“I put it in the oven,” she said. “You can take everything out in a half an hour. It’ll be hot and ready then. Just give the dishes to Cass. She’ll get them back to me.”
The words hot and ready didn’t have the same meaning with Angela. “You’re not staying for dinner?”
“Staying for dinner?”
“Sure.” He lifted her coat off her shoulders and tossed it over the back of the couch with his. “You did all the work of cooking, you should enjoy it. Would you like something to drink?”
Angela eyed the whiskey bottle on the table. “I don’t drink.”
“Yeah, don’t start. It’s a bad habit.” He scooped up the bottle from the table and stashed it in the kitchen.
“Your fire’s gone out,” she said.
“I know, but I don’t know how to start a new one.”
“Oh, I can do that.” She went to the hearth and peered in the wood box. “Your wood box is almost empty.”
“Why don’t I go outside and get some more wood while you get it going?”
Angela set to work before he’d gotten outside. On the top step, he remembered that he’d left his shoes in Cass’s house. He glanced in that direction. What did he expect to see? Her curtain twitching as she spied on him? The tracks from the snowball fight earlier ranged around the center, his own footsteps leading from her house to his and Angela’s leading around Cass’s to his door, and the tree. Frowning, he gathered up an armload of wood from the pile beside the house.
Why did it matter? He’d had her. Why did he need to know about her tax returns and her groceries? Why did it really matter?
“It just does,” he muttered to himself as he walked onto the porch and went inside. “This is a nice little town,” he said to Angela. “Have you lived here all your life?”
“Oh, yeah. I never really wanted to go anywhere else. Not like Cass. I’d be afraid to live in New York.”
“I didn’t know Cass lived in New York,” Jason lied, sitting down in one of the chairs.
Angela started stacking wood in an elaborate pattern in the fireplace. “Yes, she did. She lived there for five years before she came home. She was some kind of artist. She paints these great pictures that she sometimes sells to the tourists in the summer. She’s really good. Maybe you could have her paint one of your album covers.”
“Maybe.” Jason smiled. Angela hadn’t required much prodding at all. “She probably doesn’t have a lot of time to paint. She’s probably pretty busy with boyfriends and stuff.”
“No,” Angela said, pulled a lighter out of her coat and lit a twist of newspaper that she’d inserted in her wood sculpture. It caught, and she turned away. “She hasn’t had a boyfriend since she came back from New York. Unless she’s hiding him for some reason. She dances with about anybody who asks at the church. Finn always asks her to dance.” Frowning, she looked at the coffee table. “Is that your cellular phone? It looks like one of the new ones.”
Jason blinked. He’d been expecting her to start waxing poetic about Finn Runningwater, something he didn’t especially want to hear. “Yeah,” he said, sitting forward.
“Can I look at it?”
“Go ahead.”
Angela picked up the phone and turned it over in her hands like it might bite. “Kady has a cellphone, but she won’t let us touch it. She says we’ll break it. It’s out of service a lot because of the mountains.”
“That makes sense.” Settled back in his chair again, he said, “You’re older than Kady and Cori, aren’t you?”
“Way older. I graduated high school before they were even freshmen. But there’s nobody from my class left in town. They all went to college or joined the army. Except Mike Bittner, he’s in the Navy. And Oz Coontz up the holler. Oz is a little slow.”
Maybe Angela was a little slow, too. She didn’t seem stupid, just a bit behind the learning curve socially. The phone rang in her hand, and she jumped, dropping it. She went pale. “Oh God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to break it.”
He reached forward and scooped it off the floor. Brian. “I got it. No harm done. Just a call.”
“I better check dinner.” Angela rushed into the kitchen.
Jason answered the call.
“Hey, what’s up?” Brian said.
“I’m having dinner with somebody.”
“Cassandra Geoffrey?”
“No. Somebody else.”
Brian snickered. “I thought you’d matured.”
