Chapter 5
Chapter Five
CASSIDY
I’m sitting on my bed with my legs propped. Without warning, Rhiannon throws the door to my room open, using enough force that the knob nearly impales itself in the drywall, and she startles me.
“You have a date with Isaiah!” she shrieks louder than she screamed his name at our aunt and uncle’s house a few hours ago.
“It’s not a date. It’s a simple thank you.”
I set the book I’m reading to the side. I’m not sure why I bothered to try to get into the story. I’ve reread paragraphs on each page, proving it’s an ineffective distraction method. My mind has been all over the place since Isaiah casually said to be ready at seven.
Rhiannon lifts her chin to the ceiling, cackling like I’m the dumbest of dumb blondes.
“Simple thank you’s are someone saying, ‘thank you’. Cassidy, Isaiah Roomer looked like he wanted to eat you out.” Exasperated, she pulls her ponytail holder out of her hair.
“Up.” I correct, though her mistake makes my nipples tingle the way they had when I couldn’t meet Isaiah’s eye before escaping back to the mansion.
“What?”
“The phrase is ‘eat you up’.”
“I didn’t misspeak.” Rhiannon puts her hands on her hips. “That man is interested. And I’m pretty sure that makes you the luckiest bitch in the universe. Country’s hottest star wants in your pants. Ohmigod, this so makes up for Rude Rudy!”
I cover my face. “Can you either close the door or take it down a notch?”
“Don’t get your knickers in a twist. There aren’t any guests around to offend.”
Rhiannon follows my directions, anyway. The door snicks closed gentler than she banged it open. However, she rushes my bed. Her long black-brown hair flies behind her. She skids, landing so close her lycra-covered knees pinch my toes.
“Ow!” I rub the thick fuzzy socks protecting my tootsies.
“Oh, get over it. Maybe he’ll suck on them for you and make it all better.” Her dark brows waggle.
I roll my eyes, but can’t help the little laugh that escapes me. I had a bad date less than twenty-four hours ago. I’ve tamped down my expectations for tonight. Rhiannon’s excitement makes them bubble to the surface. My face gets hot as a result. I’m afraid both of us are reading into Isaiah’s motives, and we have the wrong idea.
We have generational wealth. The kind that pays for college and makes it easy to afford a new car or to start a small business and not lose our shirts if it goes under. But Isaiah? He’s filthy rich. He has money to throw around. He might make over the top gestures every day of the week.
Rhiannon pushes my hair over my shoulder. “He’s attracted to you,” she says in a sing-song voice.
“Just because Isaiah’s paying attention to me today doesn’t mean he can’t have whomever he wants tomorrow.” I hate thinking this sentiment aloud. I want Isaiah to have honorable intentions. “Plus, his wife just died. He’s in mourning.”
Rhiannon blinks, making me wonder what she overheard while photographing the meeting. She’s my cousin and my best friend. I’d never ask her to betray a confidence. It would put her out of a job and I understand what it is like to dig out from that hole. Still.
“I’ve never known you to have low self-esteem, Cass. And who cares? If Isaiah wasn’t at Kingsbrier, and I’d truth or dared you into admitting you’d take a hall pass with a super-hot celebrity, you would have been all ‘gotta get me some of that’ without overthinking.”
“Reality has consequences.”
“And that’s why God invented condoms! Please tell me you took your birth control this morning.” Her words are as good a reminder as any that our mutual sister was an “oops”.
“I did.” As soon as I returned to my room. What does that say about me? “Why are you trying to talk me into sleeping with him?” I ask, more suspicious about my motives than my best friend’s.
“I’m doing nothing of the sort!” Rhiannon rolls to the side, flopping her head on a pillow the way she’s done since we were teenagers. “I’m simply supporting a decision that you’ve already made to be open to a one-night stand. Can you imagine the look on Rude Rudy’s face if he saw you with Isaiah Roomer?”
“That sounds so cheap, Rhi. Like I’m using him.”
“You can’t be using one another? What makes Hottie McCrooner getting his jollies from a female fan okay, but you having a celebrity as a notch in your bedpost wrong? Forget who he is for a minute. If Isaiah was some rando who asked you out—and you were both crazy attracted to one another, because, duh, I have eyes, Cass—would you be as hung up on any of this?” She sits up, giving it to me straight. “Instead of pretending you haven’t had any wild notions whatsoever, and have considered having sex with that man, can we get to work on what you are wearing?”
“Only if you understand I’ve also entertained the possibility that nothing whatsoever will happen other than having a nice meal with a gentleman.”
“Have you not known me since the day I was born, woman?” She grabs my hands like we’re praying.
The thing about Rhiannon is we understand each other so well that she’s both my conscience and the devil on my shoulder.
I agree to let my bestie since birth sift through my closet. Rhiannon’s sloppy, letting garments fall off hangers as she pushes and tugs my clothes left and right. Whatever falls, I pick off the floor and place it on the empty opposite rod.
My room is the Tudor mansion’s original master bedroom. The citizens of a small country could occupy it with room to grow their crops. I also have a luxury bathroom that fits another nation inside. I’d like to feel worse about the extravagance. The suite would fetch an amazing nightly rate for the B&B when the vineyard hosts weddings. But our older sister, Gracyn, says there’s a season for change and it’s serving its purpose as my oasis for as long as I’m the inn’s breakfast chef.
