The International Kissing Club (34 page)

No. She refused to respond to such blatant attempts to distract her. She was angry. How had it slipped his mind to tell her, someone he’d seen and talked to every day for the past month, that his family was on the other side of well-off? That he was a friggin’ mogul. Or at least the heir to one.

“Don’t be mad, Cass. It’s nothing, I promise. My family has money. That shouldn’t change anything between us, right?” He brushed her lips, and she leaned into him, but caught herself at the last moment and stiffened.

“No, it doesn’t. But you should have told me.”

“I’m sorry. And I promise, I wasn’t trying to hide it—it just really isn’t a big deal. So, are we good?”

Finally she nodded and begrudgingly said, “Okay.”

Lucas smiled. “Good. Then kiss me.” That she was happy to do. Too happy.

“Come on, I want you to meet my family,” he said, and led her to the end of the long wooden dock. “Hello!” He helped her step down onto the deck.

A beautiful blond woman popped her head up from below.
Ah, this must be the cruise director
, Cassidy thought.

“Hello, my darling boy,” she called out. She wore a pink polo top and white linen pants with silver sandals, and had a figure that would make even Piper’s mom green. She crossed the deck to them and wrapped her arms around Lucas before leaving a smudge of lipstick on his cheek.

“Mum, this is Cassidy. Cassidy, this is my mum, Shanna.”

“Cassidy.” She smiled and before Cassidy could do anything about it, Lucas’s mom embraced her as well. “I’m delighted you could join us today. Lucas has told me so much about you already.”

Cassidy shifted on her feet, a bit overwhelmed by the welcome. “Thank you for inviting me, Mrs. McCann.” Lucas must have sensed her awkwardness, because he slipped his hand in hers and gave it a little squeeze.

Two other girls climbed up top. “Hey, li’l man,” said the first, her long pale-blond hair swinging down her back. Lucas caught her up in a hug as well.

“Cassidy, this is my older sister, Kara,” he said before pausing to hug the other girl. Her hair was darker than her sister’s and cut into a stylish bob swept to the side of her face, a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. “And this is my oldest sister, Julie.”

He was so tall and solid, it was tough for Cassidy to imagine Lucas as the baby in his family. But the way all the McCann women fussed over him, she could see he reveled in the position.

“Where’ve you been? We’ve waited hours for you, Lucas.” Julie flicked him affectionately on the ear.

He ducked. “Am I the only one in this family who likes to sleep past dawn?”

“Past dawn, no; past noon, yes.” His mother smoothed down the collar of his green shirt. “You know your father. He was ready to cast off when day broke. If he had his way, we’d live on this boat.”

“We will live on this boat,” came a booming voice behind them. Cassidy looked over Shanna’s shoulder to see an older version of Lucas coming toward them. Tan and fit, in a pair of khaki pants and a wind jacket, with only a hint of silver in his sand-colored hair, Mr. McCann was a striking man. “Just a few more years, and I plan to circumnavigate the globe with her.” He held out his hand to shake Lucas’s. “Hello, Son,” he said.

After the loving exuberance of Lucas’s mom and sisters, Cassidy couldn’t help but notice the distant formality that existed between Lucas and his father. “Hello, Dad. This is Cassidy.”

Cassidy shook his hand. “Nice to meet you, Mr. McCann.” The whole family was so stupidly attractive, she almost began to tremble with the thought of her imperfections. The refrain from the
Sesame Street
song “One of These Things Is Not Like the Others” kept replaying in the back of her mind.

“Please, when I’m not at the office, I prefer Charles. Have you been sailing before, Cassidy?”

She stifled a snort. Unless you counted paddling a canoe in the stock tank on Izzy’s ranch, then no.

Mr. McCann sailed the boat (named
Charlie’s Angels
—a cheeky reference to Shanna, Julie, and Kara) through the harbor, past the iconic landmarks, and out to the Tasman Sea, heading south along the coast. Lucas sat by her side the whole time, pointing out the sights and laughing with her while they watched dolphins surf in the boat’s wake.

