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“I’m sorry, too,” Gabe said, rubbing his hand across the back of his neck. “I shouldn’t have burdened you with my troubles, but it just hit me like a ton of bricks today and I couldn’t seem to stop myself from taking my anger out on you.” He paused and caught her gaze. “In fact, that’s probably why I yelled at you about not appreciating my help. I’m sorry for that, too.”
“That’s okay,” Kassandra said quietly.
A strange, uncomfortable silence settled over them. They’d never had a civil conversation before, and it appeared to Kassandra that neither one of them knew what to do or say next.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Kassandra finally asked, filling the awkward pause.
Gabe shook his head. “Not unless you’d like to go to Georgia with me and pretend to be my fiancée through the Christmas season.”
The absurdity of the suggestion made Kassandra laugh. They couldn’t get along for the five minutes it took to gather her groceries. There was no way they could spend three weeks together—particularly not as two people in love. She almost laughed again. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Yeah,” Gabe agreed. Evidently following her line of thinking about the absurdity of the situation, he smiled. In fact, he smiled at her.
She found she rather liked it.
He realized it didn’t kill him.
They’d actually made some progress.
Ill at ease, he rubbed his hand across the back of his neck again. “So, your roommates are leaving, huh?”
She nodded, regretting that she’d revealed so much to him. Then she realized it didn’t matter. She didn’t have a fairy godmother. There was no gold at the end of the rainbow. And she wasn’t going to be able to keep this apartment. Period.
“I’ll probably be turning in a request to get out of my lease.”
“That’s too bad,” he said, and Kassandra could tell he genuinely meant it. “This is a good building, a safe building.”
“I know,” she agreed. “That’s why I liked living here. To tell you the truth, I’m not quite sure where I’m going to go….” Kassandra trailed off, watching as a curious expression crossed Gabe’s face.
He looked her up and down, from her feet to her head, then from her head to her feet.
He smiled wickedly, handsomely. “You know, if you think about this, we could be the answer to each other’s problems.”
Kassandra shook her head. “I don’t think so. Unless you’d be willing to let me live here rent free until I get my degree, there’s nothing anyone can do to help me.”
“But I would be willing to let you live here rent free while you get your degree. I’d even be willing to help you with your other expenses, if you would go to Georgia with me for the holidays.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” Kassandra said, thinking distress had driven him just slightly delirious and he didn’t realize what he was offering.
“Don’t say no so quickly,” he insisted, this time sounding as if he were getting a little desperate. “I’m serious about this. Rent and help with your other expenses. Figure out how much money it would take for you to finish school and give me a number. I don’t care. I really need this favor.”
“You must,” Kassandra agreed, overwhelmed by his generosity. “But whether you’re serious or not doesn’t matter, because I can’t do it.” First, she knew she couldn’t impose on her parents to take care of Candy for the better part of a month. Second, she didn’t want to miss Candy’s first Christmas. Third, she didn’t think Gabe Cayne would appreciate her bringing her daughter on a holiday visit with his family—particularly since she didn’t know if Gabe knew Candy existed.
And, fourth, his proposition was just a little too good to be true. She’d been around long enough to know there had to be a catch. There was no way she’d hungrily jump at this chance and make a fool of herself.
“You have to do it,” Gabe said. “There is no other way out for you.”
“Of course there is,” Kassandra argued casually. “I might have to adjust my schedule and put back graduation, but I’ll get there.”
She set some more things in the refrigerator. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Gabe staring at her, clearly thinking she was crazy. “I know what you’re thinking,” she told him as she busied herself with storing some canned goods. “That I’m nuts. Well, I have a news flash for you. For every bit as much as you might think I’m crazy to turn down such a lucrative offer, I think you’re equally crazy for making it.”
“Why?”
“Because people who don’t have money are always suspicious of people who offer it so freely.” Smiling smugly, she tossed a can into a cupboard. “There’s a catch. I know there is, so I’m not buying into this.”
“What if I told you there was no catch?” he asked.
“There’s always a catch.”
“Not this time.”
His quietly spoken statement stopped her. “You’re kidding? You’d let me live here for eighteen months and you’d shell out enough money to take care of my other expenses?”
“I have money. You need it. And you’d be giving up your holiday. Two-thirds of December and a few days into January. To me it’s worth it.”
Flabbergasted, she shook her head. “You rich people kill me.”
“Why?” he countered. “I’m offering you a simple way out of this and you’re too…too…”
“Stupid?” she inquired, her eyebrows raised questioningly.
“Stubborn,” he corrected her, “to take it. Why?”
“For a million reasons,” she said. “First of all, I don’t know you.”
