Before she could say anything, Jeff—who was about three inches behind her—said, “What the hell are you doing here?”
Cassie grimaced before turning around. “He is my date!” she almost shouted. “Not that it is any of your business.”
“Is something wrong?” Thomas asked from the doorway.
Cassie glared at Jeff. “Are you happy now? You woke your father and he needs his rest.”
“I wasn’t the one who was shouting, you were.”
“Brent,” Thomas said, smiling as he held out his hand to shake. “Are you taking our Cassie out?”
“Yes,” Brent said, grinning. “I thought we’d go to lunch, then see a plantation or two. If that’s all right with you, Houston,” he said to Cassie.
“It sounds wonderful.” She started to say that she needed to put the flowers in water, but she didn’t want to take the time. From the way Jeff was acting, he might do something to make her stay home.
“Could I take those for you?” Thomas asked, holding out his hands for the flowers. “You young people go and have a good time. Take all day. Stay out until tomorrow. Elsbeth and I can handle things here.”
“Houston!” Jeff said, as though coming out of a trance. “Why are you calling Cassie Houston?”
“An inside joke,” Brent said as he and Cassie exchanged smiles.
She picked her bag up off the table by the door. “I don’t know how long we’ll be,” she said and thought how ridiculous it all was. You would have thought she was leaving on a two-year-long trip around the world.
“I need to speak to you, Goodwin,” Jeff said, his jaw rigid and his voice serious.
Cassie put her arm through Brent’s. “I think we’ll be off now.” She looked at Jeff. “You can talk to him later. Bye.”
As quickly as she could, she went outside and closed the door behind her.
8
WHENCASSIE UNLOCKED THE DOORto Jeff’s house, she made sure she made no noise. The lamp on the hall table was on so she could see the stairs. She silently put her purse down and the big tote bag of things she’d bought that day—mostly gifts for Thomas and Elsbeth—and tiptoed toward the stairs. When Jeff’s shadowy form appeared at the entrance into the family room, she jumped, her heart pounding.
“It’s after midnight,” she said, her hand to her heart. “What are you doing up?”
He didn’t smile. “Come with me,” he said seriously, then turned and walked back toward the kitchen.
Cassie was tired and wanted to go to bed, but she followed him. Truthfully, Jeff’s attitude that morning had stayed with her all day. Why had he acted so…well, jealous?
She followed him into the kitchen, and there, sitting on the counter, was a tall glass of milk and a plate of the cookies she’d baked.
“I thought you might be hungry,” Jeff said, his face still solemn.
Cassie went into the kitchen, got a roll of plastic wrap, covered the cookies and milk, put them in the refrigerator, then poured herself a cold glass of white wine. At last, she turned to look at him. “I’m not hungry, and even if I were, I’d want something besides cookies and milk. Could you please tell me what’s bothering you?”
He sat down at the breakfast table, his hands folded in front of him. “First of all, I want to apologize for the way I acted this morning. It was just a shock that you were going out, that’s all.”
She took the seat across from him, then leaned back in the chair, sipped her wine, and waited for him to continue.
“Elsbeth missed you today. We all missed you.”
“Last Saturday all of you went out without me and I didn’t hear any talk of missing me.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Has something happened?”
“I guess so,” he said and gave her a half smile. “I think that today it hit me that maybe you could leave us.”
Cassie couldn’t help it, but she drew in her breath and clutched the stem of the wineglass so hard it almost snapped in two. She put the glass on the table. Was this it? she wondered. Was this every dream she’d had since she was twelve? Was he going to say that the thought of her leaving had made him realize that he loved her?
“I didn’t mean to shock anyone,” Cassie said softly.
“You only shocked me, no one else.”
He has a disarming way of smiling, she thought. It was dark in the room except for the kitchen lights. There was a light over the breakfast table, but neither of them had turned it on.
“So how was your date?” he asked.
