Hunk for the Holidays (18 page)

James had sure popped her cork.

She giggled just like all the other lovesick women she had made fun of in her life.

Her cell phone rang, and she swiveled her chair back around to her desk and answered it.

“Where have you been?” Amy’s voice came through the receiver.

Grinning like an idiot, Cassie leaned back in her chair and plopped her boots on the desk. “I was home.”

“So you don’t pick up? I left you at least six messages. If I hadn’t talked to Mattie, I would’ve thought you’d fallen off the face of the earth.”

She sort of had. “I’m sorry. You know I’m not good about getting my messages at home, and I spent the day shopping.”

“So what about your cell? I left messages on it too.”

“I didn’t get a chance to stop by and get it until now.”

“So you’re at the office?” Amy sounded thoroughly disappointed. “I was hoping that you and James were still hanging out. Mattie said that you guys looked pretty intense while you were playing pool.”

“Leave it to Mattie to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong.”

“He didn’t say all that much,” Amy said. “Which is why I’ve been dying to talk to you.” Cassie could almost see Amy leaning in to the phone. “So did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Did you heat up the sheets with James?” Amy asked.

“No.”

“Liar.”

Cassie laughed. “Okay, so I had sex. But I refuse to give you details over the phone.”

“So stop by my house when you leave the office.”

She glanced at the clock. “I can’t. But maybe I could stop by this evening before I go over to my parents’ house—Oh wait, I forgot. You’re spending Christmas Eve with Derek’s family.”

There was a long pause. “Actually… I broke up with Derek.”

Cassie dropped her feet to the floor and sat up. “You’re kidding. Because of our conversation on Friday?”

“Partly,” Amy said. “I guess it made me realize that I wanted the dream after all.”

Knowing how much Amy wanted a real family for Gabby, she tried to cheer her friend up. “It will happen, Amy. I know there’s someone out there for you. Look, why don’t you and Gabby come over to my parents’ tonight? It will give me a chance to give you all the dirty details, and my nieces and nephews will love seeing Gabby.”

“I don’t think so—”

“I won’t take no for an answer. Christmas Eve is for family. And you and Gabby are family.”

“But wouldn’t you rather invite James?”

“Are you kidding?” Cassie picked up a pen and doodled on her day planner. “Having James meet the boys was bad enough. I won’t subject him to Dad until I get to know him better.”

“But you are planning on getting to know him better?”

Cassie stared down at the heart she had just drawn with the J + C written inside. There was no doubt about it. She had become one of those quivery, boy-crazed girls. “Yeah, I’m going to get a tree with him today.”

“A tree? Like as in Christmas tree?” Amy sounded shocked. “Man, Cassie, you have fallen.”

She wanted to deny it, but she couldn’t with the lopsided ink heart glaring up at her and with her own heart thumping against her chest just talking about him. She laughed because she couldn’t stop herself. “Oh, Amy, I have and I’m scared to death.”

“Because he’s an escort?”

“No. I mean I was worried about that at first, but now…” She took a deep breath. “Now I’m just scared that he doesn’t feel the same way about me.”

“What makes you think he doesn’t?”

Cassie’s mind ran over the last couple days, but she couldn’t come up with one time that James had made her feel as if he didn’t want to be right where he was. She glanced up at the clock again.

“Listen, Amy, I need to go. I’ll expect to see you at the house tonight.”

“I’ll think about it,” Amy said. “Oh, and, Cassie, while you’re at the office, would you stop by my fax machine? I had the
Las Vegas Review-Journal
fax over the article
they did on Sutton for the business section last year. It should be there by now, and your father wanted to see it.”

After Cassie hung up the phone, she punched in the numbers to retrieve her messages. She needed to hurry if she wanted to call her parents, collect all her stuff, and get back to her apartment in time to meet James.