“Ah, come on. Everybody in this city knows me, at least by reputation—good reputation, I might add. Even you, if you’re honest. In spite of the fact that you think my parties are too loud and too long, you know I’m basically a person of integrity. So, saying you don’t know me is no excuse.”
What he said was true. She did know him by reputation, but more than that she knew his family. Everybody knew his family. They weren’t merely pillars of the community. Until a few years ago when they retired in Georgia, they were the community. The most generous, most benevolent people in town…
Which made his offer even more than tempting. Knowing the family she’d be visiting were such likable, easygoing people made his offer possible. Very possible. Rent and expenses for eighteen months. She could actually quit her job as a waitress. Study full-time. Graduate early.
Suddenly he turned and strode toward the door. “I’ll tell you what, since this was a spur-of-the-moment idea, I’m going to give you some time to think about it. I’m leaving in my family’s private plane Friday afternoon at two, municipal field. If you’re not there, I’ll understand.” He paused and faced her again. “But if you want to come with me, pack for three weeks.”
Kassandra watched the door close behind him, then fell into her chair. She could tell from the way he issued that last order that he expected her to be at that airport at two o’clock on Friday.
He’d made an incredibly generous offer—one she could hardly walk away from—and he knew that.
But, then again, he obviously didn’t know about Candy….
Chapter Two (#ulink_a7d8b6a9-2895-517f-a8ff-1544757abc1b)
At twenty minutes after two on Friday afternoon, Gabe’s plane was fueled and had been moved to the boarding area of the small airstrip. Gabe stood in the biting December wind, arms crossed on his chest, as he studied the parking lot of the municipal field. Kassandra was now late enough for him to officially assume that she wasn’t coming and had turned him down.
Which seemed impossible. Short of throwing in a block of Cayne Enterprises stock, Gabe didn’t know how he could have made her a better offer. Yet, obviously, his very lucrative, very generous proposition wasn’t good enough.
On the verge of giving up, Gabe saw Kassandra jump out of a late-model car someone else was driving. Though Gabe felt a burst of relief, followed by a stirring of guilt since he never thought to offer her a ride to the airport, he didn’t want to weaken. Couldn’t weaken. This trip had to be on his terms, because this was his family. He couldn’t have Kassandra calling the shots, or running the show, or even being smart with him.
Not in front of his family.
Somehow or other, he had to get control of this situation and he had to keep it. And that wasn’t going to be easy. Not only had this woman kept him and his noise in line for almost a year, but she’d arrived twenty minutes late, and Gabe had waited for her. She was smart enough to know her own power, and she also had him in a very precarious position. They both knew it. Because of his lie he was at her mercy. But what Kassandra didn’t seem to understand was that if she didn’t play this part right, there would be no point in taking her to Georgia.
Deciding the best thing to do would be to board the plane and leave her to her own devices with her luggage, so it wasn’t so obvious he was watching for her, Gabe stepped onto the first step of the three-stair entry to the streamlined vehicle. He made one quick backward glance to confirm the woman he saw really was Kassandra, then boarded, settling himself in one of the eight seats in the small but roomy craft. He even opened his briefcase and set papers all over the seat beside him so she wouldn’t realize he’d waited for her.
But twenty minutes later he was still waiting. Furious now, he tossed the paper he was reading to the seat beside him and was just about to go to the cockpit and tell the pilot to leave, when he saw the pilot walking toward him.
“Mr. Cayne, there’s a problem in the terminal that needs your attention.”
Gabe looked up at Art Oxford. “My attention?” he asked, confused.
“There’s a woman claiming you’re waiting for her…”
“Now, you know I’m waiting for a woman, Art!” Gabe said, bounding from his seat and starting out of the plane. “You should have just told them to let her through.”
“But this woman has—” Art began, but Gabe didn’t stay to listen to the end of his sentence. He didn’t have time to wait. In the few minutes it would take for the pilot to call to the terminal to tell security to allow Kassandra through, Gabe could straighten this out himself and probably more satisfactorily.
Storming across the tarmac, Gabe muttered to himself about incompetent people. Everybody had been told to let a five-foot-six blonde through to his plane, yet here he was having to make a personal identification. He bounded through the glass door, strode through the small terminal, burst into the manager’s office and nearly knocked Kassandra on her bottom.
