Dirty Sexy Knitting

by Christie Ridgway

  She’d given him a reason to keep them in separate beds since Knitters’ Night. Working overtime on stuff for her upcoming birthday party. He hadn’t questioned her closely, uneasy about what he’d hoped he hadn’t heard, but now just looking at her made him keenly regret those hours apart.

  He took a breath instead of crassly trying to persuade her back into her house. Only a stupid man suggested sex right off the bat. To cool his libido, he thought of her nosy cats. “How’s the menagerie?” he asked.

  “Pining for you.”

  He shot a look at her, but decided he’d imagined the note of true emotion in her voice. “We’ll bring them home some salmon from brunch.”

  Yeah, he’d actually asked her out. His last date had been a hundred years ago and it probably involved a pitcher of beer and some soggy pretzels. He would have felt like an ass now, dating after a century’s hiatus, except that it was Cassandra sitting beside him and his world was right again.

  “Bed’s been too empty,” he heard himself say. “I’ve missed you.”

  “You’ve seen me every day.”

  Lattés. He had to bring her lattés. And he’d finished the shelving in her back room. But the yarn shop had been full of customers every time he’d arrived and it seemed to him they’d both been relieved by the buffer. But they were alone now, and he threaded his hand through her luxurious hair and pulled her close with it for a kiss.

  Yeah. “Maybe I need to say hello to the cats after all,” he murmured against her mouth.

  She softened, and he drew his mouth toward her ear. “Baby . . .” he murmured, grateful as hell they were back to their new normal, in each other’s arms. “How about I buy you lunch instead?”

  Her lips curved. “Well—”

  His cell phone rang. Jerking back from her mouth, he cursed and fished in his pocket. “Now it chooses to find some reception.” Glancing at the readout, he groaned. “Property management call.”

  But maybe one that wouldn’t ruin their plans for the day. He would have passed it on to a service, but the request for repair was simple and from one of Cassandra’s friends. He started his car. “Let’s go fix Oomfaa’s garbage disposal.”

  One of the Most Famous Actresses in America leased a house he owned in the infamous Malibu Colony—the original oceanfront development that Hollywood stars of the 1920s had settled. Oomfaa had been in this house for something like six months without a problem. This one didn’t look serious in the least, Gabe thought, as he played with the switch on the kitchen’s granite backsplash.

  Cassandra and Oomfaa were indulging in mimosas. “Carver’s coming over,” the actress told them, her smile luminous. Without all the movie magic, freckles dusted her nose and cheeks. Gabe thought she was prettier with them.

  He was crouched on the floor to reach under her kitchen sink when the attack came. The front door opened, and a spatter of feet and high-pitched voices assaulted him. In an instant, he was brought back to Maddie’s fourth birthday. Lynn had read that the guest list at a child’s party should be the number of the child’s age plus one. Tossing that advice to the wind, they’d invited twelve little girls to the house for the afternoon.

  These were only three children, he noted, even as instinct urged he climb under the sink altogether. A trio of the female gender: seven, five, and three, he guessed, each of them in pink and glitter and ruffles, all that froufrou stuff that he knew some little girls, like his own, were born to love.

  Carver followed the posse in, a baby wrapped in more pink in his arms. On top of the child’s head fountained a feathery, Pebbles ponytail. The other man caught sight of Gabe, frozen on the floor.

  “My nieces,” he explained. Fisted in his free hand were white paper bags reeking of fast-food breakfast items. “Four of ’em, can you believe it? I’m giving my sister and brother-in-law a much-deserved morning off.”

  Gabe wanted off. Out.

  Yeah, he’d seen kids around, of course. You couldn’t avoid them. But you could stay out of their way and you could stay out of places that packed tiny toys with every meal. There’d been a basketful of them in Maddie’s sunny bedroom, because it was their father-daughter weekend ritual, a walk to the park so Mom could sleep in, followed by the short drive to the Golden Arches.

  Now the smell of maple syrup made him ache, remembering sticky little girl kisses.

  “You okay, man?” Carter asked.

