Michele Dunaway - Sweeping The Bride Away

He gestured with a French fry. “So you were saying, about the house?”

She blinked as the French fry disappeared. Darn her. She’d been staring at his lips! “Oh. Right. It’s all Lillian’s fault.”

“Lillian?” His dark-brown eyebrow shot up and Cassidy again noticed his eyes. Those bedroom blues had turned boardroom. He was actually interested in what she was saying. Danger signals went off in her head. Whoa, she thought. Time to stop drinking beer.

She reached for the plastic dish holding the remaining peanuts. She should at least eat something. “Lillian’s my mother-in-law. Well, she’s not my mother-in-law. Not yet. Not ever if I could help it. She means well, but…”

Cassidy shuddered. Immediately forgetting her resolve, she took another sip of her third beer. She tried to gather her thoughts and retrench. Had she just criticized Lillian aloud? “She kept talking and the more she talked, the more he wrote.”

The inspector certainly hadn’t been impressed that Lillian had been the wife of Senator Ed Morris of Texas, or that she lived next door, or that she could get him fired. He’d just kept writing, turning the paper over, filling the back, and then beginning a new sheet.

Even worse, Lillian had remained calm about the whole thing.

“You’ll just need to build a new house,” Lillian had said. “I’ll talk to Ed and Dan about it tonight. If you contracted for one now it might be ready when you come home from your honeymoon. A month in Alaska, doesn’t that sound wonderful? June is the perfect month to see Alaska. It’ll be Ed’s and my gift to you both.”

At that moment Cassidy was glad she’d never taken advantage of Texas’s concealed carry law.

“Sounds pretty bad,” the man next to her sympathized as she finished the story.

“It is,” Cassidy said. He finished his sandwich, and her mouth went dry. What had gotten into her? She’d just told him everything. She never did that. She never drank beer, either, or held conversations with strange but attractive guys in a bar. She blinked. He was gorgeous, enough to be a calendar pinup. She shoved another handful of peanuts into her mouth. Sober. She needed to be sober.

“Look,” he began, “I know some handymen who can help you out. I can call them and…”

“Oh no,” Cassidy managed through the mouthful of peanuts. She shook her head firmly and cut him off. Do not accept favors from strangers in bars. Especially good-looking men like him that would break your heart. Rule number thirteen or something like that in the Single Woman’s Guide to…something or other. “No. No.” She couldn’t believe she sounded so nervous. “Thanks for offering, but I’ll take care of it.”

Somehow she would, although frankly, she had no idea how. Maybe one just looked up handymen under the letter H in the yellow pages.

“Here.” Cassidy almost jumped out of her skin as he handed her a small card. Why was he making her so nervous? Even she could see that it was only a business card. People handed her business cards all the time.

“Uh,” she stammered, suddenly feeling the urgent need to flee and get out from his magnetic proximity. It was either that or kiss him. Where had that thought come from? She would never drink beer again. Ever.

“Take my card,” he said. Then he reached forward and uncurled her fingers. Never had a man violated her personal space like this.

But the rage at his invasion of her space didn’t come. Instead Cassidy felt heat flow through her. Underneath his touch all rational thought evaporated as he closed her fingers around the card. “Call me if you need me.”

Oh, I do, she thought, heat rising into her face. At least the words hadn’t been voiced.

Wait! What was she doing? What was she thinking? Dan. Think of Dan. That’s right. Think of nice, safe Dan who never made her quiver like this. The thought evaporated as Sara walked in the door. Relief filled Cassidy. Finally.

“Look, there’s my friend.” Cassidy jerked her hand away from his, her fingers instantly missing the heat of touching his. She shoved his card in her purse and edged her way off the bar stool. “Thanks for the drink. Enjoy your dinner.” Grabbing her beer, she tottered over to meet Sara.

With a mixture of relief and frustration Blade watched her walk away. Relief filled him because she had been one of those women and he’d actually found himself enjoying the conversation with her. Frustration filled him for just about the exact same reason. She was one of those women, and he’d been enjoying the conversation with her. Would he never learn?

Dee came over and stood for a second as they both watched the two women take a seat at a back booth.

“How was the food?” Dee asked.

“Fine,” Blade replied.

Dee’s expression, as she looked down her nose at him, said it all. “Just fine?”

“You know it was great, like always.” He shoved the empty basket toward her, his concentration still on the woman he’d just been sitting next to.

“Pretty thing,” Dee observed, following his gaze. She could take those liberties. Blade had hired her four years ago when he’d bought the place from the elderly man who owned it. Greg had wanted to retire, and Blade, flush with money, had seen the need to own something that wasn’t just concrete and steel.

“So did you get her phone number?”

“Please, Dee. I don’t even know her name.”

Dee dropped the basket on a tray beneath the bar. “You sure looked like you were getting friendly with her.”

Blade gave a short, bitter laugh. “Please,” he said, denying the attraction he’d felt, that he still felt. “She’s not my type. Heck, she doesn’t even belong here. Can you see her in the back room shooting pool?”

Dee cocked her head and watched as the other waitress, Lisa, took the women’s order. “Maybe not,” Dee replied. “But looks can be deceiving.”

