CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Haden
“So this is what a cowboy’s home looks like, huh?” Cassie asks, wandering around my living room.
“You expected tumbleweeds and photos of horses?” I joke as I stir my cast-iron pot on the fire rack.
Cassie touches the antler bookends on my shelf. “You’re too clean for tumbleweeds but the antlers don’t surprise me. I expected more taxidermy maybe. Deer heads, possibly a bearskin rug. I mean, I haven’t seen it in the daylight, but by candlelight it sure looks pretty.”
I watch as she checks out my book and vintage board game collection on the old rustic shelf behind my harvest table, running her fingers along the spines.
I don’t have time to read much anymore, but I used to binge true crime and murder mysteries until the early hours of the morning as a teen.
Some of my books are first editions so I’ve always held onto them.
“Not sure pretty is the word,” I tell her. “Manly, maybe. Rugged, rustic. Modern—”
Cassie laughs. “Very manly.” She’s holding up a very early edition of Thurston House by Danielle Steel.
“My grandmother was the only motherly figure I had after my mom left. My dad’s mom.
She died a few years back but that was one of her prized possessions.
The games are my grandfather’s. There are a few more classic eighties romances of hers there if you’re looking to borrow one,” I tell her with a smirk.
Cassie’s eyebrow raises and she eyes me playfully. “I used to sneak these books when I was too young for them. My mom has a pretty good collection of eighties romance too. Maybe you can ask her to borrow some?”
I chuckle in response.
“So the big question …” she muses as she puts the book back on the shelf. “Is have you read it?”
“’Course,” I tell her honestly. “I’m confident enough in my masculinity to read a steamy romance novel. It’s also a story about generations and a single father raising his beloved daughter in a time of turmoil. Just sayin’.”
“You surprise me, Haden Westbrook,” Cassie says, coming to sit down on my living room sofa. She grabs a blanket to keep her warm on the cool leather.
“And you surprise me, Princess. This actually smells really fucking good.” I pull the hot cast-iron pan out of the fire and replace the ornate screen in front of the flames.
“What? You doubted my cooking abilities?”
I look back to the fire in an attempt to ignore how pretty she looks curled up on my sofa in the firelight.
The snow is so heavy outside the cabin window you can’t even see hers anymore.
But in here, it’s warm. I’m nothing if not a prepared man, so I have everything I need ready: flameless candles to light the space, lots of chopped wood, blankets, cast iron to cook, and a kettle for coffee or tea over the fire.
“No, I don’t doubt your cooking. There’s just two women I’ve ever known that can really cook.
My grandmother and Mama Jo,” I tell her as I serve myself a hefty plate of whatever the fuck ziti is.
After I helped her pack her belongings, she insisted I bring a plate home with me, saying she had to “earn her keep.” Of course my head is in the gutter around this woman 24/7, so I immediately thought of all the other ways she could earn her keep.
But I accepted the food gratefully because I had just gotten out of the shower after a long as fuck day and was considering making myself an easy heat dinner when the power went out.
This ziti concoction seems a lot better.
I sit down beside her on the sofa, in my sweatpants and my warm UK hoodie, relaxing for the first time in fourteen hours as I take a bite.
“Holy fuck,” I tell her as I shovel in another mouthful. This is fucking delicious.
“Told ya,” she says, a beaming smile taking over her face. “World-famous.”
I look her over as I chew. She’s in a pair of fitted leggings and a sweater that looks like it’s more my size than hers.
It covers all her curves, but her face is bright and free of makeup and her hair is a mass of platinum-colored waves and curls.
The way she looks right now could just be the prettiest damn thing I’ve ever seen.
Though it might have to do with the fact that she’s on my sofa.
“Mmmhmm, so fucking good,” I mutter as I continue eating. Add one more appealing thing about this woman? She can really fucking cook.
“So your grandmother was your best friend, but do you have any idea where your mama is?” she asks, watching me enjoy my dinner.
I shrug. “No clue.”
“You’ve never heard from her?”
I shake my head. “Nope. I don’t even know if she’s alive.”
“Do you wonder about her often?” she asks softly.
I take my last bite and think for a second.
“I used to,” I tell her honestly. “I used to wonder a lot if my dad would’ve been different if she’d stayed. Or if she ever thought about me.”
Cassie reaches over and places her hand on my knee. I instantly tense under her touch. My skin is a live wire feeling her warmth through my sweats.
“I’m sure she thinks about you,” she offers. “I’m sure she wonders.”
“Well, either way, I don’t think about it anymore. Not since I realized wondering didn’t help or change anything.”
Cassie’s brow furrows as I stand. She replaces her hand in her lap. This conversation is getting too heavy.
“What about you? What’s your story? Before me, how often did you show up like a whirlwind on some guy’s ranch, then leave them in the dust while they waited for you in the dark corner of a bar before me?
” I ask as I rinse my plate. I grab myself a big glass of water from the Berkey filter on my counter and take a drink.
I’m surprised not to hear a witty retort, so I turn around to make sure Cassie is still breathing.
“Never,” she says when my eyes meet hers.
I make my way back over to the sofa and set my glass down on the coffee table before I retake my seat beside her.
“Well, I definitely don’t go around having one-night stands in my truck.” I clear my throat. “For the last year I almost haven’t had any one-night stands at all actually, aside from you.”