She had around twenty messages. The first few were from her mother, who had been looking for her while she’d been primping in the executive bathroom; one from Amy apologizing for taking her maroon dress and laughing about the condoms; and one from an electrical contractor who wanted to meet with her after the new year. Cassie listened to all of these with half an ear, her mind going back to how cute James had looked sitting in his Land Rover watching her.

Oh, brother. She needed to get a life.

While she listened to the next message, she got up and headed to Amy’s office. The recorded voice wasn’t one she recognized.

“This is Maggie Jane Robbins calling from Elite Escorts. I’m terribly sorry, but your escort for the evening just called to say he has a hundred and two fever. Unfortunately, we don’t have any other escorts available this evening. But you will receive a full refund along with one complimentary night. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Merry Christmas.”

Cassie came to a halt by Amy’s desk.

Huh?

She stared at her phone. What did the woman mean her escort had a hundred and two temperature? James was hot. But healthy. There had to be a mistake.
Maybe he’d started feeling better and decided to show up after all.

She punched a button and listened to the message again, then checked the time she received it. That was weird. She’d received the call
after
she’d left with James. But who else would come to an office dressed to kill, escort her to a Christmas party, and then…

Cassie’s eyes slid closed in ecstasy. And then give her the best two days of her life.

No, the woman with the annoyingly snobby voice had made a mistake. Some other desperate female had missed out on an escort, but, luckily, Cassie hadn’t. James had been all hers. Her brow crinkled. At least, he’d been all hers for two days. But what would happen now? Would he continue to be an escort even if he was starting a construction company? Starting a business took capital. Maybe he couldn’t afford to quit. Especially with the biggest date night of the year only a week away. The thought of James escorting another woman to some New Year’s Eve party took all the happiness right out of Cassie.

She sat down in Amy’s chair. What had she been thinking? Did she think that suddenly James would stop being an escort? Even if it turned out he loved her, that didn’t mean he would quit his job. Maybe he was like her little brother, Mattie, and loved women. All women.

Good God. She rested her head in her hands. Could she ever choose a guy that didn’t have a bunch of weird excess baggage? At least Mike was only addicted to lacy underwear, not the women who wore them. Cassie might be able to overlook the occasional panty raiding, but could she overlook a guy who had sexual relations with half of
Denver? And even if he did quit, could she forget about all the women he’d been with before her? Every time James said hi to a woman, she would wonder if he’d taken her to bed. If she couldn’t forget the women, then she couldn’t be with James. The thought crushed her.

As her mind feverishly looked for an answer to her dilemma, Cassie glanced down at the stack of paper on the fax machine. A face smiled back at her from the top page, a face she had come to know very well. A frown marred her forehead as she reached for the picture. It was blurred. But not so blurred that she couldn’t read the words beneath the smiling image.
James Sutton, owner of Sutton Construction, cuts the ribbon on the new Sunset Housing development
.

James Sutton?

Her insides tightened as her mind frantically tried to fit all the pieces together. It didn’t take long. Now that she had the full picture, everything slipped into place. The confused look on his face when she ordered him into the elevator. His age. His nice SUV and house. All the computers and office supplies. His refusal to tell her his last name and his face whenever she mentioned his profession.

James wasn’t an escort.

He was her number-one competitor.

And a big, fat liar.

Chapter Fifteen

For Christmas Eve morning and a Sunday, traffic was brutal. It took James forever to get to his house. Or maybe it just seemed like forever because he happened to be in a hurry. A hurry to get back to Cassandra. And why was that? Hell, she hadn’t even turned around once on the way into the M & M building. He didn’t know why something that stupid would bother him. It just did. His annoyance grew when he pulled into his driveway and saw half the neighborhood in his front yard setting up brown paper sacks.

For a moment, James thought about pulling into the garage and ignoring his neighbors, but then the guy who lived next door waved, and James figured that he didn’t have much of a choice. Still, he couldn’t help glancing at his watch before he stepped from the Land Rover. An hour twenty-two minutes and counting.

