Bad News Cowboy (32 page)

CHAPTER SIX

J
AKE
COULDN
'
T
EVEN
find respite in the privacy of his apartment. Mainly because he was discovering the apartment wasn't all that private. Oh no, to the contrary, the walls were paper thin and he was very aware of the movements that Cassie was making on the other side of them. He could tell when she was getting into the shower, when she was walking across the living room, and whether or not she was wearing shoes. He found he sort of liked it when she was barefoot, if for no other reason than it meant she was wearing less.

Worse, he was getting attached to the sounds that she made. To not being alone. His house in Seattle was nice, in a quiet neighborhood, with quiet neighbors. He didn't share any connecting walls. And no one ever stayed the night. When Jake hooked up he preferred hotels, and when that wasn't happening he made it so they ended up back at her place. They rarely seemed to mind, and if they did, he just went and found someone else. Clingy wasn't his thing. Sharing space wasn't his thing. Because feelings weren't his thing.

He prized his control far too much.

But there was something comforting about hearing another person moving around so close. Comforting and at the same time disturbing. Especially since what he really wanted to do was storm over to her apartment and eliminate all the space between them. No walls. No clothes.

He hadn't had it this bad in longer than he could remember. If ever. When he wanted a woman he had her, and he never wanted a specific someone enough to cause this kind of trouble. Notable exception: Cassie back in high school.

He had a feeling that was the thing messing with him right now. All that unspent, long-buried desire.

Because right now Cassie Ventimiglia was obsessing his mind, and his body. And it was pretty damn stupid.

Even as he thought of his neighbor, he heard the sounds of her moving around, and then a sharp, shrill squeak. He jumped up from his couch, and ran to his front door without even thinking about it. Probably she had seen a spider. Or something similarly innocuous. But the desire to fulfill the fantasy that was turning over in his brain, combined with the protective instincts Cassie seemed to bring out in him, had him halfway down the stairs before he could even think about it.

He called himself ten kinds of stupid while he walked around to the other side of the little entryway in the back of the coffee shop, and up the stairs that led to Cassie's apartment.

Yeah, he had enough self-awareness to realize that he was looking for any excuse to knock on her door. Which was crazy considering that she didn't like him, she made him feel like an ass, and he knew he couldn't touch her.

His instincts, or his dick, didn't seem to care. Because before he knew it he was standing in front of Cassie's door pounding on it as hard as he could. He heard a strange thumping sound and then the door swung open and he found himself facing Cassie, who was standing on one foot and holding the other one.

She squinted. “Yes?”

“You sounded like you were in distress.”

“Oh. I stubbed my toe.” She winced and squeezed her foot then set it back down and straightened. “Did I disturb you?”

“Not disturb per se, but the walls are kind of thin. I don't know if you noticed.”

Color flooded her face. “Oh, yes, I have noticed.”

Interesting that she blushed when the question came up. It made him wonder if she was thinking the same things he was. It made him wonder if maybe she was listening to what he was doing. If she had been fantasizing about the very thing he was. Tearing the wall down and tearing each other's clothes off.

That was probably wishful thinking. He'd always had Cassie pegged as being a little bit more cautious than that. He'd put her in a box in his brain that was labeled Nice Girl. Whatever
that
meant. He didn't have an exact definition handy, but he vaguely thought it might mean she wasn't the type of girl whose clothes you just ripped off.

“I hope I haven't been too...disturbing,” she said, blinking rapidly.

“You aren't that bad.” The color in her face intensified. Very interesting, indeed.

“It was really nice of you to come check on me. But I'm fine. I don't think I broke anything, and there's no blood. Just a coffee table that I moved a few days ago. And now I'm not really familiar with exactly where it is. So the leg got my toe.”

“You were rearranging furniture?” He was asking stupid questions now, because he was reluctant to leave.

“Yes. I did a little rearranging.” She was still blushing and now he was dying to know why. He wanted to push, and hell, if it was anyone else, he would push. So he was going to push.

