‘Well, like you, I have no time to waste and I am trying to be fair and honest with you.’ Cassie sighed, projecting a calm that she didn’t feel. ‘She may insist she’s going to do it herself; it may be her lifelong dream to do it—who knows? She’s probably already started prepping and freezing things, then all this talk here with you is a complete waste of time.’
‘Really? You think so?’ He looked at her again and something zipped between them.
Under his searching gaze, Cassie felt like a rabbit caught in the headlights. For some reason his intensity slammed up against her resolve and threatened it. Luckily, Frankie arrived with the food. She hoped that would be enough to distract her from Jack Brennan’s dark eyes and even darker voice—although she seriously doubted it.
THREE
So he’d been sucked in by a bleeding heart and a pretty face. Not for the first time and probably not the last.
No. Definitely the last. Jack didn’t usually allow himself to be carried away by a sob story—unless it was for work, in which case it was the soppier the better; soppy made damned good TV. Soppy falling headlong into breakdown turned compelling into a road crash—the ratings always peaked. Great for his career, but out of bounds for his personal life.
But those big wide eyes and the crack in her voice had tugged at something deep inside him. He knew exactly what it was like to have someone steal his dreams. Time and again—and always just as he started believing they might finally come true.
So he’d stopped making dreams, simple as that. He’d clamped down on any kind of wishful hope that he was important enough for anyone to care about. Buried himself in study and work and stayed away from deep and dangerous, too burnt to foster anything more than a flimsy connection that he could break before someone else did.
But Cassie deserved a break. Right? And that was easy enough to do. So why did he feel as if he’d made a huge mistake just sitting here?
She looked a little nervous as she spoke between mouthfuls of the best taco shells he’d ever tasted.
Less hysterical, but nervous. ‘Does your sister know about the car and the photographer?’
He wondered just how much more to tell her and decided to give her the basics. ‘She wasn’t going to have any frills. Friends are taking photos and she asked me to drive her to the venue in my car. She’s a struggling artist marrying an equally struggling musician. They don’t have cash to throw around; they can barely make the weekly rent. She’s also a self-taught cook, and pretty bad, never having anyone to show her how to do these things growing up. But you try telling a woman that. Chances are she’ll give everyone botulism.’
‘I imagine the closest she’ll get to hurting anyone would be killing you when she finds out about all this.’ Cassie’s brow furrowed into tiny lines. ‘Provocation. Any jury would let her off.’
He ignored her little joke. ‘Look, I want to give her the magical day she always talked about growing up—the whole meringue dress and rose petals shindig. But I’d like to get to the end of it without a trip to the emergency department or fending off an insurance claim.’
The frown deepened. ‘Are you always this negative?’
Negative? Him? ‘You don’t know my sister. I prefer to see it as realistic. Plan for the worst, and so on.’
‘And hope for what? The saying is: plan for the worst and hope for the best, right?’ She pierced him with those eyes.
Hope that this marriage-fest would be over soon and he could get on with his life, guilt-free.
He watched Cassie take a long slow lick of a drip down the side of her hand and swallow the coriander and minty goodness. The way her tongue dipped across her suntanned flesh, the curl of a lock of hair framing her face, the light in her eyes as she caught him watching—a guilty twinkle. God.
His groin tightened.
Hope for what, indeed? A taste of her?
What? No way. No way. Na-ah. Pretty, yes. Attractive, even. But more than looking he couldn’t—wouldn’t—contemplate.
He ignored it. Tried to ignore it. Tried, too, to shake off the unnerving feeling that when she looked at him she saw a whole lot more than he wanted her to see.
Luckily, he was heading to Iceland tomorrow afternoon. The great thing about his job was that he was never anywhere for long. Guaranteed to stop any kind of meshing of minds. Meshing of bodies he could do—that didn’t take too much investment. ‘Hope that I can find a caterer who cuts me a bit of slack and stops talking in a foreign language about food stations.’
At this her eyes twinkled some more. ‘My mum used to say that often things you’re looking for are right in front of you. Which is usually the case for me—things I want are way too often in front of me, in a shop window display begging to be bought. Now, talking of mothers, what about the mother-of-the-bride? Is she likely to want to give her opinion too? Father?’
He felt his shoulders snap up at the mention of the woman who’d given birth to him and his sister, the blackness that filled that corner of his heart. She’d been no mother. Or the subsequent string of women who’d tried in vain to create the one thing he’d craved but had always had ripped away. Connection. Connection—like Lizzie was trying to create with Callum. He felt the blackness rise—that would mean putting his heart on the line again. No way. ‘It’s just the two of us.’
Pink patches took up residence on her cheeks, seeping down her neck in a rush. ‘Oh. Okay. I’m sorry if I’ve overstepped—’
‘Don’t be. Now, are we done here?’ He waved a pen-scribble action towards the door and a waiter nodded and disappeared for the bill. He needed space.
‘I guess.’ She looked a little put out at his brutal tone, and it might have been easy to clear the air—easy, maybe, for someone else. But hearts on sleeves was messy. Messy wasn’t his thing.
While they waited for the bill he searched for something uncontroversial to cut through the heavy silence. Which was, after all, his fault. ‘So what made you go into catering?’
‘You mean my sister didn’t give you the low-down of my life already?’
‘Your sister’s pretty protective where you’re concerned.’
‘She’s lovely and everything, just sometimes a little stifling.’ Fiddling with her bag, Cassie gave a gentle smile. ‘Make that a lot stifling. Like you, maybe? With Lizzie?’
He felt the guilt shimmer through him. ‘No. I don’t stifle; it’s hard to stifle when you’re not even in the same country for most of the year. I’m always on the road shooting or editing. I’m not here enough, so she tells me. But I was asking about you and your career choice.’
Hell, he didn’t need to have his relationships analysed. He knew he was bad at them. That was what this whole wedding food thing was about—making amends. Being the better guy. The better brother. Trying to create a happy medium between work and life. Instead of work and work...and work. Which until now had been his life.
Cassie shrugged her delicate shoulders as another curl fell from the chopsticks. And now his imagination ran riot with a few too many scenarios of that vivid red spilling over his bed, his back...
Whoa. Not a good idea.
She carried on chatting in her sing-song voice. ‘Bottom line—I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I left school so I dabbled in a few things, none of them particularly successful, but everything came back to how much I loved food. Eating, cooking, and I get a kick out of making food for other people to enjoy. My mum