Chapter 18
Cassie
I’m such an idiot.
“Here.” Lisa hands me a glass, then plunks down on the hotel bed beside me. “It’s homemade elderflower liqueur mixed with fresh-squeezed orange juice.”
“And vodka,” Missy adds, dropping onto the bed on my other side. “Lots of vodka.”
I take the drink, but I don’t sip it. I rest it on the knee of my faded gray yoga pants and try not to cry. “How did I not know he was a gazillionaire?”
“Because he didn’t want you to know?” Missy suggests. She’s holding a plate of cookies on her lap, and offers one to me. “Homemade gingersnap?”
“Obviously.” I take a cookie and bite savagely into it. “I mean the part about Simon not wanting me to know. Not the cookie. Though I should have figured it out.”
Both the cookie and the man. How did I not catch on that I was sleeping with some famous gazillionaire? The evasive answers to personal questions. The fancy spa experience. The glimpse I caught of our dinner bill at Ponderosa Resort with a tip so huge I felt certain it was a mistake.
It wasn’t a mistake. Or rather, it was. This whole damn thing was a mistake.
I take a slow sip of the cocktail, and it burns pleasantly down my throat.
Not for the first time, I feel grateful for my sisters’ craftiness.
And for the fact that they’re both being pretty cool about this.
They even cancelled our pedicure appointment, which they’d never dream of doing for anything less than a crisis.
“What a jerk,” Missy mutters. She takes her own cookie and shoves the whole thing in her mouth, something I haven’t seen her do since we were in grade school and Lisa had the habit of licking things to claim them. “And the way he pretended not to know you?”
“I kinda get that part,” I tell her. “He was trying not to upset his sister.”
“By having a girlfriend?” She shakes her head. “Trust me, honey. You don’t want to get involved with a guy who hides you from his family.”
This is true. Then again, I’m guilty of hiding a few details from mine.
Maybe it’s time to stop. I look at my sisters, one on each side of me like sturdy, well-polished bookends. We may not have much in common, but we’re family. That counts for something.
I clear my throat. “Did I tell you how Simon and I met?”
My sisters shake their heads in unison, which I knew they would. Because obviously, I haven’t told them anything. That’s when I realize I’m just as bad as Simon. Maybe worse. Because I’ve been lying to my family for years.
It’s time I come clean.
And so I do, starting from the beginning. The waaaay beginning, back before I even thought of The List. Back when I first decided it would be easier to play the saucy vixen sister than to admit who I really am.
I tell them all of it. The way Career Cassie struggled to be a girl in a man’s world, and how she also struggled with being not-so-girly in her sisters’ world. They listen, not saying a word, while I explain that my exploits—all those crazy sex stories—weren’t true at all.
Not until Simon, anyway.
By the time I’m done with the story, both sisters are frowning.
“I don’t understand,” Lisa says. “You made up this wild and crazy sex life to one-up us somehow?”
I shake my head and clutch my drink a little tighter. “Not to one-up you, exactly. Just to be different. I knew I couldn’t be you guys, and I didn’t want to be.”
“Gee, thanks.”
I glance at Missy, expecting to see defensiveness, but all I see is sympathy.
She pats my knee and offers a small smile. “I get it. I think. You’re not like us.”
“But that’s okay,” Lisa adds. “No one says all the sisters in a family have to be the same.”
I sigh and rest my glass on my knee. “I didn’t want to be you, but I didn’t want to be just the girl in work boots with dirty fingernails, either,” I said. “So, I made myself more interesting.”
“Oh, Cassie.” Lisa puts her hand on my knee. “You were already interesting.”
“No matter what,” Missy agrees.
“Even without the kinky sex stories.”
Lisa grins. “Though I did sort of enjoy those.”
I snort-laugh in a very unladylike way. “Me, too. Though I enjoyed it a lot more when things started happening for real.”
Missy puts an arm around me, then reaches out and breaks the last cookie into smaller bites. I take one of them, while Lisa reaches for the other. We chew in silence, none of us quite sure where to go from here.
“Wanna tell us the sexy details?” Lisa grins and sips her cocktail.
“Actually, no,” I say. “For once, I think I prefer to keep those private.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Missy lifts her glass and I follow suit, along with Lisa. We clink them together, sloshing a little liquid on the bedspread. Neither sister rushes to clean it up, which I find oddly touching.
Things are over with Simon. That much is clear.
He may have lied about some things, but he never lied about what he wanted from me.
Just sex. That’s what we agreed. I’m the one who went and deviated from the plan.
I’m the one who thought we were building something bigger, getting to know each other in between all the sexy exploits.
It’s clear now that I never knew the man at all.
But at least I know my sisters a little better than before. That’s something. I take another sip of my drink and lean into Missy’s shoulder as Lisa puts an arm around me and squeezes.