5. Cassie
5
CASSIE
This evening is a mistake.
The three shots I’ve downed while messaging Mr Blackwood have gone to my head and I’m still left with four more. I can’t get rid of this man beside me, I can’t catch the eye of my housemates, I’m rapidly losing faith with my plan to lose my V-card, and I’ve gained a boyfriend more fictional and perfect than any I’ve read in a book.
I fiddle with my phone, checking to see if Mr Blackwood has replied since I sent him my location, as he demanded.
Nothing.
I suppose he just wants to know where I am so he could tell the police my last movements if I’m murdered.
On the plus side, after stress-drinking three shots, I am down to just four, which surely I can manage to carry?
“So, your boyfriend .” The man emphasises it as though he doesn’t believe me, and leans in. “He’s coming tonight, is he?”
I nod, hoick up my purse onto my shoulder, pull down my dress—again—and try to pick up the shot glasses. “Probably. He’s got a lot of work to do, though.”
“Not here right now. Maybe he’s too high-powered to come out with you on Friday night? That doesn’t sound like a good boyfriend, leaving you all alone.”
“He’s the best.” I attempt to sound confident as I awkwardly try to pick up the shot glasses without spilling brightly-coloured vodka everywhere. Third attempt I manage it. So long as no one jostles me, I’ll be fine.
“I can help with that, if you like,” the man says casually. He’s persistent as a fly.
“No!” I yelp. “No, that’s not needed.” A miracle, that’s what’s needed.
And for once, luck is on my side, because cutting a line across the room are my housemates.
“Hey, Cassie.” Julie sheds glitter from her dress as she moves and eyes the man who has been—I don’t know what to call it. Chatting me up? Negging me? Talking to me? “What you got?”
“I’ve got shot—” I hold up my hands.
“Nice to meet you.” Tamara reaches across me, practically shouldering me out of the way to shake the hand of the man, and so doing, nudges the precariously held shot glasses.
They spill all over me. Right down the front of my cream dress pours yellow, green, blue, and red vodka.
I look in disbelief.
Fuck. My. Life.
The colours mix together and are instantly yellow, brown-ish green, and purple-ish red. It’s even on my shoes.
For a second, I close my eyes. Needles gently stab my eyelids. Worst night ever.
“Oh, you spilt your drink,” Tamara says insincerely. “Bad luck. What took you so long, anyway?”
“She’s been texting her boyfriend,” the man says.
“You didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend!” Julie says, mock scandalised. “Naughty!”
“Mm.” Nodding, I dump the now-empty shot glasses onto the bar. I would try to indicate to Julie that I’m lying to keep this guy away because she and the other two left me alone and disappeared off to dance, but I think she’d enjoy outing and humiliating me.
“When did that happen?” Julie asks.
“Quite recently.” I look around for some napkins or something to repair the damage to my dress. Or maybe just wipe my sticky hands on, but there’s nothing. “You know, when I’ve not been home.”
“I thought you were working. I’m sure Polly said your boss was making you work late.”
“No.” I turn to my tormentors, giving up on all dignity. Being covered in multi-coloured vodka does that. “Not weekends and evenings. Obviously.” I laugh as though that’s absurd, but it’s not.
And now I told Mr Blackwood he’s a bad boss, and I’m going to die of either how much I love him or a simple assassination for calling him a bad boss, we’ll see which happens sooner.
“What’s he like?” Julie asks in a gossipy, faux-friendly way that makes me want to barf.
“Italian.” And I could bite my tongue off. “But his accent is subtle.”
“Italian.” Tamara draws out the word, and I can tell she doesn’t believe me.
“He’s tall.” My hands are sticky, and my palms are sweating. I want out of here. “Bright blue eyes.”
I am describing my boss. I tried, I really did, but he’s the only man I want.
“Actually tall, or like, taller than you?” Julia’s lip curls.
“Six-foot-three. Dark-brown hair. He’s a bit older than me and has a high-powered job.” Those first two things are facts, the third and fourth are massive understatements.
“Pics or it didn’t happen.” She winks and puts her hand on her hip.
“I don’t have any photos of him.” Wow, I am just as pathetic as I feel in my stained dress. “He doesn’t like having his photo taken.”
“He doesn’t like having his photo taken.” Polly and Tamara glance at each other and smirk.
