What a Woman Gets

by Judi Fennell

  Unfortunately, he could still hear her singing even with the water pounding on his head.

  He tried to drown out her voice with soap in his ears, but that key of hers . . . It’d make the hair on his neck stand up if it weren’t wet.

  So he washed off as quickly as possible, taking a little longer to get all the suds out of his ears, wrapped a towel around his waist, and tossed another one over his shoulder. He’d dry off in the bedroom with the buffer of the bathroom between them.

  It was the perfect buffer actually, since he didn’t hear one note as he grabbed his boxer briefs from his dresser.

  That should have been his clue.

  He’d just dried off and tossed the towels onto the bed when he heard a “Titania!” followed by a gasp.

  He turned around.

  Big mistake.

  There stood Cassidy, wrapped in a towel that left her covered her from chest to thigh, but still too naked for his liking, while he . . . he was naked.

  “Oh shit.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What do you—”

  “I should go—”

  “Yeah. Good idea.” He reached for the towels and had to half crawl onto the bed to get the damn things. Which gave her more of a show than he wanted.

  He looked at her. “You can go, you know.”

  “Uh, yes. Right. I will. It’s just—”

  He sat on the bed and plopped the towel on his groin. “Princess, in case it’s escaped your notice, I’m naked.” He fluttered the towel.

  “Technically, you’re not now, and I think Titania came in here.”

  “Is that the best line you can come up with?”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s not a line. She ran out of the bathroom and I checked the front of the house. She hasn’t mastered your spiral staircase, and since she took that nap in here with me, I thought she might have come in. It would help if you’d closed your door.”

  She was right. He should have locked it, too. But it wasn’t as if he was used to living with someone, and he’d thought he’d closed it.

  “Titania,” he called.

  There was a scuffling under his bed.

  Of course she was here. Which meant more torture for him as Cassidy got down on her hands and knees—kill him now—to peek under the bed. If he were standing in his doorway, he’d be getting one hell of a show.

  “Come on, Titania. Get out here.”

  The scuffling moved toward the head of his bed.

  Of course.

  “Titania!” Cassidy slapped the floor. “Come here!”

  The dog didn’t move.

  Liam rolled his eyes. And stood up. And wrapped the towel around his waist.

  Keeping his eyes off the rounded curve of what he was sure was a delectable backside with the towel almost hiked over it, he got down beside Cassidy. “Titania. Come.”

  The little fur-ball belly-crawled right up to him and licked him on the nose.

  He snaked his arm around her and slid her out from under the bed, cradling her like a football.

  “Here you go,” he said once they were both back on their feet.

  Cassidy took the dog, almost dropping her when her towel started to fall.

  Liam went to catch the dog, got a handful of breast, and yanked his hand back as if he’d burned it.

  “Uh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “I know.” Cassidy grabbed her towel with the dog teetering on her arm and there was no way in hell Liam was going to help out this time.

  He turned around. “Let me know when you’re out of the room.”

  “Thanks. I will.”

  He heard her run from the room and he took a huge breath. That’d been too close. She’d been too close. His hand had been too close. As the hard-on beneath the towel attested to. And the feeling of her breast in his palm . . . That was going to be a hard thing to forget.

  He strode to his closet—towel securely wrapped around his waist—and grabbed a T-shirt, the boxer briefs he’d dropped in favor of the towel, and a pair of basketball shorts.

  Too bad he didn’t choose a suit of armor because, just as he walked by her door on his way to the kitchen, the dog bolted from her room, leaving the door open just enough to see—

  Now Cassidy was naked.

  She held the towel to her chest so he only got a side glimpse of a long, shapely leg, and a butt that, yeah, was delectable. Then there was the tiny waist that he’d had his hands on earlier, plus the added bonus of the curve of her breast, a visual he really didn’t need, since his memory was working just fine.

  Unfortunately, so was his dick. It went to full mast in two seconds.

