Dirty Sexy Knitting (17 page)

“It’s all my fault, Froot Loop. This has nothing to do with you.”

She shoved him away in a sudden flurry, scooting back on the blanket so there was a good eighteen inches between them. Her mouth was swollen and her eyes accusing as she sat up and stared at him. “What the hell are you talking about, Gabe?”

“I just can’t do this, Froot Loop. You need someone better in your arms.”

“Better? I still don’t know what you mean.”

“My wife. Lynn . . .”

“The one who had no trouble giving you a piece of her mind? Because that sounds like a good example for me to follow.”

“Cassandra.” He reached out to touch her, but let his hand drop with a sigh. “You’re right. She had no problem telling me what she wanted. But I had trouble hearing her.”

In the moonlight, he saw Cassandra’s eyes narrow. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning you have this wrong idea about my marriage, about me.” Damn it. He cursed Charlie and Jay and everything that had gotten between him and the booze that promised blessed forgetfulness. Except Cassandra. He couldn’t curse her, he could only save her from himself by telling her the truth.

“Lynn wanted another child,” he confessed. “I kept saying no. I kept saying maybe later, when I meant maybe never. I told her we’d talk when I stopped working so hard when I meant that I found my job more interesting than I found our marriage. Then, the last year she didn’t ask for another baby anymore. She didn’t ask me for anything.”

Except that he drive his daughter to her dance lesson that afternoon. And if he had . . . how might that have changed the outcome of that day?

“Gabe . . .” There was sympathy in her voice. She touched his arm.

He didn’t deserve it, but Cassandra was so damn tempting that he wanted to forget all the reasons why he couldn’t have her. Why not just let her skin and her scent and her sex take him away from his past and keep him out of the darkness?

His fingers curled into fists. Over the shushing surf and the dying fire, came the sound of a siren. A vehicle, speeding its way down the Pacific Coast Highway. He almost laughed, it was such an apt soundtrack for this moment. They were at a dire crossroads. Their own personal emergency.

But the vehicle’s wail didn’t pass on. They both glanced up, and then jumped to their feet, as they realized that something was happening at their businesses on the bluff above. Jesus!

What could it be? He dashed toward the trail leading upward, certain only that his good intention to keep their relationship from going in the wrong direction wasn’t the only thing at risk tonight.

The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.

—THOMAS JEFFERSON

 

 

 

 

Trying to keep her alarm at bay, Cassandra scrambled in Gabe’s wake up the path that led from the beach to the bluff and both their places of business. She lengthened her stride to keep up with him, but her slick-soled shoes couldn’t find purchase on the gritty sandstone path and she felt herself sliding back, her balance off.

Gabe’s hand latched on to her wrist. How he knew she’d been about to tumble, she couldn’t figure, but he yanked her upright and pulled her along, his pace slowing a little for her shorter legs.

“Don’t fall,” he ordered.

She glanced at the strong fingers clamped around her arm, then shifted her gaze to his face, turned toward her. In the moonlight, she could see his frown. She could remember his emotional confession on the blanket and then those hot kisses. “Working on that,” she replied.
Working on that.

The sirens had stopped wailing, but red lights were pulsing against the face of the sky. As they breached the top of the path, her gaze honed in on them, flashing on top of the pair of red engines. Even in winter, fire was serious business in Malibu.

And the attention of the firefighters, she realized with a sick jolt, was trained on Malibu & Ewe. She froze, stomach shrinking and heart squeezing as she saw flames and smoke emitting from the side of her shop.

Throat choking on a plea, she surged forward. Gabe’s grip, still circling her, hauled her back. “No, baby,” he murmured, clasping her against his chest and wrapping his arms around her. “This isn’t our fight.”

He was right, but that didn’t stop dread from shooting through her bloodstream. She and Gabe were just the audience, as water was trained on the side door of her shop and smoke billowed into the sky. “What happened? Why?” she cried out, as she tried to move forward once more, but Gabe only held her closer against him.

