Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CASS
Cass inhaled the cinnamon-and-chocolate scented steam from the mocha she clutched her in her bare hands. A Chinook, the warm breeze that blew over Calgary on lucky winter days, had brought up the temperatures enough that some of the hardier souls on set wore tee shirts.
Good news for Dawson, whose traveller suit had been bunched around his waist to bare his impressive torso to the elements all day.
Cass reminded herself to bring smelling salts for Bex tomorrow.
She’d been expecting the call. She just didn’t think it would come so fast. When Terry scheduled reshoots for the following week, she was needed on set right away. Dawson had cut the few pounds of body fat he had, and his suit needed refitting.
No sense in asking if they were sure they needed her. They would. While her wardrobe assistant was good, it needed to be perfect.
Which meant she’d have to see Josh. A fierce yearning had ripped through her chest, and she had cried at her sewing machine for an hour.
“Looking good, Dawson!” Brynne waved cheerfully after Josh yelled cut, and Dawson trotted back to where his robe slung over the back of his chair. He shoved his arms through the fluffy sleeves and blew out a breath. Josh glowered into the monitor, avoiding where Dawson wrapped the robe’s belt tightly around his torso.
“I hope he’s got what he needs,” he said, shivering. “I’m nearly hypothermic here.”
“Having a single digit body fat percentage doesn’t let you hold a lot of heat.” Cass hoisted up a smile and held out her mocha. “Want a sip?”
“Cassidy, I haven’t had sugar since Mrs. Westwood said I needed to do this stupid shirtless scene and I can’t have anything delicious until I’m sure we’re done.”
Cass withdrew her offer and stared at Josh. His eyes narrowed as he bent over the monitors, jacket riding up his torso at the back, and the dimples at the base of his spine showed up against his golden skin. She couldn’t tell from here, but she was positive he would be covered in goosebumps. He hated being cold. His black hair fell in shaggy waves over his ears, and she longed to feel those strands brushing over her cheek.
Her heart bruised itself against her ribs, and she forced her gaze into her lap.
“Sorry, Big D, I don’t want to tempt you,” she said with a small smile.
Dawson turned his nearly famous baby blue eyes on her, searching her face. “I think that ship has sailed. Your eyes melt me like chocolate and your lips look like strawberries and you smell like flowers …” His voice trailed off into a mortified whisper. “I am so sorry. That was completely uncalled for. I don’t suppose you’d blame that on me being really hungry, would you?”
Cass looked up at the big man and tried to ignore the twinge in her chest. Libby said he looked interested. This more than confirmed it. Maybe she should. Maybe trying to date assholes to forget someone didn’t work, and what she needed to do was date someone lovely. Here was someone who was nice, sweet, and open about how he felt about her. Anyone would be a fool not to at least see what could happen.
“Do you want to go out with me?” Cass blurted out.
“I don’t want to pry,” he said, and turned a scrutinizing look at her, “but I didn’t think you were exactly available.”
She looked over at Josh, who had locked eyes with her from across the set. Her breath lodged in her throat, like a hand squeezing to hold the words in. She was a free woman. Nothing stopping her back from seeing if she could make something work here.
Cass shook her head firmly. “I’m not,” she whispered, and cleared her throat. She tore her gaze away from Josh and pressed a thin smile at Dawson. “I mean, I’m not looking to jump into anything serious, but I think you’re sweet, and we get along, and,” she tried to smile, “maybe we can do something fun?”
His grin lit up his face. “I’ve been trying to work up the courage to ask you out for months, and then I thought there was something going on with … But if that’s not the case, then, I’m honoured if you’ll take a chance on me. Next Thursday? I actually have a couple ideas, if you’ll let me?”
After the train wreck of the last several months, taking a chance on a sweet guy like Dawson barely seemed like a chance at all.
Steady. Reliable. No surprises.
Cass swallowed and blinked her eyes clear. “It’s a date.”
If there was a ranking of backyard weddings, Jill and Alex’s had to top the list.
The gentle Chinook temperatures extended to the weekend, with their friends and family packing every square foot of their bungalow and spilling onto the back deck. Cass and Libby had sniffled hap py tears under a blanket as the couple recited their vows and kissed under the January stars.
It helped her broken heart to know that two people could find happiness in each other.
Even if one half of the happy couple was currently pumping Cass for information.