  “Titania, come back here!” She spun around, clasping the towel to her chest, and headed toward the door—stopping the moment she saw him. “Oh.”

  “Yes. Oh.” He looked. He shouldn’t, but he couldn’t help himself.

  “I, uh, need to get dressed.”

  “Yes. You do.”

  “So, could you, you know . . .” She fluttered her fingers.

  Yes. He knew. But the dog was resting on his feet.

  So he scooped Houdini up, spun around, and carried the little yipper—though now she was a little licker, lapping up the remnants of his shower off his wrist—out to the kitchen.

  He grabbed a container of Gran’s beef stew. The little troublemaker was going to eat in style tonight. Just because.

  “Oh you don’t have to feed her. She already ate.”

  A soaked-hair Cassidy came running into the kitchen in a tie-dyed dress that clung to those damn curves of hers way too much for his liking—well, that wasn’t exactly true, but the sight was too much for him to take right now.

  Then she bent down to pick the dog up and the torture just continued as he got a straight-shot view down her dress.

  Seriously, what was he? Eighteen? He should really stop ogling her.

  But why the hell couldn’t she wear a bra?

  Because you didn’t happen to pick one of those up while you were grabbing her lingerie.

  The pooch’s growl was an effective snap out of it call to arms.

  “I guess the dog has other ideas.”

  “She has a name, you know. Titania.”

  “I know. I used it, remember? In my room. When I was naked, remember?”

  “Look, I said I was sorry. If you’d locked the door, this wouldn’t have happened. I didn’t know you were home.”

  “Hey, don’t put this on me. It’s my home. I’m entitled to walk around naked if I want.”

  “Then why were you all out of sorts when I walked in?”

  “Did you like it when I walked in on you?” He was sort of hoping she’d say yes to that.

  And he’d deal with the why to that thought later.

  “Look, Liam. I’m sorry. I’m sorry my dog got into your room and I’m sorry I walked in on you. It’s not as if I did it on purpose.”

  “Then what’s with the clothes all over my garage?”

  “They’re not all over the place. They’re in a pile, covered in sawdust. I didn’t think you’d appreciate me tracking sawdust through your house.”

  She was considerate. That was something he hadn’t foreseen. If she ended up having any other nice qualities, he was going to have a hard time ignoring her effect on him. “As long as you clean it up, I can’t say anything about it.”

  “Well you weren’t home and I didn’t feel up to more cleaning on top of working on the credenza. I fixed the door, by the way. It works just fine now. No one will ever know it didn’t. If you’re interested, that is.”

  She put her hands on her hips and tilted her chin and—

  Yeah. He was interested.

  Chapter Eleven

  CASSIDY stopped at the supermarket entrance and stared. Seriously? How was she supposed to find anything in here? The last time she’d been to a grocery store was when the nanny had been sick and the chef had needed a few last-minute items. Now, she had a list and some cash and she
was supposed to make the list fit the cash.

  That finishing school education of hers had been sorely lacking in day-to-day skills, but she tucked some hair that escaped her ponytail behind her ear and looked at the list Liam had written. She could do this. It wasn’t rocket science. Millions of people did this every day. She had to do it sometime; might as well be now.

  She had sixty bucks for things his grandmother hadn’t brought. Things like milk, eggs, cheese, and . . . and she’d almost lost it when she’d read this—dog food.

  She blinked back a few tears even now. She was not going to cry. Liam, the sarcastic pain in the ass, had a heart. Unlike her father, the man whose DNA she carried.

  It was because of that DNA that she was going to do this. And she was going to do it in style. Dad was not going to see her fail. She was not going to cower and go crawling back to him. Or Burton. She was on her own. Well, once she left Liam, that was.

  Rolling back her shoulders, Cassidy headed for Customer Service. “Hello. I was wondering if you could help me.”

