by Arlene James
“My relationship with Paul, whatever it is, is none of your business! You have no say in who I see, so just keep your opinions to yourself!”
“For pity’s sake, Cassidy, he’s almost a married man!”
“He’s not even an engaged man yet!”
“Yet being the operative word,” William pointed out. “You know he has to marry her!”
“So? He isn’t married to her now, and even if he was, he could still be my friend!”
“You’re more than friends,” William stated flatly. “I don’t know how it happened, but it almost looks like... It almost looks like...he’s in love with you!”
A flash of pleasure, wrapped in pain, struck Cassidy square in the heart, so intense that she had to grab at her anger to hold on to it. “So what if he were?” she managed. “It wouldn’t change anything! He’d still have to marry her.”
“My point exactly!”
“Then what are you worried about? Surely not a little thing like my getting my heart broken!” She could tell from the expression on his face that he hadn’t given two seconds of thought to the possibility that she might get hurt. Oh, no, all his concern was for himself! “Well, relax, brother dear,” she said caustically. “Your plan to get Paul safely married to Betina is still intact!” William literally blanched, all the color draining from his face in a snap. “Good heavens!” Cass exclaimed, insight stunning her. “You’re in this thing up to your neck, aren’t you? You’re in this with Betina!”
Guilt wrote itself all over William. It was everywhere, in his eyes, the twist of his mouth, the flutter of his hands, the set of his shoulders, even the way one foot seemed to edge toward the door. His neck stretched, his head wobbling at the end. “I-I don’t know what you mean. A-all I’ve ever done... all I’ve ever wanted was the best...for everyone!”
Cassidy could only stare, as if seeing him for the first time. He was utterly pathetic, her brother—frightened, unsure, even paranoid. He always expected the worst. Life was one long terror for him. All these years she had believed herself to be the weak one, while he had secretly feared...everything... everyone. Some of the anger left her, but not the resolve. “William,” she said reasonably, firmly, “your job is not at risk, not from me. No matter how deeply you may be involved with Betina and her schemes.”
He twisted miserably in place and blurted out, “I didn’t mean to do it! Sh-she confided in me. She said she had to make him marry her. I didn’t ask why! I didn’t think it was my place!”
Cassidy sighed and shook her head. Poor William. “You told Betina that threatening the company was the only way to make Paul marry her.” It was a statement, not a question, but he answered it, anyway, rather meekly.
“Yes.”
“And who’s idea was it to play hard-to-get?”
“Hers! And I advised against it strongly. But she wouldn’t listen, just as she wouldn’t listen when I advised her to play the part of his great-grandmother in our little drama.”
Cassidy nodded. She didn’t really want to know any more. All she really wanted—Tears scalded the backs of her eyes when she realized that all she really wanted was Paul. Squaring her shoulders, she lifted her chin. “He’s going to marry her,” she told William calmly, “because he doesn’t have any choice. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop seeing him.”
William conceded miserably, bobbing his head. “Betina has threatened to have me fired, you know, if for some reason he should not follow through.”
“That’s not going to happen,” she promised him. “For one thing, he’s going to marry her, and for another, I won’t let it.”
Surprise sent his eyebrows skyward. “You have that much influence?”
It was obvious that he didn’t consider his question insulting. He just couldn’t imagine his little sister having influence with anyone. She let it pass, saying only, “Yes, I think I do.”
To her amusement, William struggled several moments to find something appropriate to say, finally coming up with, “Thank you.”
She chuckled. “You’re welcome. Now can we agree to close the subject, permanently?” William shrugged. She took that for an affirmative answer, saying, “Good. Now can we eat? I’m hungry.”
Alvin cleared his throat and, when they turned to him, pointed at the plate he’d heaped with burgers. “Did someone say she was hungry?”