“Great,” she answered. “We had a wonderful time. Brent and I—”
“Cassie,” Jeff said slowly, interrupting her, “I can honestly say this with affection, as I have come to honor and esteem you greatly in this past year, but I think you should be cautious about that young man.”
Honor and esteem me? Cassie thought. “Do you know something bad about him?” she asked.
“A little.” He paused. “Okay, I know more than I’m letting on. I don’t think he’s what he seems, and I feel that I must warn you to be cautious with him.”
“Could you be more specific?”
“I really can’t,” Jeff said. “I’m not at liberty to tell what I know, but I do feel the need to warn you.”
Cassie took a deep swallow of the wine. Maybe she should be grateful that Jeff was trying to admonish her about a young man she hardly knew, but she didn’t feel gratitude. “I guess I should take your advice and call off any future dates,” she said quietly.
“I think that would be best,” Jeff said, giving her a look that said she was a very smart girl.
“I guess that, all in all, it would be better for me to stay at home, meaning here in your house, and take care of your child and your father, to cook your food, wash your clothes, and run your errands.”
Jeff’s face lost its look of helpfulness. “That’s not what I meant! It’s just Goodwin who I object to.”
“Why?” she asked, leaning across the table toward him. “Because he’s young and handsome and because he likes me? He does things for me . Can you imagine that? He takes me places and buys me lunch. He laughs at my jokes. He—” She picked up the wineglass and drained it.
“He does not treat me as though I’m his eleven-year-old daughter and feed me milk and cookies.” She stood up and glared down at him. “For months now, I’ve been dreading the moment when you would tell me I was going to have to leave your house. I’m sick of the way I wake up and wonder if this is the day I’ll be fired.”
“Cassie, I—”
She put her hand up. “I can’t take it anymore. In the last week I’ve had fun. I’ve had freedom from—” She couldn’t say any more or she’d say that she’d had freedom from thinking that he was the only man in the world for her. “Let’s just say that in this last week I’ve been awakened from a dreamworld and I’ve seen reality. Jefferson Ames, I hereby give you my two weeks’ notice.”
Blinking in disbelief, Jeff stood up. “Cassie, what are you saying? You can’t quit. Elsbeth loves you. You’re like a—”
“So help me, if you say that I’m like a mother to her, I’ll deck you. Really, I will.” Say something about us , Cassie wanted to shout at him. Tell me you were jealous of Brent because you love me.
But Jeff just stood there, looking at her, seeming not to know what to say. “We all need you,” he said at last. “You can’t quit.”
What little hope Cassie had escaped her in a great gust of air. One moment she was so angry she could have entered a boxing ring, and the next she just wanted to go to bed.
“Yes, I can,” she said tiredly. “I’ll put it in writing tomorrow. Good night.” She turned toward the back stairs. Ten minutes later, she was in bed, and in spite of all the emotion of the last few minutes, she went to sleep at once.
Jeff wasn’t surprised when he heard his father’s voice. He’d sat back down at the table, his head in his hands.
“You really blew it this time,” Thomas said as he handed his son a glass with a shot of single malt whis
key and kept one for himself. He sat down across from Jeff.
“Completely. Totally. What am I going to tell Elsbeth?”
“I think Elsbeth may leave with Cassie.”
Jeff looked up at his father, questioning.
“Althea offered Cassie a job cataloguing that mess she has in the attic, and being her assistant.”
“What? Fetch her slippers and make her tea?”
“It’s an easier job than she has here.”
Jeff took a gulp of his whiskey. “What did you find out this week?”
“Not much. For all that she talks nonstop, Althea Fairmont tells very little.”
“You don’t like her,” Jeff said—a statement, not a question.
“On the contrary. I’ve never met a more charming woman. If I didn’t know all I do about her, I’d be half in love with her.”
“You and a million other men,” Jeff said.
“Maybe so, but I imagine that a lot of men are happy just to have known her. So what are you going to do about Cassie?”
“What can I do?”