  “Whaddya need?” The girl behind the counter didn’t even bother to look up. Good. Cassidy didn’t want to be recognized. Not only would Dad have yet another conniption, he’d know where she was.

  She cared more about the latter than the former.

  “I was wondering if you could tell me where to find dog food and eggs and milk and—”

  “Dairy’s on twelve. Pets six.”

  “I’m sorry, but what does that mean?”

  The girl finally looked up and arched a pierced eyebrow. “Aisles twelve and six?”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “Hey, aren’t you somebody?”

  Cassidy’s stomach thunked. “Well, sure. Aren’t we all?”

  The girl straightened up and tapped her pen against the counter. “No. I mean, somebody. Like famous or something.”

  Crap. She’d worn the most anti-Davenport clothes from the pile of anti-Davenport clothes, pulled her hair back, and sworn off makeup. She didn’t look anything like her former gossip-pages self. “Nope, sorry. I’m just me.”

  The girl’s lips twisted. “Well you sure look like someone. I just can’t figure out who it is.”

  “Aisles six and twelve, right?” Cassidy tapped the countertop. “Thanks.”

  She headed for the dog food first, then managed to find everything on the list within a half hour. Not too shabby for a first-timer. She could do this. She could learn the normal, everyday things that most of the population took for granted, but for which those of her father’s crowd had “people.”

  She was in the checkout lane when that afterglow of success dimmed.

  “Did you hear about Mitchell Davenport’s daughter?”

  Actually, the afterglow tanked. Way beyond dimmed.

  “You mean the pretty one who’s always all over the news? Born with a silver spoon and leads a charmed life?”

  The other woman shook her head. “Not anymore she doesn’t.”

  Cassidy couldn’t see the woman’s face, but she heard the glee in her voice.

  Ah. A Hater. She’d run across more than a few of them in her time.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Here. Look at this.”

  Supermarket tabloids. Dammit. Cassidy’s glow went up in a poof of mortification.

  “Her dad kicked her out. Made her fend for herself.”

  “About time. How long did she think that self-made man was going to keep paying for her party lifestyle? What I wouldn’t give if my old man had funded even half my teenage party-hopping. Still, gotta admire a girl who’s managed to get her father to pay for it for ten years after graduation.”

  “She shoulda found a sugar daddy to continue the tradition. In those circles, shouldn’t have been too tough.”

  “Next.”

  Cassidy heard a buzzing in her head. She looked at the conveyor belt, expecting something to be caught to make that god-awful racket, but all she saw was the checkout girl looking at her.

  “Next.”

  Oh. Right. Her. That buzzing was probably the beginnings of a whopper of a migraine.

  “Poor baby didn’t get to take the ’Benz. And the reporter even managed to get a shot of the car.”

  Cassidy jerked to the register, somehow managing to get her hands to coordinate with her brain to get the contents of her shopping cart onto the conveyor belt, and her fingers to negotiate her pocketbook for the sixty bucks.

  The total came to sixty-two fifty.

  She didn’t have it.

  God. This had never happened to her before. Where was that damn silver spoon that woman had been talking about? She’d sell it for cash to make this transaction happen.

  “Sure, I could sleep with some old guy for his money,” said the Hater. “Not as if it’ll be for too long, know what I mean? A few good Os and the guy’ll blow a gasket and die on me. Then it’d be all mine.”

  “Too bad we don’t run in that Davenport girl’s circles. I wouldn’t even be picky as long as his bank balance was in the seven figure range.”

  That would make the woman a prostitute, but Cassidy kept her mouth shut. Oh, not because she was some sage human being, but if she opened it, she was fairly certain something she shouldn’t say would come out.

  That wasn’t who she was. It wasn’t who her friends were. Did it happen in her social circle? Of course, but that didn’t mean everyone had the morals of an alley cat and the conscience of a flea.

  “Sixty-two fifty, please.” The checkout teenager cracked her gum.