Dressed in a black wool coat and fluffy cashmere hat, she didn’t look anything like the women Gabe normally dated. She wasn’t tall. She wasn’t slender. And she certainly wasn’t sophisticated. Though, she was cute. Cuddly. Sexy in a sweet kind of way. Unfortunately, she was also holding a baby. A little girl dressed in a one-piece pink winter garment with a bunny embroidered on the front. One shock of black hair peeked from beneath the rim of a pink knit cap. She was sucking on a plastic thing that must have been a modern-day version of a pacifier, though Gabe had never seen one that fit flat against a baby’s lips before. The minute Gabe stepped into the room, the kid spit it at him.
It thumped against his chest, then bounced to the floor.
“Hey!” Gabe yelped, jumping away from them. He looked at Kassandra, who appeared sufficiently mortified, but the baby only grinned, held out her arms and said, “Dada.”
Beyond angry, beyond confused, beyond everything, Gabe merely looked at Kassandra.
She cleared her throat, then bent to retrieve the pacifier before she turned to the airport manager. “Mr. Byron, could we have a little privacy, please?”
“Sure,” Charlie Byron said, rising from his seat. “You want me to take Candy with me?”
Kassandra shook her head negatively, then watched as Charlie left the room, closing the door behind him.
“This is the reason I keep nagging you about your noise,” Kassandra said as she shoved the dirty pacifier into an open diaper bag. “I have a daughter.”
She paused, waiting for him to respond, but Gabe was so flabbergasted he didn’t know what to say. Not only did this explain why she always complained, but it made him feel like a heel for disturbing a baby. Worse, it appeared she’d decided to bring her baby to Georgia. Georgia! To meet his mother, his father and his grandmother!
“This is her first Christmas and I don’t want to miss it. Besides, I didn’t want to impose on anybody by asking them to watch her for three weeks.” Kassandra drew a long breath. “So I decided to bring her along,” she added softly, cautiously.
“I see,” Gabe said as he slid onto a chair, then covered his face with both hands. He absolutely, positively did not know what to say…or do. Taking this woman and her baby to Georgia wouldn’t work. His last-minute attempt to save himself from looking like a liar to his family had failed.
“Look,” Kassandra said, obviously becoming annoyed with him. “It isn’t as bad as you think. Candy’s a baby, not a pet rat. I had a choice. Miss out on this opportunity—which I need—or bring Candy along. I didn’t want to lose this chance, so here I am. Now you have a choice. Take us as a team or leave us as a team, but as I recall—” she paused until she caught his gaze “—you didn’t put any stipulations on your offer. You just told me to show up at the airport.”
“You,” he said, then rose so he could pace. “I told you to show up at the airport. Not a package deal. I need one girl, not two. And one of you is a little bit too young for my taste, anyway.”
The baby babbled happily, clapping her chubby little hands and staring at Gabe as if he were the Prince of Wales, but Kassandra looked at him as if he were crazy. “I don’t want to leave her. Three weeks is a long time, and it’s her first Christmas. That’s a special time. I don’t want to miss it.”
“No, I suppose not,” Gabe muttered. Aside from a few company picnics, he hadn’t had much contact with babies before. And this one made him nervous. Oh, she was cute enough, but she also had a very unusual way of looking at him—almost as if she already knew him. He tried to get himself out of Candy’s line of vision. But the baby must have thought they were playing some kind of game, because when Gabe moved out of her way, she peeked around her mother’s shoulder to find him. When she saw him, she grinned, revealing two teeth trying to sprout from her upper gums. “But even so, I can’t take the two of you to meet my family.”
“Fine,” Kassandra said, and she smiled, albeit halfheartedly. “That’s your choice. You can’t say I didn’t give you an option.”
If her voice hadn’t quivered with disappointment, Gabe might have thought this was a bizarre scheme to annoy him since she was so good at that. Because her voice had trembled, Gabe knew all this was real. She really did have a baby, and she really did hold out the hope that Gabe would let her take Candy to Georgia with them. He glared at her. “Some option.”
She shook her head. “That all depends on how you look at it. If you need a fiancée as bad as you say you do, Gabe, then we’re actually better than nothing.”
His eyes narrowed, but he knew she was right. Taking this woman and child home for the holiday would be much better than taking no one. If he took no one, he didn’t have to admit he’d lied. He could always make up the story that he’d broken up with his fiancée. But then his grandmother would be disappointed. And he didn’t want his grandmother to be disappointed—not on her last Christmas. Taking Kassandra would make his grandmother happy.
That’s as far as he would allow himself to think for right now. “Okay. You win. Let’s go.”
Kassandra smiled, and Gabe felt the strangest tightening in his chest. She genuinely was one hell of an attractive woman. Not his type, Gabe reminded himself, but very attractive.
Before he could finish that thought, Kassandra pointed behind Charlie Byron’s desk. “Candy’s car seat, diaper bag, playpen, swing, high chair and overnight bag are all over there,” she said, and watched Gabe’s mouth fall open.