  “Yeah.” He couldn’t turn around and look at that baby again.

  He hadn’t thought much about the kid issue when he was a young man and even a young married man. Busy building his career and his portfolio, he hadn’t noticed their friends joining the diaper set, but Lynn had. And when she’d brought up having a child—well, even though he thought they were too young or he was too busy or perhaps not ready because the idea didn’t goose a single warm thought out of him—he hadn’t said a word. You went to college, you worked, you married, you had kids. The natural order of things.

  Unlike burying your young wife.

  Unlike deciding on the epitaph for your daughter’s headstone.

  “Can I help?” Carter again.

  Gabe risked a glance over his shoulder. The drummer had divested himself of food bags and from the sound of things the little girls were having a breakfast of champions in the nearby alcove, but that baby was still on the man’s hip. He was hunkered down and the child stared at Gabe while she gummed a piece of toasted English muffin.

  He couldn’t look away from her. It had been like that when they’d put Maddie in his arms minutes after her birth. Up to that point he’d been neutral on the whole project. Just another agenda item. But then they’d put this living, squirming, warm bundle of person against his chest. She’d stared up at him from unblinking eyes, as if she saw everything about him in that first look.

  Had she known then that he would fail her?

  This baby studied him in the same way. Then, with a four-toothed grin, she held out her scrap of muffin to him.

  Gabe stood so fast he slammed his hip into the countertop. Grunting at the pain, he pivoted for the front door. “I need something from the car,” he said.

  Outside, he breathed in air. Salty, crisp Malibu air. He’d never expected it to cure him, when he’d taken up residence here, but sometimes he thought he was better: when he was trading insults with the vegetarian next door, when they put up wallpaper or painted new shelves, when he wrapped himself around her at night.

  And then sometimes, like now, he knew he would never be whole.

  The ash that was the residue of his heart sickened his soul. Eventually, it would darken everyone he touched. And now, the knowledge of that opened the ever-present hole at his feet. There was a bottle of vodka wrapped in a rag in his trunk. He could take it out, slug down a mouthful or two. More.

  Such an easy slide into that dark place.

  But not right now, he told himself. Not with Cassandra in the house as well as Oomfaa and Carver. Not with children around. He could keep it together. He would keep it together.

  He made himself return to the house. The garbage disposal was grinding merrily and Carver wore a warrior’s grin. “Who said I was just another pretty face?” he said, sending a triumphant look at the two women still overseeing breakfast. Gabe followed his gaze.

  Cassandra was holding Pebbles.

  The sight struck him like an ax to the chest. He couldn’t breathe as he took in the softened lines of her face, the little back-and-forth rock of her body as she murmured to the baby, her cheek against the child’s temple. The baby’s head was snuggled into Cassandra’s neck and one small fist was tangled in her hair that tumbled over her generous breasts.

  Gabe knew the wonder of her silky hair and that bountiful softness. He closed his eyes as pain shredded whatever soft parts he had left inside him.

  “She’ll make a great mother, eh?” Carver asked.

  “What?” He opened his eyes again.

  “Cassandra, a great mother,” the other man said, el
bowing Gabe with the arm illustrated with that naked lady tattoo.

  It usually pissed him off, but now he stared down at the ink instead of looking at the woman who was so like it.

  “A wonderful mother,” he agreed, and he knew without a doubt that it was what she wanted for herself.

  Of course it was. Family was her thing. Her lonely child, outcast upbringing had pushed her to pursue every biological tie. She loved her sisters and would revel in the role of aunt, if that came about, but she had to want the tighter bonds of her very own children.

  Which was the last thing he had to offer her.

  So their “new normal” was only postponing the real inevitable. They couldn’t be together. They shouldn’t be together.

  Every moment he took from her only took her away from the man she needed to find, the one who would give her babies. Every moment he took from her only took her away from those she’d be with for the rest of her life.

  At the shrill peal of the phone, Cassandra jolted awake. She stared into the dark, heart pounding with that familiar where-is-Gabe fear, until she remembered he was beside her. As the ring sounded again, she sat up and glanced over at his side of the bed.

