Damn.
Gabe’s stuff. Last night, she’d forgotten to rescue it—but she was finished with taking care of the man and that included his clothes, too. Still . . .
Stepping outside, she tucked the phone between her ear and shoulder to pick up his wet shirt. A quick toss landed it on one of the painted metal garden chairs to dry.
“And how are you?” Cassandra’s mother’s voice suddenly sounded so clear that she started, turning to see if somehow the woman had been magically transported from Timbuktu or Turkistan.
She laughed a little at herself and turned back to bend down and retrieve the crumpled pair of sodden jeans. “I’m okay. But Gabe . . .” She swallowed the rest of the story.
Judith Riley had chosen to conceive a baby without even using a willing bed partner in the process, because it was important to her to prove that women did not need men. Not to make a baby. Not to raise a child. Not to lead a fulfilling life.
She was right, of course. Cassandra would never say it wasn’t so. But she had to wonder why biology compelled people to partner up if there wasn’t some advantage to it.
Her mother’s thoughts never wandered in such a direction, however. So her daughter didn’t share with Judith about the man in her bed—even though Cassandra had decided that once she booted him out of it she was turning her back on him, too.
Instead, she changed the subject as she threw his jeans over another chair. “Do you have your arrival date set for next month?”
She thought the silence on the other end was due to the shaky connection. But then she heard her mother’s slow “Weeell . . .”
The space under Cassandra’s heart hollowed. “You’re not coming back for my birthday.” No question mark necessary.
“I have an opportunity to get into Tibet. I met someone who . . . It doesn’t matter. I’m sure you understand that it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Cassie.”
Her mother hadn’t called her Cassie since she was in kindergarten. She tilted her head toward the blue, blue sky. “I’m only going to turn thirty once in this lifetime, too.”
“Yes, yes. But the Dalai Lama—”
“Judith, the Dalai Lama isn’t even in Tibet. He lives in exile in India.”
“Well, of course you’re right about that. But you don’t really need me there, do you? You’ve met those two new friends of yours, Nancy and Jenna—”
“Nikki and Juliet. And they’re my half sisters, remember? The sperm donor whose specimen was used to impregnate you was the same their mothers used to conceive.”
“Even more to my point. You’ll have family on your big day.”
Family. What Cassandra had always wanted, though her mother had never before conceded the benefit of one until given the chance to visit the place where the Dalai Lama wasn’t. “I was looking forward to you meeting them, Judith.”
“And I will,” her mother declared. “Not next year, but maybe the one after that—”
“What? I thought you were coming back for my birthday, then coming back for good in six months.”
“Plans change, Cassandra. You should learn to be more flexible.”
Blinking against the sudden brightness of the sun, Cassandra lowered her head. Gabe’s soggy boxers were in her line of sight and she nudged at the cotton with her toe, revealing something beneath them. With another nudge she uncovered what they’d been hiding. There, the leather water-stained, was his wallet. She reached for it.
“So when shall I expect to see you again, Judith?” she asked, straightening.
“I’m not sure. There’s Tibet, and then maybe a quick trip to Hong Kong, followed by visiting some new friends in South Africa . . .”
“I see.” She squeezed Gabe’s wallet in her hand, noticing the heft. He carried more than a debit card and his driver’s license.
“I’ll pick you up some lovely gifts. How does that sound?”
Like a piss-poor substitute for her mother’s presence on her thirtieth birthday, but Judith Riley had never been one to worry about someone else’s expectations or needs.
“What are you going to do to celebrate?” Judith’s voice came through loud and clear again, and lighter, too, presumably because she’d broken the bad news.
“I don’t know now,” Cassandra said. “I had been hoping we’d have a few days together. You know, stroll along the beach, hang out at the shop, maybe lunch with my sisters on the actual day.”
“You should do something special for yourself. Buy something you’ve always wanted. Have an experience you’ve been dreaming about.”
Cassandra’s thoughts shifted instantly to Gabe. Gabe in her bed. Without curbing the impulse this time, she strolled back into the house and took the short hallway to look at him through her half-open bedroom door. He was belly-down on her sheets, his head buried in the pillow, the covers riding low along the edge of his hips.