I lower my gaze. I can’t even lie to their faces. I swallow down my humiliation just as there are raised voices at the entrance to the bar. A group of well-dressed men have come in, and I spot him instantly, as though he’s permanently highlighted in blue.
Mr Blackwood.
He’s with another man who looks just like him—one of his brothers presumably—looking around the bar, searching. I still.
He’s here.
And that’s the moment he spots me.
“Is this him?” Julie looks Mr Blackwood up and down as though he’s a tree she’d like to climb. Possessive jealousy curdles in my stomach along with the alcohol. Mr Blackwood is my crush. He’s my grumpy boss, and I don’t want anyone else having him. Or even looking at him.
Our gazes lock and without taking his eyes off me, he strides through the room, the crowd parting like he’s a god.
He might as well be. He’s tall, gorgeous, in absolute control. Everyone else melts away.
“Cass…” He seems to catch himself from saying my first name. “Miss Meadows.” Mr Blackwood takes in my stained dress with a scowl.
“I spilt my drink,” I explain, my voice very small, and show him my sticky hands as though that makes it clearer. I am a doof.
He gestures with one finger and the barman is there instantly. “Clean cloth, please. And a glass of water.”
Within seconds, he has what he’s requested, and I peek up at him from under my lashes, embarrassed as he takes one of my hands in his, then the other, and wipes them clean, expression impassive.
Discarding the cloth, he wraps my fingers around the glass of water and instructs me to drink.
Not having much choice, I gulp it down and Mr Blackwood removes his suit jacket. The man who was badgering me has gone, I realise, and so has Mr Blackwood’s brother and at least one of the men with them. I wonder uneasily if those things are related.
Mr Blackwood plucks the glass from my hand as I finish it, and then wraps his jacket around my shoulders, impatiently indicating for me to put my arms in. Then he has me in it, the front buttoned, and the arms rolled up. It’s ludicrously big on me, I’m dwarfed. It’s longer than my dress.
Tugging at the lapels, my boss scowls at the low-cut neckline of my dress that his jacket does nothing to hide, then his gaze meets mine, and I melt. His eyes. My god, his blue eyes.
What is he doing here?
“I can’t believe your boyfriend arrived, Cassie.” Julia’s interjection into this moment is about as welcome as presents from a pet cat. “We were beginning to think you’d made him up.”
Mr Blackwood goes rigid and turns to her. “I’m not her boyfriend.”
My cheeks heat. There was my thinking this evening had taken a turn for the better, and yeah nope. It’s worse.
“Huh.” Julie gives me a look like, I knew you were lying . “That’s odd. Because she described someone exactly like you as her boyfriend.”
Julie sweeps Mr Blackwood with a speculative gaze now she knows he’s not mine, and I’m torn between bitch fighting her, and bursting into tears.
Mr Blackwood’s gaze bounces between me—the mortified raspberry—and Julie, the smug blonde. There would be silence if it weren’t for the noise of voice and the drumming of music.
I’m utterly humiliated. I might vomit.
“Didn’t you say he was tall, with bright blue eyes? Brown hair,” Julie says to me then turns to Mr Blackwood. “She said her boyfriend was rich, and handsome.”
My chin droops, but like a rabbit caught in headlights, I’m unable to actually move. I should run. That’s the mature thing to do right now having been caught out.
That or break into song. “ It wasn’t me .”
Except it was. I said all that, and all three of us in this conversation know full well I was thinking of my hot boss when I described my “boyfriend”.
“She said that was where she’d been every evening this last month,” Julie continues, getting right into her smug glee as I attempt to sink into the floor. “And that he had a hint of an Italian accent, which I think you do, isn’t that right?”
Julie sidles right up to Mr Blackwood. “You have such a broad chest though.” She reaches up and smooths across Mr Blackwood’s undeniably broad chest. “She didn’t say her boyfriend keeps in such good shape, and she would have mentioned it given you must work so hard at the gym…”
It’s more difficult than it looks, sinking into the floor. I need tips on disappearing. I could take up magic, or just immigrate to the moon. Perhaps NASA would lob me into space like that dog.
Maybe an expedition to the bottom of the ocean. One-way ticket.
Mr Blackwood’s hand strikes Julie’s and rips it from his chest.
“I’m not her boyfriend,” he states in a furious voice. “I’m her fiancé .”