Authors: Joan Kilby
“I’ve never seen anyone so determined to succeed,” Cassy said to him. “You stayed at that lemonade stand for a whole week. I was your only customer.”
His dad hadn’t come back for him. Not that week. Not that month. Not even on his birthday. “And my partner. The next day you brought more homemade cookies that you’d made with your mother to sell.”
Cassy laughed. “We didn’t have a lot of customers but we ate our fill of cookies and lemonade that summer.”
“That’s so sweet.” Lorraine’s interested gaze darted from Scott to Cassy. “Did you two have your first kiss at the lemonade stand?”
“Ew, no! Boy germs.” Cassy made a face. “The kiss didn’t happen till much later.”
“When and where? Was that when you fell in love?” Lorraine’s round, jovial face was alight with curiosity.
Scott froze. What would Cassy say? Would she make something up? Surely she wouldn’t recall that embarrassing time he took her out in the inflatable dinghy his father had sent him for Christmas?
The waiter brought elaborate desserts. Cassy held her tongue until he had left. “I fell in love with Scott the evening he took me on a sunset cruise on Chuckanut Bay.”
She did remember. Scott frowned, pretending not to know what she was talking about. “When was that?”
“Don’t you remember? You wanted to show me the blue moon.”
They had been barely thirteen years old and innocent compared to some youngsters these days. He’d been on an astronomy kick that summer and wanted to show off his knowledge to Cassy. Turned out he didn’t have a clue how to impress her. He still didn’t, for that matter.
“We went out on the water after sunset just as the blue moon, the second full moon that month, was rising,” Cassy said dreamily. “It was terribly romantic.”
“Not so romantic when the motor cut out.” The boat’s engine had stalled repeatedly because Scott hadn’t known how to maintain it. His uncle had no knowledge of boats and his father sure wasn’t around to show him.
“You let me help fix it,” Cassy said. “Lots of boys would have been macho and tried to pretend they knew what they were doing.”
“Luckily, you
did
know what you were doing,” Scott said.
“My dad liked to fish. I went with him a lot so he taught me a bit about boat engines,” Cassy explained to Lorraine.
They’d had a good time looking at the moon, but when they tried to go back to shore the engine wouldn’t start. Romantic? Scott guessed in a way it had been. He remembered their heads bent over the engine, the mingled smells of gasoline and seawater, their fingers touching, heads brushing. Her tanned skin. He remembered a thin white bra strap where her shirt gaped at the neck. Without any warning, she’d leaned closer and kissed him. He hadn’t known what to do. He’d been a nervous gawky teenager, interested but unable to handle his raging hormones, and shocked that his buddy had grown into a woman without him noticing.
That night, he’d had a dream about Cassy that revealed to him how beautiful he thought she was and how much he cared about her. It had been embarrassing and confusing. The dream kept recurring over the years. He’d recorded one using the Dreamcatcher and then locked the copy away in a safe, because those feelings were too confronting and he didn’t know how to deal with them and keep their friendship, too.
Back then, he’d ignored the kiss, pretended it hadn’t happened. Ignored Cassy, too, for the rest of the evening and for the next two weeks. The “romantic” paddle back to shore she was now embellishing for Lorraine was, as he recalled, endured in embarrassed silence on both their parts.
“That’s a gorgeous story,” Lorraine said.
Tod returned to the table, smiling. “My wife’s okay. Just having a few Braxton-Hicks contractions.”
Lorraine patted his arm. “You tell her to cross her legs and keep that baby inside until you get back. My fiancé is a yachtsman, too,” she went on as Tod tackled his dessert. “We cruised the Whitsunday Islands on his motor launch last year. The swordfishing was magnificent. I caught a seventy-pounder the second day out. Are you a hunting or a fishing man, Scott?”
“I’m afraid I don’t have time for either. I’ve been hard at work developing the Dreamcatcher for the past ten years.” Scott glanced at Cassy. During the end of the anecdote, she’d dropped her gaze to her wineglass, her smile fading. Was it possible he’d hurt her feelings that night on Chuckanut Bay?
