“But yet for some reason you think you don’t need all the security supplies I ordered. You have some superhero way of figuring this out.”
Mitch could almost see the wheels turning in Spence’s head. “Superhero?”
“Couldn’t think of another word.”
“I see and no.”
Spence let his arm fall to the desk with a thud. “Promise me one thing.”
No way was Mitch agreeing to that, so he stayed quiet.
“When Cassidy screws you over, and she will, my friend, let me be the one to escort her out of town on your behalf. It’s the least I can do before I say I told you so.”
There was only one way he wanted to think about Cassidy and screwing, and Spence didn’t have a role in that at all. “Only if you agree to beg her forgiveness when you finally figure out she’s not the woman you think she is. I’m thinking you should be on your knees while you do it.”
The smile returned to Spence’s face. “Sounds to me like you agree to that beer bet after all.”
* * *
If she was going to get yelled at, and Mitch basically promised that would happen, Cassidy vowed she’d know exactly what was going on with Allan first. Without his waffling and hiding and storytelling, she’d be in the house and not in the nursery trespassing mess.
Not that she blamed Allan for her current twisted state. No, she’d created most of the mess in her life without much help. Except the money part. She’d never had that much extra, despite what people thought, but there was enough of a nest egg to keep her going as she put her life back together and tried to figure out what type of business she could create with her odd set of skills.
Or there was money until it all disappeared. Yeah, she refused to take the blame for that one. Rick Anderson bore that sin alone.
She stood on the small stoop leading up to the back door of the house. Allan hadn’t answered the phone when she called from the diner. He didn’t come to either door now despite her lying on the bell and pounding on the wood frame. She’d peeked in the downstairs windows and walked around the house and all over the two acres attached to it. Other than seeing some unexpected empty rooms, she didn’t find anything.
The boiling frustration in her gut at his antics mixed with worry. Allan was hiding something and she no longer believed the something was a female someone. Cassidy actually hoped for a new woman at this point. The thought made her squirm but she’d accept it. He deserved to be happy.
But this was so much bigger than dating.
She cupped her hand against the back door window and looked inside. Stacked boxes filled the kitchen table. Cupboards stood open. Not exactly the look of a place packed up for fumigation. The handmade sign on the front door wasn’t convincing either. While she didn’t know much about exterminators, she assumed they didn’t use signs in the homeowner’s handwriting. They probably blocked windows and doors too, and none of that was happening here.
She rattled the doorknob but Allan had remembered to lock up the place when he rarely did it while she was growing up. Interesting how his mind held that but not an early morning breakfast date with his stepdaughter.
A quick flip of the doormat showed the outline of where the key used to sit. That left few options. She glanced at the hanging basket of dead flowers. Up until a few seconds ago that had been her Plan D. Having run through the viable, noncriminal ones that left vandalism, a potential charge on the rap sheet she feared she’d soon have.
Her motto had always been go big or go home. Looked like she might need to amend it to go big and likely end up in jail.
Reaching up, she lifted the planter off the hook, testing the weight in her hands. This thing would fly through a window. She pulled back, ready to hurl it and duck from flying glass.
A strong hand curled around her wrist and snatched the pot. “You have lost your sweet mind. Do you want to end up in prison?”
She spun around. The blue eyes lit with an angry fire stopped her from squealing to shouting or making any noise other than a wheeze-like sound she had trapped in her throat. “Mitch?”
“Of course. Who were you expecting?” He dropped the planter on the porch but didn’t let go of her hand.
Clearly there was no need for her to shout since he was doing enough for both of them. “No one. I thought you went to work.” She had kind of counted on that. “A pile of work or not, I just had this feeling I needed to take off today.” He shook his head. “Good thing I left when I did. What would you have done if Allan had installed an alarm and the police showed up?”
“Run. Explain my stepfather lives here, that I grew up here.” Possibly thrown up a little.
“So, you didn’t have a plan.”
His overbearing demeanor put her on the defensive. Her knees locked and his chin rose. “I thought I just laid out my plan.”
“I figured my choice was to head over here and stop this nonsense or raise your bail money.” The harsh words contrasted with the gentle brush of his thumb against the soft inside of her palm.
She ignored the shiver that raced to her toes at his touch. “How did you even know I was here?”
He dropped her hand and the ache of loss torpedoed her stomach. For those few seconds, the connection blocked out the cold and uncertainty. Even as he yelled, she knew she wasn’t alone.
“I called Allan but couldn’t reach him. My next call was to Darla. She told me you tried to get in touch with him too and seemed upset when you couldn’t.” Mitch looked in the window but didn’t say anything about the pile of boxes. “I added up the obvious clues and figured you’d come here looking for him.”
“You talked to Darla about me?” That admission killed off the last blossom of calm inside Cassidy. “Are you trying to start more gossip?”
“I’m dumbfounded that’s the part of my story that concerns you.” He rested a hand on his hip. The stance should have come off as relaxed but actually gave a frustrated vibe. “And, honestly, how can whatever anyone says be worse than what’s out there already about you?”
