How to Love a Blue Demon (3 page)

The r
eporter leaned forward, chin in hand. He blinked languidly, basking in the sparkle of her brown eyes. “And, you know,” she shrugged, a devilish grin on her full red lips. “I’m tall, and I got big tits. In America, that’s half the battle won right there.”

“Priti!”

No response.

“Priti!”

“What? Damn!” Priti stuck her head around her best friend and boss’s office door. Her big brown eyes bugged comically as she came into the room. The place looked like a paper mill had exploded. “Cass? Where you at, girl?”

A well-shaped head with a
slightly lopsided natural appeared over the edge of the desk. “Where’s that one thing I need to call ole’ boy and ask him to –” while she spoke, Priti stepped daintily over piles of papers and picked up an envelope from the top of the desk. She handed it over. “Ah! Thanks,” and Cass set it right back down and went back to tossing papers out of the file cabinets.

“Whatchu’ doin
’?”

“Preparing for the audit.”

“We’re being audited?” Priti’s eyes got big again.

“Nu-uh, but Burry
” – Burrell Sandberg, accountant – “said we should prepare for it, just in case.”

“How is fuckin’ up all these papers prepar
ing?”

“I gotta shred all this!
Burry ‘bout had a fit earlier when he saw it. He said not to keep any old records. Just the last seven years tax returns.”

“You sure?”

Cass looked up at her and blinked large, cat-like eyes with dark lashes so thick they appeared fake. She cocked her head to the side. “I think that’s what he said. You know I’ve been meaning to clean this stuff up anyway.”

Priti rolled her eyes at her friend’s back. She’d been saying the same thing since they were kids.

“Where’s that shredder I bought the other day?”

The other day being a year and a half ago.
Cass had no sense of time and the worst memory for anything other than music and numbers. She could do numbers in her head faster than anyone Priti knew, and remembered every note from every song she’d ever heard. But her office looked like the land that time forgot.

Priti went to the closet and lugged out a knee high box.

“Ah! Great,” Cass grinned and clapped her friend on the back, unintentionally pushing her smaller figure forward a few steps. She peered down at the box, then with one powerful yank, ripped open the top and after tossing aside the plastic and Styrofoam packaging, shook the shredder free.

She s
at down in the middle of a pile of papers and plugged it in. She grinned as she started feeding papers into it.

“Gonna help me?”

Priti rolled her eyes, and handed her a stack of papers. “Lee’s on his way.”

Cass’ head came up sharply. “He
’s on his way from the airport? You told him we gotta fly out day after tomorrow? What’d he say?”

“He said he’ll go with us.”

Cass smiled contentedly and resumed her shredding. Priti went to call Burry, “just to make sure we’re doing the right thing.”

An hour later, Priti’s boyfriend
Boyd stuck his head in the room.

“Lee and me
are goin’ to get a beer.”

Cass leapt to her feet, and Priti instinct
ively ducked as a long leg swung over her entire body – and the shredder – and dashed out the door.

Lee turned, grinning as he heard the rapid fire pitter patter of rubber soled
socks, and opened his arms as 145 pounds of shapely, scented woman leapt into them.

Slender arms and legs wrapped themselves all the way around his body and squeezed. He squeezed back, then leaned
in to kiss the soft, gloss free lips already parted for his tongue.

He gr
oaned as their tongues danced, welcoming the long-fingered hands that clenched his back and neck, that shoved into his hair and gripped hard as his caressed her ass and sides. He walked her backward until he could sit her on top of the counter and then set to work in earnest.

Priti and Boyd watched, him leaning against another counter, her leaning against his side eating some popcorn she’d been munching earlier. She passed him the bowl and he took a few kernels, never taking his eyes off the lovers.

Lee stood throat bared as Cass nipped and tongued his flesh. There was a flush along his lean cheeks, and his lips were already bruised red from their kisses. He growled something in Cass’ ear, and she issued a throaty laugh as he bent her backwards on the counter.

Boyd grunted. “You comin’, Lee?”

Lee started, having completely forgotten there were other people in the house. “Ah, yeah, B. Sorry, man.” He untangled himself from Cass and shoved his arms back into his shirt. “Come with?” he asked her, giving her the wide-eyed, sexy little boy look that earned him millions in modeling contracts.

Cass shook her head, hopping down from the counter. “I gotta practice.”

He tugged on her grey tank top. “Please? I ain’t seen you in a week.”

“Who
se fault is that?”

“Yours,” he reminded her.

Cass grinned. “Oh. Well, I started a project and –” she paused to admire the pout she was getting. “Alright, but I’ll meet you there. I gotta clean up my office, and I’m only goin’ for one drink.”

He nodded. He knew he coul
d talk her into staying long after one beer ran out. “Can we wait a bit, B?” Lee asked. “I’ll help you in the office so we can leave faster,” he told Cass.

“We’ll all help,” Pr
iti announced.

“Priti told you we
’re gonna be in New York for about a week?” Cass asked Lee.

He nodded again. “
No problem. I gotta couple jobs I can do.” He’d planned to turn them down to spend time with her, but he’d sent his agent a text telling her to accept them since he’d be in town after all.

Between the
three of them – Priti bowed out to get ready – they made short work of the office. An hour later they were installed at Morton’s ordering dinner and drinks.

As
was usually the case when Cass went anywhere, a few other people joined their group. There was a movie crew in town shooting downtown which yielded a few stars, and a local businessman wanted to buy her a drink and ask for a recommendation for his son’s guitar lessons.