“You still haven’t told us what this Dreamcatcher of yours can do,” Tod said around a mouthful of chocolate and cream.
“I’m saving that for our pitch tomorrow,” Scott said. “If I start now we’ll be up all night talking about it.”
“Tomorrow’s a big day. If we’re going to be out on the bike trails early I’d better turn in.” Lorraine tossed her napkin beside her empty dessert plate, which was so clean she might have licked it. As she rose to go, she winked at him. “Enjoy the honeymoon suite.”
Cassy’s head came up. “We’re not in the
honeymoon
suite. I mean, it’s a suite and it’s lovely but I don’t think a honeymoon suite would have two bedrooms.”
Scott ran a finger beneath his collar. Thank God it
wasn’t
the honeymoon suite. If there were only one bed, he wouldn’t stand a chance of keeping his hands off her.
“The suite you changed in for dinner was only temporary because the other one wasn’t ready yet,” Lorraine explained. ”I had the concierge move your things to the Bridal Falls room while we were having dinner. Stop by the desk for a new key card. The one you have won’t work anymore.” She grinned at their shocked expressions. “I wanted to surprise you and I see I did. Regardless of what happens this weekend businesswise, I wanted to give you kids an early wedding present. You’re a cute couple.”
“That’s…very generous of you.” Scott’s gaze flickered to Cassy, and he hoped she would come up with something to get them out of the Bridal Falls and back into the two-bedroom suite.
Instead, she jumped up and gave Lorraine a hug. Now it was the brusque Aussie woman’s turn to look surprised. “Thank you,” Cassy said. “I wouldn’t worry about making a mistake with your fiancé. Fourth time’s the charm.”
Lorraine and Tod said good-night and went out of the dining room, leaving Cassy and Scott staring awkwardly at each other across the table.
“Coffee?” Scott asked, even though it was the last thing he felt like. He and Lorraine had a date to hit the trails at 8:00 a.m., and it was already after midnight.
“No, thanks. I’m already going to have trouble getting to sleep with all that rich food.”
“I won’t. I’m dead tired.”
Liar.
His nerves were buzzing and he’d never felt so awake in his life, as if he’d downed five cans of energy drink. “How about chamomile tea?” He turned to look for a waiter. They were lined up on the edge of the dining room, waiting to clear their table. He and Cassy were the last two people in the room.
“We should probably get out of here and let these people clean up.”
“We could adjourn to the bar.” He was getting desperate now.
Cassy pushed away the glass of wine she’d been nursing for the past hour and shook her head. “No more alcohol.”
“You couldn’t have come up with a skin allergy or sleep apnea or something to prevent us from having to share a bed?” Scott said. “I was counting on you.”
“This is no lemonade stand, buster. You’re a big boy now.”
“Well, the bed in the honeymoon suite will no doubt be big enough for a football team. We would need the proverbial ten-foot pole to touch each other. Not that I would,” he assured her quickly. “We may have fooled Lorraine but we know the truth about our relationship.”
“Right,” Cassy said, gazing at him with a veiled expression. “We know the truth.”
For the first time he wondered,
Did he?
“Come on,” he said, rising. “We’re two adults. We can handle this. There’s no point stalling. We’ll have to go up sometime.”
“Two adults,” Cassy repeated, somehow making it sound X-rated.
Quietly, they walked to the desk and asked for new key cards.
The young male receptionist was effusively welcoming. “There’s a bottle of champagne on ice. Just touch a match to the fireplace and you’ll have instant romance.”
“Lovely,” Cassy murmured.
Scott led the way to the elevator, trying desperately not to think about spending the night with Cassy in a honeymoon suite. His groin was tightening with every step, making walking increasingly difficult. The doors slid open and closed on them, leaving them alone in the warm wood-and-brass elevator car. Mirrors on every wall reflected Cassy’s face, her bare shoulders, and an infinite number of her breasts.
