by Linda Seed
Surprise registered on her features. “It doesn’t mean any such thing. She’s darling.”
Brian knew his mother well enough to know that darling was not a compliment. Darling was the word she’d have used to describe a Pomeranian in a sweater.
“All right, what?” Brian folded his arms over his chest. “What’s the issue?”
“I don’t have an issue. Though I do wonder why she doesn’t have her own kitchen.”
“She doesn’t have a kitchen because she lives in an Airstream trailer.”
Lisa let out a delighted laugh. “Of course she does.”
“Mom? Do you seriously disapprove of her just because of where she lives?”
Lisa looked at her son in bemusement. “When did I say anything about disapproving? I’m all in favor of minimalist living, for those who have the temperament for it. Besides, it’s certainly better than that stifling suburban stucco box your father raised you in.”
Brian took off his glasses and rubbed his forehead, feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on. “Dad raised me in that stifling stucco box because you left, and he was doing the best he could on his own, and that suburb you disdain so much had good schools and Little League and a low crime rate, and—”
“It had no culture. It had no heartbeat! I was dying there, Brian. You know that. I had to leave. I was running for my life.”
“Really.” He turned to face her. “What about my life? What about Dad’s life?”
“Don’t be dramatic, Brian. It doesn’t suit you.”
It suited her, though—down to her manicured toes. Brian went back inside and left her on the patio alone.
Cassie noted the fact that when Brian came back inside, he went straight to his bedroom and closed the door without saying anything to her. She was certain he was upset, and she wasn’t the one who’d upset him.
The cake, she reminded herself. Focus on the cake.
She took her baked layers out of the freezer, then unwrapped one of them and placed it on a cake board she’d already prepared. She brushed off a few loose crumbs, then began frosting the cake with the buttercream she’d made.
When Lisa came into the kitchen and began looking in the refrigerator, Cassie got the distinct feeling it was less about finding some food or beverage than it was about investigating Cassie.
“Mountain Dew, my God.” Lisa shuddered and closed the refrigerator. “You’d think it’s too much to ask for Brian to stock some Perrier.”
“Um … I think he’s got some herbal tea,” Cassie offered.
“Does he? That’s surprising.” Lisa hunted around in the cupboards until she found it. “This will do. Would you like some?”
“Sure. I mean … yes, thank you. That would be nice.”
Lisa went through the motions of making tea: she filled the kettle with water, put it on the stove, and took out two mugs and placed them on the counter, each with a tea bag string dangling from its side.
“So, Cassie. How did you and my son meet?”
Cassie realized that the true story—the one in which she’d been using the house without permission and he’d caught her wearing nothing but a towel—was not something she could tell Lisa.
She’d found that lies worked better if they closely resembled the truth, so she modified the facts as little as possible.
“Well, I was here at Otter Bluff when Brian arrived and surprised me. Elliot and I didn’t know he was coming.” All true, as far as it went.
“Ah. I suppose I should have called and informed you. Though, if I had, you and Brian might not have struck up a friendship.”
Was there something arch in the way she’d said the word friendship? Or had Cassie imagined that?
“That’s true,” Cassie agreed. “Sometimes things work out for the best.”
“How charmingly optimistic.” Lisa took her mug to the kitchen island where Cassie was working and sat down on a barstool to watch.
At first, Cassie found it hard to focus under the scrutiny. But then, after a while, she got lost in the task. That was one of the things she loved about decorating cakes: it took her away from her own world and immersed her in one of sugary flowers, smooth frosting, and the challenge of making her vision into reality.
By the time Lisa spoke again, Cassie had almost forgotten she was there.
“My God, you’ve made that frosting look like silk. It’s flawless. How in the world?”
Cassie, pleased by the praise, smiled as she worked. “A lot of it’s in the making of the buttercream, but there are tricks to applying it, too. If you dip the spatula in cold water, you can get a really smooth finish.” She demonstrated with her own spatula.
