“That means we’re alone, kids,” she said over her shoulder. “Isolated.”
All she’d never wanted by thirty.
She’d made contact with her donor sibling sisters because she wanted the family ties her sperm-inseminated, single mother had always eschewed. Cassandra had a real relationship with Nikki and Juliet now, even though she’d gone behind their backs and contacted their biological father and his adopted sons. Her sisters had forgiven her, understanding her need to cement the seams between them all so that she’d never feel lonely again.
And here she was, alone again. Lonely.
The rain picked up, drumming harder against the roof and all three “kids” jumped. She’d taken them in last year during a torrential storm, and they probably remembered what it was like to be wet and muddy and barely clinging to life.
She couldn’t blame the cats for being spooked. Besides brokenhearted, Cassandra felt a little twitchy herself. Dark was approaching; the weather wasn’t abating; and with the road gone already, she had to be on the lookout for more evidence of mudslides.
Blinking back another round of self-pity, she gazed over her backyard again. At the rear was the first of the narrow flights of steps that led to the other house farther up the Malibu canyon. A creek ran through the northern end of the property, very picturesque, but if its banks overflowed, then water would come gushing down those stairs, just like—
Oh, God.
Just like it was doing right now.
She stared at the widening wash of muddy runoff tumbling Slinky-like down the cement steps. This wasn’t good.
This wasn’t supposed to happen on her birthday.
Or ever, for that matter.
Thumping sounds from the direction of her front porch caused her head to jerk around. Floodwaters behind her and who knows what on her porch? Her heart slammed against her chest and the cats jumped to their twelve feet and rushed toward the front door.
Surely only one person could get them moving with such haste. They loved him, though he paid them scant attention.
Could it be . . . ?
She crossed the room, almost beating the kids in the impromptu footrace. Their tails swished impatiently as she grasped the doorknob, then twisted and pulled.
In the deepening dusk, the visitor was just a dark figure in a sodden raincoat, a wide brimmed safari-style hat shadowing his face and leaking water at the edges like she’d been leaking tears a few minutes before.
Cassandra’s heart smacked in an erratic, painful rhythm against her breastbone. Yesterday he’d walked away from her, and she’d wondered if she’d ever see him again.
The figure pushed aside the open edges of his long coat. The sleeve slid up, reminding her of the bandage he’d wound around his cut wrist just a few weeks before. She knew the skin was healed there now.
His hand appeared pale against the blackness of his clothes. She saw the gleam of something metallic shoved into the waistband of dark jeans.
Oh, God.
She’d known he was in a desperate frame of mind yesterday, especially after he’d told her why her birthday put him in no mood to celebrate. But even after the many times she’d rescued him from barroom floors, even after the numerous occasions he’d gone missing for days at a time, even after the skydiving and the hang gliding and the dangerous solo kayak ocean voyages, she’d never let herself think that he’d really . . .
“Gabe?” she whispered, her gaze lifting to the face beneath the hat’s brim. “A gun?”
Six weeks earlier
The ring of the bedside phone jolted Cassandra from a fitful sleep. She jackknifed up, disturbing the snoozing cats. Her hand snatched the receiver from its base as adrenaline sluiced through her veins. “Gabe?” It was either him or about him. Her two a.m. calls were like that.
It was of the second variety. She assured the caller she was on her way, then dressed, the adrenaline hit she’d taken making her movements choppy. In cropped sweatpants, a T-shirt, and her yoga slip-ons, she let herself out of the house.
She didn’t feel the chill in the spring night air.
She didn’t feel the rough gravel under her thin-soled shoes.
She only felt relieved.
After three days without any sign of him, he’d turned up. This wasn’t his longest time away and this wasn’t the most worried she’d ever been, but still, she had to take deep breaths to calm her heartbeat on the short drive to the Beach Shack, notable for only two things: that in Malibu terms it was quite far from the beach, and that the owner kept Cassandra’s number pinned on the corkboard next to the bar’s house phone.
Gabe’s been found
, she told herself, pulling into the small, potholed parking lot.
We have another chance.
