“You must take after her.”
Momentarily puzzled, she burst out laughing. “You mean the condo? Heavens, no. Smith has a housekeeper come in three times a week. She was there yesterday afternoon. That’s why it’s so clean. My style is more...shall we say cluttered?”
The kitchen was empty but warmer than the rest of the house, thanks to the cookies baking in the oven. Another batch was cooling on a wire rack on the counter. She took one for herself and offered Reid one, then walked to the screen door. “Mama?”
From somewhere out of sight came the pleased sound of her mother’s voice. “Why, darlin’, I wasn’t expecting you. Hold on. I’ll be right in.” A short moment later, Rosemary came in, carrying a basket full of fresh-cut flowers. She greeted Cassie with a hug and a kiss, then fixed her gaze on Reid.
Cassie leaned back against the counter. “Mama, this is Reid Donovan. Reid, my mother, Rosemary.”
Clearly uncomfortable, he accepted the hand that her mother offered and murmured, just as she’d instructed, “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Wade.”
“A young man with manners,” Rosemary said. “There’s something we don’t see every day—particularly with that one.” She nodded toward Cassie, then, still holding his hand, she pursed her lips. “Donovan. We knew some Donovans in the old neighborhood. Bertrice and... What was her girl’s name?”
“Meghan. She’s my mother.”
Cassie carefully watched her mother’s expression. With all she knew of Meghan Donovan, she would bet her mother hadn’t been fond of her. She wouldn’t have approved of her daughters running around with her, and she very well might not approve of Cassie running around with her son.
Rosemary’s expression didn’t change, though, as she released Reid’s hand and set the basket of flowers on the counter, then removed the cookies from the oven and made room for them on the wire rack. “I remember reading in the paper quite a few years back that Bertrice had died. I was sorry. How is your mother?”
The faintest hint of defensiveness crept into his eyes. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her in a while.”
Cassie would bet that, if pressed, he knew to the day how long it had been. Maybe Meghan had been a lousy mother, maybe she had abused and neglected him before abandoning him, but he still felt something for her. Hadn’t he admitted that he’d never gotten onto one of those ships and sailed off to a better life because he’d hoped that one day she might come back for him?
“I suppose you two met through her job,” Rosemary went on as if there was nothing unusual about his answer.
“My boss is Reid’s stepmother,” Cassie volunteered. “You probably remember his father, Jamey O’Shea.”
“Oh, yes, I remember Jamey. He was a good-looking boy, and he never held a grudge against anyone, not even those parents of his. I don’t mean to be saying anything bad about your grandparents, Reid, but they left that boy to fend pretty much for himself from the time he was little. Of course, Serenity was different back then. There were problems, but most of the people looked out for each other. People looked out for Jamey.” Removing a vase from under the sink, Rosemary filled it with water and began trimming stems, then arranging the flowers in the vase. “I don’t mind telling you, this family isn’t too pleased with Cassie’s new job. We worked a long time to get our kids away from Serenity, and then she goes back there to work.”
“You always taught us to be charitable and help those who are less fortunate,” Cassie reminded her.
“Yes, but this wasn’t what we had in mind.” Pausing in her work, Rosemary looked up at Reid. “Do you think Serenity is a fit place for a young woman to be working?”
“No, ma’am.” He looked past her toward Cassie. “It’s certainly not a fit place to live.”
Cassie made a face at him behind her mother’s back while Rosemary talked on. “It certainly isn’t. At least we don’t have to worry about that. With the salary this alternative school is paying, she can’t afford to move out of Smith’s condo. If we thought she had even the vaguest notion of moving down there, her father would have to put his foot down. We simply wouldn’t allow it.” Drawing a breath, she stuck the last bloom in place, surveyed the arrangement with satisfaction, then turned to Cassie. “I never asked what brings you and your friend by here this morning.”
“Furniture. Remember that wicker dresser I asked you to keep for me?”
Her mother’s nod made her gray hair bounce. “It’s in the garage. So you’re moving that into the condo. It doesn’t exactly go with all that awful gray, does it?”
“It’ll go fine. I have the perfect place in mind for it.”
“I can’t imagine where it might be,” Rosemary said skeptically even as she removed a heavy ring of keys from a drawer. “Here you go. Be sure to lock up when you’re done. When you come back, I’ll have some cookies for you to take.”
Cassie accepted the keys on their way out. She was sorting through them, looking for a possible match, when Reid fell into step beside her. “What are all those keys for?”
She smiled. “Heaven only knows, because Mama sure doesn’t.”
“Why doesn’t she throw them away?”
“A suggestion various family members make every time we have to get into the garage. She says she can’t throw them out because then she might find out what they go to, but then it would be too late.” She sorted out seven padlock keys as they reached the garage and started through them methodically. The sixth one opened the lock.
The garage was dusty and warm. Narrow aisles stretched from front to back and all the way around the perimeter. Poverty’s lessons could be hard to overcome, and for her parents, getting the most out of everything was one. They never threw anything away if there was the slightest chance that it could be fixed up and used again. Some of the stuff in the garage was truly important, to them if no one else, but some was just junk. Cassie liked to think that her wicker dresser fell into the first category, but she couldn’t blame anyone for thinking otherwise.