Tears stung her eyes, and her lungs seized in a sharp sob. Her business. Her
life
. Gabe palmed her cheek and pressed her face into his shoulder. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s going to be okay.”

He repeated the mantra as the firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze, as she and Gabe waited around to give information to the sheriff’s deputy who eventually showed up, as the building was secured and the mopping up was completed. It had been a small blaze, caught early.

Gabe said that, too, as he drove her back to their canyon. When he’d insisted on driving her home, even though both their cars were in the parking lot, she hadn’t protested. Preoccupied by nightmarish thoughts of what might have been, she’d let him usher her into the passenger seat of his Jeep.

He glanced over now. “The damage is minimal, sweetheart.”

He never called her sweetheart. No one ever had.

“I heard what they said,” she answered, her voice hoarse. With a cough, she tried smoothing it out. “Lucky for me the nine-one-one call came in from the crew who cleans the fish market at night.”

“And lucky that you didn’t have anything but more of those pallets and some empty boxes in that side storage area. The shop itself isn’t even smoke damaged. Your other storeroom, the back one, where all your inventory is, is fine.”

“I still shouldn’t have left that side door unlocked.” It was something specific to fret over, though there was so much more bothering her. “I thought we might want more pallets later.”

“It wasn’t you who threw burning, wadded up newspaper in there. And the fireproof door between that area and the rest of your shop means the worst that happened is we have to phone the insurance company and for a few days you have to listen to some construction workers’ hammers and their lousy taste in music.”

“Right.” Except that “worst” didn’t include the vulnerability she now sensed in her foundation. That couldn’t be repaired by a guy with a hammer and some Toby Keith cowboy songs.

Gabe continued. “I told them about those delinquents that have been playing with matches around the shop. The sheriff’s people will be looking for them.”

“Heard that, too,” she said, remembering the smoke, the fire, the way her imagination had leaped to total loss. Some other woman would be feeling relieved now. Celebratory. But instead she still felt sick inside. A breath away from falling apart.

When he pulled up to her house, he gave her a once-over as the car continued to idle. “Are you going to be okay?”

She took a breath. “Sure.” Everybody knew that Cassandra Riley could keep it together. She was the epitome of calm, the kind of woman who made others feel that way, too—so certainly she could be okay. Was okay. “I’m totally fine.”

“Liar.”

Her body twitched. “No. Really.” Admitting how shaky she was would only serve to make her feel more exposed. She needed to shore up her defenses, and she only had practice doing that one way—alone. “I’m good.”

“You could fool just about anyone, Froot Loop, but you can’t fool me.”

Her arms creeped around her body, as they’d been wanting to the entire drive, trying to hold herself together. Ah, that was better.
You’ve always been your own best friend
,
Cassandra
, she reminded herself.
Everybody says you’re so warm, so calming, so nurturing. Nurture yourself!

Gabe twisted the key, killing the car’s engine. “Let’s go inside.”

She fumbled for the door handle. “No need for that.” Her voice came out sharp. “I said I’ll be fine.”

Instead of settling back in his seat, Gabe followed her out of the car. She sent him an exasperated look over her shoulder but he just gazed back at her, and she was forced to unlock her door and push it open. With his warmth at her back, she stepped inside.

He followed.

Moosewood, Breathe, and Ed rushed forward. She left them twining Gabe’s ankles and moved into the tiny kitchen where she automatically hit the PLAY button on the answering machine. A hang-up. A reminder of an upcoming Chamber of Commerce meeting. Then the aggrieved tones of Edward Malcolm IV. “Cassandra,” he said. “Now can you admit I was right about closing the yarn shop? You could have been killed in that fire tonight.”

She stilled. Killed? But she’d been on the beach, not at the building on the bluff.

Though with her car in her usual parking space, someone else might not have known that. There’d been a few lights left on in the shop, consistent with the owner working late on paperwork as she so often did.

But the damage had been minimal!

Thanks to the prompt call from Gabe’s cleaning crew. With different timing, the fire could have gained a stronger foothold—and could have trapped her inside.

