KISS AND MAKE-UP

by Kelly, Leslie

  The realization made her heart twist.

  “Is Wyatt really lactose intolerant?” she asked, to see if he’d been messing with her head earlier, and to make sure his sister wasn’t about to make him sick. As his wife used to do.

  “Oh, cripes, I forgot,” Jackie said, her eyes widening into big circles. “Is this stuff dairy?”

  Wincing as she read the label, Cassandra nodded. “I’d expect so. Cheese, cream…”

  The girl muttered a four-letter word, then gave Cassandra an apologetic smile. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I did my share of cursing when I was first learning to cook. Especially when I first made soufflé.”

  “Are you a good cook?” The hope in Jackie’s face and voice told her just how overwhelmed the girl felt.

  Thinking of the hours she’d spent with her family’s cook growing up—because the woman was the only person on the estate who’d ever made her feel welcome, rather than underfoot—Cassandra nodded. “Cooking is the one thing I’m very good at.”

  “What about selling makeup?”

  Cassandra winked. “I’m pretty good at that, too. But it helps to have an awesome product line.”

  “Which you do,” Jackie said with an earnest nod. “I never thought your company’s cosmetics were worth the outrageous prices, but that thickening mascara makes my eyes look incredible.” Her face instantly reddened. “I’m sorry. I was trying to pay you a compliment.”

  Grinning, Cassandra said, “Don’t worry about it. The overpriced perception is one of the reasons I need your brother’s help.” Striding to Wyatt’s pantry, she took stock. Then she scoped out the fridge, noting the fruits and veggies. She was already picturing pasta with marinara sauce and a big salad. “He sure eats healthier than he did in the old days,” she murmured.

  It was only when Jackie cleared her throat that she realized what she’d said. Whirling around, she stammered, “Your brother and I have known each other for a while.”

  Jackie stared at her, but didn’t answer at first. Instead, she walked to the kitchen door and pushed it open, peering into the living area of the apartment. Then she pulled her head back in, closing the door again. “I know,” she said in an exaggerated whisper. Her wide, sparkling eyes and the way she bobbed her head up and down in several jerky nods added to the melodrama.

  Cassandra was almost afraid to ask what the girl meant. Because judging by the way she’d scoped things out to make sure Wyatt wasn’t going to overhear, Jackie knew a lot. And she didn’t want her brother to know she knew.

  “I lived here with Wyatt for a couple of months last summer after sophomore year, instead of going home to Montana,” Jackie said, still sotto voice. “I wanted to be helpful, so I was doing some cleaning and I found a box of stuff in the closet.”

  “Stuff?”

  “It was a bunch of pictures. Of him…and you.”

  Oh, boy. She didn’t know whether she was touched that Wyatt had kept pictures of them—as she had, though she’d never admit it to him—or if she worried about which pictures Jackie was referring to. Hopefully they didn’t have a skinny Elvis in them.

  “They were of your wedding.”

  So much for that hope. Cassandra lowered her eyes, not quite knowing how to face the young woman, who could have been her sister-in-law all these years. “I see.”

  “He had your divorce papers in there, too.”

  The not-terribly-effective-ones, apparently.

  “But it was the pictures that really made me sad.”

  Jackie crossed the room before Cassandra even realized she was moving. Throwing her arms around Cassandra’s shoulders, she gave her a big hug. “You and my brother were perfect together—I can tell by the pictures. So what on earth happened? How did you two screw it up? Are you here to get him back?”

  Since Jackie’s hair was going up Cassandra’s nose and in her mouth, and she could barely breathe because of the bear hug, she couldn’t reply at first. Finally, Jackie let go and stepped back. It was then Cassandra noticed the tears on the girl’s cheeks. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,” Cassandra said. “Wyatt knew you’d be hurt by it, that’s why he never told you.”

  Jackie shook her head, her brown eyes—so like her brother’s—wide and miserable. “I’m not sad for me,” she said. “I’m so sad for you two, that you let it slip away. Because, Cassie, honest to God, judging by the things he wrote to you in the letters he never sent, my brother loved you more than life itself.”