“This is it.” She began moving the boxes stacked on top, then Reid helped her carry it out into the sun.
“What color are you planning to paint it?” He gave it a shake, checking just as she had the day she’d bought it for five bucks. It was solid, old and of better quality than she could afford to buy new.
“Pale green. Tomorrow morning I’ll take it to the classroom, spread out some drop cloths and spray it.” She would line the drawers with pretty scented papers and slide it against the wall in her new bedroom, where it would look beautiful.
“Your mother’s right. It would never fit in the condo.”
She wiped away a cobweb from the dresser top, then uncomfortably met his gaze with its vague disapproval. Who would have guessed that Reid tough-guy Donovan wouldn’t approve of lying to one’s mother, even if it was for the mother’s own peace of mind? “I plan to tell them that I’ve moved,” she said lamely.
“When?”
“Eventually.”
“You know they’ll be hurt.”
She wandered back into the garage, heading down one aisle to the shadowy stacks in the back. “They’ll be upset,” she disagreed even while acknowledging to herself that he was right. Her parents would be hurt. They wouldn’t understand that this was something she felt compelled to do. They wouldn’t even try to understand the connection she felt to Kathy’s House and the school, to Karen, the rest of the staff, the kids, their families, to Jamey and to Reid. But they would accept it. Eventually.
Moving a box to a higher stack, she rested her hand on an old table that had stood beside the front door in the Serenity apartment. It wasn’t particularly pretty, a half round painted a deep, almost black shade, with scalloped edges and turned legs, but she liked it. It would be perfect, with an old-fashioned lamp, in the hallway. “What do you think of this?”
He gave it the briefest of glances. “This isn’t a store, you know, where you can walk up and down the aisles and say, ‘I’ll take this, this and
this.”’
“Of course it is. That’s why Mama and Daddy keep all this, so that someday it can be used again.” She pulled the table out and carried it along in front of her. In the opposite corner, she found a bookcase, only two feet high and painted the ugliest rusty orange she’d ever seen. With no more coaxing than her best smile, Reid unearthed it and carried it outside.
“So you found something else.” Rosemary approached them, a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a plastic-covered platter of cookies in the other. “If there’s anything else you’d like, by all means, take it. All this stuff is just gathering dust out here.”
“Thanks, Mama, but this should do it for now. Are the cookies for me?”
“No, the flowers are. If you want cookies, you can come over here and get them, like a daughter should. These are for Reid. You can just give the plate to Cassie when you’re done,” she said, turning her attention to him, “or bring it by the next time you’re over this way. I’m almost always home.”
He looked for a moment as if he didn’t want to accept the gift. Was he so unused to anyone giving him anything but grief? Hadn’t he ever been on the receiving end of such a simple gesture? Finally, though, he did take the plate with a murmur of thanks and carried it to the truck along with the bookcase.
“He seems like a nice young man, considering.”
Cassie looked at her mother, who was watching Reid. “Considering what?” That he was from Serenity? That he was Meghan Donovan’s son?
“That he has this look of desperate fear in his eyes. Has the boy never gone to meet a girl’s parents before?”
“I don’t know.” She didn’t go further, didn’t explain that on Serenity few parents—if they were around—were interested in meeting the guys their daughters were involved with. Rosemary knew that. She also didn’t point out that today’s visit had nothing to do with Reid meeting Rosemary, that they didn’t have that kind of relationship.
Yet.
“What does he do?”
He returned to pick up the dresser, easily hefting what she would have scooted along by herself. Once he was out of earshot, she replied, “He’s a mechanic, and he helps out at O’Shea’s.”
“I seem to remember Jamey marrying that Donovan girl. Lasted all of three months. Why doesn’t he have his father’s name?”
“I guess Meghan didn’t want him to. When she left Jamey, she took Reid to Georgia, then brought him back here when he was fifteen. He never saw his father the entire time.”
“She was a pretty girl, but, heavens, was she selfish. I don’t envy him for having lived with her.” Rosemary shook her head in dismay, then heaved a sigh and patted Cassie’s arm. “At least he’s an improvement over that last one you brought around—that Trevor.”
Cassie couldn’t resist teasing. “A mechanic from Serenity Street better than an Ivy League MBA?”
“A fancy degree doesn’t make a person worth knowing. It certainly takes more than that to be good enough for this family.” Her mother handed her the flowers, then closed and locked the garage door. “Don’t just stand there like a helpless female. Take that table to the truck so Reid can load it. Come back and see us soon.” She gave Cassie a kiss, then raised her voice. “Reid, it was nice meeting you. Come back with Cassie to see us.”
His only response was a nod, which Rosemary took for agreement. As she carried the flowers and the table to the truck, Cassie knew it was only acknowledgment. Maybe he would come back. Maybe he would find a reason to want to like her family. Maybe someday he would be happy to make regular visits over here, the way Smith did, the way all the other husbands did. It was wishful thinking, sure.
But wasn’t that part of being Irish?
