Chapter 20
CHAPTER 20
T he other night had been a surprising blast. Cassie couldn’t remember the last time she enjoyed herself so much. Turned out dating her fake fiancé was really fun. She shook her head as she stepped into one of the local clothing stores that sold her jewelry, Blithe Boutiques. Olive and Apple—yes, those were in fact their real names—the seventy-something sisters who ran the shop—grinned like twin Cheshire cats as she placed their order of two dozen necklaces and earrings down on the counter. Olive grinned because she was permanently happy, and Apple’s thin lips maybe had the slightest curl to them. There was a reason her nickname around town was Crab Apple, and it wasn’t because the woman liked the sour fruit.
“What?” Cassie said, feeling awkward under their stares.
Olive shrugged, smile never wavering. “Nothing.”
Yeah, much like the terribly uncomfortable lace thongs they sold in their store, Cassie wasn’t buying it. “Come on. Just spit it out.”
Apple picked up a basket of silk scarves and started folding, wrinkled mouth pinching as her semi-smile tightened. “Oh, it’s nothing big. We were just wondering how you managed to nail down Kismet’s sexiest bachelor.”
Nothing her ass! She knew her and Del’s upcoming nuptials would be the talk of the town. Kismet gossiped worse than a middle-schooler with unlimited Internet access. But she hadn’t expected it to spread this fast.
“Oh, I don’t know if he’s the sexiest, Apple.” Olive fanned herself with the deep blue scarf she held in her hand. “I think the twins could give young Del a run for his money. Especially that BJ. Mmm, I don’t usually find men with long hair attractive, but that boy makes it work. Of course, Ace is handsome, too.”
“Yes, but Ace is too serious. I like my men to smile. The broody look just doesn’t do it for me. I’m cranky enough. I don’t need a man to match my sour mood. I still think Del wins because he had that charming wink that can make a woman’s panties drop.”
“If I were just twenty years younger I’d take him upstairs and show him—”
Her jaw dropped. “Didn’t you two used to babysit Del?”
Olive chuckled. “Why yes, dear, but that was at least two decades ago, and the boy has grown up since then.”
“Very well, I might add.” The older sister bobbed her pencil-drawn eyebrows.
Sourness coated the back of Cassie’s throat. This was it; she was going to lose her pastrami on rye all over the Blithe sisters’ lovely silk scarf collection. She’d have horrible mental scarring and be out hundreds of dollars in therapy.
“Too bad you snatched him up first,” the older sister sighed. “If I’d have known he went for cougars, I might have made a pass for him.”
Hey! “I’m only two years older than him.” Hardly a cougar. The age difference wouldn’t be noticed if the roles were reversed. Men married younger women all the time, but the minute an older woman married a younger man, she got a stupid name like cougar. The title didn’t even make any sense. Were there giant cats out in the wild mating with much younger cats? Who thought up that stupid name anyway?
“True, dear.” The younger Blithe smiled sweetly. “The age difference isn’t that shocking. I think what everyone finds astounding is how you two managed to keep your relationship secret for so long.” Dark brown eyes stared with a speculative glint.
“Yes, and why it was all so hush-hush in the first place?”
Cassie glanced back and forth between the two nosy women, twisting a curl around her finger as she spoke. “We, um, didn’t want anyone to know in case things went south. With me being Charlie’s best friend and all, we didn’t want to mess up any family or friend dynamic if we broke up.”
The two women shared a glance before turning back to her. Olive smiled wide while Apple narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
“And now, since you’re getting married and will live happily ever after, it’s all out in the open.” Olive held a wrinkled hand over her heart. “How romantic.”
“Happily ever after my hiney,” Apple scoffed. “I’ve got two ex-husbands that would disagree. You better hope it all works out, missy, or that dynamic you worried about with a breakup will be a volcanic explosion after a divorce.”
“Apple!” Olive chided. “Don’t say things like that. Delta is a lovely boy, and I’m sure they’ll be very happy together. Just because you have terrible taste in men, doesn’t mean you need to scare poor Cassandra. Don’t give the girl cold feet.”
Her feet were far from cold. Her heart however…encased in a block of terrified ice. They’d discussed getting a divorce after a set amount of time for the marriage to look real. She hoped they could do it amicably without causing any damage to the Jackson family. It certainly wouldn’t hurt her, right? Why would it hurt to end a relationship where no feelings are involved?
The ice spread from her chest all the way down to her toes. She could repeat the falsehood of their relationship to herself as much as she wanted. She didn’t want to face the tiny voice inside her warning that feelings were very much involved. A lot of them. And they’d started long before she and Del ever slept together. Having sex only intensified them. She cared for him. A lot. And the thought of not being with him left a sharp pain in her chest. One she very much feared would never heal.
Crap on a cracker.
“You two are going to be fine, dear.” Olive patted Cassie’s hand again. “Right, Apple?”
“Yes, life is all sunshine and unicorn farts, and no one ever cheats on you with their tarty twenty-five-year-old secretary. You’ll have two point five kids, live in a house with a white picket fence and drown under a mountain of debt.”
Olive shook her head. “Ignore her. Is that our order?”
Still reeling from the self-admission of her feelings for Del, it took Cassie a moment to process the question. She glanced down at the box she’d set on the counter the moment the Blithe sisters had started talking about the sex appeal of the Jackson brothers—ew, again.
