9. Christian
CHRISTIAN
“ H ow properly parental of you,” Cassandra said with a light laugh.
I snickered. “Sometimes it’s hard to turn off. I’ll either be swearing in front of the girls or I’ll be telling the guys I gotta go potty.”
Her hair slid to the side as she laughed.
She sounded so fucking pretty when she did that.
Cassandra and I settled into a comfortable silence as she slowly slipped into a cautiously trusting relationship with Libby.
“Relax,” I reminded her. “You’re tense.”
“Sorry,” she mumbled as she fixed her posture. But the tension never left her shoulders.
“You got something on your mind?”
“No,” she clipped.
I didn’t believe her. “Come on, Cass. Don’t bullshit me like that.”
“Nothing you need to worry about. I’m here to work for you, not the other way around. Remember?”
Evasive. Okay.
“The door’s open if you wanna talk.”
I could hear her grinding her teeth down to nubs, but I waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
The stress never left her. Those elegant fingers were rigid around the reins.
“You’re doing well. Give her a little tap with your feet if you want her to go faster.”
Cassandra didn’t say anything.
It wasn’t the horse I was worried about. Libby knew this path well.
“Next time we go out on the property, I’ll put you on Dottie. She’s a big softie. You’ll be able to handle her on your own. She doesn’t spook easy.”
“So, is this little trail ride because everyone has an opinion about you carting me around on the ATV? Or about me being here in general?”
“No. I just figured you might want to do something to clear your head. Sometimes when I can’t sleep I’ll take Libby out and find a pasture to look at the stars.”
“I hadn’t even gone to bed yet.”
“You know what I mean, Cass.”
She stiffened, but didn’t correct me like she had every other time.
“Something’s off with Tripp,” she admitted.
She was trying so hard to spoon-feed me the palatable, sugar-laced version of her shitty relationship. She was probably justifying it in her mind, too.
“You mean it’s not normal for a man to dump his fiancé in an unfamiliar situation and bolt?” I asked with an air of amusement.
She huffed and whispered, “Fuck him.”
“Take us right when you hit the fork in the trail. It leads back to the house.”
“He used to at least act like he was invested in our relationship,” she blurted out in frustration.
I itched to wrap my arms around her, but I didn’t. “How long have you been with him?”
“Six years,” she admitted. “Dated for three years before he proposed. I will have been engaged to him for four years in a few months.”
“Be straight with me.”
“I am.”
I scoffed. “He proposed to you three years ago?”
Her shoulders dropped. “He said he wasn’t in a rush to get the wedding over with.”
“Do you live with him?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I like my space and so does he.”
I worked my hand over my beard. “So. You don’t live with him. You have no plans to get married. And he’s allergic to commitment?”
“Well, when you put it that way?—”
“He gave you a ring as payment for sex.”
She wasn’t fazed by my candor. “That would be true if we were having sex.”
“You waiting for the big day or something?”
Cassandra peered over her shoulder, hitting me with those steel gray eyes. “Is this an appropriate conversation to have with your employee?”
“You’re also sleeping in my house and my kids think you’re a Barbie doll come to life.”
“Fair.” She sighed. “No, I’m not waiting or anything. We used to have sex. We just stopped when things got busy. And then…”
“And then what?”
“Then they stayed busy. Or at least he keeps making it out to be that way.”
Cassandra didn’t seem to be bothered by me speaking my mind, so I didn’t hold back. “He’s getting it from somewhere else.”
That motherfucker would have to be out of his mind to be celibate when he had a woman like Cassandra, who found some slightly redeeming quality in him.
She stared down at the reins, her gaze never leaving Libby’s rust-colored coat.
Libby led herself back into the barn and self-parked beside her stall. I dismounted and took Cassandra’s hands, coaching her through getting down. She fell at me rather than hopping down.
It was slightly less graceful than a bird kicking its baby out of a nest.
I caught her as she collided into my chest. “Yeah,” I grunted. “We’ll work on that.”
Instead of making her untack Libby the way Bree and Gracie were always supposed to, I talked her through each step as I did it while she stroked Libby’s nose.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said as we headed back to the house.
I shoved my hands in my pockets to keep from reaching for her hand. Having her against my body while we were riding felt so natural. The loss of it stung.