“Why, that’s wonderful,” Lisa said. “You know, I don’t usually strive for that kind of gloss in my own work. It’s all about chunky textures. I like to create a sense of the tactile.”
At first Cassie wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but then she remembered Elliot saying Lisa was an artist. Was it possible she was a rich and famous one? Cassie recalled something about that. She knew so little about the art world, it was certainly possible.
She was about to ask about it when Lisa propped her chin on her hand and said, “You know, this reminds me of the cake Brian’s father and I had at our wedding.”
“Was it beautiful?” Cassie asked.
“My God, no. It was a mess.” But she smiled wistfully. “We had a bargain wedding—Garrett was a grocery clerk, you know, so we didn’t have money to spare—and we used the cheapest baker we could find. And, my dear, it showed.”
“Oh. That’s a shame.” Cassie finished the base layer of frosting and set to work making white orchids in buttercream.
“I suppose. On the other hand, the cake is supposed to serve as a symbol for the marriage, yes? For that, it was perfect. Cheap, shabby, and leaving a bad taste in one’s mouth.”
“That’s … I don’t …” Cassie didn’t know what to say to that, and she found herself sputtering helplessly.
“Water under the bridge, darling. Now, what variety of orchid is that, exactly?”
Cassie finished the cake, boxed it, cleaned up the kitchen, then got ready to take the cake home to refrigerate it until she could deliver it to the bride the following day.
By the time she was ready to leave, Brian still hadn’t emerged from his room. Thor was in there with him, having scrabbled and whined at the door until Brian let him in.
“I wanted to say goodbye to Brian,” Cassie said, standing at the door with her purse hanging from her shoulder and the cake box in her hands. “Do you think he’s okay?”
“Of course he is. He’s just hiding from me, dear. I imagine he’ll come out when he becomes weak from hunger—or when I leave on Sunday evening. Whichever comes first.”
“Oh.” Cassie shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “There’s obviously a … a dynamic between you two that I … that’s none of my business. I’m sorry to have intruded.”
“Nonsense, Cassie. Without you, I’d have had no one to talk to. Goodnight, dear. And when you text my son, please tell him that he’s acting like a toddler and I’d like him to come out so we can chat. Would you?”
Cassie did text Brian, and she didn’t wait until she got home to do it. She pulled out her phone and sent a message as she sat in her car at the curb outside his house.
I’m leaving now. Where did you go?
His response came a moment later. My mother was right. I’m hiding from her.
Cassie laughed. You heard that?
It’s not as though she keeps her voice down.
He had a point. Lisa had projected her voice as though she were speaking to an auditorium.
What’s the deal with you two?
Oh, you know. The usual. She abandoned me and my dad when I was six so she could pursue an art career in LA. Then, the only time I saw her was when she showed up for the occasional birthday to bring me a wildly inappropriate gift. Nothing you haven’t seen a million times on The
Brady Bunch.
Cassie stared at her phone, horrified. What could she say to that? How could she possibly respond?
Hold on. I’m coming out, he said.
As Cassie sat there, Brian emerged from a hedge at the side of the house. He came to her car and got in on the passenger side.
“You came out of a hedge,” she said.
“I slipped out the sliding glass door in the bedroom and came around.”
She’d intended to be subtle, but screw subtlety. “God. Did she really leave you when you were six?”
“She would specify that she left my father, not me. But damned if I could tell the difference at the time. I still can’t.”
“Wow. She’s successful, right?”
“Very.”
“She seems really …” Big was the word Cassie wanted. Not big in the physical sense, but in terms of her personality. Her presence.
“Yeah.” He didn’t wait for her to finish her sentence. “She is.” He raised his eyebrows. “Any chance you want to help me escape? Maybe drive me across the border into Mexico and leave me by the side of the road?”
She smiled. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Yeah, probably not.” He sighed and looked at the house. “It’s only a weekend, right?”
“That’s the spirit.”
