“What about her?”
“Aren’t you here with her?”
Cassie knew she must have sounded like a jealous girlfriend, and she immediately wished she could grab the words back. She wished it even harder once she caught a glimpse of Richard’s smug smile.
“Laura’s here with her mom, Faye,” he explained. “I just sat with them.”
“Oh,” she said, trying to sound casual and realizing she was a miserable failure. “Okay. I just wondered.”
“Would you care if I had come with her?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I just didn’t want to be rude and steal away her date.”
“A date…to church?”
“Whatever.”
Did I really just say “Whatever”?
“Whatever?” he blurted on a laugh. “You really are jealous. Cassie, you’re making my whole day!”
“Hush!” she exclaimed, and then she turned on her heels and headed for the door.
“Cassie,” he called. He grabbed her elbow with a firm hold. “Cassie, come on. I was teasing you.”
Cassie’s heart was pounding, and she was mortified that this man was so adept at bringing out her inner sixteen-year-old girl with the mad crush on the high school quarterback!
“Do you want to go to Tarpon with me or not?” she muttered, pulling her arm out of his grip.
“I would like to, very much,” he replied.
She tried not to exit in a huff, but with her head tilted upward and those long strides she was taking, she knew it was one more thing at which she had failed.
“Uh, I can drive,” he suggested. “My car’s over here.”
She made a reluctant change in direction, following his lead through the parking lot. The second he could no longer see her face, Cassie cringed.
I’m such a dope.
When she had behaved in a similar manner at the actual age of sixteen, she recalled her mother asking, “Cassie, how old are you again?”
She suddenly wanted to tell her mother to hush up as well. And she would have, too…if the woman hadn’t passed away five years prior.
Cassie and Richard meandered along Dodecanese Boulevard between flocks of tourists of every age and ethnicity. The street was narrow in parts, and it wound its way from the bayou on one end to the aquarium on the other. Edged with large cane-and-lantern streetlights and dotted with shops and restaurants, Tarpon Springs was reminiscent of a Greek seaside village. Along the way, just beyond the marina and various sponge boats docked down the right side of the street, shop owners and restaurateurs alike could be heard speaking to one another in their native language.
A chubby man with no more than twenty greasy strands of hair on his head was wearing a stained apron and called out to his friend in Greek. The man replied, slapping him on the back. Richard cast a glance at Cassie as they passed them.
“I think the cook said that it’s a great day,” she told him. “And his friend said something about it being as beautiful here as it is in Greece.”
“You speak the language then?”
“I float around it,” she corrected. “I can figure it out sometimes. I couldn’t hold a conversation. Zan used to say I was an honorary Greek twice removed, by default and then by marriage. But I do love the culture.”
Cassie pushed her silky brown hair away from her face and then tucked a strand of it behind her ear as they continued down the avenue. Just the simple act made Richard’s chest constrict a little.
“I’m not sure about this, but I seem to remember the shop in question being somewhere in this area,” she told him. “I hope they still sell what I’m looking for.”
Richard noticed a poster for the upcoming Epiphany celebration, and he nodded toward it. “Have you ever attended?”
“I haven’t. It’s right after the new year, isn’t it? We always spent the holiday season in Boston. Have you?”
“A couple of times since I moved south,” he replied. “Will you still be here?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.”
Richard’s heart sank a little. “It’s worth sticking around for,” he told her. “The population of the city doubles in size. Everyone comes out for the party.”
“I don’t really remember the whole idea of the festivities,” she admitted.
“The Greek immigrants depended upon the sea for their livelihood, so the Epiphany was born out of their hopes that God would bless their boats and keep them safe in their work.”
“Don’t they toss something into the water at the end and all the little kids go in after it?” she asked him, and then she paused to peer into the window of a jewelry store.
“At the end of the ceremony, they throw a large wooden cross into Spring Bayou, and the boys around sixteen or eighteen years old dive in to retrieve it. The one who recovers the cross is supposed to be blessed for the following year.”
“Right,” she nodded as if it was all coming back to her.
“Afterward, there’s music and more food than you can imagine.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, tossing a grin—and her light brown hair—over one shoulder toward him. “I can imagine an awful lot of food.”
“You and me both,” he replied. “How about we grab some lunch? We’re coming up on one of my favorite places in the area.”
“All right.”
Santorini Mediterranean Grill sat at the waterside. Through their windows, patrons could watch local fishermen while enjoying traditional Greek cuisine. Richard hadn’t paid the restaurant a visit for several months, but he was greeted like an old friend when he led Cassie through the front door.
“Do you like spinach?” he asked Cassie once they’d settled in at their table.
“I love it.”
“They make a beautiful spanakopita here. Spinach and feta cheese baked inside filo.”
Cassie’s eyes sparked. “That sounds really good.”
“We’ll start with that,” Richard told the waitress. “And a couple of iced teas?”
She nodded her approval.
“Zan’s mother tried to teach me to make spanakopita,” she told him. “I just didn’t have the knack that she did. I can’t work with that thin dough. So I got the brilliant idea of putting it inside a wonton instead.”