No. If anything, it had been her livelihood at stake, not her life.

“Cassandra?” She whipped around to face Gabe.

His eyes narrowed. “What now?”

“Nothing.” She jerked her finger away from the answering machine and tucked both hands in the crooks of her folded arms. “Nothing at all.”

Eyebrows rising, he reached around her to punch a button on the machine.

“Hey—” she started to protest, but he just put his palm over her mouth, muffling what she had to say. Rolling her eyes, she tapped her foot while the messages replayed, including the last one from Edward.

Gabe glared at her as that call clicked off. “Why were you covering that up? How the hell could Edward already know about the fire?”

She pushed his hand away from her mouth. “I don’t know how he knows,” she said, sidestepping him and heading for the refrigerator. Turning her back on Gabe, she tried to pretend an interest in hummus, olives, and a plastic-wrapped plate of rice pilaf. The s’mores had ruined her appetite.

Gabe’s hand on her shoulder spun her around, his other slammed shut the refrigerator door. “Cassandra—”

“He surfs the Net all the time,” she said. “Malibu? Fire? I’ll bet it’s already out on the Web. Think how long we were kicking our heels waiting for the sheriff.”

He stomped over to her laptop, which sat on the countertop a few feet away. His body visibly tense, he pulled up the Internet browser, punched a few keys, then grunted as text poured onto the screen. Then he checked his watch. “All right. It’s out and the time on the first posts jive with the time stamp on the message left on the machine.”

“Told you.”

“But hell, Cassandra, could you stop involving yourself with these freaks? First it’s that druggie drummer—”

“Carver’s no druggie!”

“—and now it’s this creepy, can’t-let-go Edward.”

Why didn’t Gabe go away? “So I should start spending time with someone normal you’re saying?”

He’d taken his beanie off on the ride home and when he forked a hand through his hair, it stuck up like a little boy’s. “Yeah.”

Glaring, she stepped up to him, her breasts brushing his chest wall. “Someone normal, say, like you?”

He jerked back his head. “No. Not like me. Not like . . .” Then his eyes closed and he groaned. “Not like me,” he said, yet his arms moved, clamping around her to bring their hips flush, too. “Never like me,” he said against her mouth.

The fear she’d felt at seeing the fire rushed over her again, making her bones watery. She clung to Gabe, her insides shaking. Her imagination had decimated her shop, and it was then she’d realized that her business was the only thing she could count on. The only steady feature in her life.

There were friends. There were even sisters. But everyone had someone else as their number one, and Cassandra only had Malibu & Ewe at the top of her list.

Without it, she’d be lost.

A cold, unsettling, lonely notion. Her business was all she really had. The only thing she took to bed with her each evening. Tonight, she couldn’t let it be the same.

She tore her mouth away from Gabe’s kiss and looked at him through eyes stinging with tears. “Help,” she said, her earlier alarm closing in on full-blown panic. Tonight, she needed something to think about beyond her empty life and her lonely heart, and she couldn’t do it all by herself. “Rescue me.”

 

 

 

It had been leading to this for months, days, two years. Two years’ worth of stifled and subjugated lust that took only two words to set free, Gabe realized.
Rescue me.

Face it. There wasn’t a chance in hell he’d be finding his scruples and stop this time.

“Cassandra . . .” He said her name not to refuse or warn her, but because he could say it now with all the pent-up desire he’d been trying to deny. With a smile, he pressed his forehead to hers.

“For tonight,” she whispered. “Please give me something else to think about.”

As he’d wanted her to do on the beach a few hours ago. And didn’t he owe her sweet payback for the many times she’d taken him away from his dark moods? For the many occasions she’d rescued him from barrooms and booze and the self-destruction that he couldn’t say still didn’t sound damn tempting so often.

But not now. Not tonight. Cassandra was the temptation now.

His neighbor needed him. The only friend in his fucked-up little world was quivering in his arms and he could smell the faint hint of smoke in her hair. He felt something inside him tremble, too. What if she’d been in the shop tonight?