

  “Why not?”

  “Because in the end, we always regret the chances we didn’t take.”

  She lifted her brows. “Why does that sound like ‘quote of the day’ relationship advice?”

  “Maybe because I read it on Pinterest.”

  Cassie couldn’t help smiling as she shook her head. “Isn’t that Introduction to Social Media group waiting for you in the Chaucer Room?”

  “I’m on my way. But remember,” Megan said, as she headed away from the desk, “those who risk nothing often end up with nothing.”

  “Apparently you spend too much time on Pinterest.”

  “It’s an addiction,” her friend admitted. “But since I don’t have a handsome man offering to make me dinner, I’ve only got a computer to go home to at night.”

  Of course, Megan disappeared before Cassie could respond, leaving her alone with her thoughts and concerns—and a niggling suspicion that her friend was right, and if she didn’t take a chance with Braden, she might regret it.

  But taking a chance required opening up her heart, and that was easier said than done. It wasn’t just her failed engagement that made her reluctant to want to risk loving—and losing—again. In fact, her relationship with Joel was the least cause of concern to Cassie. Far more troubling was the fact that everyone she’d ever loved had left her in the end: her father, her sister, her mother and, yes, most recently her fiancé. Was it any wonder that she’d put up barriers around her heart when she found herself alone—again—after giving back Joel’s ring?

  Maybe she was a coward. Certainly she knew plenty of other people who had just as much reason to be wary but still found the courage to open up their hearts again. Like her coworker Stacey, who was thirty-nine years old, twice divorced and finally about to become a mother for the first time. Her first marriage had ended after only ten months when her husband decided that he just didn’t want to be married anymore; her second marriage lasted for almost ten years before she finally left her abusive partner. It had taken years of counseling for Stacey to move on after that, but she’d finally done so, and she was
blissfully happy with her new spouse and excited about having a family with him.

  Obviously Stacey was braver than Cassie. Because as much as she wanted the happily-ever-after that her coworker had finally found, she was starting to suspect that some people were just meant to be alone. And maybe that was okay. Irene Houlahan was a perfect example of someone who’d never married or had any children of her own, and she seemed perfectly content with her life.

  But even Cassie had to admit that, after seeing Irene in the company of Jerry Riordan these past few weeks, her friend had seemed more than content—she’d seemed happy. So maybe there was no harm in spending some time with Braden and enjoying his company.

  Besides he’d promised her shrimp and grits, and she was hungry.

  * * *

  Cassie made a quick stop at home to feed the cats and change her clothes, opting for a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved knit sweater layered over a tank top because the wrap-style dress she’d worn to work only required a tug of the bow at her waist to come undone. And then, not wanting to show up at his house empty-handed after he’d brought wine and flowers for her, she made another quick stop on the way to his Forrest Hill address.

  The contemporary two-story brick home on Spruceside Crescent was set back from the road and surrounded by large trees that gave the illusion of privacy despite the neighbors on each side. She pressed a finger to the bell, and heard the echo of a melodic chime that somehow suited the house and upscale neighborhood. He greeted her with a warm smile and a quick kiss, and it was only when he stepped carefully away from the door that she realized Saige was holding on to her father’s pant leg.

  The little girl tipped her head to peek around him and grinned at Cassie. “Hi.”

  “Hello, Saige.”

  “What’s in the bag?” Braden asked curiously.

  “It’s for your daughter,” she said, offering it to the little girl.

  Saige reached her hand inside and pulled out the package of box cars. Not knowing what trains she had, Cassie had opted for the accessory cars that would attach to any of the engines. When the little girl realized what they were, her eyes grew wide.