Real Challenge (Atlanta #2) (30 page)

Slowly, she turned a bit to her side and pulled her skirt up. She folded the fabric back from the slit of her dress just as she practiced, and revealed the tattoo. A rippling blue, faded-edge oval shimmered on her skin like the surface of a pool. The tattoo artist did a fantastic job of using different blues and a little white to get a random ripple effect. A tiny depiction of the Olympic logo sat below the watery oval, showcasing Scott’s passion directly within her skin.

She watched his eyes register the view and the corners of his mouth turn up slightly in response. He traced and retraced the tiny representation of him there on her hip with a look of wonder on his face. She smiled at his expression while his fingers touched her tattooed skin. Intensity burned behind his eyes. He pulled her hip to him and kissed the little picture, then rested his cheek against her. He wrapped his arms around her legs, holding himself against her while he kissed the tattoo again.
 

“You like it?” she asked softly.

“I can’t believe you did that for me,” he said quietly, still holding her. He let go only long enough to stand beside her and kiss her again, with even more emotion than he had before. He unzipped her dress and gently moved the straps from her shoulders. The wine-colored fabric dropped from her body as he kissed her neck and collar bone.
 

Gently, he picked her up and cradled her to the bedroom. Scott spent hours offering love with every move he made. Cassie experienced every ounce of his heart while they moved together. He spent so much time touching and kissing her tribute to him on her body; the soft attention from his lips was nothing short of beautiful.
 

He made love to her so slowly that evening, easing his body gently into hers again and again. He breathed the words “I love you” time and time again while they moved in perfect rhythm together. After finally reaching the height of pleasure, they held each other tightly. That loving satisfaction left Cassie tingling, warm, and peaceful. She slept so deeply that night, awesomely and completely in love with every single thing about Scott Merchant.

Chapter Sixteen

Scott and Cassie spent the whole weekend just being in love. They watched movies and were adorably domestic as they did dishes together after their meals. Cassie spent most of her weekend in one of his old Georgetown t-shirts and a pair of his boxers. Scott loved that she had nothing underneath his clothes and spent his time exploring her body lazily while they relaxed with the mindless movies they put on.

Sunday evening came around and neither of them wanted to go back to reality. They kissed a long goodbye at Cassie’s door when he finally forced himself to take a step back so he could leave.
 

“Friday can’t come soon enough,” he said to her lovingly. He set his hand over the tattoo again and squeezed. “Thank you for that. It’s kind of huge for me that you did it.”

“Well, you’re already on every surface of me. I just wanted the chance to see it.”

He kissed her passionately and he couldn’t leave. He walked her inside and continued kissing her, unable to let her go. “Let me stay tonight,” he whispered. “I’ll have to leave early, but I can’t be without you yet.”
 

She held him tightly and then led him to her room. He didn’t make any move to have her physically again. He only wanted her in his arms to hold her close the entire night.

He got up early the next morning and left while Cassie was still sleeping. He kissed her forehead before he went to the pool. He spent his time doing laps trying to figure out how to deal with the issue of work. He didn’t love his job. He didn’t really want to be partner. He only wanted the victory. Partner in a prestigious accounting firm was a worthy goal he could absolutely achieve. So, did that count as joy? He didn’t like the work, but the goal sounded good.
 

The concept still didn’t sit right with him. Would any goal bring him joy? Had any yet? He had achieved dominance in swimming, with women, he graduated
summa cum laude
from Georgetown, and now in his chosen field. He wasn’t sure if any of those successes had ever been joyful. The closest he came, he supposed, was the Olympics, but he couldn’t do that again. He couldn’t just be a competitive swimmer for the rest of his life, no matter how much he loved the sport. He felt like he was dumb as soup for not being able to figure this out. Cassie already had, so why couldn’t he?
 

In the mean time, he would keep on his current career trajectory until he could. By the time he got to work Monday he was forced to get right back into the grove of things. One of his larger clients was going through an IRS audit and Scott had a ton of work to do to get the paperwork in order.
 