“I’ma slip out,” she whispered to Lee
a few hours later. She’d already given Priti the signal across the table.

“I’ll follow you
in a second,” he promised.

She was waiting in the Range when he came out five minutes later, having posed for a few pictures and stopped to shoot the shit with a cameraman she knew.

“You know I’ma tear that ass up when we get home,” she said, driving with one hand and checking the rearview as she spoke to him.

“Thank God,” Lee whispered.

Cass laughed, and turned Usher up real loud on the radio.

*****

Cass slid sinuously out from under Lee’s arm and stretched. She wasn’t bored, she told herself, nor was she avoiding the second round Lee would want when he woke up. She sighed as she touched her palms to the floor. She wasn’t usually a liar.

She threw on the ragged mini dress she habitually wore around the house. The denim was so old it was no l
onger blue but grey. The seams had sprouted more than one thread, but the cotton was softer than silk from repeated washings.

It also had the added benefit
– for any men, or women, who might be within sight – of dipping low in the front and clinging to her body like skin. A few weeks ago, Priti popped Boyd upside his head when he stared too long at Cass. Cass just continued eating her breakfast. Since they were both staying in her house, it was up to Priti to train Boyd. Cass did as she pleased.

Now she
took the stairs up to her studio two at a time. She was scheduled to do a live set for VH1 in New York and another for Univision, and she wanted to work on a few twists to the album versions of her songs to ensure the experience was memorable.

Music was easy for her.
Her guitar was like an extension of her long fingers. Once a reporter laughingly said that music notes flowed through her veins instead of blood. But that didn’t mean she took it lightly. She could easily have come up some things on the fly, but early in her career she’d set a very high standard for herself, and without fail she kept to it.

Just thinking about
those early days of her career energized her. She’d gotten a late start at her avocation. Had in fact, spent six long years in the working world, commuting, clocking in, taking orders and loathing every long, constrictive minute of it.

In interviews she summed that part of her life up i
n one sentence: Some people aren’t suited for office work. Her last boss had been a nice enough man but he’d wanted perfection. Perfection during a recession when there were no raises, too few workers and an ever increasing workload.

C
onstant criticism had done her in. All delivered behind closed doors in an amiable, sensible, wrist slapping way, Cass had hated every word that had fallen from her boss’ lips. Even when she might have deserved whatever he was saying, it grated against her skin like pumice because she knew she was supposed to be playing her guitar not punching computer keys.

But she did openly
thank her last job for her present blessings, however. It enabled her to save and prepare for a life change. She set herself a goal, and shut down everything that didn’t relate to meeting it. She played her guitar three hours a night after work during the week without fail for two years. On the weekends she played all day and all night. She found gigs, wowed crowds, and recorded a CD of original music, which she reproduced and sold herself at all of her gigs.

It was at one of those gigs that her life changed. A man
in the audience visiting from LA talked her into playing at a party he was throwing at home in a week. She took the time off, went out there and played for him, and went home with a record deal. She gave her notice the very next work day.

She gave no reason for her leaving
, and when she asked what her plans were she said only, “this and that.” She told no one what she was doing. She packed up her things, cleaned her cubicle thoroughly and left smiling, offering well wishes to everyone she passed. To her boss, she said, “Thank you. Without this job I couldn’t have made my real dreams come true.” Her coworkers would say later that they hadn’t even known she played the guitar until they saw her on TV. 

Things di
dn’t happen overnight. But once Cass had her freedom she vowed to work her ass off to keep it. The day she left the dubious security and spirit draining constraints of steady employment she promised herself that she would never again allow anyone to dictate her actions. She’d kept that vow.

S
he was a millionaire many times over, and she played wherever people loved her music. Nothing was inappropriate or off limits with the exception of a few countries where they were particularly unfriendly to women. Those gigs she refused sans major political statements, usually there were only short, video’d regrets for her fans or special live sets they could watch on the Internet if permitted.

“What do you say to the people who compare you to Whitney Houston?”
One reporter asked early in her career.

Cass laughed. “
Whitney Houston with a guitar. I enjoyed that one. I guess I just say thank you. But I don’t take it seriously. I think it stems from the fact that I sang one of her songs in tribute after she died, and –”

“And killed it,” the reporter interrupted.

Cass nodded her head in thanks. “It may also come from the fact that we’re both the same shade of brown, and our voices have a lot of vibrato. But we’re very different performers. Whitney was a classic. I adore her music. She did performances decades ago that still make me cry. She was a phenom. I’m more rough and tumble.”

“More Tina Turner than Diana Ross.”

“You are good,” she told the reporter laughing. “But I don’t mind comparisons much; it makes me feel good to hear my name in the same sentence as any of those women. Whitney was a star. There will never be another voice like hers. I watched The Bodyguard again after she died, and she was radiant. She was so beautiful. That scene where she sang I have Nothing in that silver dress with head wrap and that curl on her forehead? Undeniable. Did you know that movie was around for more than a decade before Kevin Costner put some feet to it? It was actually originally intended for Diana Ross and Steve McQueen.”

That reporter swore later that interview was one of the highlights of his career.
He wrote,

“Cassidy Dodge is as beautiful and talented as
Whitney Houston minus the angst and the drugs. Both women were stars, but Whitney’s feet did not appear to be as firmly rooted to the earth as this current voice of a generation.”

Cass liked that bit about being firmly planted to the earth. She took
great pride in being practical.