Jason left that hang for a moment. There wasn’t any reason for Brian to not think he was on the trail of another willing female. Except that for the past two years Jason hadn’t managed to summon up even passing interest in any of the hordes of willing females he encountered on a daily basis. Angela started setting the table with paper plates and plastic utensils as if he’d supplied fine china and silver. “Was there a reason you called?” he asked Brian.
Angela looked at him wide-eyed. As soon as she realized he was watching her, she flushed a more brilliant red and all but sprinted back into the kitchen. He only hoped she didn’t think he was hitting on her.
“Tessa called and wanted to know if I knew anything about you and this campground woman. She said you had her fishing in the public records.”
Jason walked to the window and looked out at Cass’s cabin. She thought she lived in a small town. He lived in a much smaller town that happened to be spread out over a good portion of the United States, much of it within the county limits of Los Angeles. How had he ever managed to keep a secret from any of them? “I do.”
“Any reason why?”
“Simple curiosity.” Jason doubted Brian would accept this answer. His mother, his sisters and his other band mates wouldn’t accept this answer either. He had to stop answering the phone. Except, then he would never get the dossier on Cass.
Smoke coiled out of Cass’s chimney. He wanted to be in there, and simple curiosity had nothing to do with it.
“Yeah. Whatever,” Brian said.
“Look, somebody’s waiting for me.”
“And you have a lot of time to make up for. Try not to break every heart in West Virginia.”
“Don’t make me call your kids and tell them about closet monsters again.”
“Hah. See ya.”
“See ya.” Jason hung up and tossed the phone on the table.
Angela stood in the kitchen doorway, poised for flight again, and this time she appeared willing to go without her coat. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop.”
Jason beamed. He still needed to pump her for information. “Don’t worry about it. Is everything ready?”
It took him an hour and twenty minutes and fourteen gallons of premium charm to get slightly more information than he’d figured out over that lunch at Ida’s. According to Angela, Cass was nice. Very nice. She’d gone away to college in Philadelphia, married right after graduation and moved to New York with her husband. The wedding, to which most of the town had been invited, had been nice. Angela didn’t know what the husband did for a living. He had seemed nice, but if Cass had divorced him he must not have been very nice. Cass’s closest friend in town was Paul. Who, Angela informed him in a stage whisper despite that the only person within a mile was Cass, was gay. He’d followed Cass here from New York, where he had been a chef. Despite being a gay New York chef, or maybe because of it, Paul was also very nice. In fact, everyone in town appeared to rate on Angela’s scale as nice or very nice with the exception of Finn. Finn was really sweet. At least Angela hadn’t gone all mushy over the potato-shaped accountant.
By the time she became aware that she’d been alone with Jason for a very long time and bolted, he had a headache. She was, in her own words, nice, but he’d been hoping for some hard facts. He still wasn’t sure why.
* * * *
The next morning, Cass pulled a sled across the snow to the tree. She had hardly eaten dinner, and her pie had gone into the refrigerator uncut th
e night before. Most of the evening had been spent tossing twigs across the coffee table into the fire while she washed her sheets, twice, and pondered whether anything more than dinner had occurred between Jason and Angela during the eighty-six minutes the other woman was in his cabin.
She’d followed Angela’s progress along the road and around the tree to Jason’s door, carrying a plastic grocery bag in each hand. He’d answered the door bare-chested. Surprisingly, Angela had not keeled over on the spot. Cass was torn between happiness that Angela seemed to be getting over her shyness and sick horror that it had to be happening now, with Jason. Michael had warned her she wasn’t cut out for that life. He must have been right. She couldn’t even manage a decent one afternoon stand with Jason Callisto without going insane.
This morning she’d been up before dawn and made herself a farm hand breakfast that would have put a real farm hand into a food coma. She’d inhaled it and started eyeing the pie. After several minutes’ deliberation, she’d decided she didn’t want to eat everything in the refrigerator because that would necessitate a trip to Henderson’s, where she’d have to see Angela and speculate, while everyone else in town speculated about her.