  Cassidy shook her head to clear the fog of screaming reprimands from it and focused on the total. What was she supposed to do? She’d never had to return food. Could she even do that? And was it a return if she never took it out of the bag?

  “Um, could you take off three of the dog food packets?” Titania would just have to do with more beef stew and less commercial food. The dog wouldn’t mind.

  The kid, however, obviously did, rolling her heavily made-up eyes, and huffing loud enough that those women overheard.

  They turned around. And one of them got a look on her face Cassidy dreaded.

  “Hey, you look a lot like that Davenport girl.”

  “Who? Me?” Cassidy couldn’t pay the checkout girl and get the bags off the turnstile fast enough. “I get that a lot. Wouldn’t mind having her bank account, though.”

  “Not these days you wouldn’t.”

  “Bet she can’t even afford to buy your groceries.”

  That’s right; she couldn’t.

  And it’d made the tabloids. Everyone she knew would know.

  Cassidy practically ripped the last bag off the turnstile and headed toward the door before the women got a look at her earrings. Those would be a dead giveaway and she didn’t want to have to stand here apologizing for being born with a silver spoon nor hear their ridicule anymore.

  God, if only she’d met Franklin sooner in life. The lessons his thirteen short years had taught Cassidy were worth more than any private school education her father had paid for.

  She blinked the tears from her eyes. She’d met Franklin when she’d attended a charity dinner for the hospital’s pediatric unit in her father’s place. Yet another chance for Dad to parade her out on his behalf.

  Not that she’d minded. She’d known almost everyone and had had the opportunity to wear her new Stella McCartney dress and drink champagne—her life’s staples up to that point.

  Then Franklin had been seated next to her.

  The kid had won her over in about thirty seconds and changed her life in the next thirty days. He’d been at the end stage of his treatment with no hope for remission, but he’d been determined to leave his mark on the world. He, who’d had every reason to be bitter and to give up on life—from his cancer to the family who turned him over to child services because they hadn’t been able to deal with it—had refused to do so. He’d wanted to enjoy himself as long as he was able, and dwelling on the negative and petty things in his
life had been a waste of the time left to him.

  Cassidy had made sure to stop by at least three times a week, more as the end neared. Being with him so much had put those frivolous time-sucking things like shopping and gossiping and “being seen” into perspective.

  And then he’d been gone.

  Cassidy still remembered the pain as if it were yesterday. As if her heart had been ripped out and trampled. As if she’d never catch her breath again. The only reason she’d known she would was because she’d gone through the same emotions when Mom had left.

  But hearing those women talk about her—laugh at her hard times . . . Times like these were when she wanted to give in to the self-pity and just cry. But then she’d remember Franklin and suck it up and go on. Because what she had to deal with wasn’t as bad as what Franklin had faced and he hadn’t succumbed to self-pity.

  Neither would she.

  Those women’s attitudes, the whim of fate, the insidiousness of disease, and life . . . none of it was fair. It was how she chose to deal with it that would make or break her. And Cassidy, like Franklin, was not going to be broken. She would rise above.

  She blew a kiss heavenward—as she did whenever she thought about Franklin. She wasn’t going to let his death be in vain.

  She took a deep breath, pushed the women from her mind, and headed back to Liam’s truck. He’d loaned it to her for the day, since he was going to be tied up at her father’s building. It’d been bittersweet to see the place she’d called home for six years when she’d dropped him off there this morning, but, interestingly, there hadn’t been any of the sadness or anger she would’ve thought she’d feel to be there again. It was as if the building belonged to a different place and time. One she didn’t want to go back to.

  She stowed her shopping bags in the back seat of the four-door cab, then climbed inside, remembering when Liam had helped her.

  Damn if that didn’t elicit tingles. It was strange, really, how just the thought of being near him, standing beside him, having him touch her put Cassidy in touch with her feminine side in a way she’d never been with Burton or Carlton or Helmsford, or any of the other men her father had arranged for her to date.