Hunk for the Holidays (12 page)

As they pulled around back, James commented on the row of steel garage doors. “Are those the only way in?”

Cassie laughed. “If you don’t count the fire escape on the third floor.”

“Well, it’s secure. I’ll give it that.”

She directed him into the first parking space and wondered how a person ended a date with an escort. It had been easy with the other ones. They usually hopped out of her car and ran for the hills. Of course, she hadn’t had sex with them. Or owed them a tip.

“If you’ll wait here for just a minute—” She hesitated, because the words sounded so rude and pompous, especially after the man had offered her his home and the use of his toilet and shower. Not to mention the use of his gorgeous body. The least she could do was ask him inside, instead of making him wait in the car like the hired help. Which he was. But she didn’t have to treat him like that.

“On second thought,” she said, “would you like to come in for a minute? I have something for you.”

James looked surprised before he flashed that wonderful smile. Obviously, the promise of a tip brought out the best in him. “Sure. Besides, I really want to see the inside of this fort.”

She got out of the car before he had time to walk around to her side. But that didn’t stop him from holding her elbow and helping her over the slick asphalt. Her high heels still hurt like hell, and she couldn’t wait to get inside and take them off. Taking the keys out of her purse, she unlocked the small box that was located to the left of the garage and punched in her security code.

The garage door rumbled and slowly slid up. The spot for her truck was empty, reminding her that she’d need
to go pick it up from the office later. On the other side of the garage sat her gun-metal-gray Harley-Davidson. It brought a low whistle from James as he circled it and ran a hand over the leather seat.

“Whose is this? One of your brothers’?”

“Mine.” She loved the reaction her bike always got from men.

James’s eyebrows shot up. “A Fat Boy? This is a pretty big bike for a girl.”

“If you think that’s big, you should see my half-ton truck.” She pulled open the door at the left of the garage. “You coming, or do you want to stay here and drool over my bike?”

“I’m coming. I wouldn’t want to miss any other surprises.”

Cassie led James up the set of stairs to the first floor of her condo. At the top, she paused and scanned her living room looking for anything that might be embarrassing. Luckily, Elma, her cleaning lady, had come on Friday, so things were a lot cleaner than they usually were. Her mother had decorated the entire apartment, simply because Cassie had no patience with that kind of thing, which was why it reflected more of her mother’s feminine personality than it did her own taste.

The sofa and love seat were floral with numerous pillows of various pastel shades. The coffee table and end tables were some kind of antiqued white. They looked old and chipped to Cassie, but she knew her mother had bought them new at some shabby-chic store she liked to frequent. The only thing that Cassie really liked about the furnishings was the window seat. The window was
large and looked out onto the street and the downtown area. After a long day at work, she liked to stretch out on the soft cushion and look at the city lights and the traffic below.

“This is great.” James moved up the stairs while she slipped out of her shoes and took off his jacket, placing it and her purse on the sofa. She watched him look around, but he didn’t seem to be as interested in the furniture as he was with the high ceiling and wide-planked oak floors.

“Is the floor original?” he asked.

The remodel had been one of her first jobs. She had designed the renovation and overseen every aspect of construction, so she couldn’t keep the pride from her voice. “Yes.”

He moved over to the multipaned front window. “You’ve got a great view from here.” He laughed. “I can even see your neighbor across the way decorating his Christmas tree in his underwear.” He glanced around the living room. “Where’s your tree?”

“I haven’t had time to get one. Besides, a tree isn’t a Christmas tree unless you have someone to share it with.” She wanted to bite her tongue for saying something so personal and stupid.

James studied her for a moment before he nodded. “I know what you mean.” He glanced up the stairs. “May I?”

He didn’t wait for a reply. Instead he climbed the stairs and disappeared from sight. She probably should have yelled a warning. Her room was the only room she didn’t allow the cleaning lady in, and it usually resembled a construction site minus the heavy equipment and workers. Today was no different. Her clothes were scattered across
her king-sized bed and floor, along with shoes, hair clips, towels, and half-empty water bottles. Fortunately, there was no leftover food lying around, but only because she hated bugs more than cleaning.