The man had a point.
“I want to make sure Allan is okay.” The trip started out as fact-finding but had switched to recovery. Right now she wanted to lay eyes on Allan. The questions could wait.
“He’s with his friend Mike. They’re working on Mike’s boat, have been since yesterday.”
Relief warred with something that felt like envy. Allan was her relation yet Mitch knew how to find him.
“How can you possibly know that?” Unless the town instituted some sort of closed-circuit monitoring system, she had no idea how everyone found out everything so quickly.
“Because I know who Allan’s best friend is and called over there right before I headed over here. Can’t claim great deductive reasoning on my part, but it worked.”
“Oh.” Funny how her mind went to breaking in and Mitch’s ran to a common sense solution. That probably said more about her than she wanted it to.
“So, we can leave.” He walked down the two stairs and grabbed her gear. It took another few steps before he realized she wasn’t following. “Or not.”
“The sign out front is a joke. There’s no exterminator. Allan just doesn’t want me in the house.”
Mitch shrugged. “Use your key.”
“He changed the locks.”
“I’m starting to see your point about Allan acting odd.” Mitch stared past her before refocusing again. “Any chance you’re on the deed and can get in legally?”
Putting her personal information out there made her twitchy, but she’d already shared about her mother. Opening up just a little more couldn’t hurt. If Mitch intended to use the rough aspects of her life to join in the gossip and hurt her, he would have done it already.
She ran her hand over the banister she’d once helped her mom paint. It was years ago, after her father died and before Allan came on the scene. Back then her mom talked about them being two strong women on their own. She made it all a game, made it seem fun and
exciting.
Looking back, Cassidy wasn’t sure how they ever paid the rent or an electric bill. Mom’s secretary job at the local insurance company couldn’t have covered everything, but Cassidy couldn’t remember wanting for anything.
“Mom left the house to Allan, and before you read something into that bit of information and give it a stupid Holloway nickname, I told her to give Allan the house.” The need to justify welled inside Cassidy. “He fixed it up and until recently took great care of it. I wasn’t here, so there was no reason for me to have it.”
“You have your own money.”
What was one more confession on a day full of them? She’d opened the emotional door to him in ways she never dreamed possible. When it came to the nursery and the fertilizer mess, he deserved to know what drove it all.
“Had.” She kept the explanation to one word because she would say it without choking on it.
“Excuse me?”
She dragged her legs down the steps and joined him. “Let’s just leave.”
“Wait a second.” The bag fell from his arm and hit his boots. If it hurt, he pushed through the pain. “Tell me.”
She hesitated until nothing moved around them but the breeze and the scooping flight of a bird. When he didn’t show signs of backing down, she let all the exhaustion and anger run to the front of her brain. For so long she’d figured talking about it would make it worse, somehow increase how stupid she felt about the whole deal. But unloading might feel good and she was really tired of carrying this particular burden on her own.
“I lost it, but not by gambling or anything fun. My manager took my money. His dealings have been all over the news, though the lawyer one of my former sponsors hired kept my name out of it. Said it would reflect poorly on the company.”
“Idiots.”
She didn’t disagree. “He stole money from the accounts of most of his clients. He cleaned me out.”
The muscles in Mitch’s face fell. “You’re broke?”
“I have the pile of stuff you see right there and a little money, but not much. Not enough to survive.” She pointed at her backpack and bag she’d throw a few feet from the bottom of the stairs. “You’ve seen most of it before because you collected it at my makeshift campsite.
“My plan is to get a climbing guide job, but all of the posts are filled by this point in the season and we’re about to head into bad weather. Rick, that’s the guy’s name, managed to screw me with his timing, too, but I’ll find something to do until I can get the guide part started.”
“Where is he now?”
“Prison, and if your next question is about the location of my money, it’s gone. The police tracked down some but there’s a pool of victims and a wife who claims to be innocent. Getting my hands on any real settlement is close to impossible.”
Mitch let out a string of profanity. Only one of them came out clear enough to understand. “Son of a bitch.”
“That’s how I think of Rick. He handled my money while I traveled. The account statements I got looked real and had the right header but were fake. Somehow he kept it all hidden and working until the market turned then he couldn’t cover the regular client withdrawals and pay his own bills. He chose to keep his household running as long as possible and forego ours. I found out when I got back and my studio condo in Seattle was gone.”
Mitch reached out. He smoothed his along her arms, warming her chilled skin through her sweater. “Damn, Cassidy. I’m sorry.”
“It’s only money.” She kept repeating that mantra but she never believed it.
“No, it’s food and shelter. It’s security and the difference between having a cell phone and not. You don’t have anything you need and whatever Allan is doing means you can’t even stay here. I can only assume he doesn’t know, because I can’t imagine him abandoning you.”