“Tell her you love her. Ask her to marry you.”
“Funny,” Jeff said. “You should go on the stage. I did that once, remember? I was madly in love, got married, had a baby, then my wife was murdered because of me.”
“Lillian’s death was a tragedy, I agree, but it doesn’t always happen that way. Your mother and I were married for thirty-eight years and nothing bad happened.”
Jeff looked at his father with his eyes wide. “What about Munich? Barcelona?”
Thomas waved his hand in dismissal. “Close calls, that’s all. The difference was that your mother knew what was going on. You kept Lillian in the dark. She knew nothing about you. Not the truth anyway. If Lillian had known the truth, she wouldn’t have believed those men so easily. She wouldn’t have stepped into their car with them. She wouldn’t have—”
“Died,” Jeff said. “If she’d known the truth, it wouldn’t have made any difference. They would have found her anyway. No matter what, I couldn’t prevent it. I couldn’t protect her.”
“And that’s why you teach now,” Thomas said. “You’re not in the field anymore.”
“Not in the field?” Jeff said. “Then what do you call living next door to Althea Fairmont and that time bomb mind of hers? And Roger Craig was put on the other side of her. As long as I could keep things quiet, everyone was safe, but now I think Cassie saw Roger at Althea’s house, and Cassie is dating Goodwin.”
“He seems like a nice enough young man.”
“He’s trained to kill people,” Jeff said, glaring at his father.
“So are you. So am I.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t want Cassie involved in this. She’s a sweet kid. I’ve known her—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Since she was in diapers. Or thereabouts. But she’s grown up now, and she deserves to have a life of her own, a home of her own, and children of her own.”
“And I can’t give her any of those things,” Jeff said glumly.
“You’ve given all of them to her for the past year except without the glorious sex you could have been having.”
“‘Glorious sex’? Althea’s getting to you, isn’t she?”
“She’s certainly made me remember some things. But you’re the problem now. What are you going to do about Cassie? And how are you going to deal with Elsbeth when she’s told that you’ve made Cassie leave? Are you going to tell her that Skylar will be her new mother?”
“Give me a break! That woman is driving me crazy. Another month and we’ll be finished and I can get away from her.”
“Then what will you do? Cassie plans to leave in two weeks. By then she’ll probably be engaged.”
“Engaged?” Jeff said, horror in his voice.
“All she’d have to do is make those French doughnuts with that almond custard filling and any man in his right mind would propose.”
Jeff snorted. “It’s not her cooking that drives me insane.”
“When I was your age I didn’t think about almond custard either. All I’m saying is that you need to think very hard about what you’re doing.”
“I have thought about it. I’ve not thought about anything else all day.” He looked at his father with a sheepish expression. “I made a fool of myself this morning when Goodwin picked her up. A class-A jerk. My only excuse is that Cassie caught me off guard. One day she’s dedicated to us, and the next day she’s going out with one of my students—and not a very good student at that. It was a jolt to my system, and I handled it poorly.”
“So how do you plan on handling this situation? She said she was going to quit.”
“I think I’ll talk to her and say anything I can short of telling her that Skylar is the last woman on earth that I’d marry.”
“If you were already married, you wouldn’t have had her dumped on you,” Thomas said sternly.
“Hindsight is great, but I can’t afford that now. People must believe that Skylar and I are an item or her father won’t come through.”
“And the United States government needs the man,” Thomas said, his voice dripping sarcasm.
“It seemed a simple task when I agreed. I just didn’t think Skylar…” Jeff trailed off and took another drink of his whiskey.
“You were told she was a flibbertigibbet who only wanted a man if he drove a race car. But she wants to settle down.”
“No,” Jeff said slowly, “I’m a conquest to her, and she likes to conquer. I’m not entranced by her father’s money or her beauty.”
“Okay, so that takes care of Skylar. What are you going to do about Cassie?”
“The honorable thing.”