“Feng shui?” he asked.

“What...like making a money corner and stuff?”

“Something like that.” Except feng shui didn't make you blush.

“I'll have to get a lesson from you in the future, since you seem to know all about it. But in this case I just was moving my couch, so it seemed like moving the coffee table was the thing to do.”

“Just looking for a change?”

“Why are you giving me the third degree about the location of my furniture?”

“I'm not trying to.”

“If you must know, it's because I can hear you showering when I'm sitting on my couch. And it bothers me.” A jolt of something hit him square in the gut.

“You can hear me showering?”

“Yes.” She swallowed hard, hard enough that he could see it and hear it. “And I can hear the things you're doing in there.”

Heat assaulted him, his face burning so hot he was sure it must be red. Blushing wasn't his thing, but hearing her say that, knowing exactly what he'd done in the shower a couple of days ago, had him feeling like he'd stuck his head into a bonfire.

“Oh.” That was all he was capable of saying. He couldn't remember the last time a woman had made him blush, or the last time one had rendered him speechless. But so-called Nice Girl Cassie Ventimiglia had managed to do both.

She tilted her chin up. “Yes, I heard you doing...things.”

He cleared his throat and tugged on his shirt collar. She made him feel like a naughty schoolboy. He couldn't remember actually feeling that way when he'd been a naughty schoolboy. “Things?”

“Yes, things.”

And then a switch flipped inside him, and he remembered who he was.

He was Jake Caldwell. He wasn't a teenager. And neither was she. He was a guy who got shit done. He didn't blush. And when he wanted a woman he damn well had her. No, he
shouldn't
have Cassie, but there were a lot of things he shouldn't do. And at the very least, he was going to win whatever game they were playing here.

He wouldn't touch her. But he wasn't going to let her direct things, either.

“Honey, I would be very careful about where you take this conversation.”

“Would you?” She arched her dark brow.

“Yes, I would. Because if you're implying what I think you are, then you're taking us into dangerous territory.”

“I'm not implying anything. I'm saying it.”

“You are not saying it. Your voice is thick with meaning, but you said nothing.”

She crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “I heard you... I heard you...”

“I'm waiting, babe. Because for all I know you heard me singing ‘I Dreamed a Dream.'”

“Do you even know that song?”

“Yeah, I do. I have culture.” And he had heard it played over and over again on a movie trailer.

“Well that isn't what I heard. And I think you know it. Otherwise you wouldn't be daring me. Don't deny it, either. I know that's what you're doing.”

“Yeah, I'm daring you,” he said, taking a step closer to her. “You're right about that. So if you want to have this discussion, let's have this discussion.”

“Why?”

“You're turning red, baby. I think you bit off a little more than you can chew.”

The color mounted in her cheeks, and he had a feeling that this wasn't a blush. He had a feeling he was witnessing Cassie Ventimiglia entering a full-blown rage. Perversely, the thought pleased him. “All right, Mr. Tough Guy. I moved my couch because I can hear you showering. And I could hear you pleasuring yourself while you were showering.” She was breathing hard when she finished, and she was so red she looked a bit like an overstewed tomato.

He gritted his teeth and tried to look casual. “I'm a guy. I'm not going to say I don't do that in the shower.”

“Well, I don't need to hear it.”

“It bothers you?”

“Of course it bothers me! It would bother anybody. Nobody needs to hear that.”

And then, just because he wanted to go to her, just because he wanted to get her to give something away, just because he wanted her to be in hell the same as he was, he pushed further. “It only seems fair that you had to hear it. Seeing as I was thinking about you.”

Her mouth fell open and then closed, and then open again. She looked a little bit like a guppy that had been yanked out of the water. A very cute guppy, but a guppy nonetheless. “I can't believe you just said that.”

“Offended?”

She blinked a couple of times. “No,” she said, standing stunned. “No, I'm not.”

