“I got up this morning and the fire was out again. I thought about calling you to start it for me. Then I started thinking about yesterday afternoon and got so pissed off, I poured myself a glass and tried to light a fire. I thought about pouring the whiskey on the wood to see if that would help, but the way things have been going, I figured I’d end up burning the place down.” He placed his hand on her stomach, weighting her to the bed. “I really am sorry about what happened yesterday. I should have just run over here for another condom. I was too wound up to think straight and wanted you so much, I latched onto the first thing that would let me blow up.”
“No, it wasn’t you. It was me. I’m the one who insulted you.”
Jason pulled her on her side, spooning her against him. “You won’t even let me apologize.”
“I’m sorry.”
He chuckled, and the husky sweet sound of it shivered down her spine.
Eyes closed, she basked in the sensation of warm skin and hard muscles pressed along her. She had never been so close to anyone, so attached. He felt like an extension of her soul.
But he wouldn’t be here long. Two very short weeks at the beginning of a very long winter. She wanted to wake up like this with him every morning of the little time they had. “Why don’t you bring your things to my house?”
“What?” He sat up and looked down at her.
Choosing to ignore the note of panic in his voice, she said, “Just bring your things over to the house. I have some dinner left and I never cut the pie.”
“You want to live together?”
“Why not? It’s only a little while.”
He frowned. “It is only two weeks. Are you trying to make sure I don’t have whiskey for breakfast too often?”
“It was part of the plan,” she said, swinging her legs off the bed. She wanted him ensconced in her home as quickly as possible. “Come on, I’ll help you carry and then I’ll cook you something healthy for breakfast.”
* * * *
Settled like this in the overstuffed chair in her living room, his guitar in his lap, Cass doing something at the window behind him, being in her home was way too pleasant. She didn’t hang on him like he’d worried she might. Instead she’d gone into her little office at the front of the cabin and worked at the pile of mail she’d gotten from the post office, leaving him to noodle on his guitar, sift through her movies and books, and study her music collection. He should have known a woman who spent all winter in solitude by choice wouldn’t become clingy the moment there was a man living in her house temporarily.
That she had all his albums didn’t surprise him because she had a lot of other contemporary stuff, too. The amount of hillbilly and blues music he’d never even heard of had startled him, though. When she’d come in for supper, he’d been crouched on the floor in front of the CD player sampling a Smithsonian collection of scratchy recordings from the twenties.
After dinner, cuddling on the couch, they’d watched movies from her large library, then gone to bed and made love again. All night, they’d slept tangled around one another. He’d woken up, warm and rested, with Cass nestled in his arms as if she’d always been there. After she’d thrown another log on the fire, they’d lain in each other’s arms, talking and laughing until the house warmed up and hunger drove them to the kitchen in search of breakfast. Working around her in the kitchen while she made pancakes, he couldn’t remember what waking up alone or with Stella had been like. Or rather he could, but the memory had a surreal quality, as if it hadn’t happened in his life. More like a TV movie he’d once seen with a vaguely familiar plot. This felt right for him, like he’d come home after a long absence.
That made him nervous.
He’d never belonged anywhere. Not like this.
The vise of anxiety in his chest tightened further.
“So why did you leave New York?” he asked. Angela had been less than helpful on that point. All he’d divined was, a husband had been involved. Angela didn’t seem to understand why anyone would want to leave Potterville, especially for some place as huge and noisy as New York City. She had no yearning to see what happened outside the valley at all. Had Cass suffered a brief wanderlust before returning to her spawning grounds or did she resent being sucked back here by circumstance? Had she gone there just to be close to her beloved? And most importantly, had she carried this feeling of hominess with her or was it something about this cabin on the mountain?
“My husband left me and I was broke.”
“You were married?” One more question to add to the list. Did she still miss the ex-husband? Was that why she stayed here alone? His sister Connie had never recovered from her ex-husband’s infidelity and their subsequent divorce. Everyone suspected his eldest sister Eleanor had never loved her husband because she’d never gotten broken up when he walked out. And his mother… His mother never seemed to notice there were other men available. She’d married once, and once was enough.
“Yup.”
That didn’t sound like the answer of a heartbroken woman. Jason looked over his shoulder. She was locking the legs of an easel in place. “Why did he leave?”
“He just did.”
There had to be more to the story. As she set up her work space, the line of her shoulders and body language revealed nothing. Whether she’d struggled to save her marriage like Connie, or shrugged and changed the locks the way Eleanor had. Cass wasn’t telling. Her movements were focused on the paints and brushes she’d spread across a small table next to the easel. “What were you doing in New York?”
“I was going to be a famous artist.”
She had her back to him, and the painting on the easel was a picture perfect image of the view out her window. The colors showed late fall instead of midwinter. He blinked in surprise. It looked as though she’d placed another window beside the first, a window on another season.
He set aside his guitar and went over to examine it. Up close, the painting was even more realistic.
Angela’s definition of good covered as much territory as her definition of nice.
