Heaven Beside You (28 page)

“He hasn’t tried to contact you, has he?”

“I don’t think so. My office handles that stuff and nobody has said anything.”

Walking along the ridge at the edge of the road, the snow wasn’t as deep under the trees so she didn’t have to bring her feet up as high with each step. Every part of her felt wrung out and tired. Next time she saw her parents, she’d have to hug them and tell Mom and Dad she loved them. In fact, she should hug Ida and Paul and Ben and select other townspeople, while she was at it.

Cass kept putting one foot in front of the other. She needed to get Jason home and warm. Get him where she could take care of him again, somehow. She could give him her body to blot out the pain of losing a woman he loved, but she could never replace his father.

A glance back revealed he walked with his head down, hands shoved in his coat pockets. That long ago letter seemed to float in the air above his head. What kind of man would have five children and walk out on them? What kind of man could not be proud of the man his son had become?

“Almost home,” she said brightly. She reached back and hooked her arm through his elbow. “You want to make popcorn and watch a movie or do you just want to have sex?”

Jason blinked at her. “No. I think I’ll go to bed. I’m pretty tired tonight.”

“I don’t have any blankets warmed by the fire this time.”

“It’s okay.”

When they reached home and she’d unlocked the front door he went straight for the bedroom, while she checked her messages. Bill Wernick called saying he’d found her truck in the pasture and assumed she’d gotten stuck and walked home. The truck was in his barn with the keys in it, whenever she wanted to come get it. Her mother wanted her to call as soon as she got in because Bill had called them too. Cass heard Jason moving around taking off his clothes and getting ready for bed as she dialed her parents. He’d said he was tired. Too tired for sex. And the clock in the kitchen showed it wasn’t even nine yet.

“Hello?” her mother answered.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Oh, honey, we were starting to worry. Bill said he found your truck but not you. I was giving you another half hour before I called the state troopers.”

“I got stuck and forgot my cellphone so I walked home.”

“That’s fine, honey. We just didn’t know where you were. I started to worry you’d been attacked by wolves or something.”

And people think I have an overactive imagination. Why would wolves attack me when there’s plenty of deer around who don’t look like they might be packing guns?

“You didn’t have your rifle with you either, did you?” her mother asked in another show of mind reading.

“No, but it was fine.” No sounds came from the bedroom. Jason must have already gotten under the covers. She wished she could do something more than hug him, but he didn’t seem to want anything. His father had abandoned him. His
father
. She couldn’t even imagine it. Both her parents had always been there. And Jason had been lying about his father all his life. He must have been too devastated to tell anyone. Why had he told her? Why had he started planning a house for them, when he didn’t plan on staying past the end of next week? Why was he being so quiet?

“Honey, are you there?”

“Sorry, Mom, I was thinking about my cold feet. It was a long walk.” Cass held her breath, waiting for her mother to discover the fib. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t tell the truth. Her mother had already given her blessing to the idea that Cass might sleep with her winter guest and she didn’t know all the details. Probably if her mother knew about Jason’s past, she’d be all for her doing whatever she could to make him feel better.

“Cold feet? You should get out the hot water bottle to help warm your bed up. Did you make sure your guest was warm?”

“My guest?” Terror struck her that her mother somehow knew her guest was in her bedroom warming her bed.

“Bill said he saw two sets of footprints. I thought your guest must have gone with you when you went to see the pasture. I can’t imagine why. It’s just a pasture.”

Smiling at her mom’s assessment, she crouched in front of the dining room cabinet, digging for her hot water bottle.
Just a pasture
had Jason open mouthed with wonder, bowled him over, and he’d been all over the world. The hot water bottle lay buried at the bottom of the cabinet, and she snatched it up. “He liked it. He heard us talking at Ida’s and wanted to see it.”

“He’s probably not used to being cooped up by the winter like this, either. A man like that probably flies off to the Virgin Islands when the weather turns.”

The hot water bottle slithered out of her fingers and fell on her overly tender, thawing feet. “Ow!”

“What’s the matter?”

“I dropped something on my foot. I’m going to fill up this bottle.”