He tried to quell his hard-on by imagining her in her ratty old cat pajamas. Instantly, he got a visual of her smooth, rounded flesh moving beneath the flannel and his cock hardened more. Hell. He hoped she would wear a bra underneath her pajamas when she came to bed. He visualized her hair in curlers and her face plastered with cold cream. Yeah, this was good, this was working. Maybe she wore a retainer to bed to keep her perfect white teeth in alignment. He stared down at his shoes, concentrating on the retainer and not on her luscious pink lips. Faded cat pajamas, curlers, cold cream, retainer…
“It’s ironic that she gave us the honeymoon suite,” Cassy said. “My old cat pajamas didn’t seem right for the Salish Lodge. I mean, what if Lorraine for some reason came to my room when I wasn’t dressed? We might be caught out of character. Not that we would be likely to have a meeting in my bedroom but you have to be prepared for any eventuality.”
His head snapped up. “What are you saying, Cass?”
“I bought a negligee for the weekend. It’s really soft and clingy, so fine a material it’s almost transparent. With little pink daisies right…here.” She touched between her breasts and met his gaze, her warm brown eyes dark with what looked disconcertingly like desire. “But that won’t bother you, will it? We’re just friends, right? I wouldn’t be a…distraction.”
His erection swelled painfully. Was she toying with him? What if he called her bluff? He was itching to reach for her and take her right here in the elevator. He imagined himself hitting the red button and pressing her up against the wall…
The elevator slid to a smooth stop, putting a halt to his fantasy. “No, that won’t bother me.”
The doors opened. Cassy preceded him. His gaze lit on her calf muscles flexing and her sweet round ass twitching from side to side as she strode the carpeted corridor in high heels. A negligee, huh? Soft and clingy and transparent…
Fuck.
This was going to be a very long night.
Chapter Five
Cassy followed Scott into the luxurious Bridal Falls suite. The sitting room boasted elegant leather and mahogany furniture. A huge flower arrangement on the coffee table filled the room with a sweet aroma. Next to the vase stood an ice bucket containing a bottle of champagne and two crystal champagne flutes.
Cassy peeked into the bedroom. A massive four-poster bed faced an open fireplace, and a recessed window seat padded with plump cushions beckoned invitingly. She drew back the curtains, revealing floodlit grounds, a mountain panorama illuminated by a full moon, and the Snoqualmie Falls cascading into the river far below. Breathtaking.
Turning, she ran her hand over the dark silky fabric of the comforter on the four-poster. If she had really been on her honeymoon, she couldn’t have asked for a more romantic setting.
Scott joined her in the bedroom, facing her across the bed, a distance that seemed both huge and far too close. “So. This is it. We’re here.”
Suddenly, her palms felt damp. This was ridiculous. She was far too old to be a blushing ingenue. She’d shared beds with male friends before where nothing happened, or was expected to happen. They weren’t animals who couldn’t help mating when opportunity arose. But Scott was too important to her not to admit the truth—that she had wished and dreamed and fantasized about this moment for years. Now that it was here, it was a sham, just like the engagement and the diamond ring.
But she didn’t want it to be a sham. This was exactly the opportunity she’d been hoping for. She wanted him. Badly. She just had to find the guts to let him know. And she couldn’t beat around the bush. All her sultry hints in the elevator seemed to have gone right over Scott’s head. But now that they were alone together, her courage deserted her and she retreated to her usual sarcasm.
“Really, is that all you have to say? So much for the smooth talking ladies’ man. What
do
women see in you?” She shot him a snarky grin and brushed past him to her suitcase. “I get first shower.”
Scott thrust both hands in his front pockets. “Be my guest.”
Cassy took her negligee and dressing gown with her into the bathroom, leaving Scott to pace the sitting area of their suite, to all appearances just like a groom on his wedding night. She didn’t need another shower, but she did need to get away and regroup. Despite her bravado, she felt as nervous as a new bride.
She got a cosmetic sponge and cleanser out of her toiletry bag. Nestled next to her toothbrush holder was a small box of condoms. Just in case. Could she initiate it? Part of her was desperate to do the deed. Part of her was terrified. Once they had sex, they couldn’t go back to being just friends. They would either be more than friends, or they would fall apart.