  To his great surprise, his sister pulled off a nice dinner. Considering Jackie had set off his fire alarm every time she’d tried to cook something last summer when she’d lived with him, Wyatt was impressed. “They teaching cooking classes at Boston University now?” he asked as he pushed his plate away and leaned back in his chair.

  Jackie shoved a forkful of spaghetti into her mouth and mumbled something.

  Wyatt couldn’t help laughing. “What’s Ms. Devane going to think about our table manners?”

  “Considering Ms. Devane just sopped up the last of her marinara sauce with her bread,” Cassie said, “she’s going to think they’re just fine.”

  Her eyes were sparkling, her lips quirked in a smile. And Wyatt was simply unable to resist smiling back.

  If someone had told him one week ago that he’d enjoy an evening in Cassandra Devane’s company—in his own home—he would have thought they’d been smoking something other than a cigarette. But it had happened. She was here. And it was…okay.

  Better than okay.

  The three of them sat at his dining room table, with Jackie at one end and Wyatt on the other. His sister had insisted on playing hostess to the nth degree, meaning Cassie was seated at Wyatt’s right hand. Very close to him. Close enough that he could occasionally feel the brush of her leg against his own under the table. Which might not have been good for his sanity, but was so wickedly enticing that he couldn’t bring himself to care.

  He was also unable to resist leaning toward Cassie. “You have tomato sauce on your chin,” he said as he carefully wiped it away with his napkin.

  She turned, her blue eyes widening as she watched him. He was close enough to note the redness of her lips from the wine she’d just sipped. “Thanks.”

  Jackie, Miss No-Sense-Of-Timing, interrupted. “I am a big fat liar. Cassie made dinner.”

  Wyatt immediately pulled back and gaped at his sibling. Jackie’s face flushed pink, and beside him, Cassie groaned.

  “Just in case, you know, you were thinking Cassie couldn’t cook or something,” Jackie said. She nibbled her lip. “Sorry. She was trying to make me look good.”

  Beside him, Cassie was clearing her throat and shaking her head at Jackie. Wyatt suddenly figured out what was going on: his little sister was trying to set him up with his own ex-wife!

  The whole thing was ridiculous. So ridiculous, he simply had to change the subject. “Have you pulled your chemistry grade up yet?” he asked Jackie.

  Good tactic. His sister immediately went on the defensive, distracting Wyatt from his painful memories. “I’m not going to be a scientist. Why do I have to get As and Bs in chemistry?”

  Wyatt raised a brow. “Maybe because you can’t graduate if you end up with a D?”

  “Seems to me I know someone who flunked chemistry in college,” Cassie mumbled into her wineglass. A quick glance over confirmed the laughter dancing in her eyes.

  “I repeated it,” he said quickly.

  Cassie smirked. “Wow, and pulled it all the way up to a C. I guess science isn’t exactly the Reston family ‘thing.’”

  “Nope. We’re creative types.” Wyatt hoped Jackie hadn’t been reading too much into the conversation. She had to be wondering how Cassie knew so much about him.

  He should have known better. Jackie had zoned in on only one part of the conversation. “You flunked? You big phony, and you have the nerve to give me crap about a D?”

  He shot Cassie a glare. “Mouth.”

  She shr
ugged. “Just leveling out the playing field. It’s a womanly art, you know.” A secretive smile told him she was talking about more than the field between him and his little sister. But he didn’t have a chance to ask her what.

  “Talk about double standards,” Jackie muttered.

  He thought about that, wondering if he had been too tough on his sister. If so, it was only because he wanted the best for her…wanted her to get a top-notch education and make the most out of every chance she got. So she wouldn’t have to struggle—to fight so hard for everything she wanted. As Wyatt had.