“You aren't?”

“No, I'm not offended. I'm not offended at all. In fact, I would go so far as to say I was intrigued.”

“You're intrigued. By the thought of me touching myself while thinking about you.”

“Yes, I find that very intriguing.”

Jake crossed his arms over his chest, all the better to keep from reaching across the empty space between them and hauling her to him. “You really need to be sure this is where you want the conversation to go, baby. Because I have a feeling it could get out of hand very quickly.”

“Maybe I want it to get out of hand. And trust me, Jake, no one is more surprised by that than me.”

“I don't think you really want what you think you do.”

She took a step backward, deeper into the apartment, and he found himself following, like a dog on a leash. He stepped past the threshold, and inside. And he knew that he had made a very grave mistake. His dick, on the other hand, was rejoicing at what it was certain would be a victory.

“If you push me, you might find that you don't like the results.”

She lifted her hands. “Or maybe I'll find out I
love
the result.” She balled her hands into fists and pressed them against her eyes. “Jake, all my life, I've been a good girl. I know you have no idea what that's like, all things considered.”

“Probably not, considering I have a penis.”

He was certain that if she had possessed the physical capability she would've blushed even harder. As it was she seemed to have reached maximum capacity. “Oh yes, I'm aware, as we've established. But I didn't mean the gender part. I meant the well-behaved part. The good part. You were always so wild, and you just did what you wanted. You didn't seem to think what anyone else thought mattered. I, on the other hand, am crippled by what everyone else thinks.”

Something in his stomach twisted. He didn't like the direction this conversation was going. It was cutting a little bit too close to the bone.

Cassie continued. “You with your tattoos—tattoos when we were in high school. Badass. You and your motorcycle when I didn't even have a car. I just couldn't help but admire that in some ways. I still do. Because I did everything I was supposed to,
everything
. Got married to this guy who was supposed to be great, and we were supposed to have kids. My mother was thrilled with the decisions I made. The guy wore a tie to work. I still didn't win, Jake. I didn't win. Because Allen left me. Or rather, he kicked me out. But either way the end result was the same. He never had kids with me, he wanted to wait. And then he got remarried eight months after the divorce was final and by the time that happened they already had one on the way. Good behavior did nothing for me there. Nothing at all. And right now I'm standing here asking myself what this good behavior has
ever
gotten me.”

He'd underestimated her again. He always had. It hit him then the Nice Girl label he'd slapped onto her was just as limiting, just as much a simplistic lie as the Bad Boy label was on him.

She'd been hurt. Badly. And standing here facing that he had no clue how to handle it.

He cleared his throat. “I thought good behavior was supposed to be its own reward.”

She exploded, her tiny frame turning into a ball of energy as she paced around the apartment. “Where are my rewards?” She swept her hand around in a half circle. “Do you see them anywhere? I don't see them. I live in an apartment that I don't own, that's going to get sold out from under me, and when that happens I'll probably lose my business, too. I don't have a husband, which frankly is fine, because a bad husband is worse than none at all. But ultimately my life isn't anywhere that it was supposed to be.” Her dark eyes locked with his. “I'm tired of being good. I don't want to be good anymore.”

“Then what is it you want, Cassie?”

“I want to have fun. I want to be bad. I want the one thing I was too afraid to go after when I was in high school.”

“I think you need to spell it out for me, just in case I'm misunderstanding.”

Cassie took a deep breath. “I want to be bad, Jake. I want to be bad with you.”

* * *

C
ASSIE
WAS
SHOCKED
to the point of being horrified by her own actions. But things had been set in motion, and even though she felt like she was having an out-of-body experience, watching herself say these things, hearing the words come out of her mouth, she didn't seem to be able to control them. She was like a snowball that had started rolling down a hill, picking up momentum, picking up weight. And from her vantage point she could see that she was moving toward destruction and death. But there was no way to stop. Avalanche Cassie was firmly in motion, and she would not be deterred.