Wicked Game (6 page)

On her third day with Jaime, she’d given herself a tour of the house and discovered that in the three years he’d been in the house, he had only bought furniture for a handful of rooms—a den, an office, his bedroom, the guest room she occupied, and a weight room. The house had four more bedrooms, a dining and living room, and a huge room that had no apparent purpose.

At Jaime’s suggestion, she started picking out furniture and paint samples. When the food in the fridge had run low and no candidate for a replacement cook had shown up, she decided she could figure that out too.

The bookstore gave her access to everything she needed to wear the different hats inside Jaime Dalton’s empire.

Jaime himself posed less of a problem as the days went by. At first, he was constantly underfoot and tormenting her. Somehow, she’d managed to make it through the first week without killing him. Then that glorious day came when she put him on a plane to Los Angeles to film a commercial. His workout schedule accelerated, as June began to wind into July, and he was gone most of the days he wasn’t posing for posters or volunteering with the charities he supported.

His life was busy and complicated. After two weeks of living with him, she finally understood why he needed someone to help him keep track of his appointments. Sam was just the person who got him extra work. He didn’t call to wake him up, after a late night with members of his team or the one or two bimbos he went out with, to make it to his appointments. Or to meet with the president of the United States to receive an award for his work with the Boys and Girls Club.

However, just because Jaime’s life was complicated, that didn’t mean hers was. After synchronizing schedules with Sam and texting the daily doings to Jaime’s phone, she actually had very little to do.

In short, Cass was bored. Even verbal warfare with Jaime had lost its appeal, after she figured out he was still just a restless kid who needed something to do to keep him out of her hair. Then came that day, while sitting at a red light, the back of her soccer mom car filled with paint supplies and groceries, that she realized her soccer kid was Jaime Dalton.

That day in mid-June, she came to another realization that bothered her even more than the fact that she’d somehow become Jaime’s mother. Jaime was avoiding her. The big bad scary football player was avoiding little old her, and she had no idea why.

Well, besides her need to argue with him every time he opened his mouth. Or her almost obsessive need for his approval of each room as she brought it to life. After a month of having no one else to talk to about the things that bothered her, she included him in her observations on the daytime television schedule and her sudden fascination with the strange goings on on
The Jersey Shore
. Somehow, she identified a little too closely with Sookie, or Snookie, or whatever the hell her name was. Except for the slutty clothes, big hair, and the orange skin, of course.

Now that she thought about it, all of those clothes she’d bought her first day in Miami were still hanging in her closet, unworn. She’d found clothes at the local Target that fit her stay-at-home-mom life much better than the sexy secretary stuff she’d found in the boutique. One day she was going to haul out the black cocktail dress and wear it to vacuum the new carpet in the living room.

She’d even found time to use the pool, and suits that didn’t show as much skin as those at the boutique. It really was nice to take a swim without having third-degree chemical burns everywhere her clothes touched her.

Of course, her mother had started letting her calls go to voicemail, as had two of her college friends who had real lives.

Yes, Cass decided, she was bored out of her ever-loving mind and was ready to stake Jaime Dalton to a palm tree outside and watch him burst into flame. Oh wait, that would be one of the vampires on that dirty HBO show.

Cass banged her head on the steering wheel after this realization and drove herself home, where she unloaded the trunk. And like a good little SAHM, she went inside to whip up a good meal for her man in thirty minutes or less. Rachel Ray would be so proud.

* * * *

For nearly four weeks, Jaime had been avoiding his new personal assistant like the plague she was. For four weeks, he made sure he was out of the house before she came down to occupy his office. He came home for lunch, usually to find her on her hands and knees digging in the flowerbeds, or the kitchen cabinets.

Lately, she was up to her elbows in paint, and if he saw one more fabric sample, he might have to throttle her. She talked a lot. About everything, from what books she found at Barnes and Noble to the dating woes of the guy who mixed her paint at The Home Depot. He now knew the Cassandra rankings of all of the coffee shops nearby, and just how far it was on foot to the library. Hell, he didn’t even know where the library was located.