Thomas groaned so loudly he glanced at the doorway to make sure he hadn’t woken anybody. “I hope that doesn’t mean what I think it does.”
“I’m going to step back and let Cassie have her life. She’s young. She deserves happiness. I’d rather she wasn’t dating Goodwin—did I tell you what he made on his last weapons test?—but if that’s her choice, I won’t stand in her way.”
Thomas couldn’t seem to think of anything else to say, so he stood up. “Do what you think is best, son. I trust you and I think you have the intelligence and wisdom to figure this out on your own.”
“Thanks, Dad, I appreciate that.” Jeff looked down at his whiskey glass and didn’t move. He knew his father was waiting for him to say he was going to bed too. It was after 1A.M . and he had to get up at six, but Jeff knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. “Use the elevator,” he mumbled as his father headed toward the stairs.
“I think I will,” Thomas said, then went down the hall toward the library.
But he didn’t get on the elevator. Instead, he went into the library, picked up the land telephone, and called Althea. She answered on the first ring. “Did I wake you?”
“You know I never sleep,” she said. “I’m still on Broadway time.”
Thomas chuckled. “I guess it gets in your blood.”
“So what can I do for you at this hour?”
“I’d like you to throw a temper tantrum. Think you can?”
“I believe I could manage.” There was laughter in her voice.
He waited for her to say something else, maybe to ask why, but she didn’t. “You don’t need a motivation?”
“I’m being held prisoner by my own government. I need no more motivation than that. Just give me a time and a place and a few lines of dialogue and I’ll take it from there.”
“You’re a true lady, Althea.”
“I can be if the part calls for it. But I can also be a woman.”
“Ah, yes,” Thomas said, smiling. “ Not Enough. Did I ever tell you that was my favorite film of yours?”
Althea laughed. “On Monday you told me it was The Last Good-bye . On Tuesday you said it was First and Always. On Wednesday, you said—”
His laugh cut her off. “And every word of it was true. I’ll see you tomorrow morning and tell you ev
erything.”
“I love that idea.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed that you are quite good at getting ‘everything’ out of people while giving ‘nothing’ in return.”
“Not vertically, anyway,” she said, then hung up the phone.
Thomas smiled all the way up in the elevator.
9
“ IPROMISE THATwe’ll have separate rooms,” Brent said, his eyes pleading. “I swear it. On my honor as a knight.”
Cassie smiled. Brent was promising that if she spent the weekend after next with him in a cabin on a lake he wouldn’t make a pass at her. It was certainly an honorable promise, but a big part of her wished he was saying that he couldn’t wait to get in bed with her. But then, if he did that, she knew she’d refuse to go with him. A true dichotomy, she thought.
“Althea wants me to go up there and check on the place,” Brent said. “She had a dream that it was infested with mice and bad men, so I have to go take a look at it.”
They were in Althea’s attic, Cassie with the clipboard on her lap, and he had interrupted her cataloguing to do whatever he could to persuade her to go with him to the cabin. She had her head down, so he lifted her chin to force her to look at him. Althea wasn’t the only one who can act, he thought.
The truth was that Althea had hinted that she wanted Brent to do a little spying. When she’d asked him, she’d given a little pout that made Brent feel good. What she was really saying was that he was doing his job of guarding her so well that she’d come to depend on him.
It hadn’t taken much for him to agree to go. To do some real work! he thought. He was still reeling from the bawling out he’d received from Ames, so he was anxious to show that he would someday make a good agent.
Althea gave him directions and the keys to a lakefront cabin and told him that he needed to watch what a Mr. Norton was doing. Brent was told to arouse no suspicion, so if he had a girlfriend he should take her with him. Since he was given just twenty-four hours’ notice, there was no way his long-term girlfriend could get down from Massachusetts in time to go with him, so that left Cassie. He didn’t want to screw up his first real assignment—other than the job of guarding Althea, that is—so he had to get Cassie to go with him.