I wait for her to say something, but she doesn’t. So either I’ve really surprised her, or hell has frozen over, because that’s twice in the last five minutes she’s had no smartass remark for me.
“Well, add that to the things we have in common,” she says softly, looking down at her hands in her lap.
“And so you know, you were the first. I’ve only been with two other men before you, and I don’t think one even counts because I was seventeen and we had no idea what we were doing.
So, in truth, there’s really only been one other man I’ve been with. One relationship.”
I recoil. What?
But she’s so feisty. So confident, so fucking sexy. How is there only one other man she’s truly been with? I lean back on my sofa and huff out a breath.
“How is that possible?” I blurt.
Cassie shrugs. “I don’t trust people very often. And I have to be on my game all the time. I don’t need a man sucking all my mojo out of me.”
I chuckle and scrub my face with my hand. “I had no idea, I would’ve … I’m sorry,” I tell her.
“I wasn’t a virgin, Haden.” She laughs. “I had a boyfriend back in Memphis for two years. We’re still friendly. We broke up when I moved to Nashville.”
“Why?” I ask, though I’m unsure as to why. I’m just so goddamn curious about every single thing about her.
“He was my guitarist. We got along well but we never really had much of a spark. I just felt that at twenty I needed to start having real sex with someone. I trusted him and he was good to me.”
I stand and pace to the window. “But no one else? No groupies on the road?”
She shakes her head. “I write love songs, Haden, and in my experience there’s no such thing as true love anymore. There’s only people who want something from you. I’d rather imagine what true love is like. That way I’m not let down.”
“Christ,” I mutter. I’m an asshole. I should’ve asked her—
“I shouldn’t have told you this. It’s not a big deal. You and me, we did have a spark. I mean we really had a spark. I don’t regret what happened between us, Haden.”
I turn back to face her. All the words I want to say are on the tip of my tongue and it’s getting harder and harder to fight them.
“I don’t regret it either,” I tell her. “Not in the slightest.”
She smiles at me with a sassy little look. “Besides, it gave me a hit song,”
I chuckle at her, taking my bottom lip between my teeth. The audacity of this woman.
“Now, enough about my lack of a love life. Get over here and get ready. I’m gonna kick your ass at Monopoly.”
I shake my head as I walk back over to the sofa to play a game with her.
But as we talk more and play a full game, I register what she’s saying to me without saying it.
It replays in my head like a leaking faucet.
Cassie doesn’t sleep around or let people in.
Because she doesn’t trust them. Yet, for some reason, that night she trusted me.
And the thing that scares me even more? I like knowing I’m the man she can trust.
By midnight we’ve had our fill of Monopoly and are in the middle of a game of Uno when I grab a bottle of bourbon from my kitchen and place it in the middle of the table.
“You’ve been playing wrong your whole life,” Cassie fires at me. It’s actually quite a comfortable temperature in here now with the fire blazing away, filling the room with warmth.
“It’s not wrong. You pick up until you can go,” I tell her, taking a much-needed swig of bourbon. This woman is both bratty and stubborn, especially when she’s losing.
She looks at me with narrowed eyes, holding up at least twenty cards to my five.
“Don’t get pissy because you’re gonna lose, Princess,” I chuckle taking another swig. She follows suit and takes a shot herself.
“I don’t lose.”
“You’re about to,” I say as she finally picks a card up she can play.
“If I have to pick up until I can play, I can double-lay the cards until I run out when they’re the same color or number.”
I start to laugh as she layers on her cards.
“You dirty little cheater,” I chuckle under my breath.
She feigns shock and pulls her knees up to her chest. “I’m not a cheater, and I’m not losing.” She lays three more cards down. By my count our hands are almost even now.
“Is that so?” I ask, leaning on my forearms. If I lose, it’s only because the sight of her like this is so goddamn distracting.
“Yeah, that’s so. Care to make it interesting, Competitive Cowboy?”
Her lips curve up and she leans forward, resting her chin on her palm. Maybe it’s the bourbon talking, or the fact that she’s just too damn beautiful in this light, but I give in.
“How?”
“Well, I don’t have my wallet, so we’ll make it simple. Best of five. Starting with this game. If your opponent calls ‘Uno’ before you, you pay. In clothing.” She grins at me and takes another swig from the bottle. “Unless you’re too cold. Or chickenshit, of course.”
Cassie stands up and pulls her sweater off over her head. “It’s so warm in here, I’ll even give you a headstart for my previous ‘cheating.’”
She’s wearing nothing but a white tank top underneath. Definitely no bra. The moment her sweater is tossed aside her nipples harden under the scrap of fabric that is acting like the only barrier between her perfectly full tits and my mouth.
Christ. Get it together man.
“Ain’t nothing I haven’t seen before,” I lie, because I could see her naked body a thousand times and still drop to my knees and beg. “You sure you don’t want to change your mind?”
Please fucking change your mind.
“Hard no,” she affirms.
Oh, it’s hard alright.
“Alright. You asked for it,” I tell her. “It’s awfully cold in here with no clothes. But I guess you’re about to find that out.”
“We’ll see, Cowboy.”
Well, fuck, this game just got a whole lot more interesting. Sorry, Wade.