“Pretend?” she shrieked. “What do you mean, pretend? What is this, high school? Maybe you’d like to try going steady in secret?” She grabbed something out of the box behind her and threw it at him.
He flinched as the bag of M&Ms hit his shoulder and split open, showering candy around the room. “No, I thought it would be easier this way.”
“For who? You want me to be available to you whenever you want to scratch your itch?”
“That’s not what I want.” He wanted things to go back to the way they were. Hanging out in her house playing at a relationship, but this time he wanted it to be real.
“You want me to be your whore,” Cass screeched. She snatched something else out of the box and threw it at him. With a gasp, she tried to grab it back.
Jason grabbed for the small box. It bounced off his fingers twice, turning in the air over his hands like a slow motion camera shot, before he caught it. Cass darted forward and tried to whip it away, but he lifted it out of her reach. Her eyes looking up at the box were panicked. He opened his hands to see what she so desperately wished he hadn’t caught and stared at the box stupidly. “This is a home pregnancy test,” he said when he could understand the writing on the side.
“It’s mine.” She reached for the box, not meeting his eyes.
“The test or the baby?”
“There might not be a baby.” An arm wrapped across her stomach in a protective gesture, she stared at him, looking utterly miserable.
“But you want to be sure. Is it mine?”
She slapped him, spun on her heel, stalked to the table and leaned against it.
The imprint of her fingers was probably as visible as it felt. He didn’t know why he’d said anything so cruel. Of course it was his. Theirs.
He studied the slope of her shoulders as she huddled there, held up by the table. When Connie had been carrying Colton, she’d been sick for the first seven months. Pale and weak, throwing up every day. Eleanor hadn’t fared much better when she’d had her kids. Annamaria had been lucky with her first, but two and three had been bad. His mother swore Callisto babies were hard on the body. Cass looked so pale and weak. He stepped behind her and put his hands on her shoulder. “Preciosa, are we pregnant?”
“We are not. I am. You never wanted my baby.” She jerked away from him.
“You said you would give it up.”
“Well, maybe I lied about that then. After all, you lied to me.” She shuffled toward the hall and stopped. In front of her, a painting sat on an easel, and she tried to block his view.
He walked over to study it. The image looked so alive, he expected to see his fingers moving across the strings as he sat on her couch with his bare feet propped up to the fire. If he were sitting at the table, it would fit perfectly with the rest of the room and appear as if he sat on the couch, playing guitar.
Cass, who slumped in the kitchen door wearing his sweater, had painted him. Face turned to the side, she now studied the floor. You aren’t stupid, Jason, his mother had said. You know when someone loves you, you just can’t accept it.
“You love me, don’t you?” he asked.
Cass shook her head, but wouldn’t look up, and chewed her lip in a gesture he recognized well.
“I love you,” he said.
Her head jerked up. “Do you love me, or are you avoiding a potential paternity suit? I’m not going to let you charm me and lie to me again.”
“Lie to you?”
“About your dad. Oh poor pitiful me, my papa walked out when I was just a baby. Come to bed and make me feel better.”
Jason cringed. He’d done a great job covering his tracks on that one. “Cassie, it was true. I was lying when I said I’d lied about it. I was afraid you’d sell the story to the tabloids. Nobody outside my family knew. Until today.”
“What?” Her eyes looked a little too crossed to be healthy.
“My mother blurted it out in front of the whole band. My dad did walk out when I was a kid. I wanted to be completely honest with you, but as soon as I was, I got scared that you hadn’t been honest with me.”
“So the kettle decided the pot must be black.” Eyes sparking with anger, she folded her arms.
He shrugged and stared at the floor. This was so far off the script he didn’t know where to go next. “I made a lot of dumb mistakes. I can make up for them.”
“Why?”
“Because you are everything I ever wanted. Exactly the way you are.” He met her eyes. Her arms were hanging a little looser. Maybe in time they would open again to welcome him. He reached in his pocket. By some miracle the ring he’d dropped in there in Los Angeles had made it all the way across the country and up her driveway. “Will you marry me, Cassandra, bella?”
Cass swayed on her feet. Her eyes tried to focus on a point somewhere near the tip of her nose. Then she listed to one side and started to fall, making no effort to catch herself.
Before she hit the floor, he caught her. He carried her to the couch and wrapped her in the blanket. Fainting wasn’t the response he’d expected. Good money was on her running for her gun to chase him out. He hadn’t been counting on anything as absurd as a yes.
He set the ring on the coffee table. Before he returned it to his mom, he’d get that stone replaced. Right now, though, he needed to get a fire going.
The way Cass had taught him—paper first, small twigs, larger twigs, small branches, larger branches—he laid the fire. Over his shoulder, the announcers listed off the contenders for Album of the Year. All in all, he’d rather be here.
The guys on the screen had rearranged themselves so they were all sitting together. His mother sat next to Brian in the seat he would have had. She was holding Brian’s hand.
He glanced at Cass. Her eyes fluttered open, so he dropped some good size pieces of wood on the fire and went to her, helped her sit up.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, brushing her hair off her face.
“Like I should be speaking in tongues,” she said, groaning.
