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Hands in pockets, Blake’s eyes flicked again over the living room he’d never seen before today. Hadn’t been able to face. Shaun had flown up to Denver a few times since Cass’s marriage, but Blake hadn’t once returned to Albuquerque. His business had provided a convenient excuse.
Oh, yeah. She’d done well. The house, set high in the Foothills on the east side of the city, screamed money. Fairly new money, Blake thought, tempered by good taste. Sleek, contemporary furniture in blacks and grays, richly patterned Navajo rugs, gallery-quality artwork. Impressive. And not a trace of the Cass he’d known—or thought he’d known—anywhere.
“Nice place,” he managed.
A slight wince preceded her shifting as she tried to find the mythological, more comfortable position. She had narrow hips; the final months of pregnancy weren’t easy for her. Irrationally—again—Blake hated this guy, for being her husband, for making her pregnant. Even for dying on her. For leaving her with that frightened-little-girl look in her eyes. Hell, not even Blake had done that.
Or had he?
“Thank you,” she replied at last. “The view at night—” he followed her gaze to the expanse of glass that led out to an upper level deck “—is really something. You can see the whole city from up here—”
Her voice caught. He was intruding, he knew. But leaving wasn’t an option. Not until…
Until what?
Cass was watching him, he realized with a start. “What?” he asked.
“Is it me, or is this incredibly awkward?”
His lips cracked a little when he tried to smile for her. “Probably not all that unusual, though. With so many step-families nowadays…” His heart rate kicked up as her brows hitched underneath her bangs. “I’m still our son’s father. That didn’t change because you remarried.”
Heeling one hand on the end of the table, she pushed herself out of the chair. “The limo’s coming for us at ten-thirty,” she said, her words clipped. “Now I do need to get dressed.” She seemed to hesitate, worrying her knock-your-socks-off solitaire with the fingers of her right hand. He found himself wondering what she’d done with the plain gold band he’d given her. “Do you…you could ride with us, if you want.”
“Thanks, but no.” He smiled, a little. “That would be awkward.”
That got a quietly assessing look for a moment. “Yes, I suppose so.” She started out of the room, then turned back. “I didn’t thank you for coming.”
“Please, forget it. You’re a little preoccupied, I’m sure.”
Understandably, there was no joy in her smile. “I hope I don’t reach the point where I ever forget my manners, Blake. No matter what the circumstances. Besides, I know how busy you are, with your business and all—”
“This is still family, Cass. That always takes precedence.”
Accusation flared in her eyes, reminding him of his less-than-sterling reputation in that particular area, before she finally left the room. It struck him, as it had so often since the divorce, how badly he’d failed her.
“Dad?”
And that he’d failed his son even more.
Like tangled barbed wire, guilt lodged in Blake’s chest as he glanced over at the unwitting victim of his own pain and disappointment, standing on the opposite side of the room.
The boy’s grin seemed shy. “You look really weird in that suit.”
As in, Shaun had rarely seen Blake in anything other than jeans. With a grin that was in all likelihood equally timorous, Blake reciprocated. “Not nearly as weird as you do.”
“Dork-city, right?”
“Hardly. Just different. Good different, though.”
In the mildly uncomfortable silence that followed, Blake thought again how much he’d missed his child every day they were separated—far too many days for his comfort. But stuff got in the way, didn’t it? If only…
A sharp gasp of realization caught in his throat, as even the blood chugging through his veins came to a screeching halt. Blake wasn’t a religious man in the traditional sense, but he liked to think he knew an epiphanous moment when one smacked him upside the head. And this one was a pip:
He wanted his family back.
And if that didn’t earn him a deluxe, all-expenses-paid trip to the booby hatch, he didn’t know what did. As if…what? He could somehow pick up the widely scattered pieces from the last dozen years and glue them back together, good as new? As if Shaun—as if Cass—would let him?
Well, you could scratch that epiphany right off the list, boy, ’cause this one had No Way in Hell written all over it.
“So, anyway,” Shaun tried again, as if Blake had been the one to let the conversation die, “Towanda wants to know, you wanna cup of coffee?”
His brain buzzing, Blake covered the distance between them, drawing his son into a quick, one-handed hug around shoulders at nearly the same level as his. “Coffee sounds great.” If there was ever a Maxwell House moment, this was it. “But who’s Towanda?”
