Betting Hearts (11 page)

“Okay,” he said, expelling his breath, putting the truck in gear and pulling out of the driveway. “Where to?”

“Drop me off at Shaky Jake’s. Burke left my car there last night.”

“Do I get to hear why?”

“No.”

He huffed a little, but he kept driving.

“Uh-oh,” she groaned not too long later, scrunching her face at the sight of the restaurant. A crowd around her car was not a good sign. Hayne saw it too and instead of dropping her off, parked in the lot. Cass climbed out of the cab and slammed the door, garnering some attention from the people on the outer edge of the circle. She waited for Hayne to catch up while the men elbowed each other enough to part for her.

Her knot of dread tightened when she recognized a couple of them from Luke’s party the night before. None of them recognized her, though. She doubted they’d recognize their own mothers, most of them bleary eyed. Still, they separated and opened a path to her car.

Where Luke was taking Polaroids.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked, hands on her hips.

“Better yet, what the hell are you doing
here
?” Hayne demanded.

Luke put the camera away from his face, pulling the last shot from the mouth of the instant camera and waving it. He smiled as if old friends had joined the party. “Taking pictures of my car.”

“Your
what
?”

Cass winced. Hayne hit a new decibel, not to mention a new key for his usually baritone voice. She should have caught him up when she had the chance.

“My car.” Luke pronounced the words as if they were phonics tools. “What’s the matter, Hayne, sister dear didn’t tell you I was back in town?”

Cass felt Hayne’s hot glare on the top of her head for a short moment. “No, but it sure as hell looks like she said hello.”

Luke shrugged. “She sucker punched me.”

Hayne snorted, then turned on the bystanders. “What do you all think you’re looking at? Get out of here. And you,” he turned back to Luke with a threatening finger, “get away from our property.”

“For now,” Luke replied amicably, still flashing his picture. Faking an afterthought, he tossed it back at them. “Keep it. Don’t want you forgetting what it looks like.”

Cass watched him join his friends and head to their cars on the other side of the lot.

“What was he talking about? Why does that assmunch think he’s going to lay one finger on this car?”

Cass looked up at her brother’s thunderous expression and sighed. She wasn’t getting out of this without an explanation and she knew it. While Luke and his buddies drove away, she detailed the breaking of the nose, the wedding plans and finally the bet. He groaned at that.

“You’re turning yourself inside-out over
Luke
?
Again
?”

Cass shook her head. Why did both Hayne and Burke have it in their heads that she would willingly do anything for Luke ever again? Had she ever changed anything for him before? No. Her only fault had been believing he cared about her. Those days were long gone. “I’m doing this for
me
. Luke just happens to be a bonus.”

“Yeah? How?”

She looked down at the picture of her car and crunched it into the gravel with her boot. “Because it’s going to feel so good to rub his face in it when I win.”

“I probably shouldn’t ask why you thought of me to help you shop,” Alice Panyon said as she nibbled on a Godiva chocolate. She pushed the stroller in front of her with her free hand, oblivious to the fact that her belly could do it for her. “But I’m going to.”

Cass smiled at her, holding several bags in one hand and licking an ice cream cone with the other. The way the North County Mall was situated, there was always something to eat in between stores. Reva—Alice and Sel’s two-year-old daughter—was working her way through a giant pretzel, content to lie back in the stroller and watch the world go by.

Perhaps a compliment would sidestep the conversation. “You have style?”

“Uh-huh, but that’s not it.”

Cass shrugged. It wasn’t like Alice hadn’t figured it out already. “You’re probably the only person in town with an inkling of what it’s like to be me.”

Alice didn’t laugh, but she could have. Aside from having a similar height of around five-nine, Alice was definitely day to Cass’s night. With her pale blonde hair falling to the middle of her back, a normally willowy figure, angelic face and perfect manners, Alice didn’t exactly have tomboy written all over her. But ten years as a firefighter hadn’t happened by accident. She was stronger than some men, did work some still argued was no place for a woman and had to fight town opinion for more years than even Cass liked to think about. But when she retired, it had nothing to do with anyone else’s opinion. Alice did things when she was good and ready and not one second before. Cass admired that kind of strength. She certainly didn’t have it.

“There are worse things to be than you, Cass.” Alice’s quiet reminder didn’t have the teasing quality her voice usually held. She sounded serious.

“Sure there are.” Murderers, rapists, lounge singers. “That doesn’t mean I want to be Little Miss Mud Pie forever.”

Alice chuckled, her smoky voice full of warmth. “Well, if the damage we’ve done to your credit card is any indication, you won’t be.”

Cass smiled again. Okay, she would have to work the rest of her life to pay off most of what she’d bought, but it was worth it. Seeing her own reflection in the mirror and liking it was addicting. For the first time in her life, she understood why other women enjoyed shopping. Seeing Alice’s eyes light up with sisterly surprise gave her courage to try outfits she would never have dared otherwise. Even hearing Reva’s excited clapping had gone toward proving she was making the right decision. Now all she had to do was pass Burke’s inspection.

“Burke’s inspection?”

Shoot, did I say that out loud?
“Um, yeah. He’s helping me with this…makeover.”

“I’m guessing you won the poker game?” Alice waggled her eyebrows.

Cass frowned. “Yeah, but he didn’t agree to help me until he ran into Luke himself.”

“Oh,” Alice said, her expression dimming.

“What’s that ‘oh’ about?”

“I hoped Burke would finally buy a clue and take you up on your offer, I guess.”

Cass stopped walking, tilting her head to the side and inspecting her friend for pregnancy-induced insanity. “What offer? Why would he need to buy a clue?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Alice stopped pushing the stroller, her mouth forming an “o” while her eyes widened. “Oh, my God, you’re not kidding. You seriously don’t know?”