“You know what would be good, though? If I could take you out to dinner tomorrow night, it would get me out of the house. Also, it would show her that I do have a life, contrary to what she seems to think.”
Cassie didn’t know whether to feel excited or offended. “So, what you’re saying is, you don’t actually want to go out with me for its own sake, you just want to do it to make things easier with your mother. Enticing offer.”
“What I’m saying is”—he leaned closer and lowered his voice to a register that was intimate and sexy—“I’ve wanted to go out with you since we met. On a real date that isn’t cake-related. So, will you? Please?”
“Oh.” Just seconds ago he’d been cute man-child Brian, the goofy guy of the leftover pizza and Mountain Dew. But now, he’d transformed into the handsome, sexy Brian from the wedding. How did he do that? And could he make the change at will? “That’s … that’d be good.”
“Okay. I’ll call you tomorrow. I’d better get back in there and face Medusa.”
Chapter 14
“So, I met Brian’s mother.”
Cassie was sitting at her mother’s kitchen table eating a plate of pancakes Nancy had made for her. Nancy was always moaning about how Cassie probably wasn’t eating right in the trailer, so when she’d come in asking for her mother’s pancakes, Nancy had been delighted.
At the stove, Nancy was working on a stack of pancakes for Cassie’s father, Vince. Across the table from her, Lacy, who had already finished breakfast, was sitting with Trevor on her lap and a mug of coffee in front of her. Lacy had stopped by to eat pancakes and also to give Nancy her morning Trevor fix.
“Who’s Brian?” Nancy wanted to know.
“Oh … he’s just a guy in one of the rental houses. His mother owns it. We maybe went out once.”
“Honey, what does it mean that you maybe went out?” Nancy, a spatula in her hand, looked at her youngest daughter.
“We definitely went out, but it maybe wasn’t a date,” Cassie clarified. “But … he asked me out again on what would definitely be a date.”
“You met his mother after one maybe date?” Lacy wrinkled her nose. “That’s kind of soon, isn’t it?”
“No, no.” Cassie shook her head and stabbed a forkful of pancake. “I met her, but it wasn’t a thing. She just happened to be where I happened to be.”
“And where was that?” Nancy had become so absorbed in Cassie’s conversation that she hadn’t noticed her pancakes were burning. She noticed now. She flipped them, then turned back toward Cassie.
“At Brian’s house. Which isn’t really his house, it’s the vacation rental, and it belongs to his mom. Otter Bluff, the one on the water in Marine Terrace? She just happened to be there while I just happened to be there.”
“Enough with the logistics.” Lacy bounced her son on her knee. “Tell me about the mother. How was that?”
“It was interesting.” Cassie ate another bite of pancake, savoring the butter and syrup and the soft texture on her tongue. “She was … odd. But kind of cool. She’s an artist. I get the feeling she’s kind of a big shot, but that’s not something I’d know about.”
“Hmm. Is she anyone I’ve heard of? What’s her name?”
“Lisa Barlow.”
Lacy thought, then shook her head. “No, but I’ll ask Gen.”
Genevieve Porter, one of Lacy’s best friends, was an art dealer with a gallery on Main Street. If Lisa was, indeed, an art world big shot, Gen would know.
“The thing is,” Cassie went on, “Brian says she left him and his father when Brian was six, and she’s barely been in his life. She was all darling this and sweetheart that when she was talking to him, but he spent most of the time shut up in his room, avoiding her.”
“Yikes,” Lacy said.
Nancy shook her head and tsked. “I don’t know how a mother could turn her back on her child. Especially one so young.”
Cassie didn’t know, either, and it was clear Brian had serious issues with it himself.
“You know, Cassie,” Nancy began, then trailed off.
Cassie knew her mother well enough to know that Nancy was about to say something Cassie didn’t want to hear.
“Yes, Mom?” Cassie prompted her.
“Here it comes,” Lacy said.