Catching the startled “What the heck is this?” look on Shaun’s face, Blake released his grip. After they both tugged at their jacket hems, neither seemed to know where to look or what to do with their hands. “You’ll see,” Shaun said, still eyeing Blake with suspicion.
As he followed Shaun down a short, tiled hall to the kitchen, a series of revelatory aftershocks rattled his skull (since clearly his brain hadn’t gotten the memo about scratching the epiphany off the list). It isn’t too late, came the thought. At least, there might still be time to forge a relationship with his son, to repair the inadvertent damage inflicted by total cluelessness.
But the epiphany had said family. Not son. Family. As in Cass.
Forget it, Blake mentally yelled at whoever was in charge of these things.
Uh…no, Whoever calmly replied. Which is when Blake came to the mildly depressing realization that there’s apparently an iron-clad No Return policy on epiphanies. Who knew?
All well and good. Except how the hell was he supposed to heal a breach with someone who regarded him as though he were carrying a contagious disease, hadn’t even buried her second husband yet, and—oh, yeah—was pregnant with said dead husband’s child? The timing wasn’t exactly ideal here.
Tough. Deal with it.
Yeah, well, there was also the minor detail of his still, to this day, having no idea how to fix something that had at one time seemed so right and yet had gone so horribly wrong.
Then maybe it’s high time you get off your lazy butt and figure it out.
Right about now, Blake thought as they reached the kitchen, a lobotomy wasn’t sounding half-bad.
“Well now…” The generously bosomed black woman in the monochrome kitchen, her prodigious figure encased in a geometric-pattern shirt and polyester pants with permanently stitched-down creases, rose from a stool behind the granite island and walked over to Blake, clapping a firm hand on his arm. The dark eyes that met his were warm and fearless and unapologetically judgmental. “I take it you’re this boy’s daddy.”
Blake met her confident grin with a slightly less certain one of his own. “Last time I checked.”
“Well, I’m Towanda, and the rule around here is don’t give me any guff and we’ll get along just fine.” With that she returned to whatever she’d been doing, her crepe-soled oxfords making no sound on the gray-tiled floor. “Coffee’s over there,” she said with a twitch of her head, her dark blond waves remaining suspiciously rigid. “Help yourself.”
In business, Blake mused as he filled a mug, he’d gloried in a succession of triumphs. In life, he’d bombed, big-time. After the divorce he’d dated, some, when he could fit it in, but none of the budding relationships ever caught fire. Nor had he cared overmuch that they hadn’t. No other woman had ever gotten to him the way Cass had, and he suspected no other woman ever would. And if that sounded sappy and overly sentimental and improbable, so be it. He hadn’t purposefully closed himself off to loving again, but since it hadn’t happened, or even come close, in all this time…
Blake took a sip of the best coffee he’d ever tasted, mulling this over.
For way too long, he realized, he’d dwelled on what had gone wrong with his marriage, an exercise which had done little more than leave him with a nagging, burning sensation not unlike chronic heartburn that he’d somehow let the ball drop. That he’d given up too easily. Well, now…maybe, just maybe, it was time to remember what had been right. And with time—lots of time, considering the woman’s husband had just died—with patience, and with a lot of prayer, maybe Cass would remember, too.
Of course, there was also the definite possibility that he was on the brink of making a total ass of himself.
He took another sip of coffee, then grunted.
Which would make this not exactly a venture into new territory.
By midafternoon, the crowd had begun to thin, as more and more people slipped out the front door and back into the stream of their normal lives. The funeral, the burial, 1001 nameless condolence givers had all—mercifully, Cass decided—become an indistinct blur.
Except for Blake.
She sat on one of the sofas in the living room, Lucille next to her, close enough for the older woman to occasionally squeeze Cass’s hand. That is, when she wasn’t talking off the ear of whoever came over to offer his or her sympathy. Cass didn’t know ninety percent of these people, a fact that made it much easier to keep her emotional cool.
Except about Blake.