He turned back around so he couldn’t see the women, especially her, anymore. “I’ve never discovered that to be true,” Blade protested, already knowing that whoever she was, she’d gotten under his skin.

At that lie, Dee simply shook her head and walked away.

“SO WHO’S THE GUY?”

Cassidy’s fork hovered over her strip steak. “You mean Dan?”

“No, not him.” Sara said. She pushed a dark hair off of her face. “The guy at the bar who keeps staring at you every few minutes. You were sitting by him when I arrived.”

“I don’t know him,” Cassidy said, spearing her cut piece of meat with such a force that Sara leaned back.

“Well for not knowing him, he sure got under your skin.”

“He did not,” Cassidy said with a vigorous shake of her head. “He’s just a guy sitting at the bar, that’s all. If you’d been on time, I wouldn’t have even been talking to him. You weren’t even your usual fashionably late self.”

“No, but my extremely late self got you next to him,” Sara said. She let her gaze rove over him, and Cassidy found herself bristling. “Man, he’s hot. I’d do him.”

“Sara!”

“What?” Sara looked taken back, as if surprised at the force of Cassidy’s reaction.

“You’re married.”

“Only until the divorce paperwork’s final,” Sara said. “Believe me, I’m allowed to look.”

Cassidy knew that. Never had she been so rattled. It had to be the beer. She stared at the empty bottle in front of her. She’d stopped at three, thank goodness.

Sara turned slightly so she’d have a better view. Cassidy watched as Sara put the end of her pinkie finger in between her teeth and gazed over toward the guy again. “I mean, he’s hot. And you know what they say, that you can tell a guy’s size by the distance between his thumb and pinkie. From the look of his hands…”

“Sara!” Cassidy put her fork down.

Sara’s brow furrowed. “Come on, Cass. Lighten up. You were never this prudish in college.”

“I wasn’t engaged then,” Cassidy said.

“Yeah, well you shouldn’t be engaged now, either.”

“Sara!” Cassidy realized she’d shouted that last one at her former roommate.

“Sorry, Cass. You know me. I call them the way I see them. All your friends are married, and now you’re settling down just because it’s the right thing to do. Believe me, I settled, and look what happened. He cheated on me right from the start.”

“I am not settling,” Cassidy protested. “I love Dan.”

“Dan is dull,” Sara said. “He’s like dishwater. You need it, but you don’t want to keep it.”

“I love Dan.”

“Yeah, as a brother,” Sara said. “I think that you’ve waited so long for Mr. Right you’re settling for Mr. Wrong. Come on, you can’t tell me that you don’t think that guy over there is to die for.”

Cassidy couldn’t get her lips to voice the lie. Instead she found another argument tack. “Yeah, but look where passion got me last time. Jeff the jerk.”

Sara nodded, but didn’t concede. “I’d forgotten about good old J.J. No offense but he was a loser.”

“Yeah, but passionate. He swept me off my feet and burned me bad.”

“True.” Sara thought for a second. “But we all go through the bad ones to find the good ones. Consider J.J. a learning experience.”

Cassidy shook her head. “I don’t have time for more learning experiences. I want children and a family. I’m twenty-eight. Dan is perfect.”

He was. She jutted her chin forward stubbornly.

Sara simply shook her head. “I hope for your sake you’re right.”

“I am,” Cassidy said. As long as I don’t run into that guy again.

She’d throw his business card away as soon as she got home.

IMAGE CONSULTANTS were not supposed to have hangovers. In fact, no one was supposed to have a hangover after only three longneck bottles of beer, then dinner and then another two hours of conversation with only water to drink before either she or Sara had done any driving home. Even that guy had left long before she had.

Cassidy rolled over and shielded her eyes from the bright sunlight pouring in her bedroom windows. Lillian’s mantra suddenly filled her mind. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Make the best of it.”

With that annoying thought, Cassidy sat up straight in bed. Today already sucked, and if today was a crystal ball of the future then she wanted no part of it. She blinked and glanced at the alarm clock—7:00 a.m. Great. Her alarm wasn’t scheduled to go off for at least another fifteen minutes.

Figured. She hadn’t even slept in.

Cassidy flopped back on the pillows and covered her eyes with her arm. Not that she could go back to sleep, anyway. The only concession was that she’d slept soundly, with no dreams of said men to haunt her.

Begrudgingly she rolled out of bed, hit the shower and within forty minutes had seated herself at the breakfast table with the yellow pages.

As she munched a grape-jelly-covered bagel, she frowned. By the time she’d finished the last of the bagel, she was sure lines ridged her brow, as well, creating a look her mother had always chided would give her premature wrinkles.

The yellow pages listed hundreds of contractors, and Cassidy had no clue whatsoever who to call.

Three hours later, after dialing for over an hour, she faced failure.

“Your problems are too small,” one contractor had said. “We don’t handle residential,” another’s haughty secretary had replied. “We can’t put you on the schedule for at least three weeks,” most had told her.

She was already at the Hs. She rose and faced her nightmare. Two steps took her to the stainless steel trash compactor. She’d run it last night when she’d gotten home.