The audit consumed his entire week and would probably suck all the time out of his Saturday, too. He was miserable at the thought, but he figured he could do some of the work at Cassie’s house while she studied. He didn’t like the idea of mixing work with his weekends with her, but at least he would get to see her.
 

By the time Saturday rolled around, he was starting to feel like he was in tax season again. He was at Cassie’s just like he had hoped, but doing work at her house weighed on him heavier than expected. He didn’t like his driven, corporate self colliding with the freedom and happiness of Cassie’s world. It just felt wrong.
 

After nearly three straight hours of work, he slammed the laptop shut.
 

Cassie jumped at the sound of his computer closing so abruptly. She looked over at him and saw him looking absolutely defeated. Her heart broke to see him hating his work like that. But a little ray of hope shone through when he looked right up at her and told her what he needed. She loved that.
That
was the Scott she wanted…for both of them.
 

“I can’t take another minute of this. Take me somewhere fun, please,” he said in a flat, lifeless voice.

“Ok, we’re going to the park. You still work so much that you’ve barely seen any sunlight since that picnic. That’s why your brain is mush. We’ll grab a snack on the way. Deal?”

“As long as I don’t have to think about it, it sounds good.”

“Come on then, up you go.”

Cassie helped pull him up off the couch and sighed at the frustrated look on his face. Part-time smiling did not seem acceptable. She hugged him around his waist and rested her face on his chest for a moment. She waited while he slipped his feet into his athletic slides.
 

“I’m driving,” she said in a way that offered no debate on the subject.

By the time they got to Centennial Park, Scott seemed just a little more relaxed than he had been the rest of the day. They exited her little sedan and walked over to a bench to sit and eat the nachos and cheese she got at the mexican fast food drive-thru.
 

“Here’s to getting away from work,” she said, toasting with her taco chip “clinking” against his.
 

“To the weekends,” Scott said before crunching his chip, already lighter than he was.

They ate their nachos and Cassie pulled out all the stops to make him laugh. She pointed out people in the park and narrated whatever she thought was going through their heads.

“See that guy over there? The one with the bad toupee and the tiny little yorkie dog? I can totally read his mind. Right now he’s thinking about grape bubblegum and how many pieces he can fit into his mouth at one time. And that lady behind him? She was wishing she were a monkey so no one would judge her for her obsessive banana consumption.”

She finally had Scott laughing easily and she was glad to be able to give him a break and let him relax. When he was away from his computer, he was back to his real self with her. They finished their nachos and Cassie suggested a walk. She pulled him up off the bench and enjoyed the summer sun on her face.
 

She was wearing a typically playful Cassie outfit while Scott was in a pair of tan cargo shorts and a loose fitting tee hanging over the top of them. He looked down at her, still amazed by her bold and confident style. He, on the other hand, looked like everybody else in the park.
 

“Don’t you like my outfit?” she asked, laughing at his standard reaction to her. She wore scarlet red denim capris with a wide, white belt around the waist. A sparkly heart-shaped buckle sat right under a tight black t-shirt with a giant Minnie Mouse face on it. Her hair was in a ponytail and her feet were only covered by the fabric straps of sequined black flip flops. She looked like an over-sized six-year-old.
 

“I love your outfit. It’s very Cassie of you to wear,” he said smiling at her. He held her hand and they started walking around the park, enjoying the chance to stretch their legs and get their bodies moving before they got back to work and studying at her house. Cassie was still narrating the thoughts of the people around them when she heard a voice call to them from about twenty yards away.
 

“Scott! I didn’t know they let you tax lackeys out during an audit,” a middle age partner from his office said with a smile as he walked toward them.
 

Scott dropped Cassie’s hand quickly to shake hands with the gentleman. “I’m just taking a short break is all. It’s great to see you. I was starting to forget there was a real world beyond the office walls,” he said, all charm and smiles.
 

