Spectacular Rascal: A Sexy Flirty Dirty Standalone Romance (25 page)

“Come on, Cat. I told you, I didn’t mean any of that.” I reach for her, but she steps away, a stiffness through her shoulders that makes it clear my touch isn’t welcome.

I interlace my hands behind my head and press my skull back into the basket of my fingers, fighting the urge to pull her into my arms, haul her back to our cottage, and make her come until she forgets all the stupid shit I said. “Please, Red. Can’t we just forget the last ten minutes ever happened?”

“Sure thing.” She smiles, a brittle curve of her lips that makes me feel even shittier than I did a second ago. “I’ve had three glasses of wine, so I’m sure most of tonight will be blurry by tomorrow. But I do need to return the detective’s phone call.” She backs away, jabbing a thumb toward the party still in progress. “Tell everyone good night for me? I think I’ll head to bed after I make my call. I’m not used to drinking wine two nights in a row.”

“Let me walk you down.” I start toward her, but she stops me with a shake of her head.

“No, Aidan.” She runs a hand through her hair, wrapping the silky strands tight around her fist. “I said things will be blurry by tomorrow, but right now I remember every word you said. And I don’t really want to walk anywhere with you.”

My eyes squeeze closed as a wave of regret punches me in the gut and the throat and a few places in between. “Fuck, Cat, I’m sorry.” I open my eyes, searching hers. “How many times do you want me to say it? I’ll say it a hundred times if that’s what you need me to do. Because it’s true. It’s the only true thing I’ve said in the past—”

“Seriously, Aidan,” she says, cutting in with a wave of her hand. “We’re fine. I just want to be alone for a while. I don’t need any more sorrys.”

“Then I’ll keep my sorry to myself,” I say, my feeble attempt at a joke falling flat. “Just let me walk with you so I know that you’re safe.”

“I’m safe. I’m sure that’s what Lipman is calling to tell me. Besides, there hasn’t been a car down the road for hours.” She takes another step back, casting her features into almost full darkness. I have no idea what expression is on her face when she says, “All the other visitors are sleeping tight, and soon I will be, too. I’ll see you in the morning. You’re in charge of coffee this time. No apron, though. I don’t think that apron would even come close to covering the subject in your case.”

“All right.” I smile, but it tastes sad on my lips. “I’ll take the bottom bunk tonight? Give you the top?”

I wait for her response, praying that she’ll say I should join her on the top bunk and prepare to properly atone for my sins. But instead, she says, “That sounds good. Good night, Aidan.”

“Good night.” It’s just good night, but as she turns and starts down the path leading between the vines, heading toward the lights of the cottages, it feels like good-bye.

I ball my hands into fists at my sides and watch her go, hating that I’ve fucked things up. Why couldn’t Jim have kept his plans to turn my future kid into his barrel-making slave to himself—at least for another week or two? By then I would have been back in the city, and I would never have answered a phone call from my dad with Cat in the room. Because I fucking know better. When my guard is up, I know not to leave any cracks in my defenses for crap that makes me feel like shit to crawl inside.

But then there are no cracks for the other things, either. For the good shit. For hope and happiness and all the things she makes you feel.

Can it really work this way?

Can you shut out the bad without shutting out the good, too?

I don’t know. But I know I have to make things better with Red. I’m not even close to being done with her, with us, with whatever we’re going to be to each other.

“I’ll make it up to you,” I whisper to her retreating shadow, silently sending another apology her way before rejoining the party

Back at the table, I make Cat’s excuses to Julie, ignore my father, and promise the adorable couple who brought dessert to take the extra strawberry shortcake back to the cottage so Cat can have some in the morning. I help finish off a bottle of blush wine Julie opened to pair with the strawberries and then take charge of gathering all the recyclables into the wheelbarrow and the compost into an empty salad bowl to be added to the pile in the back yard.

