11
“YOU MIGHT HAVE TOLD ME you knew him personally,” Tag said to Cassie. “Especially since I asked you.”
She lifted a shoulder. He’d thrown her off, just as both Stacie and Miss Priss had. He stood there gazing at her from eyes filled with hurt and pain and anger.
And it made her…ache. Damn it, she didn’t want to think about this. She cared about him, she did. But it was just the bottom-line basic kind of care. The way she cared about her dentist. Her personal trainer.
Her gynecologist.
Which didn’t explain why she felt the inexplicable need to make him understand her.
“Hey.” He stepped closer. “You okay?”
“Of course.”
“Cassie.” His eyes held so much. “Why didn’t you tell me my father was the one to hurt you that night?”
He was putting her on the spot. No one put her on the spot. And suddenly she couldn’t remember why she’d wanted to spare his feelings. Why it mattered what he thought.
She really needed a moment, to think, to regroup. To build defenses against all these damn strings on her heart. “So I knew him. So I’ve always known him. So what.”
“So, you might have told me. Did you think I wouldn’t care? That I wouldn’t believe you? That I wouldn’t want to kill him?”
This was definitely the last thing Cassie wanted to talk about tonight. She didn’t want to hear how he’d found out. She didn’t want to know how it affected him. She didn’t want to do anything but polish off the last of her ice cream.
Alone.
But Tag was looking at her with an expression of sober fury bordering on fear, and she realized it was all for her. Whether she liked it or not, her past had come back to haunt not only her, but him. “He didn’t hurt me, Tag.”
“Not physically, but you trusted him.”
“I don’t trust anyone.”
“Because of him.”
“That would be flattering him.”
“Cassie…” A disparaging sound escaped him. “My father and I aren’t close. We tolerate each other at best. You wouldn’t be hurting me to admit he should have paid for what happened that night.”
“I’ve forgotten all about it.”
“Really? Is that why you’re gripping the wood so hard your knuckles are white?”
Thrown off, when she was never thrown off by a mere man, she turned her back and stalked through the house. Naturally he followed her, because he was a jerk, because he was an a—
“Cassie.” He was right behind her, matching her stride for angry stride. “Stop. We have to talk about this.”
She whirled on him at that, right there in the hallway. “Talk? About how your father thought I was as wild and fun and man-hungry as my mother? No.”
“Cassie—”
“Don’t you get it? He knew how I was. Let’s face it, Tag, everyone knew, so why should he have been any different? I came to terms with that a long time ago about this place.”
“Then why did you come back?”
“Well, there was that little matter of living on Lilac Hill,” she said sarcastically. “And let’s not forget, I couldn’t wait to drive my fancy car downtown just to show everyone.”
“You’ve never mentioned that last thing on your list,” he said very quietly.
“It wasn’t important.”
“On the contrary, I think it’s the most important one.” He stepped closer, then closer still, so they were breathing each other’s air, their bodies just brushing. His hand came up, cupped her face, and his thumb traced her jaw in an aching tenderness that made her eyes burn.
“You wanted to become someone,” he said. “You even made a note that it should have been number one on your list. What were you thinking when you wrote that, Cassie? That you didn’t matter? You did. That you weren’t important? You were. You are.”
“Stop it.” She slapped his hand away. “We both know I wrote that list ten years ago. It doesn’t mean anything now.”
“It does if you don’t believe it, that you are someone.”
“Oh, yeah, look at me.” She lifted her hands and turned full circle, giving him a good look at the au naturel Cassie Tremaine Montgomery. “I’m someone all right.”
He shook his head. “My God, you have no idea, do you? How beautiful you are on the inside, or,” he said, holding her arms when she would have fled, “on the outside. Cassie, you’re just one big fraud.”
She struggled, but he held firm. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“No, I mean it.” He bent a little, to look right into her eyes. “You honestly believe it’s the makeup and the body that sets you apart. You know what else? You honestly think the only thing between us is physical.”
“It is.”
“I don’t mind you wearing me out trying to prove that fact, but one of these days you’ll have to face the truth. There’s more to us than sex.” He let go of her arms, holding her with his gaze.