“Yeah?” I lifted a curious eyebrow. “You liked it?”
“I didn’t say I liked it. I said thank you,” she clarified.
But I caught her smiling.
I stopped on the porch and grabbed her discarded high heels. “That’s alright, Princess. Keep it to yourself, but I know Libby will win you over eventually.”
Cassandra paused in the doorway, leaving us chest-to-chest again. Her eyes were heavy as she studied my mouth. “I doubt it.”
“Challenge accepted.”
Electricity sizzled between us, sparking and crackling, but neither of us made a move.
Something heavy thumped on the far side of the porch. Cassandra’s eyes finally lifted from mine, then rolled.
I looked over my shoulder and found Gracie’s pet lumbering up the steps. Someone had put a fresh set of pool noodles on his horns.
“Get out of here, Mickey,” she hollered.
I smirked as I threw my arm around her shoulders and steered her inside.
Cassandra would do just fine here. She just didn’t know it yet.
“I’m not a breakfast person,” Cassandra said as she emerged from the guest room.
Of course she wasn’t. I kept the thought to myself as I shoveled eggs and sausage onto Bree and Gracie’s plates and tried to coax them into eating.
Cassandra didn’t float past me. She didn’t even strut. She stomped toward the coffee maker like an angry runway model.
Another day, another pair of heels.
I was starting to wonder how many pairs of shoes she’d brought.
I owned a grand total of three pairs of shoes. A pair of work boots, a pair of dress boots, and a pair of rarely used sneakers.
Cassandra had been here for three days and I had seen five different pairs of shoes.
“Whoa,” Gracie said as a waffle hung halfway out of her mouth. She looked at Cassandra like Dolly Parton herself had just walked into the kitchen.
“Where’d you get that dress?” Bree whispered with reverence.
Cassandra didn’t pay them any mind as she plucked a mug from the cabinet, inspected it, and deemed it worthy of holding her coffee. “Teddy Crenshaw. It’s from his little atelier on Seventh Avenue. He’s a designer who used to dress a client of mine and we hit it off.”
“You know fashion designers?” Bree squealed, one word tumbling out on top of the next.
Cassandra grimaced like the sound of my daughter’s voice was an ice pick to her eyeballs. “It is far too early for that much excitement.”
With the girls distracted by breakfast, I grabbed the handle of the coffee pot and held her caffeine hostage.
I kept my voice just low enough for her to hear me. “I know you didn’t have enough whiskey in your ice cream to give you a hangover, so this attitude you have with my girls? Cut it out.”
Cassandra made eye contact with me as she wrapped her hand around mine and yanked the coffee pot out from under the machine. “I don’t have an attitude.”
“My house. My rules. If I say your attitude sucks, then it sucks. Fix it.”
She put on a patronizing smile. “I interact with humans. Adults are big humans and children are small humans. I treat them the same, and I speak to them all the same.” Her eyebrow raised in a severe arch.
“Would you like me to talk down to your small humans and treat them like they’re less than an adult? ”
“While you’re at it, you can fix the attitude you’re getting with me, too.”
I didn’t know why I was so crabby this morning. Even with the impromptu trail ride, I still got a reasonable amount of sleep.
“Side part with a braid down the front, please,” Gracie said as she deposited her empty plate in the sink.
“Get the tackle box,” I said, leaving Cassandra to the coffee.
“Can you plug the curling iron in?” Bree asked as she stabbed a piece of sausage.
I tackled Gracie’s hair first. Even at eleven, she hated brushing it and always missed the tangles in the back. She tossed and turned every night, resulting in a tumbleweed of hair in the morning.
I doused it in detangler and went to work, keenly aware of Cassandra’s eyes on me.
When Gracie’s hair was tamed and her bangs were held back with a thin braid, I moved on to Bree.
She handed me the heat protectant spray. “Loose curls. Not the tight ones like you do for dance.”
I bit back a huff of irritation. I had just mastered the dance ones that made the girls look like Shirley Temple.
Racking my brain, I tried to recall the video tutorial I had watched a few weeks ago during my lunch break.
Bree sat still while I fumbled my way through the soft curls she requested.
It was uncanny how much she looked like Gretchen. Gracie had the Griffith features since birth, but Bree had always looked like her mom.