Somehow, she managed to find the art community and was slowly sneaking in paintings and objects that looked suspiciously like naked sticks. One day soon, he was terribly afraid that he was going to come home and find she’d taken up dog walking for the neighbors.

Cass was bored.

She didn’t say anything to that effect, but he could tell. Her brain was moving too fast. And if he hadn’t known before he decided it would be a good idea to hire her, he knew now that when Cassandra was bored, she drove everyone around her crazy. Unfortunately, for the last four weeks, everybody was just him.

It was his fault. He’d taken her away from her family, her friends, and any possible mind-numbing but Cass-fulfilling job she might have found at home to handle what, to him, was a major problem, but to her was a very tiny portion of her day.

So out of guilt and to get her to leave him alone, he gave her his credit card and turned her loose on the empty rooms in his house. Apparently, painting, cooking, and gardening weren’t enough to occupy her mind. So, she waited for him to come home, exhausted from endorsement shootings, his morning workout, his afternoon workout, and the one or two dates he’d somehow managed to sneak off to, to talk to him. About everything.

And exactly why he felt guilty for sneaking out to see other women, or just to get away from her, began to fester within his already overwrought personality. Soon he would snap and do something very, very bad to Cass Pendleton. Something that would involve the city dredging the canal behind the house and him fleeing the country.

Finally, the first day of July, about two weeks before he had to report for training camp, he walked into his house and realized he didn’t recognize it anymore. He found her in the garage, stripping varnish off a perfectly good dresser and talking to the television that was on in the laundry room. He didn’t even want to know when or why she put a television in the laundry room, but there it was, and Cass was telling a judge on one of the daytime shows exactly what she thought of his ruling in very purple language.

“Okay, enough is enough,” he said over the chatter, but she didn’t seem to hear. “Pepper, turn that damned thing off, or I’ll … I’ll throw it in the pool.”

“Who licked the red off your lollipop?” she retorted, but she turned the set off. “There, are you happy now?”

“Immensely. Now as I was saying, enough is enough. I can’t take the odor of paint or the sound of sanding or the constant television garbage another minute—”

“Is that why you’ve been messing around with my stuff? Because you hate the smell?” It was a strange question that caught him off guard.

“Uh, no. What the hell are you talking about?”

“I keep finding paint cans and varnish open, or not where I left them. Once a whole can was spilt on the vanity I’d just finished sanding.” She pointed the TV remote at him in an accusatory fashion, her eyes narrowed in a Cass-going-for-his-jugular sort of way.

“And that’s what I’m talking about—this is borderline obsessive behavior, and it’s driving me nuts. Go upstairs, wash the stink off, and put on something that doesn’t scream bag lady. You have thirty minutes; after that I’m throwing you in the shower and dressing you.”

“Who’s going to make me?” She laughed at him—seriously—laughed right in his face and went back to scraping the dresser as if he hadn’t said a thing.

“Okay then, just remember that you asked for this,” Jaime bellowed just before he lifted her in the air and flung her over his shoulder. She kicked him in the private parts and tried to bite him as she struggled and cursed, but a slap to her ass settled her down for the long trip up two sets of stairs to her room. He deposited her on the bed without a second of guilt, even when he saw murder and other types of mayhem in her eyes.

“Thirty minutes, Pepper. Don’t make me come and get you. Because you will not like what I’ll do to you.”

“Prick.” She threw her shoe at him.

“So you keep telling me.” He dodged the second on the way out the door. “Thirty minutes.”

He paced the foyer watching the stairs for thirty minutes, looking at his watch so often he thought he would wear it out. When the minute hand swept around to the half mark, he started to climb the stairs.

Cass, dressed in a pair of white Capri pants and a deep blue peasant-style top with matching sandals and a turquoise bag, met him on the first landing. Curiosity filled her eyes when she swept over him, noticing his khaki pants and button-down team shirt.

