REPRESENTED (39 page)

             
Cassie nodded, her eyes suspiciously wet, and said “didn’t I already answer that question once?”

             
Karin shook her head “actually no, if you remember correctly you never actually said yes.”

             
Cassie thought for a moment remembering that morning in bed and then she blushed, she hadn’t actually said yes.  “Yes, Yes,
YES
” she smiled as she took Karin’s hand in hers and asked “and will you Karin Myers marry me,
someday?
 
Somewhere
?”

             
Karin smiled and nodded as she said “absolutely.”  Cassie opened the other matching box and taking the ring she pushed it on Karin’s left ring finger joyfully.

             
They celebrated over steak and champagne as they renewed their feelings for each other both remembering their delightful time last time they had been in Phoenix.

             
Karin took two days to drive from New York to Milwaukee.  She could have driven straight through but didn’t want to be
that
tired.  The boys were going to meet her in Milwaukee to pack up the trailer for her this last time.  Alex told her unpacking all that heavy oak furniture for himself had almost cost him some well-meaning friends.  She promised she wouldn’t buy any that required heavy lifting ever again but he pointed out she hadn’t bought this.  Inherited yes, purchased no.  She looked forward to seeing them both again, who knew when she would get back to Wisconsin with her crazy schedule.

             
“Are you there yet, are you there yet?” Cassie said as though a child.

             
Karin smiled into her Bluetooth headset “I’m in Ohio” she told her.  Pennsylvania had been a long bitch.  It was snowing too and she wasn’t thrilled with the roads.  The interstate was well plowed but it wasn’t her she was worried about but the other drivers.

             
“Where are you going to stop?” Cassie asked knowing how late it was.

             
“Somewhere soon, I’m tired” Karin confessed.  She had been on the road all day and the stress of the snow and driving was tiring her out.

             
“I think I’m flying over you right now” Cassie teased.

             
“How was Detroit?” Karin asked already having heard from a team member about the numbers.

             
Cassie launched into a recital of how beautiful the show had been.  It was so high tech now and they were all performers, the ticket holders really got their monies worth these days but at the prices they were paying, they deserved it.  Karin had explained early on it didn’t matter how well Cassie sang if they didn’t give a spectacular performance.  They were entertainers, so entertain the masses.  She had copied something that Garth Brooks had learned long ago, added in Madonna’s spectacular shows, and hired a man away from the Celine Dion shows in Las Vegas to help accomplish it time and again.  It worked.  Cassie Summer’s shows were entertainment!

              ‘You’re here!’ she thought as she gazed at the body curled up in her bed.  She quickly got out of her clothes and crawled in next to the woman sleeping in the bed.  The muted light on the bedside allowed her to take in the planes of the woman’s face and the contours of what she could see of her body that had been exposed by the sheets.  She was surprised to see Karin wearing a shirt, she never wore clothes to bed if she could help it, she found them too restrictive, too constrictive.  Cassie watched her breathe for a long, long time, amazed at how much she loved this woman.  This wild, impetuous, stubborn woman.  Finally she dozed off, her head on the pillow gazing at the woman she loved.

             
Karin woke to the most delicious of dreams.  A warm wet mouth was kissing and tonguing along her neck finding that exact spot that made her want to....she sighed in her sleep and hugged her pillow tighter, her back and buttocks arching in response to the stimulation.  A hand caressed down her back and over her hip seeking a spot between her thighs, feeling its warmth, created its own.  She sighed deeply, what a great dream.  She gently parted her legs to allow the probing fingers access and lo and behold they found the hard little nub that was begging for attention.  She could feel her wetness against the hand that began its little tickling dance.  She sighed in her sleep as she turned over onto her back as the wet mouth began going down her torso, she could tell when a nose nuzzled aside the shirt she was wearing and found her engorged nipple, begging to be tongued and obliged so willingly.  She sighed as she rolled over towards the warm body.  It was the contact with that body that had her coming almost violently awake.

             
Grabbing Cassie’s hands in her own she said “stop! Cassie, STOP!”

             
Cassie grinned and ignored her.  Karin pulled Cassie’s hands away from her own body and Cassie looked at her in surprise.  “You don’t
really want
me to stop do you?”

             
“Actually, I do!  We HAVE to talk, and we have to talk NOW!” she said ominously.

             
Cassie looked at her and realized how serious she was.  She stopped struggling against Karin’s grip and pulled back.  “I guess we do” she said quietly and looked a little embarrassed.

             
Karin was still tired and having come awake so hard was still struggling with her eyelids and getting them completely open.  She let go of Cassie to rub her eyes.

             
“I’m so glad you’re here” Cassie said and she couldn’t hold the excitement out of her voice.

             
Karin looked at her as though she had gone mad.  “You might not be after you hear what I have to say.”

             
Cassie looked at her warily, she knew she had been a bit high handed and that Karin had been angry.  “I’m sorry!  I really am, but I missed you so much I wanted you here...” she began and then left off as Karin looked at her incredulously.

             
“So you
demanded
my presence?  What, I’m your beck and call girl now?”

             
“No, it wasn’t like that.”

             
“Then tell me what was it like?”

             
“I was just so pleased that you were moved in that I couldn’t wait for you to get here.”