  Still, maybe she was right. He hadn’t been fair to her. Jackie was no longer his pesky eight-year-old sister, who’d cried when he’d left home to go away to college. “Okay,” he said, “I’m going to keep my mouth shut. You pull the grade up enough to graduate and I won’t say another word about how much you’ll regret not knowing the classifications of beryllium and krypton.”

  “Alkaline metal and noble gas,” Cassie immediately murmured.

  Wyatt and Jackie both stared at her, jaws open.

  “What? Who doesn’t know that?” She sounded defensive.

  “Me,” Jackie said with a frown. “Heck, I thought krypton was just made up for comic books.”

  Wyatt chuckled. “Me, too.”

  “Cretins,” Cassie said with a shake of her head. “Some of us actually paid attention in science.”

  “Maybe one of us,” Jackie said, giving Wyatt a conspiratorial look.

  “Yeah, maybe one.” He nodded at Jackie, telling his sister everything was okay between them. And somehow it was. Cassie’s presence had helped Wyatt see his relationship with Jackie through new eyes. More impartial ones. “Just try to get through this semester, okay?”

  His sister’s huge, lopsided smile told him she would do her best. “Deal.”

  The ice completely broken, they shared the rest of the meal in comfortable conversation. Cassie was vivacious and funny, amusing both him and Jackie with her stories about her travels and some of the people she’d met. Somehow, it didn’t hurt, thinking of that lifestyle she lived, because it seemed from her words and her expressions that she considered that side of her life—the famous, rich, socialite side—a source of amusement more than anything else. The way she laughed about one movie star’s bad breath and a tycoon’s floppy toupee made him suspect there was still a bit of that same down-to-earth girl he’d known. She was just in a very sexy, mature, confident package.

  The one thing he found incredibly amusing was the way Jackie kept pointing out all of Cassie’s accomplishments to Wyatt. She wasn’t giving up on trying to set them up, and the situation made him chuckle more than once.

  He glanced at Cassie, expecting to see her amber eyes sparkling with laughter. Instead, he realized, she was focused on shuffling all the cucumbers to the side of her salad.

  He sat very still, watching her, flooded with an unexpected barrage of memories. Cassie had never liked cucumbers. Just like he’d never liked olives. The two of them used to do an automatic salad dance whenever they’d gone out to eat, dumping anything they wouldn’t eat into each other’s servings. Glancing down, Wyatt couldn’t prevent a sharp stab of sadness when he saw the lonely black olives in his bowl…and the cukes in hers.

  They’d lost something. Not just their marriage, not just their passion. No. They’d also lost their friendship…that automatic connection, the way they could finish each other’s sentences, always knew each other’s moods.

  He’d mourned over having lost Cassie as his wife. He hadn’t thought so much about having lost his best friend.

  But she had been. The best he’d ever had in his life.

  The realization—the sharpness of the loss—had suddenly proved too much to stand. An intense sense of loss overwhelmed him. Which was why he abruptly rose from the dinner table.

  “Well, dinner was great, but it’s probably time for me to drive you back to your dorm, and Cassie back to her hotel,” he said, focusing on his sister. Not on Cassie.

  His sister immediately frowned. “That’s silly. It’s only nine o’clock.”

  “Jackie, you have an eight a.m. class tomorrow, and you said you haven’t finished your paper for it.”

  “It’s not a big deal,” Jackie said, “I can skip it and turn the paper in later in the week.”

  “No, you can’t,” said Cassie, to his surprise.

  He finally glanced at her, and saw the tightness in her mouth. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. Nor, however, would she let his sister get away with skipping school.

  “Thank you both, very much, for dinner,” she said, rising and pasting-on a smile. “But your brother is right, I really do need to get back to the hotel. I have…some phone calls to make.”

  He would wager there were no phone calls, but was glad she wasn’t putting up any kind of an argument. While Jackie grumbled and gathered her things, he carried plates into the kitchen, stacking them in the sink, and waving off Cassie’s offer to clean them. His silence and stiffness apparently got his message across, because she didn’t persist.