“You know all you had to do was tell me we had an appointment somewhere.” She passed him on the landing, her hair swinging in a loose braid between her bared shoulder blades.

“I should have, I’m sorry. It’s just that watching you putter around the house is driving me crazy, and the constant noise from the television isn’t helping.” There he’d said it. She was driving him crazy. “I brought you down here and left you at loose ends most of the day. I’m sorry for that too. I guess I thought the job would be bigger than it is.”

“For you, I’m sure it is. You’re the one living this schedule. And if what you keep telling me is true, then it’s only going to get worse for you. I got that much. But between you and Sam, all I have to do is keep your schedule updated and send you reminder texts.” She shrugged, looking up at him from the foyer. “I’ll figure something out.”

“And that is why we’re going out. I have a surprise for you. Come on.” He took her arm and led her out to his car, where he held the door for her. Mentally patting himself on the back for solving both of their problems at once. Of course, if he had a brain in his head, he’d have thought of this weeks ago. But as Cass was fond of reminding him, he didn’t have two brain cells rubbing together, especially when it came to her.

“I’m well aware of your surprises, Jaime. Tell me where we’re going.”

“No, you’ll just have to wait and see. It’s not far, Cass, just sit on your hands for a little while, and if you don’t like it, then you can strangle me—but at least give it a chance.”

“This doesn’t involve gators, does it?”

“Well, there will be things with teeth, but not of the reptilian variety.”

“Fine, just drive. I have to finish that dresser, and I’m planning to make chicken for dinner. And there’s a
Real Housewives
marathon coming on tonight that I want to watch.”

“Yeah? Which one, Orange County or Atlanta?”

“Atlanta, of course.” She looked at him funny as she buckled her seat belt, but was quiet the rest of the way.

When he pulled into the parking lot at the old school that housed the area Boys and Girls Club of America, he could feel her curiosity bubbling, almost as if it were a living creature. “Is this the club you volunteer with?”

“Yeah, I go outside and toss the ball around to the kids and tell them to stay in school and work hard. But, Cass, I think you can do more here than even I can.”

“How so?” She watched a group of little kids walk in single file from one building to another, a wistful look on her face.

“They need volunteers for the summer, and then when school starts in August, tutors for the afterschool program. I think you might be more than qualified to help out. What do you think?”

“I think I love you, is what I think.” Before he could brace himself for impact, she launched herself into his arms. Her lips were so soft when she kissed him, that he almost forgot that she was off limits. “Where do I sign up?”

Two hours later, a thoroughly exhausted but incredibly happy woman fell into the seat next to him. “You can thank me anytime. But for right now, how about we go out for dinner. I feel the need to eat something that didn’t start life in a can for a change.”

“And just like that, the old Jaime opens his mouth and all of his good deeds are undone.”

“So that’s a no to dinner on the town?”

“God, no, I’m so sick of my cooking I could puke.” She laughed, and for the first time in weeks, Jaime felt as if everything in his life was finally falling in place, but knowing Cass, that feeling would only last so long before he started contemplating mayhem once again. For now, he was happy just to have an evening off and a pretty woman to share it with. Even if that woman was Cassandra Pendleton.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” she said as he pulled out of the parking lot onto the highway.

“That lasted a long time,” Jaime replied with a sigh. The look she gave him told him the interruption wasn’t appreciated. “I’m sorry; you were saying?”

“I was saying that I think it’s time for me to move out of your guest room. I found a nice apartment not far away. I can easily commute in every morning and update your itinerary, check on the house, even do the cleaning and the shopping. You need your space, and I need to get to know the community. Besides, I have all that money you’re paying me with nothing to spend it on.” She sped through her appeal, looking nervously at him every second or so as if he were somehow actually in control of anything concerning her.

“Well, Cass, you’re not a prisoner in my house. If you’d prefer someplace of your own, I can certainly understand. I just thought that the guest room would be convenient is all.”

“And you wouldn’t have to listen to me talk all the time or the television. And if you wanted to bring a … a friend home, I won’t be underfoot, and vice versa.”