There wasn’t any “we,” she knew that, but she used the word anyway, as if by doing so she could make him an active partner in this endeavor to keep him engaged in the world around him.
Admit it, Cassandra,
an inner voice insisted as she pushed open the Beach Shack’s door.
You really mean in this endeavor to keep him alive.
And in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt he looked half-dead, that was a fact. His butt on the sticky floor, his back against the battered bar, Gabe had his head down. His black hair obscured his face as a little man wearing stained khakis and a greasy-looking Dodgers cap swept around his long, outstretched legs.
The baseball fan looked up. “Closed,” he said, his Spanish accent thick.
She pointed her forefinger at the rag doll figure. “I’m here for him.”
Another man bustled through a swinging door behind the bar. “That’s becoming a bad habit, Cassandra,” he said. His cap proclaimed him a Lakers devotee.
Shrugging, she smiled. “Hi, Mr. Mueller.” She’d gone to elementary school with his daughter, and he’d never failed to attend the annual father-daughter luncheon. In second grade, she’d been assigned the seat next to his, and she’d pretended for forty-two blissful minutes that the pot-bellied man who smelled like Marlboros and deli pickles was her daddy.
Mr. Mueller wiped his hands on a dingy rag and then made his way around the bar to stand beside her. They both gazed down at Gabe.
“He showed up about eleven,” the older man said.
“You could have called me then,” she replied, frowning. “I would have—”
“He was with a woman.”
The quick breath she took hurt her lungs. “Oh.” Her face burned, and she pretended not to notice the sympathetic look he sent her. Malibu was like any other small town in the way that everyone knew everyone else’s business.
Mr. Mueller grimaced. “If it helps any—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she interjected.
“—she looked like a two-bit . . .”
His voice drifted off as the man on the floor stirred. “I stink,” Gabe mumbled.
“His, uh, friend threw up on him,” the bar owner said to Cassandra. “After that, I called her a cab.” He reached down to grab Gabe’s arm. “Let’s go, buddy. Your ride’s here.”
“Don’ call her,” Gabe said, his head swinging up to pin the other man with a bloodshot gaze. “Don’ wan’ her here.”
“It’s okay, fella,” Mr. Mueller said, helping him to his feet. “A taxi took your date away.”
Cassandra stepped forward to slide her arm around the drunk’s lean waist. “Gabe means me.”
To prove her true, he let out a long, low groan. “C’ssandra.” When he shook his head, he stirred the air around him, bringing closer his disgusting smell.
Thanks to some other woman.
Gabe’s date.
She looked like a two-bit . . .
Cassandra suspected Gabe hadn’t had to pay his evening’s companion a thing. The dark spaces inside of him acted like a magnet for all kinds of women.
The wrong kind.
Even the smart kind.
Especially the kind who seemed to be lacking self-protective instincts.
“Let’s go,” she said, trying not to breathe through her nose as she led him outside the bar.
She spread an old beach towel she found in her trunk on the passenger seat then helped Mr. Mueller insert Gabe into the car. She buckled him in as his head lolled on the cushion and blessed the donut-and-chow-mein scent that rose in the air as she started the motor. Gabe always gave her grief about the odor of the used veggie oil that she put in her gas tank, but it smelled a heck of a lot better than he did.
She glanced over at him several times on the trip home. He’d passed out again, she decided, and that was a relief in its own way. After parking in the circular drive by his front entrance, she jogged around to open his door. Then it was up to her to search his pockets for his house keys. Better to get the front door open before trying to drag him up the steps and inside.
No need to instruct him to lift off the seat. Gabe carried his wallet and keys in his right front pocket. Leaning in, she inserted her fingers between layers of tight denim.
She shrieked when a hard hand clamped around her wrist. “Darlin’,” Gabe said, apparently conscious again. “We fin’ly gonna do it?”
Rolling her eyes, she yanked on her hand, but he wouldn’t release her. “Let go. Let go, you idiot.”
“Liked where you were head’n.”