He smoothed his hand across her silken cheek. When she didn’t smack it away, he took it as a good sign.
“And the winner is...” The announcer dropped the envelope and had to scoop it off the floor. “The winner is, Bayonet Ball, Touchstone.”
“You won. Congratulations,” she whispered.
“Thanks.” Jason leaned back against the couch, settling her against his chest. This was what he’d wanted. Not what he really wanted, but what he’d asked for earlier. To be watching the Grammys sitting on Cass’s couch with her leaning against his chest. Maybe with time he could make it up to her and make her love him again. He’d have to start all over. Be her friend for a while before trying to move things along. If she’d let him.
“We’d like to thank everyone who made this possible,” Marc was saying. “Without the love and support of our families, our friends and our fans, this wouldn’t have been possible.”
Brian commandeered the microphone. “And to Jason, who couldn’t be here tonight, we hope your personal project is going well.”
Well? He’d come out here to bribe Cassie into a sham of a relationship, ended up asking her to marry him, and wrecked any hope of happiness in the immediate future. Well wasn’t the term he’d use.
“Yes,” Cassie said.
“What?” She’d said something about speaking in tongues; maybe nonsense was considered a tongue.
“You asked me a question.” She turned in his arms. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears but her smile lit her face. “The answer’s yes.”
Nothing spelled happiness in the immediate future like her yes to his marriage proposal. He crushed her against him and pressed his cheek to the top of her head. Yes.
Epilogue
With what would have appeared to the untrained eye to be a smile, Cass leaned over and whispered to Jason, “If one more person asks me when I’m going to have this baby, I’m gonna punch ’em.”
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“I don’t think that would be a good idea, sweetheart,” he said. He’d already decided, Cass pregnant was a master’s program in patience. Between temper and illness, Cass’s mother’s ferocious protectiveness, his sisters’ well-meaning if smothering concern, and Mom’s conviction that he couldn’t be patient enough, he was developing a near psychic ability to know when to be patient and when to go to ground until the worst was over.
Then there was his mother’s dating. He hadn’t developed the ability to cope with that yet. Laughing, she now whirled past in the arms of the Potterville postmaster, who was not as gimpy as everyone had supposed.
“Do you think if I hit someone,” Cass asked as if he hadn’t spoken, “the excitement would be enough to induce labor?”
“I doubt it.” Jason tightened his arm around her shoulders. This was one of those be patient, hold on and keep quiet times. Last week, when she’d merely been due any minute, he’d made the mistake of saying he wished he could help her carry the baby. She’d whipped a plate at his head and then cried when it smashed on the wall.
“Well, Cass, look at you.” The middle school principal stopped in front of them, smiling. “I hope this isn’t a trend for your child. Being tardy isn’t a good habit.”
Angela, on Cass’s other side, laughed. “Marla, your instructors seem to be at loose ends.”
The principal turned in the direction Angela pointed, spotting this week’s guest dance instructors standing at the door looking around. “Excuse me,” Marla said, headed for the couple.
Angela snorted, patted her own expanding belly. “Only someone who’d never had a baby would say something that stupid.”
“At least she gave up the idea of her parents giving dancing lessons,” Finn said from behind his wife’s chair. “Did you hear, the high school is building a new science lab with the money they earned from this summer’s robot wars receipts?”
Angela rolled her eyes at Cass. “How could we forget, when you mention it every three days?”
Tyler fell to his knees in front of Cass. “You’ve got to dance with me. If I don’t get away from those girls, there might be a homicide.”
“I can’t dance, Tyler,” she replied. “I can hardly walk. I was supposed to have this baby four days ago.”
Tyler whimpered, looking over his shoulder like a hunted man. “But I’ve got to get away from them. Angela?”
“Seven months pregnant, and I danced with you last time,” Angela pointed out. “Go ask Paul.”
“Or Cori,” Cass offered.
“Or Maureen,” Jason added. “I think she’s in the nursery.”
“Great. I’ll try all three.” Tyler stood up. “If one of them shows up, I went outside or something.” He disappeared into the press of people.
Jason shook his head. “I told him not to tell them he would be here tonight.”
Cass sighed. “He loves it. Besides, there’s Laura with one of the tourists.” She nodded toward where one of the latest beauty queen rivals was being led to the floor by a handsome young man. The guy looked like he didn’t know what had hit him, and was probably right. Maybe he was an up and coming politician. Laura had been voted Most Likely To Be First Lady by her class last year. She was still miffed that June Kim had been voted Most Likely To Be President.
The summer after they married, Dan had taken over the operation of the campground, and Cori and Kady turned their attentions on him. They still hadn’t settled who won. Cori got Dan, a wedding ring, and Cass’s old house. Kady had shaken the dust of this little town off her feet and run to New York, from which she occasionally returned to rub in her Sex In the City lifestyle, her Kate Spade bag and Jimmy Choo heels. Neither would admit jealousy to the other, but they would to everyone else. They did admit jealousy for Cass who had the man, the ring, the big new house on the mountain as well as a house in California, the shoes, the bag and a great big yellow sapphire necklace that she wore whenever Jason asked.