I force myself to go through the usual “post dinner party” motions, ignoring Julie’s probing stares and my father’s artic shoulder, reminding myself that this could be worse.

Cat’s hurt and disappointed, but she’s safe and sound and will be sleeping in the bunk above mine tonight, close enough for me to hear her breathe and for my silent “forgive me” vibes to hopefully penetrate her outer layer of defenses. Really, in the scheme of things, she’s being pretty damned cool about this.

Pretty damned cool…

“Shit,” I curse, pressing the salad bowl in Julie’s hands.

“What?” She blinks up at me in the glare of the motion-activated floodlight by the barn. “What’s wrong?”

“Cat’s never this cool when she’s mad,” I say, breaking into a run.

“What?” Julie calls after me. “Aidan, what’s wrong? Did you and Jim have another fight? I told him not to say anything about weddings yet, but he never listens to me.”

“I’ll explain later,” I throw over my shoulder, knowing there’s no time to waste.

Cat and I are both older, wiser, and generally more sane and rational than when we were in college. We’ve grown up, settled fully into our adult skins, and learned our lessons from the mistakes we made in the past. Hell, after eleven years we’re practically different people.

Except that we aren’t. Not really.

My dad still gets under my fucking skin like nothing else, and I’m betting money Red still only plays it cool when she’s truly devastated.

I run faster, hoping I’m wrong, but when I get to the cottage, I’m not surprised to find no sign of Cat. I check the main house and the barn and then do another check of the cottage and the back seat of Shane’s Rolls just in case, but Cat’s nowhere to be found. She’s vanished, like an animal slinking away to lick its wounds, the way she always has.

She’s still the same Panties I knew in so many ways.

Exactly, genius. Which is why being with her feels so right.

You say you’ve never been in real love, but the truth is you’ve never fallen out of it. You’ve been in love with that girl since you were both kids, and now you’ve gone and fucked things up one day into the rest of your life.

With another curse, I double back toward the main house again. I’ll tell Julie what’s happened and get her advice. I think I’ve searched everywhere Cat could possibly be, but another woman might have a better gut instinct. And in any case, I need Julie to keep an eye out for Cat, to promise me she’ll take care of Red if she shows up on her doorstep in the middle of the night, needing a glass of water and a place to crash.

Cat may not want anything to do with me, but I still need her to be safe.

I need it like I’ve needed few other things in my life. As long as she’s safe, there’s a chance she’ll forgive me, that she’ll see I’m flawed and clueless at times, but that I’ll make up for it by loving her. Loving her all the ways she needs to be loved, ways only I can love her because I’m hers and she’s mine.

But even as I hope for the best, something deep in my gut insists that Cat is gone. Maybe for good.

And then, halfway to the main house, I get a call from Lipman, and I learn that Cat never called him back. I learn that the sting operation was a success except for one thing, one detail, one person who wasn’t where he was supposed to be tonight.

One Nico Mancuso, who has left the city and is suspected to be en route to Ithaca, New York.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

And now Catherine Elizabeth Legend calls a Time Out.

Hey, you. Yes, you.

The one flipping the pages of this novel.

You’re probably thinking this is the chapter where we get a brief glance into the heroine’s POV as she runs back to her cottage, devastated by the stupid, hurtful things the hero said. Maybe you’re expecting tears or anger or a tormented interior monologue about how stupid it was for her to carry a torch for the one who got away for so long, when she knows damned well that the man in question isn’t capable of forming a lasting relationship.

But that’s not happening.

I refuse to go there. There’s no point in going there. Aidan is who he is, and I am who I am, and if we were meant to be, we would have come together the first time around.

But we didn’t. And that’s just fine.

More than fine. I
like
who I am without Aidan Knight. I have a great job, wonderful friends, the most adorable dog in the universe, and the rest of my life ahead of me to get over the nightmare with Nico and a certain big, stupid, beautiful idiot who made me think that dreams could come true. Even crazy romantic dreams.