It was all so overwhelmingly perfect. And she’d never felt more out of place.

His family was wonderful, of course. He and his sisters poked and
ribbed each other like they were all still children, not grown adults, and his mother, smiling and laughing with her kids, taking everything they did and said in stride. They brought Cassidy into their circle and teased her as if she was one of their own.

Cassidy, on the other hand, kept waiting for Mr. McCann to pull her aside and try to bribe her to stay away from his son like what happened on the soap operas her Memaw watched. But instead, Charles—as he kept insisting she call him—stood at the wheel all day, except when they’d anchored for lunch in the sheltered cove of a lush green national park. Even then he talked about sailing and the boat—which he loved, the passion for it glittering in his eyes.

The tension was unmistakable, however, between father and son, though neither acknowledged it. Not even when Lucas mentioned over lunch that he would be competing next week at North Narrabeen Point.

Charles had stayed quiet, returning to his position behind the wheel to sail them back to Sydney.

“Can I come watch?” Kara asked her brother. “You won’t embarrass me by wiping out on a puny wave or anything, right? ’Cause I only claim you as my li’l brother when you win.”

“Can’t wipe out—all the big companies will be there to see me. Want to come, too, Mum?”

Shanna shook her head vigorously. “No, sweetheart. You know I can’t watch you do that stuff. It’s too dangerous.”

Later, when his mother and sisters had gone below deck, Lucas sat next to Cass, legs dangling over the side, their arms against the rail. “Will you come watch me compete?”

“I’d love to,” she answered. He put his arm around her shoulder and she leaned against him. “You know you’re not all that different from your dad,” she said. “Look at him.” They glanced to where Charles stood. “He feels the same about sailing as you do about surfing.”

Lucas shrugged. “Maybe, but he doesn’t see it that way. He thinks
I’m betting my future on a long shot. Julie, she’s an attorney. Kara is studying medicine at university. He wants me to fall in line. But I have to know I gave my dream everything I had before I give up on it.”

“He’s only like that because he loves you, Lucas. He wants the best for you. You’re lucky. Trust me, having a dad that’s a pain in the ass is better than not having one around at all.”

“When did your parents divorce?” he asked. Cassidy hesitated. It made her uncomfortable to talk about her whole messed-up family situation when his was so completely opposite. But somehow she knew he wouldn’t judge her, wouldn’t think less of her for something she’d had no control over. Lucas was nothing like the small-minded people from back home. She took a breath and dove in.

“My parents were never married. My mom got pregnant when she was eighteen and my dad … my dad wanted other things. So he left.”

“Sounds like a whacker.”

Cass snorted. She wasn’t quite sure what a “whacker” was, but she could guess at the meaning. “Yeah, I think so, too.”

“D’ya ever see him?”

“Not really,” she answered, “though he did pay for me to come on this trip, so I have to give him a little credit.”

Cassidy was glad Lucas didn’t say something comforting or try to make her feel better about the situation with a sympathetic gesture. That wasn’t why she’d told him about her dad. She’d told him because it was such a huge part of what made her who she was and she’d wanted him to know. They were quiet for a while after that, watching the whitecaps crest and roll.

“If you don’t get your scholarship, are you going to stay in Paris forever?” Lucas finally asked, breaking the silence between them.

“God, I hope not. Piper says I can come live with her in Austin when she goes to college, at least until I can afford tuition or get a loan.”

“You could come back here for university. Maybe I could help you with tuition.”

For a split second everything in Cassidy’s body came to a complete stop. He couldn’t be serious. There was no way he was serious. She snorted. “Right—I’m going to move to Australia so you can pay for me to go to college. Ha. Very funny.”

“What’s so funny about it? In case you haven’t noticed, Cassidy, I like you; I like having you around. And I’d help you if you wanted. If you’d let me.”