The sapphire did seem an odd choice with the yellow cotton maternity dress, but she still looked stunning. She leaned against his side and closed her eyes.
“Are you okay?” he murmured into her hair.
“As okay as I can be, when I’m about to explode,” she answered.
His mother appeared in front of them with Ben behind her. “You look tired, Cassie. You should go home.”
“I’m fine. I’m tired of being at home.” Cass summoned up a smile for her mother-in-law’s benefit.
Mom shot him a threatening look, informing him in no uncertain terms he’d be at fault if anything went wrong. Then she took Ben’s hand and led him away. The first tour he’d been separated from Cass, she’d taken it on herself to find out what happened to the missing Alfred Callisto. With Jason’s sister Tessa’s able help, she’d tracked him from the wife and two daughters he’d abandoned in Santa Fe, to a woman who had not married him and not given him any more children but had been cast off to a car accident that claimed his life in Idaho eight years ago. The woman in Santa Fe, Susan Callisto, had become fast friends with Jason’s mother. One of her daughters was house-sitting his place in California while attending college on his dime. The other ran a B&B here in Potterville. The final Mrs. Callisto refused all contact with any of them. Eleanor thought it was only a matter of time before she, too, joined the bizarre extended family.
Jason looked around the room. Bizarre and extended about described the situation. In marrying Cass, he’d become part of the town family. Not caring that he was famous or his father had abandoned him, they’d accepted him. Andy had suddenly realized what he’d been missing in not having a son all these years. He’d taught Jason to fish and, when Brian and his kids visited, organized family fishing trips. Very little fishing was done, but there were lots of marshmallow and hot dog roastings and a good portion of singing campfire songs.
“Daddy,” someone in front of him demanded in a little voice.
He looked down at his daughter. Sometimes he had to remind himself that the dark-haired, dark-eyed child who looked just like pictures of Annamaria at four was his daughter. It seemed too magical to be real, even though he’d been present for most of the pregnancy and the birth. He always expected to wake up one morning and discover he’d dreamed it all because his life couldn’t be this good. Even when his wife was throwing dishes at him.
Andi put her little hands on her hips. “Momma’s asleep.”
“Momma is not asleep,” Cass announced. “What do you need, swee’pea?”
“Can I stay with Mamaw and Papaw tonight?”
“Again?”
Andi stuck out her lower lip and gave her mother her best soulful expression. Cass narrowed her eyes, studying her child. Before the manipulation continued, he scooped Andi into his lap.
“Why do you want to stay with Mamaw and Papaw again?” he asked, smoothing her ponytails down her back.
“Papaw said he’d teach me to balance a spoon on my nose.”
“Well, that is a vital skill, honey,” Jason told Cass, who rewarded him with a patronizing smirk. “Okay. You can stay in town tonight. But you behave.”
Andi twisted in his arms and gave him a loud smacking kiss on the lips, then vanished into the crowd.
Cass sighed. “Didn’t we come down the holler tonight to pick her up from my parents?”
“Originally, but you might go into labor tonight, and if she’s with your parents we won’t have to worry about where she is while we go to the hospital.”
“It makes sense, Cass,” Finn said.
“Oh right, like I’m ever going into labor. I’m going to be pregnant forever. I feel like I’ve never not been pregnant. Do you ever feel that way?” she asked Angela.
“No.” Angela smiled.
“She lies.” Finn leaned over his wife’s shoulder. “Every morning she wakes up and says I am still pregnant. It wasn’t a nightmare.”
Angela whacked him, which caused him to stand up, rubbing his h
ead. Then she grinned at Cass again. “I never say anything like that.”
Cass laughed. “Okay. I get it. I think I’ve had enough of sitting here like a crow on a phone line tonight anyway. Take me home, Jason.”
Jason rose and hoisted Cass out of her chair. He stood for a moment while she located her balance, and then escorted her to the door, past well-wishers, who all had a comment about her current overdue state.
“I feel like an elephant,” Cass muttered as they walked through the muggy night air to the truck.
“You are a lovely elephant.”
“You are a jerk.” She flashed him a brilliant smile. “No kid tonight.”
“What ever happened to you are never touching me again?”
“No kid tonight,” she repeated.
“You are insatiable.”
She slipped her hand behind his neck, tugged him down and kissed him, in the middle of the sidewalk, with people all around them. Her lips were soft and urgent. She tasted him like it was all brand new. Somehow that made everything brand new for him too. She shivered and the baby kicked. It probably felt a little smooshed.
She made an odd noise and tried to push him away. For a moment he resisted, but he relinquished her mouth.
“Water,” she gasped.
“What?” As he took a step back, he felt dampness on his leg.
“It’s time to go, Pop. Right now.”
Meet the Author
Born in Northeast Ohio, I have lived on four different continents, including both sides of Asia, and traveled extensively. I have an extremely elaborate fantasy life and have forgotten that my bands don’t really exist, to the extent that I have shopped for their albums on iTunes. I have met sheikhs, magnates, high ranking politicians and the guy who did the original production paintings for Raiders Of the Lost Ark, but I’m pretty sure the only celebrity who would make me completely tongue tied would be Randolph Mantooth of Emergency!
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