I knew I was living on borrowed time. Bree was a teenager and Gracie wasn’t far behind. Soon, they wouldn’t want their dad to fix their hair in the morning.
Maybe that’s why I put so much effort into learning how to do it.
I wanted them to need me.
I wanted to be enough.
“How’s that?” I asked as I released the clamp on the curling iron, and let the last spiral cool in my hand. I gently combed through the curls to separate and loosen them, then gave her shoulders a squeeze.
Bree scrambled out of the kitchen chair and darted into the bathroom to get a peek in the mirror. “Perfect!”
I left her to douse her hair in hairspray. “You ready to go, Gracie?”
“Putting my shoes on.”
“Bree?” I hollered.
“Getting my backpack!”
“Kitchen’s closed. Meet me at the truck,” I said before turning to Cassandra. “Get a move on, Princess. Can’t be late for school.”
“You said we were going into town,” she bristled.
“We are.” I grabbed a thermos from the cupboard and filled it with the rest of the coffee. “After we take the girls to school.”
Cassandra’s unemotive face never wavered as we loaded up in the truck and headed into town.
Gracie’s mouth ran faster than the truck as she filled Cassandra in on the happenings of the middle school.
Cassandra volleyed back with minimal, barely interested acknowledgements until something piqued her interest.
“What did you say?” Cassandra asked.
Gracie was staring out the window. “What? The part about pajama day where we get to build a fort in the classroom and read books all day?”
I white knuckled the steering wheel as Cassandra shook her head and dismissed Gracie’s excitement.
She and I would be having a very blunt conversation once the little ears weren’t listening.
“No. The other thing about your science class,” Cassandra said.
“Oh.” Gracie’s giddiness faded. “When I said the teacher made me desk buddies with Dylan even though I don’t like Dylan.”
“Gracie,” I chided. “Choose nice words.”
“Why don’t you like this punk?” Cassandra pressed, still craning over the center console so they could be eye to eye.
“We don’t call children ‘punks,’” I hissed.
Cassandra cut her eyes at me. “I’m not a parent. I can say whatever I want about them. Sometimes you gotta call a punk a punk.”
Gracie huffed. “He bothers me during class. I love science and he hates science so he just goofs around the whole time and distracts me.”
“Did your teacher put you with him intentionally?”
I peered in the rearview mirror to get Gracie’s reaction to Cassandra’s interrogation, but she didn’t seem bothered by it.
“Yeah. She says it’s my job to get him to focus. And since I’m good at science, I should be able to help him.”
“Absolutely the fuck not.”
“ Miss Parker, ” I stated, slamming my palm on the top of the steering wheel to catch her attention. “You cannot swear around my girls.”
“You swear in front of us all the time, Dad,” Bree countered.
Just fucking great.
Cassandra snorted. “I don’t think I’m contributing to the delinquency of a minor by saying the F-word, when she’s probably seen cows doing the deed since she could walk.”
“Sometimes,” Gracie said without a care in the world. “But sometimes the cows are artificially incinerated.”
“Inseminated,” I corrected.
“Like I’m the one corrupting them,” Cassandra muttered before putting her game face back on. “Talking about livestock insemination is totally normal.”
I watched out of the corner of my eye as Cassandra put on a smug smile and let out a quiet breath.
“Listen to me,” she began. “You are not responsible for anyone but yourself. Unless you’re getting a paycheck to be a teacher or a babysitter—that punk, Dylan, isn’t your concern.
I don’t care if he’s running circles around the classroom with his clothes on fire.
He is not your problem. If he wants to be a distraction, let him.
If he makes a mess, let him sit in his own shit.
It’s the teacher’s job to teach him. Not yours.
You keep your eyes on the lesson. Put your blinders on and stay unbothered. ”
I … couldn’t argue with that.
Cassandra pointed a manicured nail at Gracie. “Are you on the payroll?”
“No, ma’am,” Gracie said with more assertiveness than I had ever heard her muster.
“Is that kid your responsibility?” she pressed.
“No, ma’am!”
“If he wants to be a problem, what are you gonna do?” Cassandra snapped.
But it wasn’t a question spawned out of irritation. She was a coach. A drill sergeant.
Gracie beamed. “Let him run around on fire.”
Cassandra blinked at Gracie, stunned, before turning to sit back in her seat. “This family is so weird.”