James didn’t appear to be bothered by the mess. He stepped over the piles of clothes to get to the exposed brick wall behind her brass headboard.

He ran his hand over the brick. “What year?”

“Eighteen ninety-six.” She jerked a bra up off the floor and shoved it into an empty vase on her dresser.

“They could really build them back then.” He took his time studying the brick before he glanced at her messy bed. “A half-ton truck, a Fat Boy, and a king-sized bed. If you were a man, I would think that you were trying to compensate for something.” He winked at her before he moved over to the French doors that led out to the balcony. “Whoever designed this did a great job of complementing the old with the new. Who was the architect?” When she didn’t answer right away, he glanced back over his shoulder.

For some reason, she felt her face heat up.

“You did this, didn’t you?” He turned to face her. “You designed it.”

The admiration in his eyes caused a lump to form in Cassie’s throat the size of a Colorado Rockies’ baseball. All her life, she had waited for a man to look at her like this. It hadn’t come from rough and tough Big Al or any of her brothers. Or even Mike, who had been too concerned with his own fragile ego to pay attention to her accomplishments. Instead, it came from a most unlikely source. It came from a sexy escort who seemed not only to love women but brick and wood and architecture. It touched
something deep inside her. Something that had needed to be touched for a very long time.

Cassie felt exposed and completely vulnerable. For the first time in a long time, she just wanted to sit down and cry. Correction, she wanted to step into a pair of strong arms and bury her face against a thick sweater and then cry. But McPhersons didn’t cry. At least not where people could see them. And especially over something as stupid as a man praising her for designing a condo.

Unfortunately, her mind might understand that, but her heart refused to listen. The lump grew until tears filled her eyes. James’s eyes widened with concern and a small amount of fear. “Cassandra?”

She tried swallowing, but there wasn’t enough saliva to wash down a pebble, much less a baseball. She blinked twice and cleared her throat, scrambling for anything to say.

“I can s-sit out there in the summer and see the f-fireworks at Coors Field.” She hated the way her voice shook.

The look of fear deepened, and he moved around her bed. “Cassandra, what’s wrong?”

Realizing she needed a minute away from his penetrating gaze, she turned and walked over to her chest of drawers. Things were a little bit blurry, but she was still able to pull open the top drawer and take out the money. She stared down at the two hundred-dollar bills and tried to take deep breaths. They came out short and quivery.

He moved behind her and gently ran a hand up and down her bare arm. “He-e-ey, what’s going on?”

“Here.” She turned and shoved the money into his chest. “I think you should go.”

The money was ignored as his fingers slipped under
her chin and tipped it up. She refused to look at him and instead stared at the turtleneck of his sweater.

“Damn it, Cassandra.” His hand gave her chin a little shake. “You don’t get it, do you? It’s not about the money. It’s about me liking you—about me wanting to be with you.”

She tried to say something, but she couldn’t. She was too busy trying to keep the tears from falling. Unfortunately, one unruly tear escaped and trickled down her cheek.

“Oh, baby, don’t cry.” He pulled her into his arms and tucked her under his chin. “If you want me to, I’ll go. Just don’t cry.”

That was pretty much all it took. The dam broke. Cassie hadn’t cried very much in her life, but the times that she had, it wasn’t pretty. Her brother Mattie said she sounded like a baby calf calling for its mother and looked like a red-faced monkey he had seen on the Discovery Channel. But James didn’t seem to care.

He just sat down on the end of the bed and pulled her onto his lap. His hands caressed her back while he spoke to her in soft, soothing words, words that could barely be heard over her loud, racking sobs. Finally, he stopped speaking and just held her, planting small kisses on the top of her head.

The tears that started out from a man appreciating her talent soon turned into a release of all the stress she’d been under since her father’s heart attack. Add lack of sleep and an empty stomach to the mix, and you had one weepy woman who might’ve continued to cry until New Year’s if her little brother hadn’t shown up.

