Killing Casanova (5 page)

As Jake turned toward the swinging doors of the exit, the sound of dragging chair legs scuffled beside him. Troy Barnes’s voice brought Jake’s gaze back to the room.

“It’s wild in here tonight, Cassie,” Troy shouted at the girl now occupying the chair next to Jake. “Will you be all right if I leave you here for a second?” Jake watched the quick smile dance across Cassie’s lips as she looked at Troy and nodded. Troy stood straight and noticed Jake sitting in the back corner.

He grimaced slightly at Jake and nodded toward Cassie mouthing, “Watch her.”

Jake frowned but nodded back as Troy melted back into the sea of bodies and light.

This was the last girl Jake wanted to watch tonight. He already had a half-dozen phone numbers and e-mail addresses. He wasn’t looking to waste opportunity and energy on this girl. He took a deep breath and folded his arms across his chest as she turned in her chair and reached for her lemonade.

“I’m guessing that Troy’s attempt at secrecy means you have been assigned to watch out for me,” she said loudly, not looking at Jake. She stared out into the space in front of her as if he was not there, but he knew she was talking to him.

Leaning forward Jake smiled and said, “I’ve never seen Troy worried about anybody that doesn’t have four legs. Is he your boyfriend?”

Cassie tossed back her hair and laughed, turning to look him in the eye. “No, we work together, and I think he’s afraid he’ll have to leave the horses to take care of the kids if he loses me in this craziness.”

Jake smiled again. “You work at The Rocking J?” he asked, knowing he had either danced with or kissed every one of Miriam’s female staff.

“For over a month now.”

“I’ve never seen you around.”

Jake was suddenly intrigued that he hadn’t noticed Cassie after their last encounter. She had been less than six miles from his ranch.

“You mean since the last time we shared this table?” she asked with a bitter smile. She turned her eyes back to her glass, keeping her head down and her hair between them.

Jake nodded before realizing with her curtain of auburn strands between them she could not see the response. “I thought maybe you hadn’t recognized me,” he said with a slow shake of his dark hair. He pushed the tangled curls from off his forehead and offered her one of his signature smiles. She didn’t look up at him but lifted her head to focus into the distance again.

“From what I have heard about you,” she said turning toward him. “You are easy to recognize.”

Jake grinned and ran his hands through his hair with a tilt of his chin and a silken quality to his voice. “You’ve been asking about me?”

Cassie shook her head and frowned at him. “No Jake, but there are a lot of people around here who seem to see something in you that, for the life of me, I just don’t see.”

He was the recipient of one of her icy glares, and she turned her back on him for the second time since he had met her.

Jake picked up his drink, feeling suddenly trapped with this girl. “Maybe that just means you should have your eyes checked.”

Cassie shook her head helplessly, and then laughed at him. “Maybe I just see through the masks most people can’t see through. Maybe if you really
were
the man you pretend to be instead of just
looking
like him, I wouldn’t need to see anything at all.”

Jake’s expression became stony as she turned on him again, her pale blue eyes seeming to look right through him. He suddenly felt a sharp pang of fear strike him in the chest. Her fathomless eyes were piercing, as if she really could see past the charm, the silken words, and the magic of his deep blue eyes. Looking at her now, he believed her, she really couldn’t see it.

Jake pushed his chair back into the corner and stood, holding a hand out to her. “Come dance with me, Cassie,” he said the gruff quiet cowboy drawl sure to convince her she was wrong about him. “I think you should spend more than a couple of minutes judging me before you know what kind of a man I am.”

Cassie frowned and then looked as if she might turn her back on him again. “All right, Jake,” she agreed putting her hand out and forcing him to reach out and take it. “If you really think my sight problems can be cleared up after one dance, then I have two rules.”

As she stood, Jake shoved her chair aside and began winding toward the floor to break through the crowd. Cassie stood still, her feet planted, and he dropped her hand at her defiance.

“Rules?” he said, coming back toward her. Crossing his arms over his chest, he met her eyes with his best repentant little boy smile, trying to soften her unfaltering gaze. She looked through him again, not even a flick of her lip or twitch of her cheek giving her away.

Jake took a broken breath, “Okay, tell me the rules.”

