Burke watched him sourly.
Does he play Barry Manilow in his head to match his internal flashback? Was it “Mandy” or “Copacabana”?
“I finally talked her into going to dinner with me. I took her up to Carmel Mountain Ranch, where the nice restaurants are. There we are, halfway through the entrée when she tells me she shouldn’t be there. Says her
fiancé
probably wouldn’t like it.”
The Copa it is.
“This was the first you heard of the fiancé, I take it?”
“Well,
yeah
.” Hayne spared him a glance showing what he thought of Burke’s intelligence.
“Is this the part where you make an ass out of yourself or is that still a while off?”
Hayne looked at the ground and shrugged. “No, this is the part.”
At least it came quick this time. “Want another beer first?”
“Got anything harder?”
Burke would have answered, but he made the mistake of turning toward the kitchen. Cass stood there with her arms crossed under her breasts and that pouty look on her face again.
“Definitely,” she said with an evil little grin.
When Burke ordered her to the kitchen, she had to admit, she was more than a little off-kilter. Stunned might be the better word. Aroused was another. But most of all, she was confused.
Harry and Belulah?
Harry and Belulah!
He had to be nuts if he thought she was going to let him get away with that one. She’d seen the look on his face.
She
was the one he was holding so tight she’d probably have marks on her back from his fingertips, not some rocket-scientist they invented off the tops of their heads. He was looking at
her
as if she were his favorite ice cream flavor. Well, until Hayne started yelling, he was.
Cass washed her face and checked herself in the silver reflection on the fridge handle while Hayne complained about his latest failed romance. Her lipstick was gone but it couldn’t be helped. Burke didn’t sound all too sorry for his best friend, but neither was she. There’d be another love of his life shortly. Hayne liked women too much to settle for just one.
Unlike Burke, who didn’t like them enough to settle at all.
Girlfriends came and went, only mug rings are forever. Burke trusted items, not people. Even with her, he was a guarded person, only opening up about his feelings when he was begging her not to cry about something.
Or telling her to go away before her brother found out what they were doing.
Cass thought about it, remembering the hard feel of his body against hers, the flush on his cheeks, the burning in his eyes. Burke felt something more than playacting while he was kissing her. He
wanted
her.
She felt a smile start to curve her mouth. Awe made her pull her breath in slow so she wouldn’t laugh out loud in glee. He wanted her. Like a man wants a woman, a
real
woman. He wanted to keep kissing her into oblivion and probably would have if Hayne’s love life hadn’t interrupted.
It was working!
All this girl stuff was actually working. Changing how people saw her, how people treated her. Somehow in all the tangle of clothing, underwear, make-up, hair dye and food, she had changed something.
But
what
? How?
When?
Cass’s brow furrowed. When did things change with Burke? What set it all off? She knew she wasn’t imagining it. His kiss meant a lot of things had changed. The what part remained a mystery. Aside from the fake names and jokes instead of bickering, she hadn’t done anything different since yesterday. How was she supposed to do it again if she didn’t know what she did in the first place?
You’re missing the obvious question, dufus. Do
you
want
him
?
She touched her lips, her eyelids fluttering shut. Her body had yet to fully calm down and her heart still raced. Oh yes, she wanted him.
Kissing Burke wasn’t anything she set out to do. If he tried to say she did, she’d remind him he was the one who started with the kissing. The hunger and power of it were nothing she expected, much less orchestrated. Cass licked her lips, still able to taste him, and a thrill went through her again. If she’d been thinking, it probably wouldn’t have happened. But she hadn’t. She’d been feeling. Feeling Burke, feeling how much he wanted her and responding with her own wants. Which meant…it was real.
And she wanted another one.
She took a minute pause, considering what pursuing another kiss could do to her relationship with Burke, but it was gone in an instant. Their relationship changed the moment their mouths met. Maybe even before, when she became aware of the way his touch made her tingle in the oddest places. Maybe as far back as when she asked him to make her a woman. Nothing could make any of those moments go away.
More important, she didn’t want them to.
She liked Burke’s confused, hungry-helpless look. Liked his hands on her, his taste, his need—and she wanted more. Kissing him was like turning a key inside her. All her awkwardness disappeared, leaving only her own desire, strong and sure. Was this how the Frog Prince felt? Tingling from the magic that made a transformation real? The same, but different in some elemental way she couldn’t exactly pin down. She still had the same hands, the same body, the same mouth. But not. For the first time in her life, she felt exactly right in her skin…in his arms.
Hell if he getsto take it away before we find out what it is.
When she stepped out of the kitchen and into his conversation with her brother, Cass knew she finally moved into the next phase of her life.
There was no going back.
Why did she take down a button on her sweater?
It was still decent, of course. Only another two inches down her chest. Her brother didn’t seem to notice it, but Burke did. Cass walked slowly toward the couch, doing that hip thing she promised she wouldn’t do anymore, hands in her pockets and her blouse open enough to show the smallest amount of the upper slope of her breast. If a person were looking. But he wasn’t. Not at all.
He tilted his head to the side.
She sat down next to Hayne. Suddenly, the room jumped five degrees, which Burke immediately attributed to his thermostat being on the fritz. It had nothing to do with the shadowy valley between her breasts now on display.
Cass nudged her brother. “Who broke your heart this time?”
“I thought you were getting the liquor,” he replied bleakly.
She shrugged. “You look like you’ve had plenty. Besides, this was just a first date, right?”
“No.” Hayne turned his head away from her. “Sally was something special.”
Cass stiffened as if he’d called her a name. “You’re helping
Sally
get flowers for her
wedding
?”
