I Married the Third Horseman (Paranormal Romance and Divorce) (3 page)

So what made up my mind as to whether I
should go out with my knight in shining armor?

A Dora Pahnn column.

You know how some people get a guilty
pleasure out of reading Dear Abby and applying the prescriptions to
their own lives? Well, that crowd looks down their noses at people
who follow Dr. Laura. And Dr. Laura’s crowd looks down on people
who follow Miss Cleo.

You can guess which group of kids Miss Cleo’s
groupies like to pick on. Uh-huh. And you know, Dora’s loopy,
new-age-isms
are
sort of weird. It’s like she writes a
year’s worth of advice columns on a bunch of Post-It notes, throws
the notes into a blender, and writes whatever gets spit out at the
top.

I went back into my hotel suite, picked up my
copy of the local paper, and leafed through till I found Dora’s
latest. Her article for today rambled on and on about how Jupiter
was screwing all six of Saturn’s moons behind Venus’ back, and how
unless Jupiter planned to cut it out and stop acting like a damned
planetary alley cat, Venus was going to rip him a whole new Red
Spot. Fun, but not exactly what I was looking for.

Then my eye lit upon one line. It said:
“Dancer of the Sun, proceed with caution. Live, do not be afraid of
love, and return to the beginning when all is lost.”

Look, I told you that it was weird. I warned
you, really, I did. But that line definitely hit a chord with me –
I mean, come on, if I wasn’t the ‘Dancer of the Sun’ after Butch
Cassidy’s sidekick in crime handed me the gosh-darned award, I
didn’t know what was.

Live, and do not be afraid of love.

I played that line in counter to the other
two that were still circulating in my brain like a bad case of
Mariachi music, and it sort of masked the effect. It canceled out
the bad-juju vibes I was getting from the old reptile brain.

I went to the bathroom, showered, and got
dressed for lunch with the handsome man who’d asked me out.

Freeze Frame.

Hey there. It’s me again, Cassie. Sorry to
step in and crunch the narrative again with my black leather Jimmy
Choos. But I’m in the film biz, remember? And this is the part,
right here, where you’d be getting a montage sequence.

Nothing wrong with that, you know, because an
awful lot of B-movies and ‘up-all-night’ video schlockfests do
montages. Hey, a lot of
good
movies use them. The only
problem is, it’s a visual kind of thing, not a written one.

So I’ll give you the key images for the next
six months, and see maybe if you can hold the images in your mind.
Play them in a slow-shift sequence, where one image does a fade-in
and fade-out. Make the shots all medium-length, shallow depth to
blur the background and focus in on the one thing I want you to
see, and that’s the couple getting together (and maybe getting it
on). You’ll want to light it in such a way that the sun is always
shining like God rebooted the entire world to run from eight to ten
o’ clock in the morning.

And…Cue Montage.

Mitchel and me, talking for two hours over
plates of lobster ravioli smothered in a steamy, sweet saffron
cream sauce.

Our first ‘official’ date the next evening. I
could barely squeeze into my black cocktail dress, but bless him,
he didn’t seem to mind.

Back in Los Angeles. He’s in the front row,
applauding as I give a speech to the Screen Writers Guild.

We’re on the pier that stretches over the
cold Pacific in Santa Monica. We’re riding the merry-go-round like
a couple of kids, and when he kisses me, the giddy feeling from my
bellybutton on down ain’t from the ride, that’s for sure.

Ah, here’s an oldie but a goodie in any
romantic screen gem: the obligatory shot of us at a carnival,
sharing a bulbous pink bouffant of cotton candy.

Jump cut to a night shot of my condo,
overlooking Malibu. White stucco walls, trailing strands of
bougainvillea, black iron curlicues for balcony railings.

And…end the montage.

The light’s a hazy, erotic blue and someone’s
foleyed in the slow, dreamy melody of a saxophone.

We’re making love. His body’s like a
flesh-covered plane of granite, a clean-smelling furnace of body
heat, a friggin’ pile driver that pounds me into climax after
climax like I’m jumping the crest of Mulholland Drive on a
throbbing, snarling Harley Night Rodder. I don’t know where he’s
learned how to move against me, inside of me, but it makes me
giggle like a sixth-grader and explode on the inside like a
nova.

Later on, when we’re both lying together,
tangled in the silky white sheets, he takes my hand in his. His
eyes gleam in the dark like a cat’s.

“I’d like you to meet my family,” he
purrs.

“All right.”

Freeze Frame.

Aw,
SHIT
.

Thanks. I just had to get that off my chest,
therapy buddy.

A couple of months later I’m back in Utah,
driving up the winding country road to the Thantos’ family ranch.
The family was throwing a big party that evening. Partly to welcome
me, partly to celebrate some anniversary of the ranch’s opening. I
pulled my rented Jaguar convertible up to a pair of carved stone
gates decorated on either side with a fresco of that Greek guy
who’s doing a bodybuilder’s power lift move with the globe on his
back.

I pressed a silver button on the intercom
box. Before I could speak, the gates swung open on their own
accord. A young man who shared Mitchel’s features waved me in from
the driveway ahead. With a lazy toss of one arm, he motioned off to
the right and directed me to where I could park the Jag.

The young man, who had to be one of Mitchel’s
brothers, strolled over casually in my direction. I got out of the
car, straightened my black skirt and off-the-shoulder blouse. It
was rare that I wanted to make a good impression on people — most
folks can take a flying leap, so far as I’m concerned — but I was
betting Mitchel’s family mattered a great deal to him.