Cassie grimaced now, as she was shoved and jostled by the pressing crowd. A panicked glint caught in her deep eyes, and Jake felt its flash of fear along with her. He stepped toward her placing his hands at her elbows to steady her as she held up one finger. “First, you hold onto me until we get on the dance floor. You can’t get tired of me halfway across the floor and just walk off.”

Jake grinned; she was not as unaffected by him as she pretended to be.

“Second, you take me back to the same chair I was just sitting in when it’s over.”

Jake’s face crumpled in confusion. “That’s it?” he asked, taking her hand and uncrossing her arms. “No bloodletting or fight to the death with an alligator? Just take you on and off the floor?”

Cassie nodded her head as he looked back at her over his shoulder. “That’s all I need from you,” she murmured.

Jake found an open place on the dance floor and pulled her into his arms.

“Deal,” he said, letting his voice drop low and gruff, pressing his mouth against her ear.

She pulled back from him, making sure she was only touching him with the palms of her hands. Jake looked at her, stupefied.

“I feel like I’m dancing with my grandmother,” he complained putting his hand on her back and pushing her toward him. “Except my grandma stands closer to me than this.”

Cassie stiffened in his hold and tilted her head up at him. “Don’t tell me you use this cowboy charm even on your poor grandmother.”

Jake threw his head back and laughed. “You know you’re a lot of fun when you’re not trying so hard to dislike me.”

Cassie narrowed her eyes at him as he pressed them into the path of another couple to close the space they had between them.

“Who says I even have to try?” she said, straightening her arms and stepping back into a small space between couples.

Jake pulled her firmly from the narrow space with fresh fervor, and she stumbled against him, finally, as he wrapped both arms around her waist. She glared at him again, and then turned her face away to stare across the crowded pressing bodies all around. A lock of her hair had fallen into her eyes, and Jake moved his arm from her waist to free it from her lashes, knowing the tender gesture had melted more than one hard heart. With the release of his hold, Cassie backed away from him once again, shaking the hair from her lashes and planting her feet on the floor in front of him.

“The song’s over, Jake,” she said firmly. “My chair?”

She was still holding on to his arm and her mixed messages only pricked his competitive nature to grin at her. “You said when we were done, I should take you back.” He pulled her stiffly into his arms again. “I’m not done.”

The music had slowed, and Jake felt her surrender. He held her firmly, tenderly, and she relaxed her death grip on his hand and let him hold her against his body as the dancers now barely moved in response to the romantic ballad.

Cassie sighed and looked up at him. “This is a waste of a good excuse to get some beautiful girl out here to make out with you.”

Jake laughed again, still surprised at how blunt she was. He could feel the defiance slipping out of her, but it was being replaced with a frantic energy, like a wild mustang that will let you touch its nose and slide your hand along his flanks, but the instant he feels pressure on his back he runs.

“Relax, Cassie,” Jake said, his voice a deep sultry whisper again. “I don’t bite.”

Cassie stiffened in response to the honey softness of his verbal caress. “It’s not your teeth I should be watching out for,” she grumbled quietly, leaning away from him.

Jake kept her firmly wrapped in his arms and danced them both across the floor, before the song had ended. “See,” he said. “There’s more to me than disagreements in dark corners.”

Cassie shook her head, backing away from his hold on her. “That’s just it. If that was more … then I’ve already seen more than enough.”

She turned her back on him and felt her way through the throngs of people and dim atmosphere to the wall, disappearing into the crowd.

“Jake Caswell, that arrogant, manipulative snake!” Cassie’s mind fumed the most powerful pointed names she could imagine, but she didn’t actually know very many, and the blinding fury in her heart blocked out rational thought.

She felt the whisper of wind breezing through the swinging doors and she pushed them out, and past too many bodies. She followed the tracer of hot panic in her heart until she bumped against a vehicle and paused to catch her breath.
I hope you’re happy now, Troy.
She fumed all over again.
I tried.