“No.” Unable to stand the empathy and compassion in his eyes, she covered hers. “Damn it, you really caught me at a bad time, Tag. Just go away, okay?”
“I can’t. I can’t seem to stop thinking about you.”
Shocked, she dropped her hands and stared at him, then let out a laugh. “That’s funny.”
“Really? Why?” He snagged her hand, brought it to his mouth. “Because you think about me, too?”
She would have yanked her hand away but he’d opened his mouth on it and was doing something to her finger with his tongue that made her unable to speak. Then he sucked her finger into his mouth.
Her breath caught. “I…I think about a lot of people.”
“Me?”
Still watching her, he bit the pad of her finger, just lightly, but she felt it all the way to her toes. “Maybe occasionally.”
His tongue swirled over the pad of her finger before working its way to the inside of her wrist. Her tummy danced. Her nipples beaded.
“Do you want me, Cassie? Right this minute, do you want me?”
She forced out a laugh even as she felt her body weeping for him. “Of course not. You barge in here, you—”
“You’re such a bad liar.”
Her mouth had been getting her into trouble since the day she’d figured out how to use it, and today was no exception. “Okay, you’re right,” she said sarcastically. “Oh, Tag, I want you. I want you to make love to me. All night long—”
His mouth covered hers in a kiss that stole her breath. “I’m going to pretend you meant that,” he said when they came up for air.
“You can pretend all you want,” she said, daring him, then remembered…daring Tag was not a good idea.
With a triumphant glare of his eyes, he cupped the back of her head with one hand. The other traced a finger over her throat to right between her breasts. “Not aroused at all?”
“Absolutely not.”
“And yet your nipples are begging for attention. My attention.”
“Maybe I’m cold.”
“Ah.” Nodding agreeably, he swept his big, warm hands down her back, then beneath the material of her too-large T-shirt, spreading them wide on her bare skin. “Let me warm you then, since you’re not aroused at all.”
His warm, warm fingers lightly ran up and down, causing a shiver when they just skimmed the very sides of her breasts.
“Better?”
“Um…yes.” She cleared her throat. “Much better, thank you.”
“You’re not turned on at all, right?”
“Just still slightly chilled, that’s all.” But a delicious languid feeling had begun to overcome her, and damn if her hips didn’t want to arch to his. Just barely, she managed to contain herself, and bit her lip to keep any moans she might feel the urge to utter to herself.
“What was that?” His mouth lightly brushed her ear, causing another shiver. “Was that a…moan?”
She locked her knees together. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
He cupped her bottom, then gripped her hips to his so that she could feel how hard he was, and he was gloriously hard. His mouth was still doing something mind-boggling to that sensitive spot just beneath her ear and she let her head fall back to give him better access.
“Cassie?”
“Hmm?”
Now his hands slid beneath her sweats, and finding her without anything beneath, he groaned. “Warm yet?”
“Getting there,” she murmured, loving the way his fingers cupped and held her butt so that the hardest, neediest part of him was gliding over the softest, neediest part of her.
“But not turned on, right?”
She’d planted her face in his throat so she could smell him better. Realizing she was nuzzling up to him, her eyes flew open. She stared at his tanned, sexy throat. “Uh…no.”
He let go of her. Then suddenly her sweats were down around her calves. Before she could grab for them, Tag sank to his knees in front of her. Hands on her hips, he stroked his thumbs over the quivering skin of her belly, then lower. “I’m turned on by you,” he said hoarsely, putting his lips to the very top of one thigh. “So turned on I can think of nothing else.” Now his thumbs met and together they slid over her mound and slowly, slowly, spread her open to his gaze.
She was drenched.
He looked up into her eyes, his glittering with triumph. “Don’t worry, I’m not the kind of man to say I told you so.”
“Bastard—” But the word backed up in her throat when he leaned forward and licked her like a lollipop.
“Oh, my…” that was all she managed to get out, sinking her fingers into his hair and holding on tight. It was that or fall.
Then he opened his mouth and took her in with a sucking motion that rocked her world. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t breathe. She sure as hell couldn’t stand, so she crumpled to a boneless heap.
He caught her. They rolled on the carpet like a couple of wrestlers, fighting for space, struggling to remove clothes, biting, kissing, swearing, laughing.