“You must be Cassandra Van Deene,” he said.
His voice was cultured, urbane, the kind of voice you hear a lot on
National Public Radio. He took my hand and kissed it like I was
newly minted royalty. “My name is Gabriel, and I am honored, simply
honored to meet you.”

“Right back at you,” I said. “I’m the one
who’s honored. Not many people remember my full name.”

“Oh? I think Cassandra’s quite pretty.”

“Yes, but nobody listens to you if your
name’s Cassandra.”

The joke went over Gabriel’s head by a
country mile. He just nodded and offered me his arm, which I took,
even though it made me feel like a debutante at the local ball.

Even in the rapidly failing light of the
evening, I saw that the Thantos ranch was a rambling, sprawling
piece of property, with rolling hills split into neat portions by
wooden fences. The ranch house itself was a double-deckered
rectangle of wood and glass. The C-shaped driveway made of
green-flecked gravel rolled up to a wraparound porch anchored at
the end with eight-spoked Conestoga wagon wheels. Throw in the set
of white Doric pillars framing the front door, and the whole place
looked like Tara from
Gone With The Wind
, only done up with
dude ranch trappings.

The breeze shifted, carrying with it the
sticky brown sugar scent of barbeque sauce and the bitter tang of
ale hops. To one side of the house, the family had strung up an
open-air pavilion lit by strands of outdoor lights that hung like
creeper vines along the pavilion’s frame and up the trunks of the
nearby trees. I heard music, the clinks of glasses and bottles,
people talking animatedly, and the distant neighs of horses.

“I guess Mitchel must board his horse out
here,” I ventured, as we drew closer to the party. “Maybe he’s out
riding?”

“He’s coming. He just got called out on a
last-minute assignment.”

“He gets a lot of those, from what I can
tell.” I was silent again for a bit so I could give Gabriel a
once-over. He lacked Mitchel’s muscle, and his build was slighter,
thinner all over. Gabriel’s sensual pink lips stood out against his
pale white cheeks and light-colored hair that teetered between sun
tea brown and ash blonde.

He wore a sweater similar to Mitchel’s, a
white ribbed thing with what I thought was a family crest.
Gabriel’s was green, emblazoned with a skinny L-shaped knife or
something. But that wasn’t what made him interesting to me. He
shared Mitchel’s quiet, powerful gait and the serene, unhurried air
that only the filthy rich can ever truly attain. The feeling that
there was no need to hurry, no deal to be made. The world would
wait on
them
.

I’ll admit, it was attractive. And it made my
mind flip into flash-fantasy mode as to what it’d have been like
had I met Gabriel first. Flash fantasy? Uh-huh, maybe more like
‘flesh fantasy.’ He had the same hottie genes as Mitchel, after
all. Or the same pheromones. My mind snapped back to the present as
I realized that Gabriel had spoken up again.

“Mitchel’s got a difficult job,” he said. “We
all do, really. How much has Mitchel told you about us? The family,
I mean?”

“Not a lot.” I frowned. Dammit, he had a
point. Here I was, making the bedsprings creak at all hours of the
morning with this guy’s brother and I’d barely had the wit to ask
about what he did, what his family was all about. It wasn’t like
me, not at all. I’m usually very bad about nosing around in
people’s friggin’ medicine cabinets when I’m invited over.

Maybe the mind-blowing sex was consuming my
brain, blowing out the circuits like on an old, overworked fuse
box.

“Our father passed on a long, long time ago.
Our mother is…what’s the term I’m thinking of? ‘Estranged.’ So
everyone you meet at the party here is a friend or a co-worker.
People we’ve all known for a long time. But no direct relatives
other than us brothers.”

“Mitchel said you were the youngest,” I
prompted. I heard another horsey nicker in the fading light, the
muffled clop-clop of hooves on grass, the smell of hay and
horses.

“I am. Raphael’s the oldest, then Uri, then
Mitchel, and finally, I came along.”

He sounded a little melancholy about it. I
squeezed his bicep, and he actually looked a little shy. I liked
him. Gabriel could’ve used a good sun bronzer and a couple solid
meals, but the look kind of fit him.

“I hope you didn’t get picked on too much as
a kid.”

“Not too much,” he admitted. “But yeah, when
you’re the youngest, you kind of have to clean up after everyone
else is done with their work, if you know what I mean.”

“Done with what work?” I asked, frowning.

“Just a second.” He made that same click-pop
noise with his tongue that Mitchel did, and the hoofbeats resolved
into a fine-boned mare with a slender, tan body and a silvery mane.
He crooned to her, “You’re a good girl, aren’t you, Muerta?

And Muerta really was a sweetie, she came up
to Gabriel without hesitation and nuzzled his hand when he held his
palm up. He stroked her mane for a moment as I watched. She was a
palomino – at least that’s what I think the color is called.

He whispered something in Muerta’s
scoop-shaped ear, and gosh darn it if she didn’t whinny in response
and trot off again. I think even Lassie would’ve been
impressed.

“Mitchel likes you, trusts you,” Gabriel
said, as we drew closer to the lights and music of the party. “I
hope that you will do the same for him.”

“You’re protective of each other,” I said,
giving his arm a firm squeeze. “You’re a hunk of a man, and
Mitchel’s lucky to have you watching his back.”

I leaned in to give him a peck on the cheek,
but right then, I heard somebody clearing their throat. I turned,
and standing behind us were three men, all dressed in white-ribbed
sweaters and slacks, looking for all the world like the Harvard
crewing team.

The man in the center was Mitchel. His eyes
were narrow, suspicious, and glinted with barely concealed
anger.