Cassie took in the crispness of the night. How many nights had she danced with Dylan? She remembered the way it felt to be in his arms, to feel his breath in her ear. Jake had been so familiar, too familiar, and that acid falseness had drizzled from his lips just as sweetly. Cassie ground her teeth until the sound made her wince away from those pictures. Instead she cleared her mind and let the atmosphere around her trickle down to quiet her troubled heart and mind as she became awash in the night. The melodic hum of crickets mingled with the distant roar of the river up the canyon. Muted voices and music humming in staccato against the breath of the evening greeted her ears; the smell of moss, pine, sage, and sand drifted past her nose.

“Cassie?” Troy’s voice broke her silent reverie. “Are you okay? Jake said he lost you in the crowd. Are you lost?”

“No, Troy, not lost. I left when Jake was more concerned with showing off than he was with anything or anyone else.”

Troy chuckled under his breath, and Cassie felt him take her elbow. “Are you sure?” Do you know where you are?

“I know exactly where I am. I am misplaced somewhere in a parking lot.”

“Misplaced, huh? Not lost?”

“After twenty years of doing this Troy, do you really think I would get lost in a parking lot?”

“Jake.” Debra Caswell’s voice brought him to full awareness now sitting up in bed and rubbing his eyes.

“Mom?” he groaned falling back into his pillow and pulling it over his head.

Debra stood with her arms crossed and her lips pursed, tapping her foot against the footboard of his bed until the slight vibrations annoyed him into looking up at her.

“Jake Caswell, it’s two thirty in the afternoon, and you have been asleep all day.”

Jake sat back up, panic clearing the sleep from his mind.

“Dad and Derek took care of your chores, and tended the horses before they left for Los Angeles with Armando Pinion, but I need your help now.”

Jake nodded wordlessly, focusing on his mother’s words and fighting a return of sleep. Debra stepped back from his bed, throwing a dirty look at the pile of napkins and coasters still on the dresser from the night before. It was actually this morning, he thought, as he rotated on the bed to swing his long legs over the side to the floor. Resting his throbbing skull in his hands, propped on his knees, Jake blocked out the blaring sun breaking through the window, trying to ignore his mother’s fussing about the room.

“You don’t have any of the girls who belong to those phone numbers stashed in here with you somewhere, do you?” Debra said, frowning and glancing around Jake’s chaotic room. Dirty boots and blue jeans hid the floor from view and Debra pushed a mound aside to look under his bed. “I know you’re an adult and everything,” her voice was muffled by the dark recess of the under side of his mattress, “but if you’re going to pick up girls, don’t bring them back here, please.” Debra’s long dark hair popped up from below the edge of the bed and Jake frowned disapprovingly. “Don’t give me that face, Jake. I know what girls who put their phone numbers on cocktail napkins are after.”

Jake did his best to look shocked and horrified at his mother’s too-knowing comments. “Mom,” he gasped in mock disdain. “I am not that kind of guy, and my mama didn’t raise me like that.”

Debra Caswell rolled her eyes, picking up one of his pillows and batting him in the face with it.

“Get dressed.” She commanded, not able to hold back her own good natured smile. “I need you to go to The Rocking J and pick up Heidi.”

Jake nodded and rubbed his yawning jaw.

As he stood and began stumbling toward his bedroom door, his mother began throwing the dirty clothes into the mostly empty basket, and a memory of pale blue eyes suddenly filled his mind. He paused briefly, his hand on the open door.

“Have you met Miriam’s new counselor?” he asked as his mother pushed the basket in front of her with her foot.

She paused, a look of concentration on her face, deepening the lines around her eyes and mouth.

“I don’t think so,” she said with a shrug, pushing past Jake into the hallway.

He followed her down the hall until he stood in front of the bathroom and she was at the top of the stairs. Bending down to pick up the basket, she lifted it to one hip and then turned to grin at her handsome son in the doorway.

“I should be asking you. I didn’t think there was a girl within a thousand miles of here you haven’t had track you down.”

“What makes you think the new counselor is a girl?” he asked stepping into the bathroom and turning on the shower to warm it up.

“Heidi works with her and Applesauce twice a week.” Debra yelled to be heard over the sound of the shower.

Jake pulled his wet hand out from under the nozzle and popped his head around the partially opened door. “Heidi works with her?” he said trying not to let his mother see the glint in his eye.