  It was empty.

  He was gone.

  She snatched up the phone. “Yes?”

  It was routine, the finding of clothes, keys, the drive to the Beach Shack. She peered into Gabe’s car as she jogged toward the bar’s doorway, noting the empty bottle of vodka on the passenger seat.

  Mr. Mueller was waiting for her. “I’m sorry, Cassandra. I only came in a short time ago to close up or else I would have called you sooner.”

  “Sooner” Gabe had been beside her in bed. They’d spent the day together—a late brunch, an afternoon with the newspaper and the three cats, a shared dinner. When Edward had called, Gabe had happened to pick up the receiver for her and she thought his intimidating growl might have put the other man off for good. When she’d teased him about his caveman phone manners, he’d chased her into the bedroom and they’d wrestled until lust had been declared the winner.

  There’d been two condom wrappers tossed on the table on his side of the bed when she’d fallen asleep. And after that he must have snuck out on her.

  “Where is he?” she asked, glancing around the small place. A woman was huddled on a stool at the dim end of the bar, but there didn’t seem to be anyone else drowning their sorrows.

  “He took off,” the bartender said. “Was drinking with her when I came in”—he indicated the lone figure with a cocked thumb—“but when I reached for the phone, he stumbled out.”

  Yet he wasn’t in his car or loitering in the parking lot either. Squaring her shoulders, she forced herself toward the woman nursing the last of a beer. “Hey,” she said, then had to clear her throat and start over. “I’m a friend of Gabe’s. Might you know where he went?”

  Bleary eyes swung her way. Platinum, teased hair was pinned in a messy updo and her bangs tangled with black-as-black eyelashes. “I do his hair,” the woman said. “He called me and asked to come in for a trim.”

  Cassandra pressed a fist beneath her breasts and tried to focus on the matter at hand. But it hurt bad, it hurt right there below her heart, to think that he’d left her bed for another woman. His barber, Sammy. For a “trim.” Yeah, right.

  “I have a styling chair on one side of my duplex.” She blinked and then seemed to really see Cassandra. “You could come in. I could cut your hair in a bob.”

  “No, thanks. I’ve seen what you do to Gabe.”

  “Don’t blame me for that,” the other woman said. “When he gets a hankering for a haircut, he lets me go at it with scissors, and then he takes the clippers and finishes the job himself. Always looks like hell.”

  “So I’m looking for a refugee from the underworld.” Cassandra sighed. “Do you know if he called himself a cab?”

  The woman shrugged. “He called himself a selfish son of a bitch and then he walked out.”

  What could she do but start for home? If Gabe had any sense, he would have climbed into a taxi and headed back to their canyon. He’d probably beat her there.

  Rain started to fall as she pulled out of the bar’s parking lot. The back end of the car fishtailed, a side effect of Southern California’s almost perpetual sunshine. During the long dry spells, oil built up on the roads, only to rise as it rained, turning asphalt into dangerous slicks.

  People who said Californians didn’t know how to drive in the rain had never tried driving on a greased surface. She kept her speed slow, but the cars sharing the four-lane Pacific Coast Highway weren’t always as cautious. As one rushed by her, throwing up a rooster tail of wet that landed on her windshield, she was blinded for the instant it took for her to edge up the action of her wipers.

  When they cleared the deluge, she saw him. Gabe. Walking in the middle of the highway. Where there were no wide turn lanes and no concrete dividers.

  Terror clamped like a skeletal hand around her throat. Her mind raced as she checked her rearview mirror. Clear.

  Up ahead, though, coming from the opposite direction, another car approached him. He kept walking, head down, and it laid on the horn as it passed. He didn’t flinch.

  She swallowed a shriek, but kept moving, slowing as she came abreast of him. Clammy sweat broke over her skin as she flipped on her hazard lights. Her finger punched the window opener.

  Cold raindrops fell on her cheeks. “Gabe!” she shouted. “Gabe, get in the car.”

  He kept walking.

  She checked her rearview mirror again, and edged her car forward. “Gabe!”

