Dirty Sexy Knitting (26 page)

The man looked around, caught sight of her, and rose to his feet. Gray slacks, black belt that matched black shoes, a pale blue shirt and a blue and green tie that echoed his blue and green eyes, the mirror of both Nikki’s and Juliet’s. Cassandra had to force her feet to cross the tiled floor.

Her heart pounded as they stared at each other.

He held out his hand. “Cassandra.”

“Yes.” The shake was businesslike. Noncommittal. A disappointment.

Which was ridiculous, really. What did she expect? This distinguished, handsome man didn’t know her.

“Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the chair across from his own. There was a cup of coffee waiting for her there.

“I like mine black,” he said, picking up his own cup. “You?”

Stupid to feel it was like a test. “Sure. Yes.”

No. Never. The only coffee that crossed her lips was the steamed-milk kind that Gabe pretended to leave at the shop by mistake. Just thinking of him steadied her a little and she wrapped her fingers around the ceramic cup to hide their shaking. “Was your return trip to the States smooth?”

It went on for several minutes like that. The most banal of banal conversations, when what she wanted to ask was what had motivated him to be a sperm donor, how the fact that he had children he’d never met had affected his life, if . . .

If he’d watched a lonely little girl sit on a swing at a public park and wondered if she was missing the dad she didn’t know.

Finally, they exhausted generalities and they both offered a little bit more. He mentioned his wife, who had died of a kidney ailment seven years before. She told him about her fascination with yarn and all things textile as well as the shop she had in Malibu.

He mused, “Besides needles, I’m trying to think of some correlation between plastic surgery and knitting.”

She tried thinking, too—how could stitching a wound be like creating a sweater?—but after a few minutes they both gave up and laughed. The laughter was good, she supposed, though now she felt as if she’d failed the exam’s Part B as well.

He asked to be reminded how old she was. “Twenty-nine.” It was the perfect opportunity to bring up the birthday party and ask if he planned to attend, but the words stuck on her tongue.

Another awkward silence passed. “The other two,” her father said. “Nicole and Julie.”

“Nikki and Juliet,” Cassandra corrected on a whisper, guilt tasting as bitter as the coffee as she thought of her sisters. It wasn’t right to bring them into this conversation. She didn’t have their permission to speak of them. “But I don’t think . . .” she started, reluctance clear in her voice.

“What can you tell me about them?” their biological father pressed anyway.

Because he was already bored with her? The swift thought made the back of her neck flame. She was wicked, she thought, curling her fingers into her hands and pressing her nails into her palms. Wicked, because jealousy of Nikki and Juliet shot through her like a burning knife. He’d like them better.

Maybe he’d even love them.

She cleared her throat, trying to swallow the ugly thought. It roiled in her belly and she was angry at her childishness. Ashamed of her neediness.

“I’m really not comfortable speaking about Nikki and Juliet,” she finally said.

After a moment, he nodded. Cassandra blew out a silent breath and relaxed a little. Her father understood. Maybe her father understood
her
.

“My secretary saved those tabloids from last fall and I looked at the photos of you girls,” he said.

She knew the ones he meant. She’d shown them to Gabe not long ago. There’d been color photographs of the three donor sibling sisters.

“Those other two each have one blue and one green eye, like me,” he continued.

“Yes.”

His gaze narrowed on her face. “As a matter of fact, they both look a lot like me—much more than you do.”

Maybe. To be polite, she nodded.

His eyes traveled over her with a clinical detachment. “How certain are you about your research? And how reliable are that clinic’s records, I wonder.” He took another sip of coffee. “Are you really sure that you’re my daughter?”

She couldn’t hear how she responded to that, not with the high ringing sound in her ears. Once she was on her feet, she supposed she gave him some excuse about needing to get back to the yarn shop. She didn’t remember it, or really anything, except that as she beat a hasty retreat from the café that she pushed past Patrick and Reed Tucker. If one of them said anything to her, she didn’t hear that either.