Cassidy had forgotten he was even there, or rather that she was here, in his house. She looked at her father with his tattoos and his leather and his bald-top ponytail, and it occurred to her that he hadn’t interfered, hadn’t demanded explanations or attention. He’d merely allowed her and William to air their differences. At least he treated them, her, like adults. Cassidy smiled and crossed the room to pull out a stool at the bar and park herself upon it. She looked a pointed invitation at William over her shoulder. Obediently William sat down, and Alvin served lunch, chatting about how he loved these greasy burgers and “tater” chips.
Alvin’s theory was that since a fellow only lived once and he’d managed to make it to retirement, he was entitled to all the enjoyment he could handle from this point onward, and that included eating whatever he pleased. His inclinations were so counter to that of his ex-wife—who as she aged tended to become more and more intent on protecting herself in ever more bizarre ways—that they had led to, if not hastened, the divorce that ended their marriage of some thirty-two yearns.
Cassidy understood the necessity for the divorce, but William had always had a problem with it. He just didn’t see why they couldn’t have stayed married. So what if their approaches to this stage of their lives were diametrically opposed? As far as he was concerned they ought to just ignore that fact and carry on. He was embarrassed by them both, by Anna’s determination to find the secret of longevity and Alvin’s abandoned pursuit of enjoyment. Moreover, he didn’t understand why they couldn’t go their own ways and remain married. Cassidy, on the other hand, couldn’t help wondering why they had stayed married as long as they had. It was easier for her to deal with them, but then she was beginning to see that it was easier for her to deal with life in general than it was her brother. That discovery somehow strengthened her, and she found herself enjoying, for the first time in a long time, the simple act of sharing a meal with members of her own family.
William stayed no longer than necessary, taking his leave as soon as he’d done justice to the food, oddly subdued and quiet. No doubt he was puzzled by the turn of events, by his sister’s refusal to buckle under the pressure he had applied. Cassidy felt sorry for him, even as she realized that William would likely never know the kind of heartbreak to which she had willingly opened herself. After William had gone, Alvin boldly, bluntly leaped into Cassidy’s business, saying, “Tell me about it.” She didn’t have to ask what he meant
“I’m in love with a man who has to marry someone else, and he just happens to be William’s boss.”
Alvin, bless him, didn’t blink an eyelash. “Did he get her pregnant?”
“No!”
“Then why’s he have to marry her?”
Cassidy sighed. “It’s complicated. Let’s just say that if he doesn’t marry her, his business and his family will suffer greatly.
“Hmm, and is he in love with you?”
“Yes, I think he is—for now, anyway.”
“Now’s all there ever is, sweetheart. Now’s all there ever is.”
He was right, of course. While tomorrow would ever be a promise, and the past could never be relived, the present remained the only true reality. It made sense, then, especially if the future promised only loss, to grab all you could from the present.
“Why don’t you tell me all about it?” Alvin urged gently. Cassidy took a deep breath and began by explaining why Paul had to marry Betina Lincoln. Alvin merely grunted at that, either reserving or withholding judgment. When he had heard it all, or at least as much as she was willing to tell him, he had only one thing to say. “Well, kid, I’m proud of you. You c
ould’ve crawled into a hole somewhere and pretended that what you two feel for each other never happened, but instead you’ve chosen to seize the moment and take all you can get from it. It may hurt like hell later, but you’ll always have the memory of these days, and that’s something.”
It came to her suddenly that he was right. She could have Paul now or not at all, and not at all was no longer an option. She thanked her father for lunch, apologized for leaving him with the dishes and excused herself. As she slipped out the door, she heard him chuckle and mutter, “Damned if I didn’t think that girl would live her whole life a virgin.”
Embarrassment and humiliation burned her face red, but it only strengthened her resolve to take all she could from the present—and prove her father’s previous assumptions about her false.