“What the hell are you doing to my sister?”

Patrick’s angry, booming voice could’ve been heard over a jackhammer. He stood in the doorway of her bedroom dressed in his running clothes with his hands clenched in fists and his green eyes snapping. She had witnessed this posture a few times in her life and knew that the outcome wouldn’t be pretty.

Taking a deep, trembling breath, she prepared to soothe her brother’s fiery temper. James beat her to it.

“Hey, Patrick.” He slipped Cassie off his lap and stood.

She wondered if the man had a death wish. Without her between them, Patrick had a clear shot. Obviously, he didn’t understand that her brother broke noses first and asked questions later. She jumped to her feet and tried to step between them, but James moved her aside with a firm but gentle hand.

Patrick glared at that hand and took two steps closer. “So you want to explain why my sister’s crying? And while you’re at it, you can also explain why you didn’t bring her home last night.”

“Paddy!” Cassie gasped, then ruined it all with a hiccup. Neither man spared her a glance. They just stood there mad-dogging each other. So she tried again. “Patrick McPherson, it is none of your business what I do—”

“Let me handle this, Cassie,” James said.

“Don’t tell my sister what to do,” Patrick grumbled.

“He can tell me what to do if he wants, Patrick.” She wasn’t sure why she defended James, especially when she was about to tell him the same thing. She just wanted to be the one to do it. Not her little brother.

“It’s all right, Cassandra,” James said. “I understand perfectly why Patrick is so upset. If I had a sister and discovered
her crying her eyes out with some guy I barely knew, I wouldn’t be so happy about it either. All kinds of questions would be going through my head. Had the jerk hurt her physically? Verbally? And which of his limbs did I want to rip off first?”

Patrick’s eyes darkened. “That about sums it up. Except I wasn’t thinking of limbs as much as your head.”

Cassie cringed, but James only nodded. “Well, before you do, I have a few things I want to make clear. First, I’m just as upset about your sister’s tears as you are. A woman’s tears scare the hell out of me.” He glanced at Cassie. “But it appears the worst is over.” She smiled at Patrick to show she wasn’t upset anymore, then at James to show him how well she thought he was handling the volatile situation. But the smile dropped when he got to his next point. “And secondly, what we did or didn’t do last night is really none of your damned business.”

Cassie was sure that the shit was going to hit the fan. But even after having four brothers as playmates, she still didn’t understand men. One second, her brothers would be beating one another senseless for no apparent reason, and the next, they’d be slapping one another on the back. If Patrick’s smirk was any indication, this was a slap on the back kind of moment.

He nodded his head. “Fair enough.” His green eyes examined her for a minute before he chucked her under the chin. “Sis, did you realize that your dress is on backward and you look like hell?”

“Patrick McPherson, shut up.” She sniffed and wiped at her eyes, then jerked her hand behind her back when she realized she still held the money in her fist.

Her brother’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say a word. “I’ll call you later.” He turned and left the room.

After Patrick was gone, James didn’t waste any time pulling her back into his arms. “Are all the McPhersons so unpredictable?”

Cassie smiled up at him. “Pretty much.”

“Hmmm? At least there’s never a dull moment.” His eyes grew serious. “Are you okay?”

No, she wasn’t. A man had walked into her life and turned everything upside down. She wasn’t okay. She was dazed. Breathless. And happy for the first time in a long time.

“What brought on the tears, Cassandra?” he asked.

She lowered her gaze and scrambled through her mind for an answer. When she didn’t find one, she told the truth. “You liked my bricks.”

She felt the rumbling in his chest before she heard his laughter. “You are the most intriguing woman I have ever met. And I want to spend the entire day making you smile. What do you say, Cassandra McPherson? You want to hang out with me?” When she looked up, James winked. “This time it won’t cost you a dime.”

“Yes,” she whispered, right before his lips covered hers.

Cassie might be stubborn, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew a bargain when she saw one.

Chapter Ten