  His head came around. In the glare of headlights off the wet asphalt, his face glowed like a ghost’s. He blinked, as if he didn’t recognize her.

  This wasn’t the time to make introductions. Gritting her teeth, she pulled the car closer to him, put it in PARK and set the brake, then jumped out. Fueled by a potent mix of fear and anger, she dragged him to the passenger side and stuffed him inside. Then she ran around and got behind the wheel.

  “I’m going to kill you,” she said, as she accelerated, taking them back up to a safe and sane speed. “I’m going to . . . going to . . .” And then she humiliated herself by breaking into choking sobs that sounded loud and pitiful and desperately worried because that killing is what she was afraid of most. That Gabe was once again contemplating killing himself.

  “Cassandra.” His hand awkwardly patted her thigh.

  “Don’t touch me.” She hunched away and tried wiping her face on her wet shoulder. Then she glanced over at him, taking in the drenched state of his clothes. “God damn it, Gabe,” she said. “What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking about Maddie,” he said. If he was drunk, it was only the slightest of slurs in his voice. “I’ve been thinking about Maddie all day.”

  “Oh, Gabe.”

  “I loved her, Froot Loop. I was a good father, I think. Not great. Too busy. But I tried to let her know how special she was to me.” He closed his eyes. “I miss her so much.”

  Fresh tears fell, warm over Cassandra’s cold face. At Oomfaa’s that morning, she’d noted his tension around the children, but he’d seemed to pull himself together. He certainly hadn’t mentioned any mental anguish to her. But all day, as they ate together, played together, made love, running through his head like a cold, secret spring, had been thoughts of his daughter.

  His wife, too, she guessed.

  Gabe’s ghosts.

  Indefatigable. Undefeatable. At least it seemed that way to her right now. Maybe in the morning she could imagine some way to rescue Gabe from the clutches of his memories and his pain.

  She pulled into their driveway and then parked in front of her house. Weary and frozen to the bone, she headed for her door. Gabe didn’t follow. He trudged up the drive toward his place, head bent, his posture the same as it had been as he’d walked the line on the highway.

  Lost in thought.

  Or just plain lost—at least
to her.

  Eighteen

  Friends are God’s apologies for relatives.

  —HUGH KINGSMILL

  Under dreary skies and dripping rain, Cassandra opened Malibu & Ewe. In the quiet time before the shop’s business hours, she went over her checklist for her birthday party the next day. Celebration was the last thing she had in mind, but the invitations had been sent, the food and beverages bought. She had no clue if Dr. Frank Tucker would show up.

  She’d still not confessed to Nikki and Juliet about contacting him. She’d not confessed to them she wasn’t certain they were her sisters, either.

  All her important secrets were still safe from the relevant parties. After finding Gabe in the rain last night, she was only gladder that he didn’t know her feelings for him. A safe heart equaled a whole heart.

  The bells on the door rang out and she walked into the main section of the store to find Juliet. “I didn’t expect you back at work so soon, did I?” she asked, surprised.

  “I’m home from my honeymoon and all unpacked. Noah’s returned to his office. So I thought you might need a backup today.” Her blue and green eyes took a slow, considering pass over Cassandra.

  “You heard something,” she said flatly. “People are talking.”

  Juliet lifted her hands. “It’s Malibu. Someone called Jay and then Nikki called me.”

  Cassandra turned away from the other woman’s probing gaze. “Well, I’ll be glad to have the help today. There’s a group coming through on a yarn crawl and we’re one of their first stops.”

  “That’s all you’re going to say?”

  Eyebrows raised, she turned back. “Uh . . . can I make you some tea?”

  “Yuck, no,” Juliet replied, sounding just like Nikki. “I mean, aren’t you going to tell me about last night?”

  She shook her head. Not this time. “Let it go, Juliet.”

  Whatever she might have responded was lost in a flurry of activity as the first couple of customers of the day arrived. Umbrellas had to be propped open to dry, rain exclaimed over, worry expressed about what Mother Nature had next in store for beautiful but unpredictable Malibu.