“Oooh.” Richard grimaced.
“Yeah. Not so much the brilliant idea I thought it was. So what’s good for lunch?”
“What are you in the mood for?” he asked her.
“I love Greek salads. Is theirs any good?”
“It is. Let’s get a Greek salad for two, and we’ll have them add chilled shrimp to it.”
Cassie picked up her napkin and dabbed the corner of her mouth. “I’m sorry, did I just drool?”
After lunch, they continued their stroll down Dodecanese, stopping here and there to step inside shops and look around. But the boutique that Cassie was seeking wasn’t anywhere in sight, and Richard felt her disappointment when he looked into her eyes.
“I guess it’s just been too long,” she said on their stroll back down the street. “I should have known better, but I had to look.”
“Tell me more about what you’re looking for.”
“It was this large panel of leaded glass, like a stained glass design except without the color. It was about, I don’t know, I guess maybe three feet wide and about two feet in height, and it hung from a chain. For some reason I’ve always remembered it, and I got it in my head that it would be just beautiful hanging in that very high window in my master bath, reflecting the light.”
“That would have been nice,” he agreed.
“I haven’t given up,” she said—it sounded almost like a warning. “Don’t go using the past tense on me just yet.”
Richard didn’t imagine Cassie had much experience in the art of surrender. He had visions of her tromping through the desert in the middle of a sandstorm if she heard about a panel of leaded glass somewhere out there on the other side.
A duo with a lute and
violin began to play traditional Greek music across the street, and Cassie and Richard stopped for a couple of minutes to listen. Several elderly men emerged from the restaurant behind them, and they interlocked their arms as they stood shoulder to shoulder and began to dance. Richard remembered seeing Anthony Quinn do a similar dance on the beach in Zorba the Greek.
“Do you think the seniors at the church would like to learn the Sirtáki?” Cassie asked with a grin.
“Nothing about that group would surprise me after their enthusiasm for the hustle.”
Cassie tossed back her head and laughed, and it was melodious in its harmony against the grand, rolling guffaws of the dancing men. They sounded like an underground train making its way toward town, with Cassie as the church bells on the hill above them.
Cassie turned to Richard and slipped him a hopeful smile. “I feel like having something sweet,” she said. “Where can we get some baklava?”
“I know just the place.”
When they’d almost reached the café he had in mind, Cassie let out a scream that she muffled with both hands over her mouth. She began to hop from one foot to the other, and then she pointed at a long plate of leaded glass hanging by a thick chain in a shop window.
“Is that it?”
“That’s it!” she cried, before flying into the store.
By the time Richard stepped up to the counter, she already had the glass in her hands and was telling the clerk the story of how she’d had a piece just like this one in mind. When he saw the price ring up on the register, his gut wrenched.
Well, at least it’s mobile, he thought. She can take it with her when she goes.
Richard hated that Cassie was spending so much on her home when…well…what he really hated was that he had such an enormous secret to keep from her. But she’d thank him in the long run. He hoped.
“Isn’t it just gorgeous, Richard? I can see it hanging in that long, high window in the master bath, reflecting prisms of light. Oh, it’s going to be just beautiful!”
Richard had thought many times since meeting Cassie that she reminded him of the actress Sally Field, and, as she gleefully paid for her magnificent find, she looked to him very much like a young surfing Gidget who’d just taken on her first respectable wave.
“Pack it very carefully,” she suggested to the clerk, “with lots of cardboard on both sides. If I break it before I get it into my window at home, I’ll just cry.”
Isn’t it just the ultimate, Moondoggie? The utter living end? I swear, if it breaks before I get it home, I’ll die. I’ll just dii-eeee!
“Richard Dillon! How are you, buddy?”
“Better than fair, Mick. How about you?”
“About to become a grandfather,” his old friend told him.
“Connie’s having a baby?”
“She sure is. Let me tell you, my friend, nothing ages you faster than that.”
Richard laughed and then shifted the phone against his shoulder. He wished he’d planned out this conversation a little better before dialing his old college chum.
“How are things down in Florida?” Mick Kendrick asked him.
“Sunny and warm. Same forecast, different day.”
Talking about the weather? It began to set in on him how transparent this phone call actually was.
“The last I heard, you were thinking of buying into a new business down there. Any truth to that rumor?”
“Still thinking,” Richard replied. “Hey, listen. I met up with someone who says she knows you.”
“Uh-oh. Who is she, so I can start plotting my deniability?”
“Cassie Constantine.”
“Cassie! You met Cassie?”
“She owns some property close to mine in Holiday,” he revealed. “I was pretty shocked when she told me who she works for.”
“Cassie’s a peach. Been through a lot in the last year or so.”
“So I gather.”
“What a small world,” Mick remarked. “You meeting Cassie.”
“Isn’t it though,” Richard replied. “So, Mick. What can you tell me about her?”
“What do you mean? What are you looking for?”
“I just think she’s interesting,” he said. “Hearing that she works for you, I figured you could tell me a little bit about her.”
“What’re you doing, a background check, Dillon? Or are you interested for some other reason? My administrator hasn’t gone and started applying for jobs in Central Florida, has she?”