“All right, sweetie. You get warmed up and make sure of your guest. Good night. Sleep tight.”

“Thanks, Mom. Good night.” She couldn’t promise sleeping tight, or at all.

In the bedroom, Jason lay curled on his side facing away from the fire, buried under the blankets. Cass slid the now full hot water bottle under the covers near his feet. He wasn’t anywhere near sleep, but seemed so intent on pretending, she didn’t disturb him. It had been a long, cold hike.

She added two large logs to the fire. The fire leaped up, casting troubling shadows on the walls as she slipped off her clothes and draped them over a chair to dry. For a moment she hesitated, fingering the flannel nightgown she hadn’t worn since Jason moved in. She would have welcomed the soft touch of the cloth against her skin now, knowing his sweet caresses would not be coming.

She turned away from the nightgown and walked around the bed to where Jason had dropped his clothes in a careless heap. The wet cuffs of his jeans had soaked his shirt and sweatshirt already. On the bottom of the pile lay his sopping wet socks. Holding them, she wondered if she should “wake” him and insist he dry his feet, but a glance at his shadowed face stopped her. His feet would dry well enough on the sheets. She draped his clothes on the chair with hers where they would dry and climbed into bed beside him.

Jason’s familiar weight pulled her to the center of the bed. Usually he slept curled around her, his face buried in her hair. They fit together like two spoons in a drawer, knees and hips curved together, his arm draped across her stomach. Not tonight. How long would it take to learn to fall asleep without the whisper of his breath across her cheek?

She propped herself on one elbow and tugged the blanket over his shoulder, allowing her hand to trail across his back under the sheet. He didn’t react. Normally he responded to her every touch, even if only to sigh in his sleep. She wished he would roll over and take her in his arms. His strong chest pressed against her back would feel so good right now. But something had torn between them tonight. She slid her hand around his waist as she fitted her knees behind his and curved her hips around his. She pressed her cheek against his shoulder. Breathing his scent, she closed her eyes.

Jason opened his eyes in the dark room. The clock beside the bed said 1:30. The way he felt, he would have invited a hangover. His head rested somewhere warm, soft, and seemingly safe. Without moving and alerting Cass, he discovered he’d twisted around her in his sleep and now had his cheek resting between her breasts. She had her arm draped around his shoulders and her other hand on top of his head. Her knees hooked over his, trapping him. Getting out of bed without waking her would be tricky, and if he woke her, he’d have to talk to her.

He didn’t want to talk to anyone now. He wanted to slip away and leave a cheery note saying it had been fun, but he had to get home to take care of some business. Never mind that business would be finding another hideout to finish out his exile and lick his fresh wounds.

The slow beat of Cass’s heart pulsed under his ear. He’d watched her shadow as she’d undressed by the firelight last night, and for the first time, not been aroused. Even when she climbed into bed and lay naked against him, stroking his back, he hadn’t wanted to roll over and take her.

He’d wanted to run then, too.

He closed his eyes, which proved to be a mistake. Eyes closed, he could see the letter in his hands.

He’d gone into his mother’s room to find some money for milk. She’d been out working and had taken her purse with her, so he went through the pockets of her thin, ragged winter coat and torn raincoat. Finding nothing, he’d pulled down her church purse. Before he found the dollar bills she kept there for her tithe, he found the letter in a side pocket. The paper was soft from handling, the letter dated the day they’d told him his father had died. Every year on that date, Jason went to the church and lit a candle for his father’s soul.

But according to the thick block letters on this page, his father wasn’t dead. He’d found a woman in Santa Fe he liked better and they were expecting a baby. Too stunned to even tear the letter to shreds, he’d sunk to his knees, reading and rereading it until every inkblot had burned into his mind. His two oldest sisters had been at work, waiting tables to supplement the family income. Connie, the middle child, was out with friends. She wouldn’t have her waitressing job for six more months. Only Tessa had been home, nose in a book, studying for a test. He’d tucked the letter back the way he’d found it and walked out of the house.