             
Karin could hear the excitement in Cassie’s voice, she didn’t want to kill that, she didn’t want to hurt her, but she couldn’t remember ever being so angry at this woman before, well maybe once...  “So you set your dogs on me to escort me to the limo, to the private jet, to your hotel room?”

             
“It wasn’t like that I swear, I just wanted to make it easy for you!”

             
“Do you know how much like a kept woman I felt when Meredith came in with her key into your house and calmly informed me that she had three dresses for me to choose from for Sunday, that they matched yours and then informed me that she had a limo waiting to take me to the airport?”

             
“I just wanted to make it easy for you....” she began again but cut it off at Karin’s glare.

             
“Just because we are engaged, just because I moved in with you, does NOT mean that you own me in any shape, manner, or form!” Karin made a move to get out of the bed and Cassie grabbed her shoulder to hold her to the bed.

             
“Look, it wasn’t like that.  Not at all.  I just ...” she looked down at her hand and realized it was the one that had her ring on it, she gulped and released Karin to finish “I got so excited by everything coming together like it was and thought we could be together sooner.  It wasn’t meant to be a command performance, I swear.”

             
“Your servants certainly follow your orders well” she said dryly.

             
“I asked them to make a smooth transition for you.”

             
“You could have at least waited a day so I had time to relax!”

             
“I thought you could sleep on the plane ride...” she began and stopped again at another glare.

             
“Do you know how much I’ve been through in the past couple of days?”

             
Cassie nodded and then looked puzzled.

             
“I drove to Wisconsin.  We packed up that trailer in record time; I emptied that house that I haven’t really lived in for the past few years....”

             
Cassie interrupted “you could have moved in sooner if you ...”

             
Karin raised a hand to cut her off “I wasn’t ready!  Didn’t you get that?”  She frowned and turned away from her fiancée so she could think.  “I’ve been traveling the last few years, going ‘home’ was a ritual for me.  When we packed it all up last month, I still didn’t really feel like I was moving” she gulped “I just wanted time to adjust.  The actual trailer packing took very little time with everything in boxes.  The boys had the few pieces of furniture in there within a relatively short time.  The plants were in the Pathfinder, I was ready to go.  And yet” here she paused “I decided to have a drink.  They dropped me off on their way out of town back to their homes.  My boys,” she paused again “have lives of their own and now they have no home to go to” she said sadly.

             
“Karin, they knew that last month when they got their stuff out for you.  I thought when we boxed everything up then that this was the next logical step” Cassie tried to console her.

             
“We lived there a lot of years; they grew up in that house.  Now, we will only visit each other’s houses.  It’s the end of an era.  I started drinking with a beer and then switched to a screwdriver.  Once that buzz was there I let it wear off with kiddy cocktails since I don’t really drink.  It was nice, I was in a bar where no one knew me, thinking about life and what do you think happens, in walks someone who once made my life miserable when I lived there, before this job, before school, in another lifetime.  The look on her face must have mirrored mine.  She had the nerve to come over and say hello as though we were friends again, as though nothing had ever happened between us.”

             
“What happened?”  Cassie listened carefully.

             
“I said hello and she asked what I was doing there, she had heard I moved away.  I laughed and said yes, I’m moving to Nashville.  I flashed my ring at her and said ‘I’m engaged’ showing it off as though a trophy.  Then I finished my drink and just then the taxi I had ordered arrived.  Kismet, great timing, whatever, I smiled at her and said ‘have a nice life, I know I will’ as I grinned, threw a twenty on the bar for a two dollar drink and walked out the door.  I felt good about that.”  She smiled in remembrance.  It was one of those rare moments when you come out on top.

             
“And then I came home feeling good, crawled into my sleeping bag, and began thinking of you.  The small amount of alcohol made the bumps and bruises of moving things that day go away for a while but it also relaxed me enough to make me horny and to begin thinking of you.  Then you called.”

             
Cassie smiled remembering that call.  It had gotten them both hot and horny knowing how much each of them had wanted the other.  They had seriously thought about having phone sex but each had wanted to wait until they were together, they could wait, each was worth it for the other.

             
“I slept for only four hours that night before realizing it was stupid.  I was rested, the house was empty, I got up and grabbed my sleeping bag and few other things and left.  There was nothing there for me anymore; my things were in the trailer.  I did nothing but drive almost straight through to Nashville, thinking about my life, our life, what was next on the agenda.  Emptying that trailer into your garage and returning the trailer to U-Haul, I was exhausted.  All I wanted to do was rest and take a shower and in walks Meredith with a clipboard of demands all dictated by you.  I was tired, I got angry!”

             
Cassie remembered that anger, the phone call that she hadn’t answered and the message she had gotten had put her into a fine mood.  For a moment there she had thought their engagement was over, Karin had been
that
furious.  Then the second phone call that she missed and an equally nasty message.  Then the silence, ominous silence.  She had obsessively returned the calls and it was obvious that Karin’s phone was turned off.  Meredith’s too as she couldn’t reach her either.  She had no clue what had happened, that was why she was so happy, relieved, and thrilled to find Karin in her bed when she had gotten into the hotel last night.  She had left rehearsal so dejected that she had snapped at her band mates and they knew something was up.  She had cut things short at rehearsal and pissed off a few important people but she was no good there, worrying about her relationship with Karin.