  Minutes later, they were in the parking garage, getting into his car. During that drive, he gave thanks for his incredibly small vehicle. With Jackie crammed into the tiny back seat, he and Cassie were able to exchange little more than the most minor pleasantries before saying good-night.

  Which was exactly what he wanted. When his walls had started crumbling down, and he’d allowed himself to dwell on their past, he’d managed to reinforce his defenses. By the time she got out of the car at the hotel, mumbling another thank-you and a stiff goodnight, he sighed audibly with relief, not caring what Jackie heard or made of his reaction.

  Cassie was gone. It was done. They need not ever see each other again, and that was really for the best.

  He knew that, logically. Knew steering clear of his ex was the right thing for him intellectually and emotionally. Knew he’d be an absolute fool to risk spending any more time with a woman who made him stupid and crazy with lust.

  So why in the hell, just twenty-four hours later, was he pulling into the parking lot of her hotel, having agreed to meet her for a drink?

  “Because you’re a masochist,” he said aloud as he got out of the car and pocketed his keys.

  Cassie had called him earlier in the day, and something had forced him to accept her invitation. Wyatt had been prepared to refuse when he’d suddenly realized a Pandora’s box had opened up inside him. So many crazy, tangled memories had come soaring out last night, he now felt he had to see her again, if only to figure out what she was really doing in Boston. Because the whole excuse of her wanting to hire him had been bull. She had another reason for being in town, he knew it down to his bones. She wasn’t telling, but he’d seen the averted gazes, heard the occasional mumbled excuse, and knew there was more to this story than she was letting on.

  He needed to find out what it was.

  He also needed to prove something—to her? To himself? He had practically run away because of some salad memories last night, which was ridiculous. Seeing her again, proving to himself that he could resist her, and was entirely over his feelings for her, was a necessity not only for his self-confidence, but for his pride.

  Entering the pricey hotel, he glanced around and immediately saw Cassie sitting on an overstuffed couch. She spied him and rose, smiling as she approached. “Hi. I’m glad you came. A drink is the least I owe you for last night’s dinner.”

  “Honestly, I have no idea why I agreed to this.” The words had left his mouth before he’d even considered them. He couldn’t regret the statement, though. It was, after all, only the truth.

  Taking her arm, he led her through the lobby toward a nearby lounge, noting the attention she received from the hotel staff. She’d obviously made her presence felt already, because everyone—from the concierge to the bellhop, to the waitress—greeted her with a genuine smile.

  Once inside the bar, they sat at a quiet table in the corner. Only a few other people
were around. A bored-looking middle-aged man sat at the piano. His fingers danced lightly over the keys as he plucked out quiet standards—inoffensive background music that covered all other conversation in the place, leaving them cocooned in their own private bubble.

  “So when are you going back to New York?” he asked after they sat down and ordered their drinks.

  “Not sure.” She shifted in her seat—which was beside his, not across from it—and crossed her legs. He was so tuned in to Cassie that he could hear the scrape of the fabric of her slacks. Even, he believed, her slow, deep breaths.

  Their eyes met and held for a long, electric moment. It was as if both of them had suddenly realized they were completely alone in a hotel bar. At night. With only the clink of glasses and some quiet music to disturb them.

  The waitress returned with their order, breaking the silent connection, and then disappeared again behind the bar.

  “Tell me why you’re really here.”

  Her reply was just as challenging. “Tell me why you want me to leave.”

  Maybe because your pants highlight that glorious ass and those amazing legs and my will-power is down to zero?

  “I’d think that would be obvious.”

  “Not to me. So say it, Wyatt.” As if she knew exactly what he was thinking, and was determined to increase the pressure, she leaned close and dropped her hand onto his thigh.

  Her touch burned. Fried him until he had to drop his hand to cover hers on his leg. Still, he managed to draw a response out of his gut. “I’m here to prove to myself—and to you—that I’m over you. That we can be friendly and cordial, and absolutely nothing else.”

  And that there would be no repeat of the wild, intense, sensual dreams that had been tormenting him for the past few nights. Not that he was about to tell her that.