Hayne raised a bland eyebrow. “You know her?”
“Curly blonde hair, petite, pretty, loads of make-up and boobs so big she should wear a backbrace?”
“Uh…”
It was answer enough for Cass. “You jackass!” Before either he or Hayne knew it was coming, Cass pushed her brother off the couch, her seductress act over in an instant. “Sally is
Luke’s
fiancée, you moron!”
“What?” Hayne looked to Burke for help, sprawled like an injured player signaling to the sidelines. “No one told me.”
She was on her feet, pacing, her hands fisted while she tried to not kill her brother. That had to be progress. Any other time she’d be straddling him, denting a rib or two. “How could you miss it? Who else is coming from out of town to get married?”
“I don’t know. If you had been working like you were supposed to, I might not have gotten in this mess. I’m the grounds man and Dad does the nursery. You handle the business end and the florals. It’s like that for a reason.”
“Yeah, because the two of you wouldn’t know what to do with a wedding party if one landed on you. It has nothing to do with you being a brainless idiot!”
One at a time, the Bishops were nearly acceptable adults with the ability to use reason from time to time. Get them together and they turned into eight-year-olds bickering. Get either of them drunk and Burke was always the one with the hangover. He rubbed at his temples.
“Technically, Cass, a wedding party did land on him. A good one,” Burke said, only half-back to his normal thought processes now that she was back to her regular self. He had a feeling it would take him a while to get all the blood back in his skull instead of places it had no right being.
“Excuse me?” She whirled on him, angry and frustrated and yelling.
Women shouldn’t look that good when they’re ready to kill you. Eyes bright, lips dark, cheeks flushed…his mental checklist dinged like a pinball machine racking up points. His blood headed south again in a hurry. Shaking his head to gather what few of his wits remained, Burke forced himself back on point.
“It’ll look good to everyone in town if you’re gracious enough to provide the flowers for this wedding. Adds to your ladylike appeal.”
Hayne snickered from the floor. “If she has ladylike appeal, I have balls of solid gold.”
Cass kicked her brother’s legs hard enough to make him yelp. “How is that gracious? We’re the only nursery in town.”
“Meaning they had no choice but to come to you. Be petty and people will think you’re jealous. Be professional…and you’ll be the better person.”
“Better is good,” she muttered, sucking in her bottom lip and chewing on it.
“You want to use Sally in your stupid bet with Luke?” Hayne asked from the floor, anger threading his voice.
“She’s already being used,” Cass reminded him.
“Not by you. How can you be better than Luke if you’re doing the same thing he is?”
Burke’s head began to ache. It had to be even worse than he thought if a drunk Hayne Bishop was making logical sense.
“What do you want me to do?” Cass asked, raising her punching arm, which in turn had Hayne lurching into the couch. She harrumphed because she hadn’t waved it in his direction. “Should I send her crappy arrangements out of spite? Would that be better?”
The ache in Burke’s head turned to a throb.
“Refer her to someone else!” Hayne demanded.
His temples flash-pulsed with pain.
“I would, but some dumbass was so busy getting a date he booked her for next Saturday. No one could do it on such short notice!”
Burke’s nerves exploded. “
Enough!”
Silence reigned long enough for him to get a handle back on his temper, thin though it was. “I have some thinking to do. The two of you are going home. Bicker
there
.”
“But—” Cass’s alarm would have meant more if she wanted to pick up where they left off. But, no, he knew her too well. She was only ticked because Hayne was getting her sent home.
“No buts. No finger pointing. Both of you. Out.”
He helped get Hayne off the ground and even helped stuff him into Cassie’s Z. The gold and black firebird across the hood reminded him once more what was at stake besides pride. The look in her angry kitten eyes reminded him of something else he should never have lost sight of: you can take the grime off the girl, but you can’t make her less a pain in your ass.
Cass lay back in her bed, not sleeping and not liking it. Hayne sacked out on the couch almost as soon as they came in the door. The house was dark and there was no sign of their father anywhere. Somehow she found it depressing that a man who hadn’t had a date in a quarter-century was doing better than his supposedly energetic children. If Eddie didn’t come back before dawn, she was going to be very unhappy.
Or was that jealous?
She kicked off her blankets and flipped on her stomach. Bunching her pillow under her chin, she tried to figure out what was wrong with her. For one, her skin felt…prickly. She had a restlessness that wouldn’t go away and an ache in her belly. Like being hungry, but not. Her lips were still a little sore from his kiss and she kept reliving the feel of Burke’s hands on her back. If she didn’t remember years of dissatisfaction with Luke, she’d think that’s what this was. Then again, Luke had never once idled her needle this high and left her hanging. If she wasn’t so frustrated, it would be funny that it took her twenty years to figure out the man who could get her hot like no other was the one standing right next to her.
Of course, until tonight, the thought of getting hot with her best friend was impossible. Burke never saw her that way. She couldn’t be too angry at him for it. She couldn’t see him that way either. Too busy telling herself he was
just
Burke. Claiming he didn’t affect her the way he did all the other women they knew. Now she couldn’t be so blind. Even though Burke hadn’t changed, something inside
her
had. If only she knew what it was.
After the kiss, she’d felt a sense of sensual power and she’d had every intention of feeling it again. Of being desired, of being kissed within a half-inch of her panties dissolving right off her. But it faded when Hayne dropped his bomb about Sally. It refused to come back when Burke opened his door muttering for them to go home before he tied them to the back of his truck and hauled them to Luke’s front yard, dropping them to wait for sunshine and utter humiliation. He had the look on his face that said he might do it too.