Sweet Talk Boxed Set (Ten NEW Contemporary Romances by Bestselling Authors to Benefit Diabetes Research plus BONUS Novel) (57 page)

Cassidy, slumped in the passenger seat of Shelby’s Blazer, had just looked at the screen of her phone for about the hundredth time, and, frustrated, she’d tossed the thing into the depths of her purse and muttered, to no one in particular, “Why can’t I just
answer
him?”

Hence Shelby’s words of wisdom about ignoring texts.

“Don’t start,” Cassidy said, with a mock glare at her friend’s profile.

Shelby pretended to zip her mouth shut, but she was definitely smirking a little.  Cassidy could tell, even with just a side view to go on.

The line moved, one pickup truck shorter now, and Shelby pulled forward a ways.

“This is ridiculous,” Cassidy said.  Basically, she was talking to herself, since Shelby had zipped her lips, but at least she could serve as a sounding board.  She leaned over, ferreted through her handbag for her phone, and scrolled through the long series of messages.

She touched ‘reply’ under Michael’s most recent text and thumbed in, “Everything is fine.”

Was that true?

Cassidy decided it wasn’t, and deleted the statement without hitting ‘send’.

She tried, “Relax,” and rejected that, too.

They moved up another car-length. 

“Let’s hope we get to the window before they switch over from breakfast to lunch,” Shelby said.  “It’s too early for a hamburger.”  After dining in the parking lot, they’d be on their way to Flagstaff, where Cassidy intended to rent a car.  She had access to Duke’s truck, when it was running, but shifting gears was a battle, she needed all her upper body strength to turn the steering wheel, and all her
lower
body strength to work the clutch and the brakes.

In essence, driving the thing was too damn much work.  On the upside, it probably qualified as a complete workout.

Cassidy was rereading Michael’s texts.

They were terse.  Impatient. 

Not that she could blame him.  In his place, she’d have been furious, too.  And hurt.

Michael didn’t sound hurt, though.  The messages were brief—three words, max—and Cassidy found herself wanting to duck them, the way she’d dodge like flying bullets.

She drew a very deep breath, let it out slowly.  Glanced Shelby’s way.  “I don’t know what to say to him,” she confessed miserably.

Shelby kept her gaze on the car ahead.  “You’re not asking
me
for suggestions, I’m sure.”

“No,” Cassidy said pointedly.  “I’m not.”

They rolled forward again.  Two SUVs and a pickup truck, and they’d be at the window.

Shelby smiled, though she still didn’t look at Cassidy.  Her hair was piled on top of her head, held loosely in place with a huge plastic squeeze-clip.  “This is taking too long,” she said.  “I should have cooked, but it seemed so drastic.”

“Hmmm,” Cassidy said.  She was still staring at her phone, trying to figure out a diplomatic way to tell Michael she needed space.

“By the time our turn comes,” Shelby observed, the words accompanied by an audible stomach-rumble, “we’ll both be eligible for Medicare.”

Cassidy chuckled, though she might just as easily have cried instead.  “I haven’t been very good company lately,” she said.  “I’m sorry, Shelb.”

“Does that mean I can talk now?”

“I hadn’t noticed that you’d stopped,” Cassidy pointed out.

“Very funny,” Shelby responded.

“Go ahead, tell me what you think.”

“Gee, thanks.  Don’t mind if I do.”

Cassidy glared at her phone again.  Since she hadn’t been able to come up with anything better, she typed in, “Michael, I need space.”

Then, holding her breath, she sent the message hurtling through the ether.

The data must have had a clear shot to the appropriate satellite and zipped from there to its target, because Michael responded in about ten seconds.

“’Space’?  Are you kidding me?  We have to talk, Cassidy.  Now.  I’m punching in your number, and don’t even think about letting my call go to voice mail.”

Their turn had come at last; Shelby had reached the drive-thru window.

She placed the order she and Cassidy had already agreed upon.

The cell rang in Cassidy’s hands at the same moment.

She considered hitting the ‘decline’ button, but that seemed cowardly.  While Shelby chatted with the person in the window, Cassidy whispered into the phone, “Hello?  Michael?”