“Me either.” Even through his haze of anger, she could see that Mitch understood all of it. How the loss of money spread out and infected everything, even the most basic of needs. The comfort that came from not having to explain wiped all the tension from her body. For the first in a long time the tightness inside her, from her stomach to her head, loosened.
In a flash the tiny lines near his eyes disappeared. His expression shifted from tense and disgusted on her behalf to open. The charming guy from that first day at the nursery returned.
“Good news is we can resolve part of the problem,” he said, smiling as he clearly warmed to the topic. “You’ll come and stay with me until we can get Allan to talk.”
The door on her mental wanderings and brief moment of calm happiness slammed shut. “No way.”
“We’re not arguing about this.”
Her thought exactly. “Yeah, I know.”
“I have an extra bedroom and heat. That puts you two steps ahead of where you are right now.”
The outside closed in on her. She didn’t know that was even possible. In a wide-open space, the air tightened and the trees and house rushed toward her. It was panic, pure and simple, and it skidded around the edge of her vision.
“Until the single women of Holloway stone me for being at your house. Yeah, no thanks. I have enough enemies.”
Not that she cared about having one more reason for people around here to hate her. This was about them. About the way her heartbeat crashed into her ribcage when she saw him and clogged her throat at the touch of his fingers. Two minutes in his house and whatever control she had would melt into nothing.
“I am not dating anyone other than you. We’re grown-ups. But the biggest point, and listen because I could not be more serious about this, Cassidy. I am not letting you sleep in the street. No fucking way. I don’t know what kind of guys you’ve known before, but that’s not happening with me.”
He’d managed to drop the fact she’d been tossing around in her head since the kiss. People night not think she had boundaries, but fidelity was a big one. She vowed never to be the other woman. Not even for him. Knowing he wasn’t with anyone else untied the knots on some of her resistance.
“I appreciate that, but—”
“Then it’s settled.” He balanced the backpack on his shoulder and held out a hand to her. “Let’s go.”
With each word from him the wall she’d built, the promises she’d made, crumbled. “This is a terrible idea.”
“I’m betting you won’t take money from me, even as a loan.”
Bile rushed up her throat at the idea. “Of course not.”
“Then your only other option is to move in. You can work off the rent at the nursery. As I said before, I know you can do the tasks since you’ve been doing them without pay. Only this time you’ll get income that will help you get back on your feet. There’s also the side benefit of me not pressing criminal charges against you for trespassing.”
The crash echoed in her brain as the last of the wall disintegrated.
“It will never work.” Even to her ears the denial sounded weaker.
“Why?”
There was no reason to dance around it. It wasn’t as if the attraction only ran in one direction. He’d made it clear in the way he touched her and the things he said to her that this, whatever it was zapping between them, was mutual. “You know why.”
“Because I want you in my bed and not the one down the hall?” The backs of his fingers brushed over her cheek. “Yeah, I’m not going to deny that. But you control that decision.”
“What will people say?”
“Do I honestly look like a guy who cares about that shit?”
More like the guy who took a woman’s self-control and smashed it to pieces at her feet with only a few sexy words. “Anyone ever tell you how you swear when you get grumpy?”
His eyebrow lifted. “Then stop pissing me off.”
Everything was so easy for him. For every argument, he had a counter. With every mistake she made, he came back with a workaround. The few men she’d let into her life never stuck around long. They came and went and she mo
ved on. The lack of stability never bothered her before but now she wondered if that was because she couldn’t miss what she didn’t have.
She meant to put her hand on his chest but he shifted and it slid and landed on his flat stomach. “Mitch, your offer means more to me than I can say.”
“So, stop talking.” He dropped a quick kiss on her startled mouth. “Let me help.”
“I’m not good at accepting charity.”
“And I’m not good at living with people. Think how much fun we’re going to have.”
“I guess this means that yelling you promised will take place in the privacy of your house.”
“I’ll make a deal with you. Accept my offer and I’ll forget the yelling.”
“Deal.” Though she wasn’t sure she’d really won that one.
Chapter Eight
Mitch went back to the office only long enough to pick up some paperwork and head out again. Cassidy was waiting in the car, not knowing they were about to go on a quick shopping run for whatever essentials women needed and the ones he wanted—groceries and condoms. He’d almost made it out of his office without getting stopped. He turned the lock and closed the door…and ran right into Spence.
“You’re leaving early,” he said.
For a guy who spent most of his time outside, Spence sure was hanging around the office a lot lately. “Need to run an errand.”
“Is this errand called Cassidy?”
It was about her, and their dinner and his peace of mind. “I do have other parts of my life, you know.”
“If you say so.”
Since Spence wasn’t moving and people milled around them, Mitch decided not to fight the conversation. “Did you need something?”
“Just watching out for you.”
“I’m a little old to need help.”
Spence crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the office wall. “I find that stupidity doesn’t really have an age limit.”
Mitch wondered if he’d come off this annoying when he was trying to help Austin through his troubles with Carrie. “Go ahead. Say whatever you need to say.”
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