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“I’m sorry?” She’d asked breathily, her vibrant blue eyes searching his face in confusion.
“You said you bet I’d love it. I’ll take the wager once I know the stakes.” His accent confused her. His English was flawless, but his vowels were softened, sounding French, perhaps Spanish. And American, too, like Europeans who had learned English as a second language often had.
Cassandra had known from that moment that she was lost. Anyone who could verbally spar with her was a temptation she couldn’t resist. She picked up a toothpick that had, on its end, a speared morsel. “The stakes are,” she had said, throwing a look over her shoulder to make sure her boss wasn’t watching, “whatever you want them to be.” And her eyes had glowed luminescent with promise as she’d lifted an hors d'oeuvre to his mouth and watched him bite down on it. His eyes had never left her face as he’d taste the exquisite finger good.
When she would have dropped her hand, he had caught her wrist and pressed it to his lips, placing a single kiss against the fluttering pulse point.
“Dinner. Tomorrow night.” He’d commanded, in that authoritative tone that she was to come to love, and then hate.
Now, three months later, their eyes met and time disappeared down a rabbit hole as they both relived that moment. His thumb padded across her wrist beneath the table and she sucked in a gulp of air desperately.
Oblivious to the sensual byplay, Alyssia was still marvelling at the view. The persistent sound of her stepmother’s accented voice broke the spell. Cassandra curved her fingernails into her palm to curb the itch she felt to reach across and slap her glamorous stepmother.
According to consensus, the scallops were divine. The chef had seared them over flame and served them with a delicate salad of avocado and rocket, with a squeeze of lemon juice. Simplicity to leave the seafood to shine. Cassandra found that despite not having eaten all day, she couldn’t bring herself to have more than a mouthful now. She pushed the food around on her plate but her stomach was tied up in knots to such an extent as to make eating impossible.
Drinking was not so difficult, and she polished off her second martini as their entree plates were being cleared.
Peter Hervey slid his daughter an anxious look. “You still like the party scene then?” He tried to keep the condemnation from his tone. He didn’t know what he’d expected when Benedict had called, saying he’d located Cassandra. He’d hoped, if he was honest with himself, that Cassandra might have grown out of her childish and selfish behaviour. It would seem however, that she had not.
“Once a party girl, always a party girl,” Cassandra acknowledged with a wry twist of her lips. To emphasise her point, she reached across the table and sloshed some ice cold Viognier into her glass.
Benedict turned to face her, his eyebrows raised in surprise, but she did not look at him. Let him think what he would. It would serve him right to realise he didn’t know her as well as he thought. And though she wanted to revel in that idea, she couldn’t. It just made her more miserable.
Alyssia did a better job than Peter at keeping the judgement from her voice. “You enjoy living in Sydney then, Cassandra?”
“I won’t be queuing up to come home to Hervey Manor anytime soon, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she snapped. The surprise on Alyssia’s face made her feel momentarily ashamed. Again, she reminded herself that her stepmother was accomplished at manipulation.
“I don’t think that’s what my cousin was asking,” Benedict’s voice held a note of steel that anyone else might have heeded as warning.
Cassandra liked to dance with danger, and that night she was feeling particularly foolhardy. “Wasn’t she?” Cass took a sip of her wine and then pushed it away as bile rose in her throat. A vibrating against her hip caught her attention and she looked down in confusion. The cocktails had made her brain foggy, so she didn’t immediately connect the sensation with her mobile phone.
“You’re ringing,” Alyssia said softly, her brown eyes were soft with something akin to pity that made Cassandra bristle.
“So I am,” she seethed, reaching into her bag and fishing out her phone.
It was Cherie, agreeing to meet her.
Cassandra stood, a little unsteadily. “Excuse me,” she said, a saccharine smile on her face. “I’m sure you’ll all enjoy your evening much better without me in it.” She spun around and listed a little as she went back inside.
She was at the front door when Benedict caught her, his expression livid. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” He demanded harshly, his voice arresting her in her tracks.
“I am going to meet my friends.” She glared at him pointedly. “My real friends.”
“How dare you be so disrespectful to your parents on their first night in town?”
“They’re not my parents,” she shouted at him, uncaring if her father and his wife heard. “She is not my mother!” Her voice was shrill and the sheer strength of emotions made him want to take her in his arms.
“I’ve never seen you like this,” he said quietly, as her chest heaved with the force of her ragged breathing.
Something occurred to her. “I need money.” She pouted belligerently. “My wallet. You took it. I’ll need it.”
He frowned. “Cass...”
“My name is Cassandra,” She slurred unevenly, parroting his own words back to him.
“Cassandra,” his voice held a warning. “You should not go out in this condition.”
“I sure as heck can’t be here in this condition. I’m likely to kill someone, and at this moment in time, I’d say you’re the prime candidate,” she pushed a finger into his chest as she spoke, connecting with the rock hard wall of abdominals.