“Oh, don’t give me that, Lacy.” Nancy scowled at her daughter. “All I was going to say is that it’s a concern, this young man having such trouble with his mother. Cassie, if you and he were to end up together—”
“It’s just one date, Mom. Or, two, depending on how you count them. Nobody said we’re going to end up together.”
“If you end up together,” Nancy went on, undaunted, “you’re going to have that woman for a mother-in-law. And …”
“She already has us getting married,” Cassie remarked to Lacy.
“And,” Nancy said, raising her voice over her daughters, “people who grow up with troubled family lives tend to replay those problems in their marriages.”
“Mom. Brian and I aren’t planning a wedding. I’m pretty sure he was just thinking dinner and a movie.”
“I stand by what I said. Vince!” Nancy called to her husband, who hadn’t come downstairs yet. “Your pancakes are ready!”
Brian came out of his bedroom at Otter Bluff the next morning to find his mother sitting on the sofa with her bare feet propped on the coffee table and her laptop open on her thighs. She was wearing a pair of red-framed reading glasses and a silk kimono.
“Good morning, Mom.” Brian let Thor outside to pee, then went to the kitchen to pour some coffee, his hair standing up at odd angles from sleep.
“Brian, dear.” She looked at him over the tops of the glasses, her fingers paused over the keyboard. “I should probably mention that Lorenzo will be here around midmorning.”
Brian blinked at her. “Who’s Lorenzo?”
She scowled. “I’m sure I’ve mentioned him to you several times. He’s my personal assistant.”
It escaped Brian why his mother needed a personal assistant. Yes, she was fairly sought-after these days in certain circles, and yes, she always seemed to be juggling one engagement or another. But was she so busy that she needed an assistant to follow her on her weekend getaway?
“Okay, but why’s he coming here?”
“To assist me, obviously.” She went back to typing something into the computer.
“Well … is he staying overnight? Where’s he going to sleep?” Otter Bluff only had two bedrooms, and Brian wasn’t about to give up his.
Lisa stopped typing again and gave Brian a slow, lopsided smile. “Oh … I don’t think that will be a problem.”
&nb
sp; Weekends were busy days at Central Coast Escapes, with various renters arriving and leaving. That meant Cassie had a busy day ahead of her on Saturday.
She had to clean two houses in the morning and cover Elliot in the office for a couple of hours in the afternoon. She had to deliver the sample cake to the bride-to-be and sell her on a plan for the full-sized cake. Then she had to plan her wardrobe—and her overall approach—for her date with Brian.
She couldn’t plan what she’d wear until she’d thought out her philosophy for the date. Should she aim for devastating sex appeal, with the intention of making him want her desperately? Or should she go for cute and casual, just in case he had something closer to friendship in mind?
The wedding they’d attended together had been mostly friendly. But the way his voice had sounded when he’d asked her out—the way he’d looked at her? That suggested that the devastatingly sexy approach was called for.
She thought about it as she cleaned a house on Park Hill. Then she called Lacy on her way to her next assignment.
“So, sexy, right? Not cute and friendly?”
Since Lacy already knew about the date, there was no need to get her caught up on the background of the question.
“Well … what are the chances that you’re going to friend-zone him?”
Cassie considered that. “I don’t know. I mean … I guess that could happen. It’s too soon to tell.”
“Okay. Then, on a scale of one to ten, how much do you want the two of you to get friend-zoned?”
“Zero.” The answer popped out of Cassie’s mouth before she could think about it. Still, it felt true. She’d like for this to go somewhere, though she had no idea whether it would.
“Zero?”
“Yes. I’m sticking with that. Zero.”
“Okay. Then irresistible sex kitten it is.”
While Cassie was thinking about sexiness, Brian was actively trying not to think about it.
Lorenzo arrived at around one o’clock, and the guy hadn’t been in the door five minutes before he tongue-kissed Lisa and grabbed her ass. Thor, an excellent judge of people, growled at him.