Above them she glimpsed the upper curve of his taut butt, the long valley of his spine, the tangle of his too-long black hair. It was always either too long or too short. He’d let it go until it brushed the tops of his shoulders, then he’d visit some mysterious barber he called “Sammy” who left nicks on his scalp from the brutal clip of a razor.
She suspected he liked the pain.
And yet she still wanted him.
“Do you have something like that in mind, Cassie?” her mom said in her ear.
Cassandra had had Gabe in her mind and in her fantasies since he’d walked into Malibu & Ewe one day two years before and told her he’d bought the building that housed her little yarn shop. He’d bought the café/fish market across the parking lot, too. There were other properties in the Malibu area that were now his. He hadn’t been particularly friendly, but that hadn’t mattered to her.
In the succeeding months, she’d refused to let him get away with his short responses and his stiff attitude. She’d wheedled, she’d charmed, she’d outright lied about needing the occasional repair so that she could get him into her shop and out of whatever black hole had sucked him down.
They were friends now. She was convinced of it when he told her about this funky little place on his property that she was welcome to rent when the apartment building she lived in went condo. He gave her a deal on the monthly cost and she cooked him as many healthy dinners as she could coax him into accepting.
Friendship wasn’t all she wanted, though. She’d always known that on some level.
Could joining him in that bed be the birthday gift her mother was suggesting she should give herself? They’d never kissed. They’d never really touched, except for those drunken times he didn’t remember, when she scooped his sorry ass from some seedy place and dragged him home.
And yet every inch of her flesh ached to be stroked by him. She wanted his hard mouth on hers, even though 99 percent of the time she’d be risking whisker burn from his five-o’clock shadow that was from the five o’clock three days before.
Yearning rushed like heat across her skin.
“Cassandra?”
She’d forgotten all about her mother, and she started at the sound of her voice. “Yes, yes, I’m here.” It came out so loud, she saw Gabe twitch, and then begin to stir.
Cassandra stumbled back from the doorway, and she bobbled the wallet she was carrying. It flew out of her hands to land on the floor, the two edges opening. Inside, in one of those protective sleeves, was a photograph.
“Are you thinking about your celebration?” her mother asked.
“Yes,” Cassandra said slowly. “Right.” She retrieved the wallet from the floor, staring at the small, plastic-covered rectangle the whole while. Two people were pictured. A slender dark-haired woman with a sleek, short bob. There was a child leaning against her leg, her long hair just as dark as her mother’s—and Gabe’s.
Funny, she’d never pictured them in her head. Cassandra had never imagined what Lynn—his wife—had looked like, or Maddie, his five-year-old daughter either. Maybe he had trouble keeping their looks in mind, too. The plastic over their faces was worn away, as if he’d run his thumb over their features countless times, trying to memorize them.
Or trying to bring them back.
Closing her eyes, she snapped shut the edges of the damp leather. She could never compete with that. She could never snag his romantic attention, not when he was so devoted to the ghosts of his wife and daughter who had died at the hands of a drunk driver three years before.
She’d always known that at some level, too, which is why she’d settled for being his friend. But it wasn’t working for her anymore. It wasn’t enough.
So she
had
to turn away from him.
She had to turn toward her future.
“I’m going to throw myself a big bash, Judith,” Cassandra said, making a sudden decision. “I’m going to open the shop and have the best damn thirtieth birthday celebration I can put together.”
“Good idea,” her mother enthused. “Invite everyone. You know they’ll all come.”
“Right,” she agreed. Except one someone. But that wouldn’t matter. While she might include Gabe on the guest list, she promised herself it wasn’t going to break her heart if he didn’t attend.
Gabe Kincaid woke to the familiar: the Death Valley dryness of his mouth and tongue, the pounding at his temples as the hangover goblins used their mallets to knock nine-inch nails into his brain, the last wisps of a sexual dream that left his body hot and his cock erect.
