Betting Hearts (14 page)

Not trusting himself, he moved the entire pillow and traded it with the one from the other side of the bed. He dropped gratefully into it, barely bothering to reach up and turn out the light again. But sleep didn’t come. It wouldn’t. Not with that scrap of silk and lace only an arm’s reach away.

Burke stared up at the ceiling. He had to face facts. In two days, he had somehow developed some sort of problem. He wanted to get his friend into bed; no apologies, no remorse Hell, tonight he would have settled for the carpet. Worse, he didn’t have a prayer of achieving it. Her brother would kill him and Cass would see the whole event as some sort of to-do list.

New dress, check.

New shoes, check.

Mind-blowing orgasm, check.

He smiled.
Check, check, check and check.

The smile faded slowly. Of course that’s how Cass would see it. But what would
he
think if he slept with her? Would it be a to-do list for him too? Would he merely be scratching an itch? Knowing himself as well as he did, what else could it be?

No, this would never work. Wasn’t there a fable about this? Or a bumper sticker:
Friends Don’t Let Friends Have Sex
? Some kind of warning to explain why
not
to tempt the big, bad wolf? Cass obviously needed a refresher and he needed a wake-up call. In all the fairy tales he knew, the teases got away scot-free and the wolf ended up someone’s dinner. The last thing he wanted was to be carved up by the Bishop men. He valued them—and Cass—too much for a simple roll in the hay. But mostly, he didn’t want to lose her and he would if he didn’t get his act together.

Hayne wasn’t kidding when he said Burke was more Cass’s friend than his own. They didn’t get together to have beer alone, they didn’t scout women together anymore and they only talked when one of them was waiting for Cass, in the casual manner of people making chit chat until the real deal came up. Burke didn’t even remember the last time he talked to Eddie, a man he considered an adopted father. All the important roads in his life led to Cass, roads he couldn’t afford to block.

The Halifaxes weren’t what a person might call close knit. His parents retired to Florida ages ago, selling their house and leaving him as much on his own as he had always been. He sent and received a Christmas card each year, along with a short note from his mother on how retirement was treating them. He was an only child, probably why he had locked in with the Bishops in the first place. He liked having someone to talk to and a little sister who thought he was a hero. That would disappear.

His high school friends mostly had moved out of their tiny town to bigger and better things. Sel Panyon was the only one who returned and he did it only after he’d made his mark on the art world. The second he got back he found himself a wife, made himself a family and got on being the happiest man on earth. Only Cass had the kind of time to hang out with him for whatever came to mind.

He had his auto repair and custom body shop, something he was proud of, sure. But as much fun as rebuilding cars was, for the most part all he did now was watch Oprah and do paperwork. If she didn’t insist on dragging him to conventions and car shows on weekends, his hands would never get any grease on them.

No, Cass the friend was far too important to risk.

He closed his eyes tightly to wipe away the ruminations, stretching out his arms to take up as much of his bed as he could, hoping that would help him sleep. No such luck. All it got him was a handful of silk.

Tiny flowers tickled his fingertips, delicate lace tried to twine itself around his wrist. Vanilla vapor drifted over him, an invitation Cass only offered because she needed a guinea pig for her burgeoning femininity.

He stuffed the contraption under his pillow and made himself ignore it. The same way he was going to ignore everything else he’d been thinking since she stood up in his tub and showed him a thing or two about women.

Cass was his friend. He was going to get her through the next two weeks if it killed him. After that, everything would go back the way it was. It had to.

Six days of movie watching, dinner trials and shoe practicing was finally taking its toll on her. She didn’t want to see another chair, another fork or another pair of high heels for at least ten years. Maybe longer.

Burke was a taskmaster regularly. Now, for some reason, this project brought out the worst in him. He sniped, simmered, snapped and worse, withheld food. Tonight, he finally agreed to a “dress rehearsal”, meaning she got to wear something
she
bought.

Rather than wearing anything to up his ire, she went with a long floral skirt that came to mid-calf and swished its lovely teals and pinks around her legs comfortably. Along with the matching set of pumps and regular nylons she still wore the pretty underwear Alice recommended, but she wore those as a standard now. No matter what happened with her makeover, she wasn’t going back to cotton unless medically ordered to. Not when silk was this nice to her. She matched the pink fuzzy sweater to the skirt and held her hair back at the sides with barrettes. Casual, but nice.

Now if only she could get past her brother.

Grabbing her purse—Alice insisted a lady always had her purse—Cass headed down the stairs. Oddly, there wasn’t any sound coming from the kitchen. Hayne usually did the cooking for the house, since no one trusted her to do it without harming something. Instead, the lights were off and there was a note on the small table atop a twenty-dollar bill.

“Order pizza for Dad?” she read, turning around and finding her father already settling down to his usual routine of the Wheel. “Where’s Hayne?”

“He has a date or something. Some little girl he met at the nursery.”

Cass rolled her eyes at the note, then went to the phone. Her father considered every female under fifty a little girl—except her, anyway—and Hayne picking one up at work was no big shock to either of them. Right when she was going to dial the number more familiar to her than her own, she happened to look at the card on the refrigerator. Lola’s business card, with an appointment date for a root touch-up. She picked it out from under the magnet, flicking it against her nail once or twice. It wouldn’t hurt to test the waters, would it? If he didn’t show any signs of interest, Lola need never know. If he did…

“Hey, Dad? Do you remember Lola Velasquez?”

“Who?”

“Lola. Velasquez. She asked about you when I was getting my hair done.”

“You mean the one who runs that hair place?” Good old Dad, sharp as a nub when it came to anything that didn’t involve plants.