The traffic from Beverly Hills to Malibu snarled, just like her tangled thoughts. Not his daughter? Cassandra thought.
Not his daughter?
If she wasn’t, then Nikki and Juliet weren’t her sisters.
They both look a lot like me—much more than you do.

Meaning not only no father.

But no family either.

That high whine in her ears broke, and the well of quiet in her head was even worse. What now?

What now was that she was on her own again. What now was that she couldn’t share her doubt and pain with Nikki and Juliet when she’d kept the meeting with their father a secret. What now was that the uncertainty and disappointment were hers to bear, all by herself.

Meaning she was more alone than ever.

We cannot destroy kindred: our chains stretch a little sometimes, but they never break.

—MARQUISE DE SÉVIGNÉ

 

 

 

 

“Look,” Marlys said, trailing Dean across the dark parking lot toward Malibu & Ewe, lit brightly because it was Knitters’ Night. “They don’t like me. They’re never going to like me.”

He had her hand in his and he squeezed her fingers yet kept on going, even as her reluctance stretched to the length of both their arms. “I thought you said you needed some knitting help.”

“I don’t need help,” she said quickly. She’d asked for his help and look at the serious consequences.
I love yous
and bodily fluids exchanged. Hearts trembling on the threshold of being broken. Hers, anyway. It was his illusions that were sure to shatter and whatever sweet feelings he had for her would spoil and sour.

Dean glanced back at her, his feet slowing. “When I told you I was going out for beers with Noah and the other guys, you said you’d spend time at the yarn shop.”

Yes, she’d said that, and yes, she even had the bag with her project in it under her arm. She’d agreed to come because she had no spine when it came to Dean. Since that afternoon in her bed she hadn’t wanted to refuse him anything. They’d shared meals, saw movies, found a startling compatibility. Their instant sexual chemistry hadn’t been a shiny object to fake them out. So here she was, accompanying him to the knitting shop where she was certain to encounter her evil stepmother and the woman’s wicked half-sisters.

The mean one would probably take one look at her and this time throw her out of the place. Maybe that would be the trigger Marlys needed to tell Dean the truth.

So far, she’d not come close to confessing about Phil, because she’d told herself that facing her feelings about her father was enough confrontation for the time being. Selfish Marlys had convinced herself she could enjoy a short time with the man she loved without ruining it with truth and honesty.

Except the lack of truth and honesty was worrying at her like Blackie worried one of his rawhide bones. Every time she caught a glimpse of that tear pendant that Dean continued to wear for her, guilt throbbed in her chest.

He reeled her in with a tug on her hand. His tender kiss didn’t melt her apprehension, but it made it even harder for her to refuse him. “C’mon,” he said, starting forward again. “They’re not that bad.”

Behind his back, she rolled her eyes. It wasn’t their badness, but hers that was an issue. He was so nice he couldn’t fathom that she wasn’t nice. He was so good that her being so not good just wouldn’t sink in. His friends saw her clearly though, and they wouldn’t let her forget how they felt about her. “I’m telling you,” she tried one more time. “They’re not my tribe.”

The one she hadn’t had since her army brat days. “They don’t like me,” she added. “I won’t fit in.”

He pulled her close again. “
I
like you. You fit in with
me
.”

Inside her, guilt pounded like truth, demanding to get out. She rubbed at her shoulder and then at her thigh with her free hand, wishing she could spend another hour in the shower, because the longer she held off telling Dean what she’d done, the dirtier she felt.

The bells on the front door of the shop rang out as they entered, a similar jangle to the sound of those at Marlys’s boutique. Heads turned as Dean drew her over the threshold. Six heads, three couples.

Her nerves jittered and before anyone could say anything—like “Beat it” or “Get the hell out”—Marlys curled her top lip in a cynical scowl. “How sweet,” she said, addressing the room. “Everyone all paired up.”

Nikki and Jay sat on a couch, his arm snuggling her close.

Both looking tan and rested, Juliet and Noah stood by a table where a selection of refreshments was laid out.