In the immediate foreground, he could make out the veins on the leaves that probably hung in front of Cass’s window. In the valley, most of the buildings were hidden by multicolored trees, but the church spires and the town hall with its statue and green identified it. A gold dragon circled the valley, sailing on an updraft from the mountain, sunlight glinting off his scales.
“Nice dragon.”
“I started it last fall, but didn’t get to finish before Christmas.”
He couldn’t see any flaws. “It’s not done?”
Cass gestured with the end of her paintbrush. “I need a little yellow on the underbelly and in the trees here by the river. Then it’ll be done. I think next I’m going to do an alien invasion.”
“Done a lot of these?” He couldn’t stand being near her without touching her, so put his hands on her shoulders. They fit neatly into his palms. The scent of shampoo and the wood smoke clung to her hair.
“I usually manage about three a year.”
Jason laughed. She’d said it as if painting the same little town over and over again wasn’t odd. “What do you do with them all?”
“I do at least one straight one every year, and it’ll sell over the summer. The odd ones sell, too, but I don’t show those to everybody. I have one in the closet with a Big Foot sitting on the edge of the cliff eating a banana, but it’s never sold. I do other paintings, too. It’s my retirement fund.” She dabbed her brush in the yellow and made tiny strokes on the dragon’s underbelly.
“Why couldn’t you get work?”
“I had work for a while. I colored comic books.”
“You what?”
She turned to him. “I put the colors on comic book pages. It’s not one of the world’s most common professions, I guess.”
“What happened?” Jason coiled a lock of her hair around his finger. He didn’t know a lot about art, but he could see
she had more skill than most.
“Politics. One of the editors took a hate for me and blacklisted me.”
Sounded like sour grapes. Lots of people who couldn’t make it decided somebody had it out for them. That usually meant they weren’t good enough or reliable enough. Cass had amazing talent, though.
“One particular editor decided to hate me, and she was powerful enough, the other editors wouldn’t hire me.” Cass shrugged. “I was never late and my editors were always happy with my work, but one day I couldn’t get any jobs. Then Michael left me, so I came home.”
“He was a fool to leave you,” he said, giving her shoulders a squeeze.
Another shrug, but she didn’t say anything as she touched some yellow to the leaves. “There. Now to dry and I can start on the next. Do you want some brandy?”
“Sure.” The painting could have been a photograph taken out her window of the town being attacked by a fire-breathing dragon. Looking closer, he picked out the grocery store and Ida’s Diner.
“Who ruined you?” she asked, handing him a snifter.
The snifter was crystal, and nice quality. He sipped. Rich, orange amber apple brandy. A bottle he hadn’t noticed before sat on the sideboard in the dining room. Laird’s Applejack. Mentally, he added classy to her long list of qualities. “Stella.”
Cass nodded.
“She dumped me in People.”
Cass raised one eyebrow. Now he knew what he’d looked like when she’d told him she’d been blacklisted.
“I went out of town thinking nothing was wrong and picked up a People magazine in the airport on the way home to find myself listed in the ‘over’ column.” Swirling his brandy, he watched the color thin against the glass. He also now knew why she’d shrugged. It still hurt, but there wasn’t anything anyone could do. At least he hadn’t lost his career and his relationship at the same time.
“She wasn’t good enough for you,” Cass offered.
“I thought she was. I wanted to marry her.” He pursed his lips. He’d never told anyone that. No one. Wanting to surprise Stella on Valentine’s Day, on his trip out of town, he’d bought the ring. It had been in his pocket when he saw the magazine, and he’d been so relieved he hadn’t popped the question.
“I’m so sorry.”
“You’re right. She wasn’t good for me.” Letting the chair mold around him again, he pulled the guitar into his lap. Music had been his only hope at the time. His lifeline. He’d played guitar until his fingers ached. “I had to compound it by putting out that lousy solo album.”
“I didn’t think it was bad. I bought a copy.”
“Then I owe you fifteen bucks.”
“Twelve ninety-nine plus tax. It was on sale.” She moved aside her finished painting, leaning it on the wall below the window, and set a clean canvas on the easel.
“Add it to my bill.” He picked out a few notes. “At the time I thought I was creating a work of tortured genius. Something like an album-long “I’m Looking Through You.” Paul McCartney wrote it when he was breaking up with Jane Asher. I should have just gotten permission to record that.”
“She hurt you that badly.”
“She dumped me in People magazine,” he snapped. Immediately, he wished he could take the words back. Cass didn’t deserve being snapped at because he still felt a little too raw two years later. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.”
“No, but I understand hurt. At least you didn’t marry her.” She turned back to him. “Try getting a divorce from another state neither of you were born in. Very messy. And when you’re fighting with a weasel, it doesn’t help. He tried to get a piece of this place.”
“Why did you marry him in the first place?” What kind of a guy would screw with somebody as sweet as Cass? How difficult it would be to track Michael down so he could deck him? Tessa would probably include some info on him in her dossier.
“We went to college together and we both wanted to go to New York when we graduated. We got along well. It seemed right at the time.” She drew in a deep breath. “He was a charming scoundrel, and I discovered too late he was more scoundrel than charm.”