“Yes, it is,” she said.
“Wonderful. I have a display for them right up front. I’m sure they’ll sell out in no time. Like always.”
“Good thing you have your own money.” Apple pointed one boney finger. “Never depend on a man for your livelihood. He’ll up and leave you high and dry, and you’ll have to go into business with your sister who is so damn sunny even rainbows tell her to tone it down.”
A sigh came from the other woman. “I’m standing right here, Apple.”
“I know. I’m bitchy, not senile.”
“Don’t pay her any attention,” Olive said. “You and Del will be happy for many years to come. I know it.”
As much as Cassie disliked Apple’s pessimism, Olive was wrong. She and Del wouldn’t live happily ever after, and it shouldn’t hurt so much to know that.
So why did it?
“Thanks, I have to run now. Let me know when you need another order.”
“We will, dear. And we’ll be looking forward to attending the nuptials.”
“Yeah, can’t wait to see party-boy Del sweat like a sinner in church when he realizes he’s tied himself down to one woman forever. Better get a prenup so the man can’t steal what’s yours!”
“Quit, Crab Apple.”
“Stuff it, Sunshine.”
Cassie hurried out of the shop, the entire exchange with the sisters ringing in her head. But what the women said dug in like a bad splinter she couldn’t remove. They expected to be invited to the wedding. She and Del had planned on having a small ceremony with just his family. She didn’t want to drag the whole town into this, but it looked like they might have to.
Stupid small-town expectations.
The town of Kismet only had about four thousand full-time residents, so most people knew each other, and everyone nosed in on everyone else’s business. Of course, the people she dealt with on a regular basis, like the Blithe sisters, would expect an invitation. Pulling out her phone, she quickly hit the speed-dial—yes, the man had somehow managed to get on her speed-dial—for Del.
“Hey, Sassy. I was just—”
“We have to invite the town!”
“What?”
She hurried down the sidewalk at a quick pace, her heart pounding in her chest. “Olive and Apple expect to be invited to the wedding, and if we invite them we have to invite all the shop owners on Goldmine street or people will feel hurt and left out and that might cause bad business for me and the distillery. And if we invite the shop owners we have to invite the workers and their families, and then they’ll tell everyone else, so we’ll have to invite the whole damn town or people will talk and get upset and—dammit Del, this is not funny!”
His soft chuckle coming over the line grated on her last nerve. This was serious, how could he just laugh it off? Kismet was so small, things like not inviting people to an important event could ruin you. Everyone helped everyone else. The town ran on small businesses and tourist dollars. If the townsfolk felt slighted, they might drive tourists away from the distillery and stop selling her jewelry in their shops.
She could recover. She had her trust fund, and while most of it went to the charities she supported, she had a little safety net socked away for a rainy day. But she didn’t want anything to hurt Del and Jack’s.
“It’s kind of funny,” he said.
Did the man have no self-preservation? “And how exactly is it funny?”
“Well, the other day at the LollyPop Shoppe, Fannie demanded the same thing. An invite to the wedding.”
“You see!” She groaned, stopping at the end of the sidewalk to slump down on the small bench by the creek. Unfortunately, the peaceful place did nothing to help her anxious mood. “Everyone is finding out about it, and everyone will want to come.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
She rubbed a hand across the growing ache at her temple. The man could truly be an idiot at times. “Yes, because we wanted to keep this small. Family only. We agreed not to put it on display since it isn’t…” But she couldn’t finish the statement.
“Isn’t real?” Del’s gruff voice finished for her.
“Yes.” The word ripped from her throat, getting harder and harder to say. It wasn’t real,
they weren’t real. Just because they had sex a few times—more than a few—didn’t make this real. Sure, the sex was amazing, connective, explosive, best sex of her life ever. But it didn’t make this any more real than it started out.
Right?
“I just don’t want to look like a fool.” But she was afraid she already was. A fool who’d
developed feelings for her fake fiancé. Deep feelings.
“You’re not a fool, Cassie. No one could ever think that.” His voice softened, the gentle
tone soothing her.
“But if we make this big, fancy show of a wedding and then,” she lowered her voice,
cupping her hand over the end of her cell, “get a divorce, people will talk.”
“People always talk. It’s because they can’t mind their own business and discussing other people’s failings makes them feel better about their own shitty lives. Screw them. Who cares what they think?”
She did, because Kismet was the only home she’d ever known, and she enjoyed being liked by the charming, quirky, and sometimes difficult people of this town. When she first came here, she heard the gossip about her, the whispers of pity for the poor little girl who’d lost her mother. The one whose father didn’t want her. She never wanted to be talked about like that again, and if they made a big to-do about their wedding then separated, she knew she’d be pitied once more.
“We don’t have to invite the town,” Del said,
“Yes, we do.” Didn’t he see what a disaster it would be if they didn’t? She hurried to her car, driving the few blocks to her house and hurrying up the front porch. “It would be career suicide if we didn’t. For both of us.”
Oh God, she was hyperventilating, and not from the brisk climb up three tiny stairs. She wasn’t in the best of shape, but she could handle a few steps. No, this lovely panic attack came directly from this whole situation becoming too real and far too out of hand from what she first imagined. Taking out her keys, she started to jam them in the lock, but her hands shook so much they slipped from her grasp and fell to the floor.
Before she could reach down to pick them up, a soft, sensual voice from behind her spoke, “Need help?”