He shifted his legs, noting a warm weight across one ankle. Opening his eyes, he stared, astonished, at the creature draped over his lower limb. It blinked back at him, its yellow eyes wide.
Not the pussy he’d been fantasizing about.
Shutting his eyes again, he breathed deep and tried regrouping. In the last three years, he’d come to consciousness in a variety of places under a range of circumstances. Once, he’d found himself on the beach at Zuma, surrounded by surfers who’d paid him no attention as he’d rolled over and yakked up ninety-proof who-knew-what. Another time, he’d come awake inside a yellow cab parked in the lot of a local bar. Apparently he’d told the driver to leave him in the backseat with the motor running until the meter ran up to the four-hundred bucks he had in his pocket.
In the last year it had been relatively better. He’d wake up with a raging hangover, in his own bed or on his own couch, a note left nearby informing him of his car’s location. Yet one aspect of his benders had always remained the same. He never remembered getting drunk and he never remembered how he got to the beach or to his bed—for which he’d always been grateful.
It was the whole damn point, after all. To forget.
But this morning he didn’t feel so full of gratitude, because he had a bad feeling, a very bad feeling, about where he’d spent last night.
Steeling himself, he took a quick inventory. All right, he was naked. And, yep, he was in between rumpled sheets. Opening his eyes the merest slit, he checked out the animal at the end of the bed.
Damn it, he hadn’t made a mistake. The yellow-orbed pet was none other than one of Cassandra’s cats.
Which meant he was naked in Cassandra’s bed.
Of course, Gabe didn’t really need the visual clues. Now that his brain was getting into gear, he registered it was her scent that was surrounding him, the lemony freshness of the lotion she used on her skin and the sweeter, more flowery fragrance of her shampoo that often drifted through the air as her waterfall of rippling brown hair moved.
The stuff was a mystery to him—its perfect waves and its silky-looking length that, when she was naked, would flirt with the crease at the top of her round ass. Not that he’d ever seen her naked.
He’d just thought about it a lot.
Groaning, he threw his forearm over his eyes to hold back the image in his mind. This was
Cassandra
he was thinking of, who was kind of like a nun, and kind of like a sister, and the closest thing to a friend he had in his whole, fucked-up little world.
Because he honored all that—a half-dead man like himself had to honor
something
—not once had he come on to her like his libido always urged him to.
Except now he was naked in her bed.
And as usual, he had a big gaping hole in his memory. How many days did it go back? Two? Five? It wasn’t something he usually bothered to calculate, other than to be glad that time had passed.
Still, it didn’t mean he’d actually made another entry in the long list of his life’s mistakes, did it?
The sudden sound of rushing water caused his arm to drop and his eyes to pop open. A shower noise, but he knew this place, owned it as a matter of fact, and the shower was in the attached bathroom. The door to it was ajar, the light inside was off, and he’d know if Cassandra was that close.
Then, in the periphery of his vision, something moved.
Oh, no. Oh, God.
There
was
another shower; he knew that, too, because he’d installed its rainwater showerhead with his very own hands last summer. It was situated outside, against the side of the house a few steps from the pool, and that’s where his hostess was making her morning ablutions.
Probably so she wouldn’t wake him; Cassandra was courteous like that.
And if he had an iota of her good manners, he wouldn’t be using the angle afforded by the half-opened mirrored closet door to gawk at her wet body through the bedroom window.
She was naked now, too.
With her head thrown back, her eyes closed as she wet that length of spectacular hair, there was nothing to hide the most amazing pair of breasts he’d been trying not to think about for two long years. It wasn’t as if anyone could ignore them—and her sisters teased her about nature’s bounty all the time—but on only a very few occasions had Gabe allowed himself to even glance at the abundance of female flesh below her clavicle.
And now here that flesh was, for his secret, private viewing, the pale globes that would spill out of his palms and the hard, pink nipples that pointed toward him in invitation. There was all the rest, too: the taut sweep of her abdomen, the tight swirl of her belly button, the cluster of soft brown curls that matched the warm brown on the top of her head.