Cassandra rolled her eyes again. There were twelve steps to self-recovery, so it shouldn’t surprise her that there were steps to self-destruction, too. For Gabe, those had been tending to go like this: 1) a short-to-long disappearance 2) followed by a scene of public drunkenness 3) ending with demands for sex with Cassandra.
He never remembered them after he sobered up.
He never seemed interested in her that way after he sobered up either.
She yanked again, freeing her hand, then patted his thigh to check out the pocket from the outside. It seemed empty. “Gabe, where are your keys?”
“Dunno.” Frowning, he managed to get his feet out of the car and then he stood, swaying as held on to the open door. His hands searched all four of his pockets. “C’ssandra. Do you have m’keys?”
“No.” Thinking fast, she decided the best way to deal was to run to her house and get the spare set. She’d dash through his front yard to the steps leading to her back patio. He’d be better off waiting here in the fresh air until she returned. “Stay,” she told him, then made for her place.
It was the big splash that said he hadn’t followed orders. At her back door, she whipped around to discover he’d fallen into her small pool. So small that she could lean over the side and grab his arm and tow his body to the side. “What are you doing, you fool?”
“Can’t leave a girl ‘lone in the dark.” He grasped her waist to hoist himself up, lost his grip, then slipped back underwater. “Watchin’ after you,” he added wetly, as he broke the surface again. This time he dug his fingers into her hips and with her help managed to exit the pool. Standing up, he shook himself like a dog.
Dodging the spray, she decided that thanks to her good deeds there must be a cloud in heaven with her name already inscribed on it. And she hoped it was plenty fluffy, because handling Gabe was making her old before her time. She left him on her back patio and scurried for towels before he could get into more trouble.
Scurrying proved useless, however, because when she returned from the linen closet, he was standing in her small living area, stark naked.
Cassandra focused on his face. “What are you doing now?” she demanded.
He lifted his arms away from his lean, muscled body. The benders didn’t seem to affect his fitness level. “Shortcut. I’m naked. Now you.”
She threw the towel at his chest, but his reflexes were off and it fell to the floor after briefly catching on the impressive erection he was sporting. “I thought booze was supposed to make that impossible,” she muttered.
He looked down at himself, palmed the thick flesh, then sent her a grin. “Hung like ‘n’ elephant. Did I tell you that?”
“Only every time you’ve been drinking.” Except this was the first time she’d seen the evidence for herself. Oh, and he had a nice ass, too, she noticed, as he turned and headed down the short hallway that led to a half-bath on the left and her bedroom on the right. She trailed his slow-moving figure, then had to yell out, “Left, left! You want to go left,” as he veered into her bedroom.
Oh, fine. There was an attached bathroom there, too, complete with a shower.
But he didn’t make it that far. Instead, he found her queen-sized mattress and fell on it, faceup. One of the cats tiptoed over and settled on the pillow around his head, just like a coonskin hat.
“My comatose Davy Crocket,” she said, aware he’d sunk into drunken dreamland again. Resigned to an unexpected overnight visitor, she reached for the covers to pull them over his nakedness. Her gaze snagged on a thin strip of fabric tied with a clumsy knot around his left wrist. Watery bloodstains marred the white material.
Her stomach hollowed. A high whine rang in her ears and her spongy knees had her sinking to the mattress. She lifted his hand into her lap. His fingers were curled in relaxation, the skin warm, the callused palm scratchy under her thumbs. The bandage—
“Wha’?”
Her gaze jumped to Gabe’s face. He was awake again, and staring at her.
“Your wrist,” she said. “How did you get hurt?”
His gaze flicked down to the bandage and he looked at it, obviously bemused. Not alarmed. Alarmed was her.
“Accident.” It was the first nonslurred word he’d spoken that evening.
Her alarm level rose. “What kind of ‘accident’?” When he didn’t respond, she shook his hand. “What kind of accident, Gabe?”
The same kind of “accident” that had led her to find him in his closed garage with his car’s motor running? The same kind of “accident” that had led him to take a hunk of rope and coil it into a noose that she’d caught him tying from a beam in the gazebo in his backyard? She swallowed.
“
What kind of accident
?”