But I don’t want to play the romance game anymore.

I would rather be in a women’s fiction story. Maybe Julie and I can band together, kick the stubborn, pigheaded men out of her house, and run the winery ourselves. She’ll be the mother figure I’ve always wanted, I’ll be the daughter she never had, and we’ll be so,
so
happy.

At least for a few chapters.

Until it’s revealed that Julie has early onset dementia. Then I’ll have to spend the rest of the book taking care of her as her health worsens, all while learning valuable lessons about the fleeting nature of time and the mercurial disposition of Fate. And maybe somewhere in there, right before the black moment, when we learn Julie isn’t responding well to her treatments, I’ll have an affair with the guy hired to run the harvest.

But that won’t be part of the central plot, and he definitely
won’t
break my heart.

Yes, we’ll all end up crying at the end of the story when Julie walks into the lake—choosing suicide during a lucid moment in order to be the architect of her own death—but there will be hope, too. There will be kittens born in a corner of the barn, or a new grape clone named after Julie. Or maybe I’ll find out I’m pregnant with the harvest drifter’s baby, and the book will end as I realize that Julie has taught me how to be the mother I want to be. I’ll stand with my hand on my belly as I gaze out over Lake Cayuga and wish for a girl so I can name her after the woman who was my chosen family.

Or if that’s too depressing, we could go with some speculative fiction.

Maybe Aidan and I wake up in the woods eleven years ago with no idea how we got there, but with all our memories intact, and we have to sort out the mystery of our future-past. Or maybe we come home from work one afternoon to find that we’ve both metamorphosed into giant insects. We have a huge argument about who has to make dinner now that we both have feelers instead of hands and end up ordering pizza and eating the delivery boy.

That
could make for some compelling book club discussion.

Is our transformation a statement on the current socio-political state of the Western world? Or maybe it’s representative of the author’s growing sense of alienation from the romance genre. Or maybe it’s just a really creepy way of saying that love is hard, and sometimes it turns perfectly decent people into nasty, acid-spewing insects who lash out at those around them instead of examining their relationship and making positive changes.

Or maybe we should just stop this story right now.

Before I cry.

Before I start to hate myself for jumping straight into the deep end of the emotion pool after less than forty-eight hours with the best friend I never thought I’d see again.

Stop before a man steps out from behind the door to the cottage and clamps his hand over my mouth, whispering, “Did you miss me, Catherine?” as he jabs something sharp into my neck.

I flinch, pain flooding through my shoulder, and my muscles going limp. I lose consciousness in the middle of a thick-tongued call for help.

And to be perfectly honest, as I black out, my last thoughts aren’t of giant bugs or book club questions or mother figures. My last thoughts are of Aidan and how much I wish I’d stayed with him and fought for us instead of running away. Because I’m in love with him, of course I am, of course I always have been, from the moment I saw his stupid, furry face.

So I guess this is a love story, after all.

And I guess we should get back to it before it’s too late to prove that, with enough love, it’s possible to find a way back to the precious things you lost.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Nico knows she’s here. He knows. He knows. He knows…

The knowledge squirms through my head like a flesh-eating worm devouring my sanity. I should never have brought Cat here. I underestimated her ex a second time, and now she might not live long enough for me to make up for my mistake.

Not even the police suspected that Nico was tracking Cat’s credit card purchases, or that our stop at the mall would tip him off that she was with me upstate, but that doesn’t matter. I should have stayed glued to her side until I knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was safe.

Now my only shot at making this right is to get to her before Nico hurts her.

I turn on every light at the main house, grab a flashlight from the cupboard for good measure, and search the ground around each exit for clues. Thanks to Cat, I know a little about tracking and how to read the story of footprints in the dirt. But the footprints leading to Dad and Julie’s place all belong to dinner guests and a coyote who circled the gate around the chicken coop in the backyard several times before running into the woods between here and the lake.