Instead, she’d suited up against the cold and headed out to finish dealing with the tree.
She stacked some of the wood on the sled and dragged it to her woodpile. On her second trip to the tree, Jason’s door opened. Her heart leaped to her throat. Maybe he wanted to talk to her. It would give her time to apologize.
“Hey, Cass,” he called.
“Yeah.” She dropped the sled’s rope. He had no shoes on, she noticed. She probably had the only pair he’d brought with him in her hall.
“Yesterday, you said you’d start a fire for me and you haven’t.”
Her throat tightened. She’d dropped from “my God, you are tempting” to hired help in less than a day. “I thought Angela lit it for you last night.” She bit her lip against the unintended double entendre.
“It went out again.” He folded his arms across his chest. From this distance, his expression was cold and uncaring.
“Sorry. I forgot. I’ll take care of that in a minute.” She loaded a log onto the sled, trying to keep her eyes on the task. Looking at him stung.
“I’d appreciate it if you did it now. It’s pretty cold.”
Cass dropped another log onto the sled. Did she imagine that sharpness in his voice? “All right.” Wading through the snow to his cabin, she could still make out the prints from his bare feet in the snow. At least his visitor last night had been Angela. Anyone else would have leaped to exactly the right conclusion. Angela would have just gone on dreaming about Finn.
Jason stepped away from the door to allow her in. Dreading going inside, she hesitated on the threshold. They’d gotten along well over dinner and he’d enjoyed the trip into town. Sex had been pretty fantastic, by her standards. His, too, if he’d told the truth. Then they’d hit yesterday afternoon. She didn’t want it to be this way, and wasn’t sure what way she wanted it to be, but this turn of events seemed wrong.
He now stood on the far side of the room watching her. He’d obviously tried to light it himself this morning. Three logs were stacked on top of a sheet of charred newspaper.
“You have to start with more paper and smaller pieces of wood,” she said, stepped inside and closed the door behind her. Her cabins had often been described as spacious, especially on her web site. They were pretty large. Whole families slept in them comfortably. Now it felt no bigger than a standard closet. Though he was across the room, he might as well have been next to her. She could almost feel the heat of his breath on her skin. “Listen, about yesterday—”
“Forget about it. It was nothing,” he said.
Cass steeled herself against a flinch. Her entire life was a wasteland compared with those short hours yesterday, and to him it was nothing? “Okay,” she mumbled.
She started crumbling paper to line the grate. Her eyes burned, which she couldn’t explain because she hadn’t gotten any smoke in them yet. Scattering some twigs across the top of the paper, she built a lean-to of thicker branches and thin sections of split logs. Then she looked around for the long thin lighter she supplied each cabin with. “Where’s the fire lighter?”
“On the mantle.”
Cass stood and looked across the mantle. There wasn’t anything on it. Her throat hurt and her eyes wanted to overflow. She had to get out of here. “It’s not here.” Her voice sounded tight. Michael had always hated it when she’d cried, and claimed she was manipulating him.
“Oh, sorry. I stuck it in my pocket.”
She held out her hand behind her, turned and looked down at the hearth, trying to get herself under control. Unwilling to even touch her work gloves, apparently, he dropped the lighter in her open palm. She heard him walk back to his place on the far side of the room as she fitted the lighter in her hand. Crouching, she lit the paper. It caught quickly. Slivers on the inside of her lean-to blackened and curled. Then edges of the split logs began to char.
“You should be okay now,” she said without turning to look at him. “Let this get good and hot before you add any larger logs and tonight when you go to bed, rake the ashes over the coals. That’ll keep them glowing until morning when you can add more fuel.” She swiped at an annoying tickle on her cheek, like a fly landing on her face.
“Cass, are you crying?” Jason asked. The floor creaked as he stepped forward. “Why are you crying?”