The guy next door stuck out the hand that didn’t hold three lunch-sized bags. “Les Finley.”

“James Sutton.” He shook the guy’s hand and then watched as a couple teenage boys in the back of a pickup handed off the bags to a group of women who then placed them on the front lawn. James didn’t know a lot about luminaria placement, but it sure looked like a jumbled mess to him. While the other houses had them neatly lined along the driveways and sidewalks, the neighbors had placed James’s in nine crooked lines they’d shoveled through the snow. Sensing James’s confusion, Les clarified.

“Betty thought you might like to have them in the shape of a menorah like the Greenburgs.”

Now would’ve been the time to mention that he wasn’t Jewish, but James refused to add fuel to the conversation when he was in a hurry.

“I figure you and the Greenburgs would just as soon do without them altogether,” Les continued. “But once Betty gets something in her head, it’s best to just go along with it. She means well.”

James’s eyes narrowed on the older woman, who was issuing orders like Patton on D-Day.
Means well, my ass
. The woman just liked to issue orders. Speaking of people who liked to issue orders, he glanced at his watch and tried to bring the conversation to an end.

“I’d love to help out, but I have an appointment I need to get ready for.”

Les glanced over at him and grinned. “Yeah, I saw you driving off with her yesterday morning.” His eyes turned wistful. “I remember what it was like to have
those appointments. Now I’m lucky if I have one every other week. Not that I don’t love the kids, but once in a while…” His voice trailed off before he snapped out of his daydream and cleared his throat. “Don’t worry about helping. We’ve got it covered. And my son and his friends will come back tonight and light them. That’s if it doesn’t snow.” He grinned. “Of course, I don’t know what I’m talking about. A little thing like a blizzard won’t stop Betty from seeing her plan to fruition.”

“Yeah, well, thanks again.” James edged back toward the open garage, almost tripping over the gray, one-eyed cat. He sidestepped the cat and wasn’t even aware that it had followed him until Les spoke.

“Oh no, you don’t.”

James turned to find Les scooping up the cat and walking out of the garage so James could close the door.

It took James just over twenty minutes to shower, shave, and get dressed. Which left him with an hour before he had to be back at Cassie’s.

Standing at his kitchen counter waiting for the coffee to brew, he glanced at his watch for the umpteenth time. Was it his imagination or was the second hand slower than normal? He tapped the crystal face. Maybe it was broken. Maybe a lot more than forty minutes had gone by. Maybe he should grab his cup of coffee and head on over to Cassie’s. Or maybe he should go to her office.

Or maybe he should pull his head out and quit acting like an idiot.

Just as the coffee machine hissed out its final drop, the lock on his front door rattled. A moment later, Sierra bounced into the kitchen wearing a pair of Tweety Bird
slippers, pink heart pajama bottoms, a zippered hoodie, and a striped scarf wrapped around her neck.

“Where have you been?” She unwound the mile-long striped scarf. “Do you realize you were moments away from getting listed as MIA and your picture on a carton of milk? The last I saw of you, you were all dressed for prom and on your way to some party. Then I show up here yesterday to drop off your Christmas present—Oh, crap, I left it back at my apartment.” She waved the hand that wasn’t holding the Starbucks cup around in the air, fluttering the bangs of her short magenta hair. “Anyway, I stopped by and you weren’t here, and you’re never not here. Unless you’re on site, but with all the sites shut down for the holidays, you should be here. So I tried calling and I kept getting your voice mail—”

James reached over and covered her mouth, something he did on a regular basis. She stopped talking, and her big brown eyes blinked at him.

“As you can see, I’m fine.” He dropped his hand and smiled to reassure her. Sierra might be young, dramatic, and easily excitable, but she was also loyal, dependable, and hardworking. In the last year, he’d grown attached to her odd-colored hair, multiple ear piercings, and weird fish tattoo. Well, maybe not the weird fish tattoo.