Chapter Seven
Paul smiled down at Cassidy, just as instructed in the script, and at the proper place in the narrative, slipped his arm about her, pulling her close. This time, however, Cassidy did more than simply stare up at him. She lifted her hand and stroked his cheek, her eyes full of promises that were anything but scripted. Paul’s heart suddenly swelled. It was all he could do not to lower his head and kiss her, and then the light faded, and he groped for her hand in the dark, leading her carefully across the blackened stage as the lights came up elsewhere and the narration subtly shifted in tone. The new scene was that of the original Barclay Bakery, with patrons lining up to purchase the breads and pastries turned out by the Barclays and their small staff, but Paul didn’t follow either the narration or the action as he led Cassidy backstage.
To his surprise, the moment they reached the relative privacy to be found behind the scene, Cassidy turned and slid her arms around his waist, squeezing him tightly. “Oh, I’ve missed you!” she whispered, adding, “You know, I’ve never slept so soundly as I did the night you stayed with me.”
Paul felt his heart lurch inside his chest, a bittersweet joy filling him. He remembered the night he’d shared with her and the morning after. The feel of her beneath him had haunted him ever since, but he’d gone away with the impression that their brash with ultimate intimacy had left her shaken and even a little frightened. God knew that he couldn’t blame her, and yet he’d tortured himself ever since with the certain knowledge that some other man would be the first to taste that particular joy with her, while he lived out a farce with a woman he couldn’t bear to touch. He wondered now if life wasn’t about to be more generous to him than he had any right to expect, but he put aside that thought in order to simply enjoy the moment. He leaned down and did what he had repeatedly wanted to do ever since he’d met this woman, he kissed her, quite thoroughly, and was rewarded with her full participation.
She was, in fact, a little aggressive, her arms looping about his neck and pulling tight, her mouth opening wide beneath his, her tongue stroking his before sliding into his mouth. She plastered her body to his, moaning. Paul was shaken, innamed—and a little puzzled. She wasn’t exactly throwing herself at him, but she wasn’t behaving as he’d come to expect, either. He didn’t know whether to be dismayed or delighted. Then she dropped a hand to his chest and rubbed it firmly up and down his torso in slow, yet oddly frantic strokes, and he was suddenly in the most exquisite pain. He throbbed with red-hot need, but it was more than physical and more than emotional. It was soul-deep yearning of a sort he’d never before felt—and never expected to feel again. He forgot to wonder what was going on and simply reveled in it.
Ah, Cassidy. Had he ever wanted a woman this much? Had he ever needed a woman’s touch so desperately?
He lost track of his hands for a few seconds, then she gasped into his mouth, and he realized that he had cupped a breast and was kneading it and she had not pulled away. But if one of them didn’t call a halt soon he was going to be opening zippers and heading for the floor. He wondered how long it would be before someone came looking for them and then conceded that it wouldn’t be long enough. He wanted all her clothes off. Obediently his free hand began tugging the tail of her ribbed knit sweater free of her corduroys. It was then that she finally pulled back.
She stood with her hands on his forearms, gasping for breath and trembling. He curbed the impulse to reach for her again and just waited, hoping, dreaming, not daring to examine too closely what was happening here. Suddenly she lunged forward, grabbing his shirt front in her fists and blurting raggedly, “Come home with me tonight!”
He covered her hands with his. “Cass—”
“I want you to come home with me!”
“Aw, babe. What I wouldn’t give—”
“Please! I need you, Paul. I know we can’t be together very long, but I want as much of you as I can have as long as I can have it. Please.”
He put his arms around her, holding her tight against him as he savored the moment. Gratitude filled him, humbling in its magnitude. “All right. If it’s what you want.”
“It is.”
He closed his eyes and merely held her a moment longer. “Cass, I want you so much!”
She loosened her hold on his shirt, smoothing her hands across his chest. “Wait about half an hour,” she whispered. “Then come.”
He nodded. “Half an hour.”
She pushed free of him and moved wraithlike toward the steps that led down onto the factory floor. Then suddenly she was back, her hands on his shoulders, her mouth pressing against his. “I love you!” she whispered breathlessly, rocking him to the soles of his feet.
“Cass—”
But she had fluttered away, her footfalls tapping lightly on the stairs.