“Wait. Wait, wait, wait.” Jill held up a hand. “You are going on a date with Dawson James? Dr. Rykoff in Sirius Darker , that Dawson James?”
“Yep.”
“Try and sound excited about it, why don’t you?” Omar said, dropping onto the couch beside her. “I’ll jump on that train if you aren’t interested.”
“He’s really nice. I’m sure it’ll be fun.” Cass shrugged and pulled up a genuine smile. “But seriously, how long have you planned this, Mrs. Campbell?”
Jill grinned back with the most relaxed expression Cass had seen on her face since the day she’d announced her engagement. “About a week.”
“You sneak,” Libby said, elbowing Jill in the ribs. “Wedding planning apps weren’t cutting it for you?”
“Couldn’t decide on the colour for the tablecloths,” Alex cut in, and reached his hand to Jill. “Pardon me, but I need to steal my wife.”
Jill glowed as he wrapped a protective arm around her, leading her to say goodbye to departing family, and Cass felt the longing for that easy comfort. Of knowing the person you loved, loved you back. Fiercely. With every fibre of their being.
“It’s really special, seeing them together, isn’t it?” Omar shifted into Jill’s vacated spot beside Cass, watching the newlyweds melt into each other’s arms as people congratulated them on their way out. The look of sublime bliss on Alex’s face was perfectly mirrored in Jill’s.
“It really is,” she whispered.
“It’s not every day people find love like that. ”
She thought she had. Once. She didn’t know if she ever would again. Cass pressed her hand to the raw ache in her chest. “Have you, Omar?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“I wasn’t ready for it, and I let it go.”
Cass followed his gaze to a skinny man in a cowboy hat she didn’t recognize, hugging Jill and shaking hands with Alex. Cass pulled her eyes away. “What did you do?”
“I’ve spent the last decade trying to find someone else to fill his space in my heart.”
“Did it work?”
“No,” he said. “None of them were him.”
“I’m taking a page from Brynne’s book and putting a no-topless clause in all my future contracts. I am never doing that to myself again.”
Powder-like snowflakes lazed down from the inky sky and melted on the pavement. All three locations Dawson had planned for them to tour at the annual hot chocolate festival were within walking distance, and a short drive from the wearable technology fashion event planned for after.
It couldn’t have fit her better if she’d planned it herself.
Dawson sipped his second hot chocolate, his jacket collar open to the early evening cold. He steered Cass around the open guitar case of a busker singing an old country song and dropped in a few bills as he passed.
Cass blew into her drink to make the honey flavoured marshmallows swirl in a tiny whirlpool and took a sip of her chili-spiced hot chocolate. The night she and Josh had met, cherry blossoms and rain flowed along the Vancouver streets. The city’s lights reflected off every surface. He’d dragged her under an awning to ki ss her as they waited for the car to bring them back to his condo.
Thinking about him isn’t going to help.
Cass stared into her cup. “No shirtless scenes? You’ll disappoint a whole bunch of fans.”
“Some, maybe. But if I worried about trying to please everyone, I’d never get out of bed in the morning.”
Whether it was the sky-blue parka that nearly matched his eyes or the fleece beanie he wore—Cass had given one to everyone on the cast and crew—the cold seemed to eddy around him. No shiver made his shoulders tense or his teeth chatter.
Josh would have spent half the time grousing about the cold, and the other half threatening to put his hands down her shirt to warm up his hands.
If she closed her eyes, she could picture him smiling as he did it in front of everyone on the sidewalk, too, telling her to say the word if she wanted him to stop.
Stop.
“I don’t know why I’m trying to talk you out of it.” She tipped her head to the side and stopped herself from licking a rogue drop from the corner of her mouth, and wiped the last bit away with her glove. “It’s good job security. More costumes to design and all.”
“You get to design more costumes, and I get to wear them? Win-win,” he said with a lop-sided smile.
A gaggle of twenty-something women circled back to ogle him again and he tugged the beanie down lower over his brows until they passed. He tossed the cup into the recycling bin and glanced down at her hands, both occupied with her now-empty cup. He crossed and uncrossed his arms, fiddling with the zippers on his parka.
“I have never seen someone so fiddly as you,” Cass said, draining the last sips of her hot chocolate. “I know we’re off set and all, but it’s killing me not to fix this. ”
“You ever think I messed around with things so you’d come over to talk to me?”
“Tsk. Stop it.”
He shrugged and smiled at her. “I’m just a bit nervous.”