Cassie noticed very quickly that he didn’t pick her hand back up and that he didn’t introduce her to the gentleman who obviously knew him from work somehow. He was standing there with that broad-shouldered posture, conversational, falsely easy-going, and calculatedly impressive. Cassie knew this shiny façade was deliberate. Scott was overly genial and laughed just a bit too hard at this guy’s not-that-funny comments. She stood by quietly while they chatted for a moment and tried to look friendly instead of royally pissed.

When the guy from the office walked off toward his family picnicking in the grass, Cassie spun on her heal and walked quickly back toward the car.
 

“Cassie, wait up,” Scott called. He had to almost jog to catch up to her. “Wait! Cassie?”

She stopped only long enough to take off a flip-flop and wing it at Scott’s head. He caught it as he blocked his face, completely at a loss. “Cassie?”

By the time he got that word out, she was already striding toward the car in only one shoe, fuming at what had just happened. Scott was nearly out of breath by the time he caught up to her, trying to keep pace. “Cassie, what’s wrong?”

She couldn’t believe he had no idea.
 

“You’re a jerk, that’s what’s wrong,” she said, stopping short and staring at him. “You don’t have the first clue about anything, do you. It’s like you’ve been lying to me for months! I’m going home. If you don’t want to be abandoned in the park, I suggest you keep up and get in the car before I decide to leave you here. Give me my damn shoe.”

Cassie ripped the flip-flop from his hand and tugged it onto her foot so she could storm off again. Scott thought he had seen every side of Cassie, but as he struggled to keep up with her furious pace, he realized he had never seen the angry side. He did not like this at all, especially when directed at him.
 

“Cassie, what the hell?” he said as he opened the car. This was not good, and Scott knew it. She wouldn’t be this mad unless he deserved it. “What did I do?”

She turned the ignition key aggressively and clenched her jaw as she threw the car in reverse and swung out of the parking spot. She stopped herself long enough for a quick breath, and then drove off at a reasonable rate of speed. She stayed silent the entire way back to her house and Scott stared straight ahead, confused and more than a bit worried. She let him in to her house, which was a relief, and then turned to look at him directly.

“You really have no idea, do you,” she said to him with her hands on her hips.

“God, Cass, I really don’t. Talk to me.
Please
.”

Cassie took a deep breath. “I don’t even know where to start. But all this time I thought you were so
real
with me. I had the
real
Scott playing and laughing and having fun and being
real you
with
real me
. But that was it. You’ve just been playing with me this whole time and that’s all. The first sign of someone you know from elsewhere and you are instantly embarrassed by me. So much for adoring my confidence. And by the way, you have
none
.”

Cassie paused and paced around the room, still fuming. Scott had not idea what to say, so he gaped in silence, hoping to understand how to handle the moment. He was about to say something when Cassie started in again.
 

“You wouldn’t even introduce me to him! Do you know how crappy that was? And you acted like a corporate jackass with that guy from the office. You practically had your lips surgically attached to his butt. Maybe the real Scott is the one I just saw in the park and the
you
I have
here
is a farce. Am I just a fun little toy to play with while you skyrocket your way to the top? And good luck with that, by the way. Choke on it.”

When she had finished her rant, she stomped back to her bedroom and slammed the door. Scott just stood there with his mouth hanging open with absolutely no idea what to say. He sank down on the couch and dropped his head in his hands. He knew she was right, and he was so angry that his two halves had collided so violently.
 

Until that point, he hadn’t even realized how altogether polarized he had become. And because of his inability to find a balance between the two hemispheres of his world, he had insulted Cassie to the point of anger and pain. He really was a jackass, but he had no idea how to repair what he had just broken. This whole fiasco also had him wondering which Scott
was
the real one.
 

He thought about that for a while. Cassie had lots of sides to her, so why couldn’t he have just as many? Before he could even finish the question in his head, he had the answer. Every single part of Cassie was true. She never put on airs for anyone. If she was sad, she cried. If she was happy, she laughed. If she was mad, she threw her shoes. She would never fake an emotion.