Cassandra had put the cash register between herself and everyone else in the room, though Gabe was hovering nearby, a frown on his face as his gaze returned to the woman with the rippling hair and Bunny breasts. “Froot Loop,” he said, ignoring the newcomers. “What’s the matter? You’ve not been acting like yourself . . .”

Her eyes on Marlys, Nikki tried rising to her feet as Jay’s hand tightened on her shoulder. “Cookie,” he warned.

Marlys pinned on a flirtatious smile. “Hey, Jay. Long time no see. I remember our night together with pleasure.”

Amusement gleamed in his eyes as he saw Nikki’s face flush with anger. “Marlys. As I remember it, our one date ended early because there wasn’t a spark on either side. Zero fireworks.”

“You’re right.” Sighing, Marlys shot Dean a silent apology for the play on Jay she’d tried as a poke at Nikki. “Duds ville.”

The man she loved winked, confident that the two of them together were the Fourth of July.

Nikki settled back on the cushions, looking as if she’d swallowed her “humph.” Jay laughed and nuzzled her temple. “I didn’t bed them all, Cookie. I keep telling you that.”

Noah didn’t even try faking a welcome as he walked forward. “Don’t think you can stir things up here, Marlys. Leave your troublemaking at the door, or . . .”

His head turned as Juliet drew up beside him and put her hand on his arm. As always, she looked elegant with her golden hair falling to her shoulders and with just a trace of coral lipstick on her mouth. Whatever message she gave her new husband from her blue and green eyes he apparently understood, because he sighed, then looked back at Dean. “You told me you were with her, Dino, but I didn’t want to believe it. I hope you keep a whip and chair handy.”

Juliet grimaced. “Noah—”

“She could have cost me what I value most in the world. I’m not forgetting that.” He shook his head. “Dean should know she has no heart.”

“I think she has a very big heart,” Juliet countered. She switched her attention from Noah to Marlys and there was sympathy written across her face. “Last fall she was hurting.”

And Marlys remembered Dean saying to her then:
It’s other people that you use to take out your pain. You hurt other people so you don’t have to feel a goddamned thing.
But he didn’t remember the moment. He didn’t remember why he’d said it to her and he didn’t remember what she’d done.

The guilt of it kept pounding inside of her though, demanding to be set free. It was hard to hear Juliet over the incessant
bam bam bam bam
.

“Her father,” Juliet was saying. “She loved her fa—”

“Don’t,” Marlys burst out. “Don’t say it.” She broke away from Dean in retreat. Her heels hit the glass of the front door.

Compassion softened Juliet’s face. “Oh, Marlys. You do have a big heart and you did love your father very much.”

But she hadn’t!

That was the truth of it. She’d wanted him to stay nearby and act like a father instead of a soldier—
You’ll be fine
—and when he hadn’t, her love had shriveled and died. All her big heart had been carrying inside it these many years was disappointment and bitterness and a profound fear of loving.

Loving didn’t work out so well for her.

Her hand reached blindly for the handle of the door.

“Don’t go, angel,” Dean said.

Her fingers slipped on the metal knob and the knitting she’d been holding under her arm slipped, too. She clamped her elbow against her side, the needles digging into her ribs, reminding her of what she’d brought with her. The seed of an idea, plus restless hours, plus the sense of impending doom she’d experienced since her first shared night with Dean had grown into something that was nearly complete.

Almost as finished as her brief blissful interlude with the man she loved.

It was time for them both to be done.

Swallowing hard, she stepped toward the center area of the shop. Her gaze skipped from Nikki to Juliet to Cassandra. The shop owner looked as if she were in another world, her gaze distant. It was Gabe who noticed Marlys’s attention.

“Yo, Froot Loop.”

She started, her head jerking toward the man. He nodded at Marlys. “Looks like you have a customer.”

“Oh.” She blinked, and it was clear that she’d registered nothing of the past few minutes. “Marlys. How are you?”

Marlys clutched her cloth bag to her chest and glanced back at the men. Dean had already crossed to Noah, and Jay was joining them. She reached inside her bag. “I need help with this.” Her needles and the length of knitting plopped onto the countertop.