“Why would you be nervous?”
“Trying to decide if it’s too early in the night to try to kiss you.”
Josh had said something similar the first night they met. Testing the waters , he’d said, then dove in for a heady kiss that made her forget to breathe. All the kisses after, stolen behind closed doors, tasting, hands claiming each other.
A buzz rustled in her stomach, and she tried to tell herself it was because Dawson James, the handsome, polite, heartthrob standing in front of her, wanted to kiss her.
She leaned up onto the tips of her toes. “Only one way to find out.”
Their mouths met. The night air breezed cold as traffic hummed around her ears. He smelled nice. Like Ivory soap and melting snow, and his hands on the small of her back were steady and warm. The last of his minty hot chocolate still clung to his lips, an odd contrast with the chili spice of her own.
Interesting combination. Not unpleasant. She pulled away to settle back on her heels, and opened her eyes. Dawson drew a jagged breath, and she turned the corners of her mouth up.
“That was really nice.”
“Yeah, it was.” He smiled at her wistfully. “But you deserve more than nice.”
Josh had sat her in her chair after coming to get her from another bad date, taking her boots off with gentle care, laughing as she’d drunkenly tried to get a kiss from him. A kiss that would have curled her toes, stolen her breath, and made her forget her own name. Something far more than nice.
He said he could write sonnets about kissing her.
It had been one thing trying to forget Nick with a bunch of throwaway dates with guys she’d never see again. It was another thin g completely to try to move on from Josh by asking this sweet, genuine man, who she knew liked her. When she knew she didn’t feel the same way.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She stared down at the toes of her boots. “It was selfish of me to ask you to come out tonight.”
He took a fortifying breath and stared out over the crowd flowing around them. “Don’t be sorry, darlin’. I’m glad you did. I feel like tonight answered some questions for both of us.”
“What would those be?”
A corner of his mouth quirked up. “I think you have some unfinished business with a certain surly director.”
“He’s not that surly.” Except when a shot didn’t go right, or when someone was late on set. Or when he thought she was interested in someone else. Her heart lurched, and she sniffed. “Usually.”
Dawson thumbed away a tear before it could freeze on her cheek. “Not with you.”
She took his hand and squeezed. “What other questions did we answer tonight?”
“I wanted to know for some time now what it would be like to kiss you,” he said. “Even if it was just once.”
If she was smart, lucky, sensible, or any combination of those, falling in love with Dawson James would have been the easiest thing in the world. Cass fiddled with the zipper on his parka one last time. “You are going to make someone really happy one day.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Friends?”
“Friends,” he confirmed, and tucked her gloved hand under his arm to turn them down the street. “Come on, I got a fashion show to get you to in ten minutes, and I don’t want to miss the electric Lego dresses.”
Cass covered her giggle in her free hand and smiled her first real smile in days. “Me, either.”
It could hardly be called a mobile phone if it had to be connected to a power outlet at all times. When her next pay cheque came in, she was getting an upgrade.
Cass dropped her keys on her kitchen counter and plugged in her dead phone. She dug her thumbs into the small of her back as she checked the time on her microwave.
Almost eleven. Enough time to ice her knee before bed. Before she could settle on the couch with a cold compress, her phone buzzed on her counter.
The five notifications that popped up should have tipped her off something was going on. One from her sister, asking her to babysit next week, one from her brother to borrow her truck, and three from Libby.
Call me
Call me
Before you look at anything else
Cass scrunched her brow.
What’s the emergency?
Nothing! Just wanted to see how was your date with D? You home? Are you alone?
“Okay, weirdo,” Cass said, holding out her phone while searching for her earbuds. “I’m home. I’m alone. What’s up?”
Libby’s face filled the screen. “I don’t suppose you fell madly in love with Dawson over sippy cups of hot chocolate and electrified fashion, did you?” she asked in an inordinately hopeful voice.
Cass heaved a sigh. “No. We kissed, and he’s so sweet, but we’re just friends. ”
“Well, shit.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“No, I mean …” Libby trailed off, lips pursed. “Have you been online at all tonight?”
“Nope, too busy having the most platonic date of my life. But no face licking or vape clouds or monologues on tropical fish, though, so honestly the best date I’ve had in the last year.”
If she didn’t count the time she and Josh had spent holed up in her apartment, eating Christmas leftovers and laughing over old movies and smearing each other with beauty products. Winding themselves around each other in bed for hours, waking up in the middle of the night with his hand curled around hers.