“Who else?” Michael demanded.  She could picture him shoving splayed fingers through his hair.  “Cassidy, what the
hell
is going on with you?  Is this about that stupid picture on the internet?  Because, if it is---”

“Michael,” Cassidy said, trying to whisper while Shelby pretended not to be listening, “calm down, okay?  It’s just—“

He didn’t let her finish.  “
Calm down? 
You fly off to Cowpattie, Arizona and leave me hanging—won’t even answer my texts, for God’s sake—and I’m supposed to ‘calm down’?“

“Michael,” Cassidy repeated, closing her eyes.  “Stop.  You’re blowing this whole thing way out of proportion—“

“Am I?  Try to see this from my viewpoint, will you?  Just for a nanosecond?  You’re freezing me out, Cassidy, and, damn it, I want to know why.”

I wish I could tell you,
Cassidy thought. 
Trouble is, I have no clue.

Shelby was handing money to the cashier, receiving change. 

“I just need some space, time to think,” Cassidy said.  The answer was a lame one, she knew, but it was all she could come up with.

“You want space?” Michael boomed.  “You want time?  Fine.  You can have all the time you want.  How does forever sound?”

Cassidy knew she should have seen that coming, but she hadn’t.  She felt as though she’d been punched in the solar plexus.  “Michael—“

“I’m done,” Michael said.  “
Done.”

And then he was gone.

Cassidy stared at her phone.

Shelby set their coffees in the cup-holder on the console and handed her a bulging paper bag, grease-dappled and smelling like heaven.

Cassidy couldn’t believe she still wanted to eat, considering the circumstances, but she did.

Shelby pulled ahead, parked the Blazer, and shut off the engine.  “What just happened here?” she asked, her tone mild.  She wasn’t smirking anymore.

“I’ve been dumped,” Cassidy said.  She was shocked.  Amazed.  And, well, maybe she felt a little like a freshly-caught fish tossed back in the water.

“Seriously?” Shelby asked.  She unbuckled her seatbelt and turned slightly, so she could look straight at Cassidy.

“Seriously,” Cassidy confirmed.  She opened the bag, took out a wrapped breakfast sandwich and a hash-brown brick and handed them both to her friend before rummaging for her own.

“You seem remarkably calm,” Shelby said.

“I think I’m in shock,” Cassidy replied.  She unwrapped her sandwich and took a bite.  Chewed and swallowed.

“It doesn’t seem to be affecting your appetite,” Shelby remarked.

Cassidy laughed.  Then she cried.  Then she alternated between the two extremes for a couple of minutes.

And all the while, she was devouring the sandwich.

Shelby probably wanted to say about a million things, but she concentrated on her breakfast and waited out Cassidy’s emotional jag.  She wasn’t the kind of friend who shoved tissue at a person when they lapsed into mild hysteria and told them cheer up, that everything would be fine, that they were making a big deal out of nothing.

Cassidy appreciated that quality, especially then.

When they’d finished their deliciously unhealthy meal, Shelby wadded up the bag and the wrappers and got out of the Blazer to deposit them in a trash bin.

By the time she returned, Cassidy had recovered a little.  She was sipping coffee.

“Do you still want to go to Flagstaff?” Shelby asked.

“Yes.”  Cassidy put her cell phone back in her purse, pulled out her sunglasses, put them on. 

“Are you—okay?”

“I’m not sure,” Cassidy answered, in all honesty.  “But I know one thing for certain: I don’t want to drive that stupid truck of Duke’s ever again, if I can avoid it.  My own wheels are more than a thousand miles away at the moment, which means I need to find myself some interim transportation.”

Still, Shelby hesitated, clearly concerned.  “Michael will probably apologize,” she ventured.  “Send flowers—“

Cassidy said nothing.

Shelby faced forward, snapped her seatbelt back in place, reached to adjust the rearview mirror.  “Let’s roll,” she said.

Five hours later, when Cassidy returned to the ranch, driving a spiffy little rental with a retractable roof, she found Duke, G.W. and Henry gathered around Duke’s truck.  The hood was up.

Déjà vu all over again,
Cassidy thought.  All day, she’d been waiting for depression to set in—after all, she and her fiancé had officially broken up—but it hadn’t happened.  She wasn’t sad, but she wasn’t happy, either.

She was just—numb.

It was probably a coping mechanism.

Spotting her, Henry raced over, Chip bounding alongside.

“Is that
your
car?” the boy cried, delighted.

Cassidy, getting out, hated to burst his bubble.  “It’s a rental,” she said.

Henry seemed a little deflated.  “The kind you give back when you don’t need it anymore?”