For all but six months of his life, Reid had lived in apartments so poorly constructed that privacy was only an illusion. At the Morgans’ place, they had routinely gotten an earsplitting blow-by-blow of the next-door neighbors’ daily fights. At his grandmother’s apartment, he’d known as much about the intimate side of that neighbor’s life as she had. In all the countless places he and Meghan had lived in Atlanta, there had been no secrets.
For the first time, that wasn’t the case. So far, true to her word, Cassie was quiet. In the past eighteen hours or so, he’d heard little from next door—the occasional creak of a floorboard, the sound of something tumbling to the floor, the shower running this morning—but he hadn’t forgotten, not for one second, that she was there. During the shower, he’d found it impossible to forget.
It was nearly nine o’clock on a warm, sticky Sunday morning, long past time for him to be up, but he still lay in bed. Thanks to his new neighbor, he’d had a restless night, too preoccupied with what was going on in her bedroom to relax enough to sleep in his own, too distracted by what had happened yesterday to rest through the night.
Cassie had been jealous. Jealous. Over him. In a perfect world, she shouldn’t even know him. She certainly wouldn’t have any interest in him. But hadn’t he known for the past twenty years that this world was far from perfect?
Any average living, breathing man would have been flattered by the knowledge that she was interested in him. The idea scared him. It was one thing to want her and know he couldn’t have her. It was another entirely to want her and know that he could. That he shouldn’t, that maybe he wouldn’t, but he could, for a while at least, until the novelty wore off for her. Until she realized once and for all that the reality of an affair with a rebel wasn’t as romantic and appealing as the fantasy. Until she got tired of trying to relate to a man with whom she had nothing in common besides geographical location. Until she began longing for the companionship of her intelligent, elegant and sophisticated friends, the ones who read the same heavy, literary novels that had filled several of her boxes, the ones who shared her esoteric tastes in music, the ones who had accompanied her on her trips abroad.
The friends who couldn’t be more different from him than light from dark. Good from bad. Mr. Right from Mr. Wrong.
He was wrong. He knew it, even if she didn’t.
But just for a moment, lying there in his too-long-empty bed, he allowed himself the fantasy of wondering. Could they have an affair without either of them suffering for it? Could they move successfully from friendship to dating to intimacy, making love, sex?
He’d never engaged in casual sex. Sometimes his feelings for the woman were casual, he was ashamed to admit, but never for the act. He’d learned a long time ago that sex was one time when it was all right to touch and be touched, one time when physical contact didn’t involve pain.
He suspected that sex with Cassie would be a whole new experience, one that he just might not ever get over.
He was in the process of untangling the threadbare sheet from his legs when a knock sounded at the door. In all the months he’d lived here, the only person who had ever come knocking at his door was Jamey, but something told him this wasn’t his father. Maybe it was the sudden tightening in his chest or the queasy, anxious sensation in his stomach, but he knew it was Cassie.
Rising from the bed, he took a pair of clean jeans from the closet and pulled them on, fastening the metal buttons as he went to the door. For his own protection, he didn’t open it wide, and he braced it with one hand on the knob. After the thoughts he’d just been having, the last thing he needed was to get too uncomfortably close to the object of them.
She looked as cool as an early-spring morning, her hair pulled back in a heavy braid, her summery dress so long that it almost hid the clunky sandals she wore. She was lovely, so incredibly perfect and untouchable that he wanted nothing in the world more than to do just that—to touch her bare shoulders, covered with no more than the narrowest of straps, to glide his hands over the swell of her breasts, her waist, her hips, to pull her close and undress her slowly, to look at her, kiss her and bury himself inside her.
“What do you want?” he asked abruptly, his voice hoarse, thick and heavy with desire.
“And good morning to you,
too. You look like you just got up.”
“I did.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t.” He watched her go still, not breathing, not blinking as her gaze shifted toward the bedroom. “No.”
She glanced at him. “No?”
“No one’s in there. I’m alone.” He had never brought a woman here because... Well, hell, because he’d thought that the only woman he had wanted in the past six months was way off-limits. But yesterday she seemed to have been telling him that she didn’t want to be, and he wanted to believe it. Damned if he could, though.
With a hint of relief, she got to the point of her visit. “I came to invite you to a picnic.”
“A picnic. I haven’t had breakfast yet, and you’re talking about lunch.”
“A breakfast picnic.” She pointed to the basket on the floor at the top of the stairs. It was large, round and filled with all the necessary items. Now that his mind was on it and off Cassie’s body, he could smell muffins, biscuits and bacon. He was hungry, he realized, for more than his usual cold cereal. He wanted to share her food and the old comforter folded over the stair rail. He wanted to share her morning.
“Let me get dressed,” he said, hearing the grudging acceptance in his voice, hoping she didn’t. If she did, she gave no sign of it. As he turned away, she was smiling, a quiet, private smile of triumph. She was genuinely happy that he had accepted her invitation, he reflected as he returned to the bedroom. He hadn’t ever had an easy time of pleasing people. Whatever he did had always been wrong in Meghan’s eyes, and for eleven years Jamey hadn’t been much different. He hadn’t liked the way Reid had behaved, the way he’d talked, the things he’d done, the people he’d hung out with, not even the way he had looked.
The Taming Of Reid Donovan Page 10