And then he had her flat on her back, arms held over her head. His body, hard and satisfactorily naked, pressed into her. “Still want to fight?”
Slowly she shook her head.
“Want to give me a hint on what you do want to do?”
“I saw a condom fall out of your pocket.”
He had it on before she could say anything else. She had barely spread her thighs for him when an impossibly powerful thrust sank him inside her to the hilt.
And then she was lost. She was always lost when she was with him, just as, when he stroked them to a simultaneous orgasm in less than five hard strokes, she was found.
How devastating was that?
* * *
THEY SPENT the next few nights in the same manner, with Tag attempting to talk to her, Cassie resisting, distracting him with other things—namely her body—and both of them ending up wearing each other out every way but yesterday.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t seem to stop. Cassie couldn’t seem to stop. The devastating tugs on the strings to her heart just kept getting stronger every single day.
At least she was sure she hadn’t seen Pete again, but what she had seen was worse. In the grocery store, no less than four people she recognized but didn’t personally know smiled at her. Smiled. At the gas station, the mechanic came out and offered to pump her gas—and he didn’t want anything for it.
Then she caved and, at Stacie’s insistence, went over there for dinner and found her child a messy, sticky delight. She actually got talked into bowling afterwards—bowling!—because Stacie had just joined a league. And then, because apparently a weekly bowling night complete with greasy fries and cherry sodas appealed to her in a way she hadn’t imagined, she joined the league, too.
Insanity.
Then, when she thought she couldn’t get more conflicted, Kate dropped a bomb, saying that already Bare Essentials was such a success that it deserved a chance to become more than a revenge vehicle. She asked Cassie to stay to run it. Permanently. She said Cassie couldn’t be a model forever, and she was right. She said Cassie was made for such a thing, and she was right. She said Cassie seemed happier and more content here than she’d ever seen her and…Cassie was deeply afraid to admit that Kate was right yet again.
So why did she feel such an inexplicable weight on her chest? She could hardly breathe because of it. Home alone late one night, she moved through the living room to the den, off of which was a sliding-glass door that led to the surprisingly large, lush, five-acre-long backyard.
There was a lovely wooden deck opening up to that land, on which sat the hot tub that had become her best friend. She needed that friend now as her every muscle was screaming with a tension tighter than she’d felt when she’d been stalked right out of New York.
The water was already hot, and if she’d had any energy left she might have whimpered in gratitude but her head was working on a more important issue.
Her biggest worry of all wasn’t the town or the people in it. It wasn’t Kate or the store. It wasn’t even Pete.
It was Tag.
He wouldn’t come tonight—she’d asked him not to. He would want to talk, want to share, want to…well.
She wanted to be with him, but for her, it was all physical. It was, damn it. It had to be, it was all she could give.
But why? cried a very small, very in-the-minority voice in her head. Why did it have to be so shallow, like everything else in her life? Why couldn’t it be different? Deeper? More meaningful? Real.
Because she didn’t know how to do that. She didn’t know if she even believed in it.
So physical and shallow it would stay. And while that had been enough for Tag up until now, she was terrified things were changing. She was terrified he wanted more. And if he didn’t get more, she was terrified he’d walk away.
At the bare minimum, he wanted to talk about his father. He thought he had to atone for that long-ago night in some way, and of course he didn’t.
His father had told him…what, exactly? God, the humiliation of that night hadn’t eaten at her in a long time, but it was eating at her now.
She cranked on the jets of the hot tub. Kicked off her sandals. Stared at the water. Had Sheriff Richard Taggart told his son how Cassie had dressed for the prom? What was it he’d said back then…Oh, yes, he’d said she’d dressed like she wanted it.
Had he also told Tag where Biff was heading with her?
And what had Tag really thought about that night?
Why did she care? “I don’t,” she said out loud, and dropped her pants. Reached for the buttons on her shirt. “I don’t care—” But she did, and her voice caught. She cared about all of it. She cared about the store. She cared about the people she’d come to know—Stacie, Daisy, Diane. Damn it, she even cared about the stupid cat.
But mostly she cared about a man she wasn’t sure about. With a vicious yank, she pulled off her blouse and stepped into the hot tub, sinking with a hissing breath into the hot bubbling water up to her chin.