Oh my God, she’d taken the seasickness patch off too soon. The boat had suddenly turned into a Tilt-A-Whirl and everything was topsy-turvy because Lucas couldn’t be serious. And
if
he was then …

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

Cassidy couldn’t breathe, but Lucas was waiting for a response. This ride was coming to an end, and instead of letting her off safely, it had dumped her into the ocean. She scrambled for the only life preserver she could find.

“I thought you don’t have any money—your parents do,” she said.

“I don’t. But I could if it were really important to me.” Now she was slipping beneath the water and drowning.

Panicked by the direction this conversation had taken, she turned away. Cassidy gripped the railing for dear life and stared out at the horizon, trying to regain her equilibrium. She was a state basketball champion, and she hadn’t gotten there without knowing how to stamp down her fear and focus on her goal. In this case: getting off this goddamn boat.

Cassidy shut out everything—Lucas, the noise of the boat, the waves, the wind—and just breathed. And breathed. And breathed.

These past weeks hanging out with Lucas had been the best time of her life. But moving here to be with him, putting all of her faith in him, letting him pay for her expenses—that was a level she wasn’t ready for. Not to mention, Cassidy could only imagine telling her mother that she was going to move to the other side of the world to be
with a guy who would be paying for her college education. Talk about sending someone to an early grave—her mother’s head would spin like a hula hoop before shooting off across the room like a champagne cork.

Not that the idea didn’t have some appeal, if she was being completely honest with herself. Why wouldn’t it? Life would be a lot easier if there really were white knights that rode to the rescue when a girl needed it. But Cassidy wasn’t that girl. She didn’t want charity. She could rescue herself, thank you very much.

And grand gestures like the offer Lucas had just made were the sorts of things guys did when they wanted something from you. Not that she believed that about Lucas, but there had to be a better explanation for what he’d said than just that he liked having her around.

Love?

Where had that come from? Just thinking the word gave her a brain freeze. She liked Lucas more than any guy she’d ever known, but love … no, it was too soon and she was too young to be talking about that.

Cassidy pulled away from Lucas. She took a breath to sort through her rambling, crazy thoughts. She was still Vacation Cassidy, remember? He was talking about University Cassidy. She wasn’t ready to open the box on that model yet. “That’s almost two years away. I can’t worry about it right now. I just want to focus on the four weeks I’ve got left here, okay? And
you
need to focus on surfing your ass off next weekend.”

As soon as the words came out of her mouth she seized the idea. Surfing … yeah. He probably needed to practice in the coming week. And God knew she needed a little time to remember that Hot Guy and Monster Sailboat weren’t accessories that Vacation Cassidy got to keep when this trip was over.

“Maybe we shouldn’t see each other this week. Maybe we need a break.” Yes, that’s what they needed: breathing space.

“A break?” His face fell, like she’d just stomped on his surfboard.

“You know, so you’re not distracted. You’ll get more wave time this way.”

“You’re not a distraction, Cass,” he argued, twirling a long springy curl of her hair around his finger.

She scooted another foot away, out of his reach. “Well,
you
are. Not in a bad way, that’s the problem. I like being with you, too much. I could stand to put a bit more effort into my classes so I don’t have to repeat junior year. And all your energy needs to go into impressing those sponsors.”

Lucas looked unconvinced. “That’s all this is about, your school and my surfing? Nothing else?”

“Yes, Lucas, really. Nothing else.” Nothing else she wanted to talk to him about anyway.

“This isn’t some crap excuse because you want to get more points for that stupid kissing club?”

Cassidy laughed out loud. Jeez, guys could be so insecure, even really cute ones. “No. I promise that’s not the reason.” She scooted back toward him, playfully punching his arm. “And don’t knock the IKC, dude. It’s the whole reason we started kissing in the first place.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Reason? That was just an excuse. But you’re still coming with me next Saturday, yeah?”

“I wouldn’t miss it, Lucas. And it’s only six days. It’ll be over before we know it.”

Six days would be a cakewalk. Just long enough for her to get her head—and her heart—back on straight.

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