“All that for one kid?”
“We left most of her things at home,” Kassandra announced casually, though she agreed an eight-month-old was not the perfect traveling companion. Still, it wouldn’t do to give Gabe any other way or means to find fault with this situation. Particularly since he hadn’t yet thought of the most obvious complication. “You can get those. I’ll ask Mr. Byron if he can assign someone to help me get my things from Sandy’s car. We should be on our way in ten minutes.”
“It’ll take me ten minutes to haul this stuff through the terminal,” he complained, still staring at the pile of baby paraphernalia stacked in the corner, but Kassandra was already halfway out the door. “Wait a minute,” he called after her. “How am I supposed to explain Candy to my grandmother?”
Chapter Three (#ulink_c7b9ad44-0408-5e70-90da-4404b884ecf9)
Kassandra didn’t give Gabe an answer to his question because she was just about positive he wouldn’t like her answer—at least not until he had a few minutes to adjust to the news she’d already given him. But he didn’t press for an explanation. Because Candy began to cry the very second they stepped into the small plane, Gabe pulled some papers from his briefcase and occupied himself by reading while Kassandra rocked Candy to sleep.
Unfortunately, after Candy fell asleep, Gabe continued to read. He even read through the short limousine ride to his parents’ home. Candy slept. Gabe read. All in all, everything was going smoothly—much better than Kassandra expected—until they turned into the long, circular driveway, and Kassandra got her first jolt of reality.
They were about to meet Gabe’s parents, but he hadn’t instructed her on the things she’d need to know to pretend to be his fiancée.
“I think there’s no time like the present,” Kassandra said, gesturing toward the tastefully luxurious white mansion which was now only about a hundred feet away. “For you to tell me a little bit about yourself and your family. Otherwise, we’ll never pull this thing off.”
Gabe glanced up from his document. He’d apparently come to the airport straight from work because he was wearing one of his tailored suits. His short black hair was combed in the casual way he wore it to the office, not the slick way he combed it for his parties. Dressed as he was, he appeared capable, smart and strong. Powerful. To look at him, no one would ever guess he was the kind to have loud parties, or date women who looked like rejects from rap videos…or do absolutely anything to please his grandmother.
“Won’t talking disturb the baby?”
“Well, yes,” Kassandra reluctantly agreed. “But even if our talking does awaken her, we still need to put a plan together, figure out what I should say when you introduce me….”
Gabe looked down at his papers again. “At this point, I think it’s more important that we don’t wake the baby.”
Feeling summarily dismissed, Kassandra leaned back on her seat. Prickles of fear danced along her spine, but she ignored them. This was his family. If Gabe was comfortable walking into that great big house without a strategy in place, then so be it.
Without as much as a word of comment, Gabe opened the front door of his family home and, carrying Candy, Kassandra stepped through. It took a minute for her eyes to adjust, but once they had, her brow furrowed. Though the huge white mansion had a bright look from the outside, inside it was gloomy and cold. Dark-stained wainscoting covered the lower half of all the walls, even up the stairway. The upper half had been painted an oppressive green. All of the doors were closed to any rooms visible from the hall, making the foyer seem smaller than it really was. A large crystal chandelier hung from the high ceiling, but it wasn’t lit. The only light in the foyer came from candle-shaped wall sconces. Still, though it was dark, the foyer dripped with elegance, beauty and money.
“I’m going to show you to a room,” Gabe whispered, directing Kassandra up the long stairway of the front foyer as sleeping Candy nestled into her neck. “So you can put Candy on a bed.”
Since the quiet house appeared to be empty, Kassandra breathed a sigh of relief. Giving Gabe the benefit of the doubt, she decided he must have known they would have plenty of time for discussions once they got Candy to a bed. She nodded her agreement with his instructions, and once they were on the second floor Gabe led her down a long hall and to a huge bedroom. But when they were behind the closed doors of the bedroom and Candy had been settled in the center of the double bed, Gabe still didn’t say anything.
“Your family has a lovely home,” Kassandra said, seeking to start a conversation she hoped would lead him into telling her the things she needed to know.
“Yes. Thank you,” Gabe agreed absently.
He used the same tone he’d used when he said good morning in the hall the day after the first time she called the police on him, and Kassandra only stared at him. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he had every intention of treating her the same way here as he did in Pennsylvania. “Look, Gabe,” she said. “You can’t give me the silent treatment for the next three weeks. You brought me down here to make your family think you’re engaged—happily,” she reminded him. “This charade isn’t going to work if you keep treating me as if I have the plague.”
