13. Cassandra
CASSANDRA
“ M iss Cass!” Gracie shouted as she bolted in from school and threw her backpack across the living room.
I looked up from my laptop and observed the melee as Christian’s children barreled in.
“Gracie, honey.” Christian’s mom, Claire, carted a cardboard diorama into the house and slid it onto the kitchen counter. “Miss Parker is still working.”
“Okay, but I need to talk to Miss Cass,” Bree announced when she strolled in.
Claire huffed. “Girls, head upstairs and do your homework.” She checked her watch. “Your father should be back in an hour or so. I’ve gotta head up to my house and get started on supper.”
“We’re fine,” they chirped.
Claire pointed a finger. “Give Miss Parker her space.”
Were they just going to keep talking about me like I wasn’t here?
“Yes ma’am,” the girls mumbled together as they tromped up the stairs.
Her stern gaze turned to me. “You need anything, sweetheart?”
The moniker usually would have made my skin prickle. I still wasn’t used to the homegrown workplace dynamic I had been thrust into, but it didn’t make me want to crawl out of my skin as much as it had when I first arrived.
“I’m fine. Thanks,” I said as I turned my attention back to the computer screen so Claire didn’t feel like she had to linger.
But linger, she did.
“You coming up to the house for dinner with the rest of the motley crew?”
I glanced at the time. “Thank you for your hospitality, but no. I’ll likely still be working.”
“Hospitality?” She let out a blustering huff.
“Cass, there ain’t a shred of hospitality being doled out on this lot.
I feed everyone because it’s what I do.” She planted her hands on her hips.
“Now you can show up and eat a plate or you can ration whatever leftovers Chris has in his fridge. But this isn’t hospitality. It’s family. Learn the difference.”
And with that, she stomped out the door with the grace of a bull.
I rubbed my eyes, trying to keep the numbers on the screen from blurring together. I had a migraine from looking at this damn budget.
If Christian wanted a revitalization project that was larger than his wallet, he was going to get one.
I settled back into the blissful quiet and had just finalized the list of investors I needed to reach out to when thunder erupted from upstairs.
Bree and Gracie tumbled past each other as they fought for first place in getting down the steps.
“Miss Cass!” Gracie shouted.
“No, I want to talk to her first!” Bree hollered.
“I got down here first,” Gracie grunted as she elbowed her sister out of the way and rounded the corner into the living room.
“I’m older!”
“I don’t care!”
“I want to?—”
Without lifting my eyes from my screen, I raised my palm and stopped them in their tracks. The twin tornadoes ceased immediately.
I dropped my hands back onto the keyboard and typed the names of all the personal assistants that would still answer my calls. “What were the terms you all agreed to in exchange for information about my wedding dress?” I asked.
“Your lack of a wedding dress,” Bree corrected.
“Two feet away at all times,” Gracie recited.
“Gold star for you, Little Griffith,” I clipped as I saved the spreadsheet.
Gracie beamed like I had just said she was a princess.
I sighed, lacing my hands together as I turned to them. “Yes?”
“Can you help me pick out an outfit for school tomorrow before my dad gets back?” Bree blurted out at the same time Gracie said, “I want big hair like the cheerleaders for Dallas. Can you do it?”
Instead of immediately shooting them down, I at least pretended to think it over.
I tapped my pen on the notebook in front of me. “No.”
“Ugh,” Bree groaned. “Why not?”
While the older Griffith turned on the teenage attitude, the younger one pulled out a set of killer puppy eyes.
“ Please ?” she begged. “We don’t have a mom to help us with this stuff. Dad tries, but some things require a woman’s touch.”
What in Carrie Bradshaw’s world was happening.
I pressed my fingers to my temples. “I’m sorry—what kind of eleven-year-old talks like that? I can’t decide if you’re trying to act like you’re three or thirty. And second, did you just pull the dead mom card to try to guilt trip me?”
Gracie nodded with an ear-to-ear grin on her face. “Yep. It usually works too.”
“Dear God, you two need to stop going to therapy. You skipped right over ‘well adjusted’ and headed straight for manipulative.”
“Please,” Bree begged.
Not my children, not my problem.
I hit them with a dismissive smile. “Well, with your dead mom, you’re halfway to being fairytale princesses. It’s statistically impossible to be a fantasy heroine without two dead parents or a dead parent and an evil stepmother. Find some mice and singing birds and figure it out, ladies.”
Bree went on the offensive, surprising me when she planted both hands on the side of the roll-top desk that I had turned into my workspace. “I thought New York women loved makeovers.”
“Ah, that’s where you’re correct. I love a good makeover. But like you said, New York women love makeovers. Come back when you’re eighteen.”
“Cass—”
“Excuse me?” I cut Gracie’s whining off with a raised eyebrow. “That’s Miss Parker or Cassandra to you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.”
I thought I was home free until the whispering started. Children whispering sounded like nails on a chalkboard. It made my skin crawl.
“What about Saturday?” Bree countered when they broke from the cone of near-silence.
“Excuse me?”
“You don’t have to work on Saturday,” Gracie said. “If Dad takes us into town, will you go shopping with us?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Gracie griped.
“I am many things, but I am neither a babysitter nor a nanny. Ask your aunt or your grandma to take you.”
“Grandma makes us shop in the kids section and Aunt Becks needs to stay off her feet,” Bree chimed in.
I choked back a laugh. “I’m not sure if you’ve looked in the mirror lately, but you should be shopping in the kids’ section because—spoiler alert—you are kids.”
Bree rolled her eyes. “I’m a teenager, thank you very much.”
That was evident.
“Doesn’t your dad have a girlfriend or someone? Ask her. I have work to do.”