Another tear escaped and followed the track of the first. “I got some smoke in my eyes.” She faked a cough.
He lifted her face to meet his. “You’re crying.”
Though she hadn’t heard him cross the room, the touch of his hand rang from the ends of her hair to the tips of her toes. “I’m not.” She sobbed. Her knees stopped working and she collapsed forward into his arms.
Jason caught her and held her tight, whispering. He stroked her hair, calling her bella and cherie and telling her everything would be fine. She closed her eyes. His heart pounded against her chest. When her weeping had receded to a shivery trickle, he asked, “What’s the matter, bella? Are you upset about our little spat yesterday afternoon?”
She nodded. Any second now he was going to get defensive. He would tell her she was just trying to make him apologize when it wasn’t his fault. That it was unfair to use tears against him like this. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cry and I didn’t mean to insult you. I was just so—so—”
“I know, cherie. I was feeling a little like that myself. I shouldn’t have started something I couldn’t finish. I think I got us both too wound up.” He stroked her cheek with his thumb. “You’re too tempting for my good. Am I forgiven?”
“Of course. It wasn’t your fault. I’m the one who went all crazy,” Cass protested.
Jason put his finger over her lips. “Let’s call it a mutual mistake and chalk it up to our first fight, brought on by sexual tension.”
His forgiveness tasted like ambrosia, and as she kissed his finger, he drew a deep, shaky breath.
He cupped the back of her head in his hand, pressing his lips to hers, and with his other hand, opened her coat. Then he slipped his arm around her waist, pulled her tight to his body. “You know I can finish this time, right?” he murmured against her mouth. “You don’t want to start something you don’t want to finish now.”
“Believe me, I want to finish.”
He was backlit by the window. His long hair fell forward, brushing his jaw and casting his face into shadow. She couldn’t be sure, but he seemed to be smiling.
“Good, can you take the gloves off? Or would you rather fight some more?” he asked with a soft purr that made her skin ache for his touch.
Now he wasn’t making any sense, and he wasn’t kissing her. Both bad things.
Jason laughed and kissed her forehead. “Let me.” He took one of her hands off his shoulder and peeled off her work glove, kisse
d her palm. “I can’t believe how much I want you.”
“I want you, too,” she whispered. Though she quivered with anticipation, she was lying. This was more than just wanting or simple lust, but if she told him, he might leave. Or it might sound like a lie and he would leave anyway. She had two weeks. She had to make the most of them.
Jason picked her up. “Then let’s move some place more comfortable.”
He carried her into his bedroom and undressed them both and laid her down on the bed. Cradling her, touching her while kissing every inch of her flesh, he lit all the nerves in her body one by one. Cass melted into the bed as he explored her, laying her soul bare. Outside the wind picked up, howling through the eaves, reflecting the swirl of passion inside her. He touched her everywhere, and her core coiled into a hot, tight ball of ecstasy. The whole room filled with her cries.
And then he entered her, shattering the world, leaving her wrung and gasping, clinging to him as he clung to her.
Chapter 9
“You are something else,” he told her, when he’d caught his breath. Propped up on his elbow, he looked down at her.
Still too loose and relaxed to speak, she could only smile. With an unsteady hand, she brushed his sweaty hair off his face. He caught her hand and kissed her fingers.
“How was your dinner last night?” she asked.
“Dinner?” Jason frowned. “Oh, Angela. Good enough. I’d have rather been with you.” He stroked with his fingers through her hair. “Were you jealous?”
“Angela’s meatloaf is famous around these parts.”
“She gave me the leftovers. I was going to eat them for breakfast.” Jason raised one eyebrow in challenge.
“You haven’t had breakfast?”
“I’ve had you.” He kissed her cheek.
It was a joke, and wasn’t supposed to mean anything. None of this meant anything. “I’m not in any of the food groups.”
“Then I suppose the whiskey I had earlier doesn’t count, either.”
“Whiskey?”
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