“I can understand falling for that. I did.”
“Stella was a charming scoundrel?”
“In a way. I went for the pretty face and didn’t notice the snake underneath.” Snake was a good description. The way she’d slithered into his life, taken over and slithered out when she was ready. Stella had suggested they live together, and insisted on the New York apartment. She’d decorated their homes, even directed their vacations. She’d run everything. He’d just accepted it as part of being famous. It made for great album sales.
“Ouch.” Cass perched on the arm of the couch. “So what do you want for lunch?”
“I don’t care.” He watched his fingers picking out notes on the strings. Stella. The sun rose and set at her direction. The apartment in New York was an expensive pit thousands of miles away from where he needed and wanted to be, but she was there, so he’d lived there. Jet set vacations to Cannes and Sundance because she wanted to go. The press with her on his arm was great. She always made best dressed lists, and lived for movie premieres. He’d seen a lot of movies because she’d finagled an invitation to the premiere so they could be photographed on the red carpet.
“What about the situation in the Middle East?”
He mumbled, “Nothing.” It wasn’t his press. She hadn’t been worried about his press, but hers. She’d gotten herself connected to all the right people to help her career on those vacations and she’d gotten herself into while with him, photographed in lots of magazines on his arm. People magazine would never have thought to talk to her before she was his girlfriend and the new sucker would have never met her if she hadn’t flirted with him in Cannes.
Cass took his guitar out of his hands and laid it on the couch.
“What are you doing?”
She straddled his lap. “I’m making you forget about her for a few minutes.” She kissed him, running her fingers through his hair.
Her warm, sweet mouth obliterated everything in his mind. Soft and fragrant, her hair hung around them in a red-gold curtain. There was an exclusive resort on St. Tropez he’d gone to with Stella. He wanted to take Cass there. The water would match her eyes. He’d lace tropical flowers through her brilliant hair and walk down the white sand beach hand in hand with her.
Grasping her hips, he shifted her higher, pressed his face between her breasts, and the sound of her happy sigh bound him to her. She pulled her shirt over her head, allowing him access to her sweet pale skin. It felt like velvet under his hands. As he stroked her back, her quiver made him smile. Always so eager for him. Not eager like a groupie, but a woman. Cass responded to him every time. She didn’t lie back and acquiesce. She burned bright all the time.
He nibbled along the line of her bra, tasting her soft flesh. With a hand on each of his cheeks, she turned his face to her again, explored his mouth as if she had never kissed him before. He unhooked her bra and slid it off, dropped it on the floor and cupped her breasts. Her hands clutched his shoulders. One of them moaned, though he couldn’t tell who. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
“Shit,” she hissed.
“What?” Now she was pulling away from him. This was not the time for her to be leaving. He reached for her, but she turned, hopped to her feet.
“Someone’s coming.”
“Coming?”
“Someone’s driving up the road.” She picked up her bra and struggled into it on as she ran to the office window and peeked out the curtain. “Shit. It’s Finn. I need you to hide.”
“Why?” Jason stood up. Her tension was contagious and he couldn’t think straight. He wanted her now. Whoever was outside could go hang. But he didn’t want her to be mad at him either, and this kinda felt like mad. “Couldn’t we just pretend not to be home?”
“He knows I’m home. All he has to do is look a
t the tracks in the snow. He can’t find out you’re here. Christ, if he looks around the other side of the house, he’s going to see our footprints.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t let Finn know what’s been going on. Please, Jason, this is a small town and I have to live in it.” She pulled her sweatshirt on inside out. “If he finds you here, he’s going to put two and two together. It’s going to make a lot of trouble for me. Just hide in the bedroom and I’ll get rid of him.” She picked up his guitar and pushed it into his hands.
“Cass, you’re an adult,” he protested as she shoved him toward the bedroom.
“I know, but I’m an adult living in a small town full of people with nothing better to do than snoop in each other’s private lives. Please, Jason,” she pleaded, pushing him ahead of her.
“All right.” He stopped in the bedroom doorway. “But you have to promise to pick up where we left off.”
A car crunched through the snow in front of the house.
Some of her anxiety must have disappeared, because her eyes sparkled and she smiled. “Do you really need a promise on that?”
“I guess not.” He kissed her. She was leaning into his arms, drawn into his embrace when the knock came at the door.
Blushing, she leaped back. “Just a minute,” she called, then said to him, “Stay in here and be quiet. And stay away from the fireplace, he can see right through.”
Jason stood in the corner of the bedroom, listening to her walk to the door. They hadn’t bothered to make the bed this morning. The blankets were still thrown around invitingly. Remembering waking up with her in his arms, he smiled. Hopefully tomorrow morning would be like that, too.
“Finn, what are you doing here?” Cass said at the front door.
“I wanted to warn you that storm I told you about is on its way. Sounds like a really bad one.” The needy whine in Finn’s voice made him sound like a desperate mosquito.
“You could have called.” A nervous laugh came from her.
Jason looked around. Cass hadn’t closed her top dresser drawer all the way this morning. Something scarlet peeked out.
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