“What about this?” Rhiannon holds a slinky black dress against her torso. “The tags are still on.”
I finger the thin, silky fabric that clung like a second skin to my form when I tried it on at the store. I’d planned to wear the dress last New Year’s Eve. However, Texas had a cold snap and slipping it on that night was akin to getting out of a hot tub in a soaking wet bathing suit in Vermont during the winter. I didn’t think anyone would’ve seen past my glaring headlights, so I chose something else.
“This dress is a little much for the steakhouse.”
“Or perfect if you are going for the slutty look. I still can’t understand why you wouldn’t wear it to the country club. You looked fantastic in it.” Rhiannon, who hasn’t had a stitch of color in her entire wardrobe since high school, ponders the black dress. “If my hips were slimmer and my boobs were as big as yours, I’d love to borrow it.”
“Stop being critical of your body. It could fit like a glove for all the complaining you’re doing. I’m happy to lend it out, seeing as it’s been collecting dust for three hundred and sixty-five days.”
Rhiannon insists she’s disinterested, but I toss it on my bed for her to take along when she leaves. A pile of other dresses land on top of it.
“A-HA! You don’t even have to model this one. I haven’t met a man yet who doesn’t notice you in it.” Rhiannon fist pumps victorious. “Now onto the pièce de résistance!” She tackles my underwear drawer with gusto.
Panties and bras fly everywhere. She laces three of my sheerest thongs on her arm. They dangle like obscene bracelets. Shapewear is slung over her shoulder. And the way she’s picking through my bras, muttering to herself about wire versus no wire and what textures will show under the dress is making me apprehensive about wearing what she’s deemed perfect.
I’m exasperated, ready to ask my cousin if she plans to clean up the mess she’s making when the front door chimes.
I’m not expecting anyone. The perishable and non-perishable shipments for the kitchen are on pause. Family members let themselves in and out using the keypad on the morning porch door—the backdoor that I took Isaiah out when I gave him the fifty-cent tour of the ranch. And Rhiannon mentioned Isaiah, Uncle Cris, and Jake were so engrossed in their guitars none of them noticed she ghosted.
“I’ll get that,” I say since she’s up to her elbows in my erm , private business.
Glad to escape my room, my feet bounce down the staircase.
I keep unusual hours, which makes dating hard for me. Even the shift-working single dads I meet get put off by a woman whose bedtime is earlier than their kids’. Not to mention, my days off are inconsistent and rarely over the weekend.
Rhiannon pulling my delicates out of mothballs made me panicky. Thinking Isaiah is being anything other than grateful for a place to stay in a pinch, or a gentleman, is presumptuous of me. His type is the jet-set Kylies of the world. The electricity I feel between us is probably the flirty mood he puts me in rebounding off of an impenetrable energy shield that surrounds famous people.
The bell rings a second time as I reach for the door handle. Met with a black garment bag being shoved in my face, I yelp.
“Oh, man. Sorry! I was about to knock. Probably should’ve used my empty hand.” It’s not until the guy moves it back that the letters MF go from fuzzy to readable and I recognize the Tom Ford logo.
“ Um, it’s ok-ay.” I stutter, curiously accepting the bag. “Who is this for?”
“I was just given a delivery address, ma’am.”
He’s turning from me when a second white truck enters the circular driveway. I watch, riveted, as this delivery driver opens the back and removes a long white box.
“Delivery for Cassidy Cavanaugh?”
“That’s me.”
“Please sign here.”
I’m awkward taking the oversized box under one arm and the suit under the other, scribbling my initials on a signature pad. I express the same gawky thank you I gave the first driver. Like a complete idiot, I ask the second driver to wait when the first has already pulled away without me even wishing him a Merry Christmas. I hang the garment bag on a coat rack. Jostling the contents of the box, I jog to a nearby secretary desk for petty cash.
“Have a wonderful holiday!” The driver and I say in unison as he accepts the tip.
I rejoice having gotten the final nuance right.
Perhaps there’s hope I won’t be sitting across from the Isaiah Roomer at an elegant restaurant with broccoli stuck in my teeth.
Or worse… yawning. Because nothing says I’m having a great time, like falling asleep in your dinner plate. Three minutes worth of interactions with other humans has taken an eternity, and I could use a nap.
I carry the box into Gracyn’s office and balance it on a cherry wood drop-leaf table behind the leather sofa. Lifting the lid, I suck in a breath.
“Is that a good gasp, or did someone send you a severed head?” Rhiannon moseys into the office.
She peeks into the box to see a dozen long stemmed red roses. Her gasp is subdued compared to her antics in my bedroom. I’m flabbergasted. Rhiannon does the honors, picking up the card from the flowers and opening the envelope.
Her tongue finds her back tooth. A Cheshire smile spreads over her cheeks when she hands it to me.
If my jaw wasn’t already scraping the carpet, it hangs lower reading:
Looking forward to our date tonight.—Isaiah
I glance at my best friend, who holds onto the lace insets on the hips of a pair of red cheeky underwear. “Now that that’s settled, you’re wearing these,” she says.