Out of hand. How did one phone call get so out of hand so fast?
Chapter Seven
18 DOWN: Intensely hot; characterized by passion
“What were you thinking? Can you tell me that? Can you just tell me what you were thinking?”
Cassie had asked him the same question at least a dozen different ways, and Richard Dillon still hadn’t come up with a satisfying response. In fact, he hadn’t given any response at all!
“You called my boss and gave him the impression that I’m down here job hunting, Richard. Please tell me what you were thinking?”
“I didn’t mean to give him that impression, Cassie. He came up with that one all on his own.”
“How? Can you tell me how!”
“Just calm down,” he suggested. “It was an innocent conversation. I just mentioned what a small world it is, that I’d met someone who worked for him.”
“Yes, I work for him!” she exclaimed. “He’s my boss! And now he thinks you were doing a background check for possible employment.”
“He doesn’t think that.”
“No?”
“He couldn’t think that.”
“Really.”
“What would I be hiring you for? Dance instructor?”
When he followed up the comment with a snicker, Cassie felt her blood pressure rise, and her temples immediately began to pound. It infuriated her to no end that he’d chosen to take the smug way out.
“He mentioned that you’ve been considering a business venture, unrelated to the law,” she seethed, trying with all her might to calm the stormy seas raging inside. “Something about buying a business here in the area.”
Richard’s face dropped.
“What, not so funny anymore?”
“I really didn’t want anyone down here to know about that. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about. There’s nothing written in stone.”
“And yet you allowed my employer to think you were considering me for a position in this possible, well, maybe, nothing in stone new venture? Who does that?”
He sighed and then shook his head. “I’m really sorry about that, Cassie. I can see that I’ve upset you, and I didn’t mean to.”
“Why did you call Mr. Kendrick and ask about me, Richard? Why would you do that?”
And there it was again. That vacant, desolate expression, with his face bunched up like rapidly drying fruit.
After almost a full minute of expectation, Cassie groaned and walked away.
“Cassie,” he called after her, but she kept on walking.
One foot in front of the other, she thought. He’s just a lunatic with a chiseled face and a nice smile. Keep walking.
Cassie crossed the well-lit parking lot and headed straight into the sanctuary. Millicent and her friends were already gathered, huddled together like a colorful grape cluster on a vine, and Cassie stalked toward them.
“Merry Christmas Eve, hunny bunny.” Millicent greeted her with an enthusiastic hug.
“Same to you,” she replied, and then she gave a deep sigh over Millicent’s shoulder in an effort to expel all remnants of Richard Dillon.
“Come and sit with us,” one of the woman’s friends invited, and Cassie nodded thankfully.
The choir had just entered into a lively rendition of “Joy to the World” when Stella Nesbitt joined her favorite cronies in the row in front of Cassie.
“Happy Christmas,” she sang, reaching over the back of the pew and squeezing Cassie’s hand, and
then she brushed the air a foot or two in front of Millicent. “Happy Christmas, Millie.”
Pastor Sullivan had just stepped up to the microphone when Stella turned completely around in the pew ahead of her and waved her arms as if she was hailing a taxi. A tall, lean man in a sport jacket and jeans appeared in the aisle, and he gave the woman a hurried embrace. When he started to step into the row beside her, Stella’s face crumpled, doughy, like bread left on the counter to rise.
“It’s crowded up here,” she whispered, and then she wiggled a chunky finger in Cassie’s direction. “Sit right here instead.”
“Oh.” Cassie slid across the varnished pew, and then Millicent followed suit. But as the man pushed into the row beside her, she couldn’t help but notice that there was more available space beside Stella and her friends than there was next to her.
“My nephew, Hunter,” Stella whispered to Cassie, her mouth forming the words with animated dexterity. Cassie nodded. “Hunter, this is Cassie Constantine. Down from Boston.”
Cassie nodded a second time, this one directed at the young man seated beside her.
“Hunter lives up North, too,” Stella murmured. “New York City.”
“Aunt Stella,” he said in a hushed tone, whirling his finger in circles to tell her to turn around.
“Okay, all right,” she replied. “We’ll talk after.”
Cassie and Hunter exchanged uncomfortable smiles, and then both faced the front of the church. It wasn’t until Pastor Sullivan reached the part of the story where there was no room at the inn for a pregnant woman and her new husband that Cassie took note of the dozen or so glances Stella and her friends had been making over their shoulders toward her. But it was that goofy grin out of Millicent that finally brought the point home for her
Oh, Lord, am I…? Is this…? Oh, for goodness’ sake.
She was being set up!
Hunter Nesbitt wasn’t a day over thirty-five. And at twenty years her junior, Cassie could have easily been old enough to be his…
Oh, my.
Sneaking a sideways glance in his direction and then focusing on him for a fraction of a second, Cassie’s stomach constricted as she turned to face front again to meet Stella’s face full-on. Her head was spun around like a character in a scary movie, her grin so wide that it looked like the corners of her mouth were strung up on invisible wires.
Love Finds You in Holiday, Florida Page 8