Betting Hearts (4 page)

He grumbled into what was left of his beer. “The point is he’s doing it to rub her face in it and you’re helping him.”

“You look like a grumpy four-year-old. Stop whining. If you don’t want it to happen, go talk to Luke. I got a business to run.”

“Like Luke’s going to listen to
me
.”

May gave him a steamy look. “You’re a good-looking man. Play on his…masculine side.”

His disgust only made her laugh. “You’re a sick woman, May Belle.”

“And you’re taking up space in my bar. Go home, go work on a car or something. Better yet, go talk to CB. I’ll bet money if
you
didn’t know anything about this yet, neither does she.”

A whole host of words his mother would scrub his mouth out for fought for first dibs getting out of his mouth. Why didn’t he think of that? Hanson might not be smart, but he was fast. No doubt he’d take first opportunity to rub this in her face. Burke jumped off the stool, calling behind him to put the bill on his tab. Eight minutes later he entered the house hoping to hear absolutely nothing. Instead he heard the thing he dreaded more than anything on earth.

Singing.

With one off-key, high-decibel, off-time note, he knew he was already too late. It wasn’t right what CB could do to Garth Brooks. He shuddered every time she tried to attempt “Thunder Rolls”. Especially bad, not only was she singing, she was suspiciously sniffing and gasping into skipped words. She was also nearly a whole line behind.

He headed into the kitchen, where the white CD player was failing to drown her out. He hit the stop button and pushed open the back door. He found her exactly where he expected; in the flowerbeds on her knees, her hands sunk into the still muddy earth between his rosebushes. Whenever she was upset, she tried to sing and till the entire earth single-handedly. She didn’t abandon her task, continuing to turn over the dirt like an earthworm gone wrong.

“Garth threatened to sue last time, remember?”

No response.

“So did the neighbors.”

Silence.

“Cassie?”

Then he heard the most awful thing. A full blown sob. Her shoulders hitched and everything. He stood there, shocked to immobility while she lowered her head and cried. What finally made him realize this wasn’t some horrible nightmare was when she picked up her hand to cover her face.

“CB, no!”

She jumped, startled by his voice, plopping her rump on his thick grass and setting her elbows on her parted knees. Mud clumped to her fingers, falling in chunks between her feet. Her hair was still wet from her bath, rippling and unruly, strays in all directions, hanks dried into strings around her face. Those big green eyes of hers glistened miserably at him as tears poured over her spiked lashes.

God, why not shove a stake through my gut, Cassie?

“Honey, it isn’t that bad.”

“He’s
marrying
her!” Brand new sobs bubbled out of her while she tried to say something else, but the lump in her throat seemed to keep her from making any intelligible noises.

“I heard.”

“He-he-he-”

Burke stifled a groan. This was going to take a while. She wasn’t this goopy when Luke left her practically at the altar. He grabbed the hose and brought it over to her, kissing off the rest of his day. She extended her hands at his gesture. He turned on the spray, sending mud dripping off them. Once she was reasonably clean, he helped her to her feet and led her back into the house.

She stopped crying by the time he got her to the couch, thank God, but she curled up on a blanket and turned away from him, which wasn’t an improvement. He let her stay there, long enough to start some coffee. He carried in two mugs, one sweet and creamy the way she liked. She hadn’t moved an inch and she didn’t twitch at the scent of the coffee. Bad sign.

The white square of paper caught his eye when he put her mug on the coffee table. He tilted his head to inspect it, finding the gold-embossed pattern of two swans forming a heart with their necks.

A wedding invitation.

Cass knew it was stupid to be this upset over someone like Luke. Actually, it wasn’t Luke bothering her. It was that he was right. How there weren’t little horned ice skaters outside, she couldn’t say, but it was true. She didn’t know the first thing about being feminine. Being a girl. Being a wife. Worse, she was never going to find out. Burke might be uncomfortable for a moment in his otherwise blithe existence, but dammit, she deserved to cry about it.

Sitting in a heap on Burke’s couch, she could see her entire dismal eternity spreading out before her. Friday night poker games until she was as old as Ben Friedly, one of May Belle’s infamous regulars down at Shaky Jakes. The man was eighty if he was a day and not one person in town remembered him being married, having a date or even liking a girl. Then again, no one but Ben remembered the Depression with any clarity either. The point, the one she could see in the not-so-distant horizon, was she’d already left her best chances behind her.

She was doomed to always be Little Miss Mud Pie, Burke’s good-buddy-good-pal, Hayne’s not-so-little sister, champion of the Annual Beer Guzzling Contest three years running. She couldn’t sing, couldn’t dance, couldn’t date, couldn’t cook, couldn’t do her hair or her makeup, wouldn’t know what to do at a baby shower—much less with a baby—and had never worn a pair of high heels in her life. She was going to spend eternity knowing the best she’d ever been able to scrounge as a boyfriend was Luke Hanson. That alone was depressing. The rest was gravy to boil in.

Busy dwelling in the bleak abyss of her future she didn’t notice Burke picked up the invitation until he was reading it.

“This guy has no class at all,” he grumbled.

“What, you don’t think it’s acceptable to cross out the vital information on your engraved wedding invitation to scribble corrections in the borders?” she asked through swollen sinuses. “I thought it was the
in
thing this year.”

“He’s only doing this to get back at you for breaking his nose.”

She tossed him a sour look. “Thanks, Burke. Where would I be without you to point out the obvious?”

He shrugged, back to his reading. The next part was the real kicker. It was what sent Cass out to the backyard in the first place.