The police had dragged him home at three in the morning after a fight in a pool hall. The next day he’d gone to school with no sleep, two black eyes, and a split lip, and he’d managed to keep the truth from his family, the police, and the school counselor.

Jason shifted and Cass moved, moaning in her sleep. She rolled away from him and lay with one arm and one leg dangling off the side of the bed, facing the glowing remains of the fire. He sat up and looked at her. Her face in the firelight was flushed with sleep and tendrils of hair stuck to her forehead.

He trusted Cass. She loved him, but she wouldn’t for long. Not now that she knew the truth. Soon she’d start wondering what his father saw that made him leave. He hadn’t left when the girls were born. When the boy was born, he’d packed up and left.

She’d see what had made his father leave, or her father would. And by then, he would need her too much to lose her.

He slipped out of bed and picked up her yellow silk dress, draped over the chair in the corner, and pressed the material to his face. It still smelled like her. A faint scent of vanilla, ginger and hope. That night two nights ago had been one of the highlights of his life. The little church dance and taking a turn around the dance floor with the town’s one gay man and most of the matriarchs. The hillbilly jam session in the chapel. He’d felt so much like he belonged here. And he wanted to. He wanted to watch Kady and Cori compete for the attentions of some man who wasn’t him, learn Maybelle Carter’s fingerpicking technique from Cass’s father and memorize the words to that haunting ballad Cass’s mother had sung. Most of all, he longed to dress Cass up in beautiful clothes just to have the right to take them off her. He ached to come home once in a while to find her standing in the living room looking so beautiful, his heart wanted to stop beating.

It wasn’t fair. He couldn’t have any of those things. If he tried, when Cass abandoned him for a better sugar daddy, he’d end up even lonelier. Or she’d figure out why his father rejected him and then she’d reject him too. It didn’t matter. She wouldn’t stay. They never stayed. Only his mom and his sisters would remain with him, and they depended on his money and his connections. The guys in the band needed him because he was a great guitar player. None of them liked him. His father was right all those years ago.

He knelt in front of the fire and fed a few small sticks into it. As he moved, trying to get closer to the heat, his foot caught on something poking from under her bed. Leaning down beside the bed, he tugged on the corner of the box.

The banker’s box held carefully filed magazines. He pulled out one from the back and recognized his own smiling face from several years ago. Drawing out another, he saw himself again. Sifting through it, he found the infamous issue of
People
magazine. On page thirty-seven, he found a picture of himself and Stella, smiling on the red carpet of a movie premiere with an artful tear separating them. Cass had everything in that box. So it was a con. She needed him. Nobody could love him.

Something sour coiled in his stomach.

“Jason?” Her voice was heavy with sleep, but still so sweet.

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing?”

“The fire was going out.” He glanced up. Her eyes were closed, so he jammed the magazine back into box and shoved it under the bed. She’d studied her prey. Part of him wanted to keep being conned. Even if it only lasted for a little while, it might be worth the ride.

“Come to bed. It’ll be fine.” She opened one eye.

“I heard what you said.”

“About the fire?”

He didn’t want to continue and couldn’t stop himself. “You said you loved me the other night.”

Stiffening, she sat up, clutching the blankets over her breasts, looking impossibly small and fragile. Either she was really hurt or she was a really good actress.

“We weren’t going to get involved.”

“I know,” she said. “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

“Are you?” Hardly aware he was wearing nothing, he stood. “After all, if you were to manipulate me into loving you, it would get you out of this little burg and you’d never have to worry about money again.”

“What?” Her voice had no strength. “I wasn’t manipulating you.”

“Oh? The nice cozy dance, the little jam you arranged, the dress you surprised me with, the very convenient timing of your confession.”

“I thought it would please you.” Her voice tightened.

“You even conned me into telling you a lie to further soften what I thought was your soft heart.”

She frowned, pulling the sheets higher around her neck. “A lie?”

“My father never walked out on me.” He grinned cruelly, and hated himself for doing it. That story would be worth a lot to the tabloids if they got hold of it. She couldn’t know he’d given her anything worth selling. “I can’t believe you bought that. It works every time.”