His nearness, both through the services and now, back at the house, tormented her no less than the too-hot-for-March noonday sun that had seared her skin through her black silk maternity dress. Had she been deluding herself these past dozen years? Cass really had believed she’d broken Blake’s almost mesmeric hold on her heart, her mind. Her soul. But the truth was, she now realized with a mixture of embarrassment and horror, the attachment had never truly been severed. Like stretching a rubber band thin enough to give the illusion of separation, if you increase the tension even a little too far—twannnng! Right back where you started.
Like now. Her mental and emotional resources stretched to the max, all it took was Blake Carter’s reappearance in her life, and…twannnng!
And, boy oh boy, did it smart.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” said yet another pleasant-looking middle-aged stranger, grasping Cass’s hand. Cass gave the woman a brave little smile and murmured her thanks, wondering which one of them was more relieved at having gotten through the requisite contact. That done, now whoever-she-was could scarf down the catered hors d’oeuvres with a clear conscience, while Cass could return to obsessing about her ex with anything but.
All she knew was this absurd attraction was inappropriate at best and sheer, stark-raving, just-lock-me-up-now-and-throw-away-the-key idiocy at worst. All she knew was, whatever was going on in her head had to stay there, where no one could see, or know how seriously flawed she was. All she knew was, she was a brand-new widow, almost seven months pregnant with her second husband’s child, but she would have spilled state secrets to feel her first husband’s arms around her. So damn Blake Carter for reappearing in her life to remind her of what she’d lost, of what she’d missed, of what she would never have again. Not with him, at least. And judging from her abysmal track record thus far, not with anybody else, either.
Speak of the devil. Cass glanced up to catch Blake approaching her, his brows dipped in an undecided expression somewhere between pity and confusion. His nearly black hair was still too long, she noticed, the threads of silver at his temples the only thing making him look any older than when they’d been married. She knotted her hands together at the memory of gliding her fingers through those thick waves when they—
The tiny moan just sort of slipped out. Yet someone else she didn’t know gave her a funny look. “The baby kicked,” she said with a shaky smile.
The woman smiled back and returned to her conversation while Cass went back to studying the only man who’d ever rocked her world. In rapid, profound and heart-stopping succession.
Okay, she really had to stop this.
Mercedes Zamora, one of her business partners, had snagged him with a tray of something or other. Blake politely took one, obviously trying to extricate himself from Mercy’s rapid-fire monologue. Thank God for small favors, Cass thought, trying to shift her weight on the sofa. Maybe by the time he made it over here, her heart rate would be back to normal.
Right. Now she noticed the fine webbing at the corners of his eyes, which made him look more distinguished, as did the creases bracketing a mouth she remembered with a clarity vivid enough to make her squirm in her seat. And not because of the baby, either.
Having escaped Mercy’s clutches, Blake was back on course toward Cass…and the fantasies vaporized in the heat of those hound-dog eyes, eyes that seemed to plead with her to explain what had happened between them. On the surface, the answer seemed simple enough—that he’d broken one too many promises for her to ever be able to trust him again. But in truth, the answer was anything but simple. God knows, she would have given anything to untangle the myriad reasons why their marriage had sizzled, then fizzled, at least enough to lay them out in order of importance. But the more she tried to sort out the jumble of disappointment and heartache left in the wake of their divorce, the less she understood. Two things, however, she was absolutely sure of: She could never forgive him for virtually abandoning their child, and she could never forgive herself for still, after all this time, wanting him so much.
Even now, as he lowered himself onto the sofa beside her—since, after loudly announcing she had to pee like a racehorse, Lucille had abandoned her—where she sat staring at a plate full of food she couldn’t get past her throat if she tried, she still yearned to feel his touch, to hear his soothing voice when he’d kid her out of a bad mood or comfort her when she was legitimately upset. For so long, he’d been her best—and often, her only—friend. That their marriage had destroyed their friendship hurt almost more than anything else.
“How’re you holding up?” she heard at her elbow.
She shrugged, shook her head. Refused to look at him, to react to that soft, Oklahoma-tinged voice that had always turned her insides to warmed honey.
There had to be a logical reason for this. Hormones. Exhaustion. Misdirected grief.
Insanity.
Yes, let’s go with that, shall we?
Blake seemed to hesitate, then cautiously took her hand in his, sending trickles of warmth to places she’d just as soon forget existed. Yep, she was seriously messed up, all right. As if to compensate, a shiver slalomed down her spine.