“Yeah. She seemed to think you would remember her.”

He coughed. He didn’t say yes or no, she should or shouldn’t remember him. He just coughed.

Suspicious….

Cass stepped out of the kitchen, still holding the portable phone against her chest. “Do you?”

“Um, yeah, I…um…remember her. Why?”

“Well, I was thinking…since Hayne’s going out and I’m not going to be here, why don’t you call her up? See if she’s doing anything.”

“Because she probably is. Pretty ladies like her don’t stay home on Friday nights.” He fit his glasses on his nose and fussed with his chair as if it weren’t already perfectly shaped to his comfort.

“They do if no one calls them,” she sing-songed, waving the phone at him.

He frowned forward, concentrating too hard on the TV when his show wasn’t on yet.

“She had a lot to say about you. I’m sure she’d like to hear from you.”

That got his attention. He looked at her over the top of his lenses, his bushy brows forced together to form one. “She did?”

Cass nodded and held out the phone further. “She said you were romantic.”

He couldn’t have heard that word in more than twenty years. “I don’t have her number,” he mumbled. But he took the phone.

She held out the card.

“She’s probably busy.” He picked out the numbers slowly on the dial pad.

“Then you’ve got nothing to lose, right?”

He laughed, a rusty old sound that made Cass kiss his temple and give him some privacy. By the time he got to the word dinner, she was out the door.

“I thought we were going out.” She was pouting.

Burke couldn’t see her, placing the bowl of Fettuccine Alfredo in the center of the table next to the breadsticks, but he knew she was. Her voice had that quality to it.

“And let word get back to Luke? I don’t think so. We want him as high on his horse as he can get before we knock him down.” He lit the tapered candles and stood back to study the effect. He was no Martha Stewart, but it would work.

“What’s in the box by the door?”

He turned around to catch her bumping the small box with the toe of her shoe. “Homework.”

She looked up, her mouth quirked into an incredulous frown. “More? I barely got those movies turned back to Ernie’s on time as it was.”

“More. We’ve only got a week left and a lot left to cover.”

“What else is there? We’ve got eating and walking down already. The clothes do the rest, don’t they?”

“Not hardly. This is a wedding. It’s a minefield of etiquette. Walking, sitting, eating, yes. But also conversation that doesn’t involve swearing or insulting anyone. And…” He dreaded this part, “…dancing.”

“Dancing?” She was right to look worried. He couldn’t dance and no one had ever taught her.

“We’ll have to wing it.”

“Are we going to practice?”

“Unfortunately.” He wore his most scuffed boots for the occasion. He only wished they were steel toe.

“Start with food, though, right?”

He shrugged. “As good a place as any, I guess.”

Why wasn’t he prepared for her smiles these days? The pink gloss she wore wasn’t spectacular, but for some reason she lit up when she smiled. She looked pretty comfortable in skirts now. She didn’t trip in her heels, which only took a few days to achieve. She still had something a little stiff to her step in them, though. As if she were a little girl playing dress up instead of a woman wearing her own clothes.

He shrugged the thought away, concentrating on more important things. He flicked the lights off over the dining room table and turned to her. “For all intents and purposes, we’ll pretend this is a date. We’re going out to dinner and I suppose the place has a dance floor.” He gestured to the bare bit of carpet next to the front door, where she already stood.

“Will we have fake names too?”

It was hard not to be amused when her eyes danced with the reflection of the candlelight. Oh, hell, they might as well have fun with it. It might help. “Sure, you can be Gwenivere and I can be—”

“Harry.”

He scrunched an eye at her. “Why do I have to be a Harry?”

The brat feigned an innocent look. “I happen to like the name Harry.”

“Fine, your name is Belulah.”

She gaped at him. “That sounds like a cow!”

“Good. Now, Belulah, shall we?”

She narrowed her little cat eyes at him and pursed her lips in perfect lemon-sucking form. “Sure thing, Harold.”

“Harry, darlin’. Only my mother calls me Harold.” He led her to the table, pleased when she flowed against him the way she was supposed to. After pushing her chair in, he took the one across from her.

Watching her between the candles, he saw her unroll her silverware and put the napkin across her lap as if she’d been doing it all her life. It was hard to admit when he was wrong, but he had to when he watched the firelight shimmer off the red waves of her hair, flicker in her eyes and brighten the soft gold of her skin. Right now, there wasn’t a person on earth who could tell him she wasn’t a lady.

If only he could make it last one more week and go away.

“What do you do, Belulah? If I can ask?”

She reached for the serving spoons in the salad and grinned cheekily. “Oh, is this a blind date?”

“Sure, why not?”

She tilted her head, looking up from the corners of her eyes and probably thinking up something wholly impossible. “Well, after I retired from my original profession as a much sought after brain surgeon, I thought I’d take things easy and become a rocket scientist.”

“I can see how that might be relaxing. A hobby below my esteemed intelligence, I must say. I’m an inventor.”

“Ooh, that’s interesting. What did you invent?”

“The first pair of working X-Ray glasses, marketed for boys. I stand to make a fortune off second-graders wanting to see their teacher’s underpants.”

She laughed, throwing her head back with real, relaxed whimsy. Burke forgot for a moment they were playing a game. He let his gaze caress the graceful curve of her long throat, trace the line of her jaw and linger on the petal pink of her lips. She smiled at him, her eyes still glittering with giggles. When had that become more intoxicating than the wine he had yet to sip?

“When does your handy-dandy gadget hit the market?”

Burke went back to his salad. Far less interesting, but immeasurably safer. “Christmas. It’s my present to the world.”