Cassidy squeezed his shoulder.  “That’s the plan,” she said gently.  She found herself wanting to explain that she didn’t need a car, since she had one, back in Seattle, but that would have been too much information for sure.  She nodded in the direction of Duke’s truck.  “Another breakdown?”

Henry nodded importantly.  “Dad says it threw a rod.”

Cassidy was no mechanic, but she figured
that
prognosis was grim indeed.

Chip, standing so close to Henry that they were nearly holding each other up, wagged his tail, panting.  He seemed fascinated by the whole exchange.

“Yikes,” Cassidy said, though secretly, she was hoping Duke would finally junk that old rust-bucket and buy himself a new truck.  And behind that thought was another: G.W. looked almost as good from the back as he did from the front.

He turned just then, almost as if he’d heard the gears turning in her head, nodded a greeting.

“Can I have a ride sometime?” Henry wanted to know.  He was checking out the car now, standing on tiptoe to peer through the driver’s side window.

“Sure,” Cassidy said, distracted.

G.W. walked toward her, wiping his hands on a rag.  He wasn’t wearing a hat, and his hair was attractively rumpled.  “That pile of rusty bolts is a goner,” he said, jabbing a thumb over one shoulder to indicate Duke’s rig.  “Talk some sense into your uncle, will you?  Tell him it’s time to bust out his wallet and buy a new one.”

Cassidy smiled.  “This is Duke McCullough we’re talking about,” she reminded him.  “He won’t listen to a word I say.”

Henry was back.  “Did you tell Cassidy about the flowers?” he asked his father.  Then he looked up at Cassidy and said, “Somebody sent you flowers.  They’re real pretty, too.  A woman brought them all the way from Flagstaff, and Uncle Duke gave her a big tip for going to all the trouble.”

“Slipped my mind,” G.W. told the boy.  Then he met Cassidy’s eyes and said dutifully, “Somebody sent you flowers.”

“Oh,” Cassidy said.

Brilliant.

Henry was tugging at her hand.  “Don’t you want to look at them?  Don’t you want to smell them or something?”

“Absolutely,” she said.  “Who do you suppose sent them?”

G.W. raised one eyebrow, and his mouth tilted up at one side.  His expression said,
Who indeed?

“Let’s have a look,” Cassidy said, and rushed toward the house.

Henry and Chip were right behind her.

Sure enough, a massive bouquet awaited her in the middle of the kitchen table, spilling from a beautiful cut-glass vase.  Roses, pink and white, at least two dozen of them, plus baby’s breath and lots of greenery.

So, Shelby had been right.  Michael was sorry for blowing her off the way he had.  He wanted to make up.

Cassidy waited to feel something, but she was still numb.

Her hand shook slightly as she reached for the card, opened the tiny envelope, read the words inside.

At first, they didn’t register.

She read them again.

The flowers weren’t from Michael, after all.  They were from his
mother.

“It’s all for the best,” Mrs. Brighton-Stiles had dictated to some hapless florist in Flagstaff.

‘It’s all for the best’?

Cassidy nearly laughed aloud.  As kiss-offs went, this one was in a class by itself.

“Are they from that guy you’re gonna marry?” Henry asked innocently, examining the impressive bouquet.

“No,” Cassidy said, carefully tucking the card back into the envelope.

“Then who sent them?”

How was she supposed to answer that?  She couldn’t say, ‘a friend’, because Michael’s mother
wasn’t
one.  She’d never actually liked the woman, and she’d known all along that the feeling was mutual.

So she finally settled on, “Just someone I know in Seattle.”

“Oh,” Henry said, clearly confused but willing to take her word for it.

“How about that ride?” Cassidy asked.  “We can leave right now, if your dad says it’s okay.”

Henry’s face lit up.  “In your car?” He wanted clarification.

“In my car,” Cassidy affirmed.  It was back, that urge to hug the little guy.

“Can Chip come with us?”

“Yes,” she replied.  “But remember—we have to get the go-ahead first.”

“Dad will say yes,” Henry said, with exuberant confidence, running for the back door, bursting through the opening, Chip behind him, like always.

Cassidy lingered for a while, looking at the roses.  They
were
beautiful. 

She reached into her bag, found her cell, checked the screen.  Nothing from Michael.

Well, he hadn’t wasted any time bringing his mother up to speed on the situation, had he?

Who else had he told?

If she checked his social media page, would she find an anti-Cassidy rant posted there?

Cassidy decided that none of it mattered.  She turned her back on the bouquet and followed Henry outside.