“You’re freezing,” he said, his brows taking a dive. “Here…” He pulled an ivory wool throw off the back of the sofa, tried to spread it over her lap. But she pushed it away, as if accepting his ministrations somehow indicted her.
“It’s just my hands,” she insisted. “I’m not cold. Really.”
“But you have been under a helluva lot of stress, ho—” She watched as he swallowed back the endearment. “Maybe you should go lie down.”
“I will. Soon,” she promised before he launched into his Poppa Hen routine, before she remembered far more than she wanted to. Before she forgot the one thing she most needed to remember. Finally she met his gaze, only to immediately wish she hadn’t. “I’ll rest in a bit. I just don’t want to be alone right now.”
His expression was unreadable. “I understand.”
But he didn’t, of course, since she barely understood herself. She didn’t want to be alone, to think about her situation, to worry about how she was going to get through this mess, to wonder why Blake’s presence was so thoroughly discombobulating her, especially after all this time. Especially today.
She hadn’t noticed when he’d risen. He now stood in front of her, his hands slouched in his pockets as usual, although the navy jacket and tie were anything but. However, unlike her son, who looked about as natural in his get-up as he might have wearing chicken feathers, Blake seemed right at home. But then, she supposed these days he wore suits, even formalwear, pretty regularly. After all, Blake Carter was a millionaire now, an entrepreneur who’d beaten the odds and rocketed to the top of his industry. Idly, Cass wondered if money and success had changed him.
“Well,” he said, “I guess I’ll get back to the hotel—”
“Like hell you will,” Lucille squawked right behind Cass, making her jolt. The woman had a habit of popping up, prairie-dog fashion, at remarkably inconvenient moments. She sidestepped the arm of the sofa to snag Blake’s forearm in red talons. “With six bedrooms, you should stay at some hotel?” She vigorously shook her head, the rhinestone earrings flashing like a blitz of paparazzi flashbulbs. “Forget it.”
“Cille, really, I don’t think that’s such a good idea—” Cass put in, but Lucille had pressed her crimson lips together in her you-can-talk-but-I-won’t-hear expression.
“The man should be with his son. And the son should be with his mother. So maybe this isn’t the most ideal situation in the world, but since when does life play along? Besides, sweetheart…” She nailed Cass with her green gaze. “I know you wouldn’t push my buttons at a time like this.” Tarantula lashes swallowed up her eyes as she squinted. “Would you?”
“I believe this is called emotional blackmail, Cille.”
“Whatever works. Besides, Blake would be happy to stay.” The tarantulas veered in his direction. “Right?”
After a moment—a very long moment—Blake replied, “If you’re sure it’s no trouble.”
“Listen to him. Like it would be trouble to put up my stepgrandson’s father. Besides, have you looked in the kitchen recently? There’s enough food to feed Yonkers in there. All these people on these weird diets…nobody eats real food anymore. Towanda’s been kvetching for the last half hour about how the hell is she going to stuff it all in the Fridgedaire. We won’t have to cook for a week.”
“This has got to be a bad dream,” Cass muttered, but Lucille pretended not to hear her.
“This is no time for Cassie and me to be sitting around, depressing each other. So, for a few days, you’ll stay. Be a father to your son. Regale us with stories about the ice cream business. Keep our spirits out of the toilet.”
Apparently convinced the matter was settled, Lucille left to see out the last of the guests, except for one set of distant cousins, who seemed to have bonded with the buffet. And Mercy was still here, too, having a set-to with Towanda, if the raised voices coming from the kitchen were any indication. Suddenly, the argument stopped—which led Cass to wonder whether the two women had come to terms or killed each other—leaving the house ominously quiet.
Blake hesitated before asking, “Is this okay with you?”
“Oh, right. As if I have any say in the matter.”
His mouth tilted. “I’m not afraid of an old lady.”
“Yeah, well, I am. And if you had any sense, you would be, too.”
“Nope, sorry. Although Towanda’s another story entirely.”
Cass glanced away before she was tempted to smile. “In any case, please don’t feel obligated to stay if you don’t want to.”
“Actually…I wouldn’t mind hanging out more with Shaun. While I’m here.”
“I’m…sure he’d like that.”