Putting her head back on the edge, she stared up at the stars. What if all these feelings were hers alone? What if he was just out for a good time, using her body as she was using his, and after she left he’d happily move on to the next woman?
Oh, God. That thought tore her apart and she put a shaking hand to her mouth. No. No, this couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t be falling for this place, for the people in it. For Tag.
No. She’d leave, soon as she could. Pack up and go, and if New York still wasn’t safe for her, she’d find somewhere else to go, somewhere where there were no strings attached, no—
“Meow.” Miss Priss butted her jaw with her stubborn little head.
Which for some reason made Cassie burst into tears.
* * *
TAG WORKED LATE, mostly because his head had not been into his paperwork for weeks now and he was helplessly behind.
The extra hours in the quiet station didn’t help much. He had too much time to think. And what he was thinking about was crowding around his head, fighting for space.
His father. They hadn’t spoken again, and Tag wasn’t sure they would.
Then there was Kate, who’d actually called him today to see if he could check on Pete’s whereabouts. Tag had been checking daily to no avail. No one had located Pete and he could only hope the L.A. rumor was true.
And then there was one stubborn, ornery, strong-willed, wildly passionate woman he couldn’t seem to get enough of. Cassie Tremaine Montgomery. Not his fantasy woman, that was certain, but somehow…better.
She’d asked him not to come to her tonight, and he’d had every intention of keeping himself busy without her. Only there had been something in her voice that had disturbed him, something…lonely. She was hurting, and she was alone.
In spite of all they’d given to each other—and taken—she was still struggling to keep him at arm’s length. She still wanted to separate the physical from the emotional. He’d been all for that, until he’d realized he wanted both. He wanted it all.
And he wanted her to know that.
Tonight.
* * *
SHE DIDN’T ANSWER the front door, but since the sunshine-yellow Porsche was blinding Tag from the driveway by moonlight, he knew she was home.
The front door was locked. Good girl, he thought, and walked around the side yard to see if he could find her outside.
The swing out there was empty. But from where he stood he could hear the jets of the hot tub, and continued on that way.
He was caught up thinking about the things they could do to each other in the hot tub, so it took him a moment to assimilate what he was seeing.
Cassie sitting in it. Long, wavy hair piled on top of her head. Bubbles surrounding her gorgeous body, hiding it from view.
And she was quietly sobbing her heart out.
“Cassie.” He was there in a heartbeat, kneeling on the deck behind her, reaching for her shoulders. “Cassie. Oh, baby.”
She jerked at his touch, whirling around and backing away into the center of the tub while doing so, making him realize with the sound of the jets and her own grief, she hadn’t heard him approach.
“You,” she said in such a way that told him exactly who was at the center of at least some of this.
“Me,” he agreed. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
She wiped at her face. “What’s wrong is you’re trouncing on my privacy again.”
“Cassie.” Knowing she was hurting made his heart hurt. “Come closer.”
“No.”
“Come out then.”
“No.”
She was still right there in front of him, but she’d suddenly retreated into herself before his very gaze. He had no idea what was going on in her head. And damn if he wasn’t very, very tired of that. “Fine. I’ll come in.”
“Don’t be silly, Sheriff. You’d wrinkle your uniform.”
Ah, the uniform. The center of every single argument they’d ever had. Well, he was done with that. Done with all of it. Frustrated, he kicked off his shoes.
She craned her neck and stole a peek, probably hoping he’d left. Her eyes widened when his hands went to his belt. “What are you doing?”
“Getting rid of the brick wall between us.” He shoved down his pants. Kicked them away with his shoes. Ripped off his shirt.
And stood there in front of her bare-ass naked. “Not a sheriff right now, am I?”
“It’s just a shirt. A pair of pants.”
“I know that.” He put his foot in and refused to hiss out a breath at the hot water. “I’m just not sure you do.”
“Put your clothes back on.”
“Not until you understand.”
“Understand what? That you’re butting in where you’re not wanted?”
“Understand that I’m just a man. A regular man.” He sank in to his waist and walked toward her, stopping when they were only a breath apart. “A regular man who’s falling in love with you.”