He felt, suddenly, like laughing—or weeping—or both. Jerking his hands over his face, he took several deep breaths and tried to blank his mind, knowing it was the only way he’d make it through the remaining hour or more of rehearsal and that long thirty minutes before he could go to her, make love to her. Cassidy. His Cassidy. For now.
Zombielike he got through, not even remembering afterward what he’d done or said or seen. He was as aware of Cassidy’s tension as his own but nothing and no one else. He couldn’t even recall if she’d looked at him directly, if there had been unread messages in her soft green eyes. He remembered mostly the brightness of the lights and the slowly ticking seconds until he found himself standing in an empty parking lot, watching the small red taillights of the cars carrying away the others. One pair of them belonged to Cassidy’s old German economy car, but he dared not seek them out even now. Instead he got into his own low-slung luxury model and drove to the nearest coffee shop, where he chugged down two cups and ate a piece of soggy pie that he didn’t even want. Exactly twenty-eight minutes after he arrived, he got up and left again.
Oddly, now that the moment was nearly at hand, he felt a calmness settle over him that he hadn’t expected. True, he was a man of experience, too much experience, for most of it he had reason to regret. He knew now why his grandfather had worried for him. He’d been spinning his wheels, running in place, getting nowhere fast, accomplishing nothing, following bodily urges blindly as if that were all this life had to offer. And then a funny, unaffected, bottom-shelf virgin, a lovely and unexpected treasure somehow overlooked by the rest of the world, had put him on the right path. He’d never beheld such a vista of beauty, never felt such accomplishment in simply making another person smile or hum or moan the way she had in his arms backstage. And she loved him! That was the most surprising and most humbling realization of all. She loved him, enough to give him what she had given no other man, even knowing that he could never walk that happy road to forever with her. If he was damned—and he was—then he was the luckiest damned man alive.
He pulled up at her curb in the brightest frame of mind he’d known since his grandfather had passed away, and found himself wishing that he could tell the old man how happy he was at this moment. But maybe he knew. Maybe they all knew, his parents right on down to Theo and Jane. Maybe they were sitting up there somewhere marveling at what they’d wrought. Or maybe t
hey were shaking their heads over the mess he’d gotten himself into, over the waste his life would be after Cassidy. But he wouldn’t think of that. Not now. Not when the next few hours promised such joy, enough, he hoped, to last him a lifetime.
He got out of the car, pocketed the keys and jauntily trotted up the pathway to the front door. He knocked and after several moments heard a sultry voice bid him enter. He turned the knob and stepped into fantasyland.
She’d draped the lamps with red scarves and strewn pillows over the floor. Candles flickered all around the perimeter of the room. Soft music played from...he wasn’t sure where, and he didn’t wonder beyond the moment she stepped up to his side and lifted her hands to the collar of his jacket.
“Let’s get rid of this,” she said silkily. He put his arms back and let her slip the jacket from his shoulders. She folded it and draped it carefully over the arm of the chair, and when she turned back to him he caught his breath, realizing suddenly what she wore—or rather, what she didn’t wear.
Ribbed knit and corduroy had given way to a most unconventional costume. She was a French can-can dancer in figure-hugging black satin that closed down the front with a row of tiny silver hooks. Strapless, practically topless, it squeezed in at her tiny waist and pushed her amazingly generous breasts upward. A kind of bustle made of rows of sheer, ruffly fabric fanned out over her hips in the back, but her legs were left bare of all but the very sheerest black stockings seamed up the backs and held in place with white lacy garters at mid-thigh. She wore black shoes with sharp toes and stiletto heels and bows that had been tied at her wrists with strips of hot pink ribbon. Using the same ribbon, she’d caught her dark gold hair in a loose chignon at the crown of her head and left tendrils to float about her face and shoulders, and for the first time that he could remember, she was wearing conventional cosmetics, but only a few strokes of black mascara and sheer, glossy red lipstick.