“Don’t know what?”

“You and Burke are…well, that the two of you are…” Alice twirled her hand as if it would clear things up for Cass. It didn’t. Finally, she sighed and rolled her eyes. “You guys are in love with each other.”

Definitely pregnancy-induced insanity.
“Are you nuts?” Cass sputtered, choking on her ice cream and a peal of laughter. “Me and Burke?”
Yeah and aliens landed on the Statue of Liberty.

“Of course you and Burke. Everyone knows how you feel about him. Burke probably doesn’t, but he’s a typical man. You’ll have to practically write a sign on your forehead for him to get it.”

How
she
felt? “Everyone is wrong.” Dead wrong. Colossally wrong. “Burke is my friend—”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m not in love with him, Alice.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m not.”

“Sure.”

“Stop agreeing with me, already!” Cass brought her hands to her fiery cheeks while Alice giggled into another bite of chocolate.

“Okay.”

Cass sighed, trying not to smile, but Alice’s eyes were dancing, making it hard to even feign anger. “Seriously! I’m not. He’s my
friend
. It’s all he’s ever been. Even if I was—” she thought of her brother’s offhand comment, which sobered her right up, “—Burke wouldn’t touch me with a ten foot sewer pipe.”

Alice slipped her a sideways glance of disbelief. . “Burke is a man, honey. You have a great figure and you know him better than he knows himself. Trust me, if you gave him a push in the right direction, he’d be begging to touch you.”

Cass snickered. “Yeah, right.” Burke didn’t beg. Period. She could be the image of his wettest dream and it wouldn’t happen.

“Really. He would. If what Ben Friedly told me last night is true, you won’t need to push real hard either.”

Cass’s ears perked. “Why? What did Ben tell you?”

“That Burke looked ready to eat you alive in the bar in front of half the town. In a good way,” Alice added, probably because Burke eating people alive usually involved yelling, insults and occasionally violence.

Cass tried to remember something out of the ordinary happening at the bar. All she could think of was the moment he washed her face.
She
was the one who’d gotten all soft and gooey, for once understanding why every girl in town had a crush on her best friend. You couldn’t be close to someone with eyes that intense, features that strong and a touch that gentle, without losing yourself for a moment. Or two. Okay, three, but that was it.

“I say you get yourself all dolled up and give it a shot.”

Cass blinked out of her reverie. “Give what a shot?”

“Seducing Burke. Give it a try.”

Who would have guessed speechlessness physically hurt? Cass tried to make a sound. Nothing came out. She tried to breathe, but the two mental directives blocked each other and she ended up choking to the point of tears. Alice whacked her on the back until Cass finally got a grip on her disbelief.

“I can’t seduce Burke!”

A few people stopped to stare at her. Cass glared until they went away.

Alice just looked amused. “Sure you can. You stroll up to him, kiss him as if your life depended on it and see what happens.”

“He’d kill me is what would happen.” Painfully.

Alice wrinkled her nose. “If you want to pull off this transformation of yours, Cass, you’re going to have to do more than dive-bomb your credit card.”

“Hey!” This was beyond dive-bombing. Her card looked like a pack of wolves gnawed it.

“Hey what? Do you want to know the true secret of feeling feminine or not?”

Cass gave up arguing.

“Femininity is about more than clothes or hair or make-up. It’s not high heels or cooking or lingerie. It’s about people
seeing
you’re a girl. Not you changing how you dress and telling them to. That won’t work. You’ll still be CB Bishop, dressed different.

“The reason you don’t feel like a girl isn’t because you aren’t one. It’s not because everyone sees you a certain way. It’s because
you
don’t see
yourself
a certain way. You don’t know your own sensuality and until you do, nothing we bought today is going to create it for you.”

“I have to seduce Burke if I’m going to be feminine?” Her head throbbed.
Yet another definition to remember.

“No, sex won’t do it either.”

“But you just said—”

“Femininity is a spark, Cass.” Alice’s brow creased, her voice authoritative. “It’s the…
thing
that makes you realize you’re soft where he’s not. The thing about you that makes
him
realize it, too. Sometimes being feminine is believing you can seduce any man in any room at any time. Even if you don’t, you have to believe you can.”

“Only sometimes?”

Alice shrugged.

This is important,
Cass wanted to yell.
My head isn’t
that
hard to get through!
Instead, she waited, breath held, for Alice to continue.

“Sometimes, it’s the way you feel when you hold your baby. Or when another woman says you look nice. Sometimes, it’s a simple as believing in yourself and the rest follows naturally. I know you don’t want to hear this, but Burke was right to tell you you’d know it when you see it. You’ll know it when you feel it.”

That’s it?
“But I
can’t
feel it. Why else do you think I’m doing all this?” The frustration made Cass want to hit something. Or kick something. Neither the little girl in the stroller or the woman with the belly were acceptable targets, meaning she had to buck up and deal. Alice nibbled her candy, watching while Cass tried to fit this new information in with the other confusing pieces.

They stood looking at each other for a while, silent while the mall hummed around them. People walked this way and that, moving from store to store as if something important weren’t happening in front of them. For Cass, the only thing clicking was resentment.

“You’re like everyone else, aren’t you? You think I’m doing this because of Luke. Like I want him back or something.”

“Truthfully?”

“Yeah, truthfully.”

“I think you’re doing it for Burke.”

Cass laughed, but it felt almost as hollow as it sounded. “Burke is the last person who wants me to change. If you heard some of our arguments…” She laughed again, which didn’t make any sense because she had the strangest urge to cry. “I’m doing this for
me
, Alice. If Burke had his way, I’d be Little Miss Mud Pie forever.”