“CB—we’ll understand if you can’t make it. We know how hard it would be to find a tux in your size.” Burke read, monotone, then inspected her from head to toe. “Why would a woman need a tux?”

“I’m only a technical woman.” Cass held her still cold hands over her puffy eyes, sighing with relief. “I’ve got the equipment, I don’t have a clue how to use it.”

“Is
that
what he said?”

She appreciated his burgeoning anger, but really, who was he kidding? “Basically.” She’d never tell him what Luke
actually
said.

“CB—”

She turned her head to face him. He had the scrunched frown on his face that didn’t belong there this time and they both knew it. “He’s right, Burke. Even Luke gets to be right once in a while. Everyone knows it. I’m an utter failure in the girl department. I don’t deserve what little breast I have.”

“Uh—”

She looked down at the slopes barely denting the shirt on her chest. “No one notices them anyway.”

“Hon—”

“I mean, when was the last time
you
ever looked at them?”

Burke blinked at her as if she had pointed a loaded shotgun at his head.

She sighed. She probably had. Poor guy, he didn’t deserve this. “Never mind.”

At least he breathed again.

“I just…I wish I had something to offer a man.”

“You have plenty to offer,” he practically choked out. God, the only thing he did worse than bluffing was out and out lying.

“My landscaping business? Yeah, men fall all over themselves for women with green thumbs.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself.” He tossed the card back on the table with disgust. It lay face up, the feathered edges catching her eye. What would it have been like, to mail some of those instead of the plain beige cards printed from her own computer? Put one in a photo album? Or let your kids touch it with gentle awe years and years later? She’d never find out. She’d never know what she was missing. Didn’t that make it worse?

“I’m facing facts. I’m not girl material. I’m not wife material. I’m exactly what Luke said I was—one of the guys.” So much of a guy he felt gay for being with her. Her chest tightened painfully, stomach clenching until she swore under her breath. “I need to accept it and move on.”

“Cassie, the last thing on earth you should accept is the opinion of an ass like Luke Hanson. The man couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You really think
he
can make a judgment on what makes you a woman?”

Probably not, but it didn’t take a genius to know she wasn’t going to find a man interested in spending the rest of his life with her. Why would he bother? She wasn’t attractive, wasn’t sexy on her best day and had no interest in making anyone feel better about his hard day when she had one of her own. No one other than Burke, anyway. Which worked out. Odds were, he’d be the only man not blood-related to her staying with her till the day she died. She turned to him. “What do
you
think makes a woman feminine?”

He leaned back into the couch and pulled her feet onto his lap by her ankles. “I don’t know. Looks aren’t it though. All that’s just training. You might not know all the girly magazine stuff, but you’re a woman where it counts.”

She wiggled her toes so he’d rub. “Yeah, where’s that?”

“I don’t know, CB.” His palm took hold of her foot firmly, the heel of it pushing small circles against her arch. “Femininity is mystery, not an organ. You know it when you see it. You’ve got it in there. Somewhere.”

Way to sound reassuring, Burke.
“Sure I do.” Right where he was rubbing if the tingles and urge to groan were any indication.

“You do,” he insisted, ceasing the pressure from his hand.

She opened her eyes, ready to insist he get back to his work, and met his glare.

“I see it all the time.”

She gaped. No one else in twenty-eight years had seen it, including her. Burke bowed his head, picking up the other foot to massage, signaling the topic closed.

She frowned. He couldn’t say something like that and pretend there was nothing else to discuss. When did he see it? Why didn’t he mention it? She wanted to see it. She hated looking in the mirror and seeing what Luke did. Couldn’t he—

“No, Cassie.” He didn’t pick up his head, but she could feel the pressure on her instep change.

“You don’t know what I was going to ask.”

“I don’t have to know. You’re upset. You’re hurt. Anything you think up right now is going to get you in a world of trouble. It always does.”

Cass folded her arms and set her foot bouncing in time with her irritation.

He followed it with his hands for a moment before dropping them from her entirely. “Fine, but it’s gonna be a bad idea.”

“Think you could help me bring it out?”

He laughed, absently returning to his task, relief evident. “It’s not a dinner tray.”

“No, but…” An idea formed—an odd, fanciful, fascinating idea. Something Burke was guaranteed not to approve but sounded like exactly the right thing to do. “You said it’s all in the training, right?”

Uh-oh.
She could see him rethinking his laxity. His hands on her foot tightened, his back straightening with the scent of danger. She rushed to explain herself before he wigged out completely.

“You could teach me!” Oh, oh it’d be perfect. Wouldn’t Luke’s jaw fall off if she came into the church dressed to the nines and so sexy that every man in Rancho Del Cielo was overcome with desire?

“No, I couldn’t!” He bumped her feet off his lap as if she’d caught fire.

Maybe she had. The idea had merit.

“Sure you could. You said you see my femininity all the time. You said—”

“I was trying to make you feel better.”

“Were you lying?” The very real possibility brought her pause.

His discomfort started to resemble a blush. She never knew Burke’s face was capable of reddening. “Uh…no, but CB—”

“Then you
can
do it!”

“No.”

“Yes!”

“No! I’m not doing anything with your femininity and that’s final!” He got off the couch and stomped to his bedroom.

Cass lay back into the leather cushions, smiling only when he slammed the door to make his point. So he walked away. He’d done it before. He always came back. It didn’t matter if he wasn’t there to help her at the moment. She already had a plan, a progressive way to prove to Luke—to everyone—that she wasn’t someone to be pitied or dismissed.

Cassandra Bishop was going to become a girl.

“This isn’t your night, Sel,” Alice Panyon crowed to her husband a few hours later. She pulled in her third pot of the night with a smoky laugh.