The missing headphones were lodged between her couch pillows. She fished them out and worked at the tangles one-handed.
A long pause followed, and Cass used the silence to plug in her earbuds. By the time Libby spoke again, her voice was directly in Cass’s ears.
“A few gossip sites posted photos of you and D kissing from tonight.”
That was fast. Cass let out a weak chuckle. “I saw a few starstruck girls ogling him, but I didn’t know we were still trending. No jealous tirades against me for taking him off the market this time, are there?”
“I need to warn you about something, and I think maybe it’s best that you hear it from me. Some photos of Josh popped up, too.” Libby cleared her throat. “With Brynne.”
Cass’s heart lurched into her throat. “What do you mean?”
“It’s probably nothing. Like, really nothing. The shots are grainy, but …” Libby pressed her lips together.
“I can’t really assume anything if I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Cass’s voice sounded brittle to her own ears.
“Josh and Brynne. There’s photos of them hugging, then going into her trailer. The captions said they didn’t come out for a while. ”
The room greyed and pressed down on her. It shouldn’t be a surprise. The two had never been anything more than professional on set—fighting, if anything. But Brynne was a stunning woman, and Josh was, well, Josh. Gorgeous and creative and irresistible.
But even if it was something …
“You’re probably right. It’s probably nothing.”
If she said it with a firm enough voice, she might believe it.
Either way, it didn’t matter. She’d ignored Josh’s every attempt to talk to her. Left him on read with every text. Deleted every voicemail without listening to it. “But what Josh does, and who he does it with, is up to him.”
Cass clicked off the call and plugged it into her search bar. Libby was right. It was the first thing that showed up when she searched Sirius Darker movie . The talking head videos popped up first, speculating over what was happening behind closed doors. Then, grainy, low-res shots of the Josh and Brynne embracing on set, another with him following her into her trailer, both taken just days before filming had wrapped.
She shut down the feed. It didn’t look like anything. Josh had given Libby the same one-arm hug when her brilliant lighting made a particularly tricky night shot work. And Josh almost always went behind closed doors for serious conversations. It was probably that.
But what if it wasn’t?
She knew what it felt like to be pulled behind closed doors with him. Not knowing if it was going to be a quiet discussion about a scene or if he would pin her against the wall with his hand working between her thighs. His arms would steal around her, his soft stubble rasping against her temple as he whispered something sweet, filthy—or both—in her ear. How he would fight with her about a movie, longer than its runtime, just to keep her talking.
Stop torturing yourself. He is married. He hid that from you. For months .
Cass swiped her cheeks. No more.
Her phone buzzed again and her already low heart sunk further. The list of people who would text her this late was short.
The man must have a sixth sense for when she was vulnerable. Or her hormones sent a signal into the sky that alerted him when she was easy pickings. Or maybe it was men in general. She half expected a text to show up from some other guy who had ghosted her months ago.
How ironic. She’d been the one doing all the ghosting for the last several months. Maybe this was cosmic payback. She wearily bent her head over her phone.
are you dating dawson james??
How do you know about Dawson?
So you are??
you were tagged in a video
Kissing, it looked like
And that was his cue to circle up and see if he still had her on his carousel of numbers to call when he needed a hookup. Dole out a compliment or two to keep her on the bench.
Her fingers hovered over the keys as she debated whether to respond. She didn’t owe him anything. And if she replied, she might not be able to say no.
No random guys to message and hide behind tonight. Only her and her battered willpower. She bit her lip and tilted her head back to stare at the ceiling.
D and I are just friends
Not sad to hear that ;)
You looked beautiful as usual
Wyd now?
Wallowing in my terrible luck with men . So many of the guys she’d gone on dates with as part of project No Second Dates had been losers. Just as many had been fine. Nice on their own, but no compatibility. Steak and ice cream. Orange juice and toothpaste. Wine and oatmeal.
Even her and Dawson. Sounded good in theory, but it didn’t quite work.
Be strong. You can do this. Say no.
It’s late. I’m almost in bed
please
I’d really like to see you
She sunk back on her couch and adjusted the ice pack over her knee. The phone screen dimmed to black. She should leave him on read. Ghost him the way he’d ghosted her months ago.
But they had history. It had been fun. Usually. When she got together with Nick, there were no surprises.
okay