“Dad doesn’t date,” Gracie said. “Well, not exactly. He pretends like he doesn’t go on dates, but we know he does. We just never meet them.”
Interesting, but not surprising.
“Please,” Bree begged in a whisper. “I need something cute to wear to school and my dad thinks Levis and a button-up are the answer to everything.”
I turned back to the contact list I was working on. “Still no.”
“Fine,” Gracie said. “Will you be our evil stepmother?”
“Excuse me?” The rumbling voice came from the doorway. Christian stood with his hands on his hips and his eyebrows in his hairline.
Gracie shrugged. “I’m just saying. An evil stepmother is better than nothing. If we have an evil stepmother, it means we’ll get to go to a ball or kiss a prince or get magical powers. Do you have any poisoned apples? Or a cloak? Those are usually required.”
I arched an eyebrow. “You should be very concerned about the state of things if I’m the one feeding you.” I dismissed them with a flick of my wrist. “Be gone, peasants.”
They dashed through the living room and giggled all the way up the stairs.
Christian closed the door behind him. He looked filthy—covered in dirt and sweat. His hair was damp and dark. Loose strands framed his face and stuck to his skin.
“Your children are weird,” I said with my back to him.
He chuckled as he hung his hat. “Yeah, I know. That’s probably my fault.”
I felt—no—I smelled his presence as he loomed behind me.
“I know you like to lean into the whole grizzled cowboy thing, but please go take a shower before the paint starts peeling off the walls. You smell like cows.”
Christian laughed and gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze as he passed by. “You coming up to momma’s house for dinner?”
“No. I’ll be catching up on the twenty minutes your offspring stole from my workday, and then winding down with leftovers before Tripp calls.”
“Ah, the ever-elusive fiancé,” he teased as he did an uncanny imitation of a National Geographic narrator. “You gonna finally set a date or are you gonna spend a few more weeks staring at that ring like you want to throw it over a cliff?”
My stomach knotted as rage boiled up in my gut. How dare he?
“I’ll bring you a plate back,” Christian called as he disappeared into the bathroom.
As much as I tried to focus on the to-do list looming in front of me, I was distracted by the squeak of the shower and the ambient spray of water.
My thoughts drifted to the night I ran into him when he was coming out of the shower.
I could put up a good front. I could keep my face from cracking under the pressure of red carpets, press conferences, and crises. But Christian was a different story.
I wanted to hate being here. It wasn’t my cup of tea.
But I didn’t.
It dawned on me that I had never felt at peace around someone.
Tripp always put me on edge. I felt like I had to show up, keep up, and measure up.
My sex drive through my twenties was through the roof. I blamed its decline on turning thirty. Along with the weird hairs on my chin and my inability to bounce back from more than two cocktails.
But I was two years removed from the dirty thirty and had felt the rumblings of my libido coming back to life.
Maybe it wasn’t me.
Maybe it was him.
Maybe it was both.
One man calling time of death, and the other resuscitating my craving for intimacy.
But that’s not how this was going to go.
I wasn’t a Hallmark heroine who was banished to a small town and was destined to learn the true meaning of Christmas and the evils of corporate life after being wooed by the local lumberjack.
Four things were for certain:
I loved my job.
I did not like flannel.
I would not apologize for climbing the corporate ladder and stepping on the occasional set of knuckles.
There was no mystical small-town magic when the air around the ranch smelled like livestock.
My phone rang as Christian was shuffling Bree and Gracie out the door.
Video Call from Tripp Meyers.
But instead of my heart skipping a beat the way it had when I thought about Christian in the shower, a boulder of dread sank in my gut.
I waited to answer until the front door shut behind the Griffith clan, since I was bound to the confines of the house WiFi.
With a deep breath, I tapped the accept button and waited.
Tripp’s grainy face filled the screen. I hadn’t seen him since he abandoned me.
Dread was instantly replaced by rage.
“Cassandra,” he said without so much as a hello. “I’m surprised you answered. I expected you to be working.”
My eyebrows winged up. “Is that really the tone you’re taking with me?”
“I’m still your boss. I have to make sure that everyone on my team is doing what’s expected.”
Oh, he was asking for it today.
“Mike is my boss now.”
Tripp scoffed. “And here I was, thinking you’d be happy to talk to me.”
I clawed the lacquered wood desk. “Why do you think I would be happy with you right now? You left me here because you couldn’t be uncomfortable for a few hours.”
He barely held back an eye roll. “It’s not my fault you are where you are.”
“No, it’s hers.”
As if on cue, Lillian Monroe—with the teased blonde hair she fried every month to hide her gray and brunette roots—appeared behind him like a bad omen.
“Ca-ssand-ra,” Tripp hissed, enunciating every fucking syllable. “That is a client you’re speaking about.”
Lillian’s pixelated smile was patronizing and malefic. “Hello, Cassandra. You look… unwell. Been skipping the med spa, have you?”
I was a month overdue for a facial and it was all her fault.
I took a deep breath and tamped down my vitriol. “Lillian, if you could give Tripp and me a few minutes of privacy, that would be lovely.”
But Lillian wasn’t paying attention to me. She sat beside Tripp and snuggled up to him. “I thought you said she left the Carrington Group,” she murmured as she fingered the point of his pressed collar. The corner of her mouth curved in a sickled smile. “You’ve got a little something?—”
Red.
All I saw was red.
Red like the empty bottle of merlot between them.
Red like the scarlet lipstick on his collar.
Red like the crimson bite mark on his neck.
Red like the flames of rage that consumed me like a wildfire.
Red like the flags I should have seen.
Red like the blood I was out for.