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She sticks her tongue out but doesn’t look at me. “I should have specified that you weren’t allowed to talk during this. You’ve already got such an advantage.”
Kneading my dough into the perfect shape, I can’t exactly tell her she’s wrong. When I suggested a pizza-making competition for dinner, Cassandra laughed and said I was setting her up to fail. And then I told her that my parents used to do this with us as kids, splitting us into teams while they were captains. Two kids to a side, having free rein over toppings and sauce, and we had to make the perfect pie, and then we’d all sit down to eat them for dinner and vote whose was better.
Cassandra blinked at me when I told her I wanted to start the tradition ourselves, then launched herself at me and gave me a kiss that had my cock going from six to midnight.
“But I let you take the prosciutto as your ingredient. Adding that to anything gives it like five extra bonus points.” I pout like I did her a favor.
“And your mom gave me her special sauce,” she brags, nodding her head toward the jar.
“Why does she like you more than me?” In the ten days she’s been living in the guesthouse, my mom found her way over here numerous times or invited Cassandra to do some kind of activity at my parent’s house.
Even if I am teasing her, and a little salty that she got the better sauce for our pizza competition, I am thrilled they’re bonding. Not just for Cassandra’s sake, it’s nice for her to have other people to lean on, but because I can tell that Mom is really bringing her into the inner circle. Which is the end goal, since I plan on making Cassandra a permanent part of the family … not that I want to freak her out with all that just yet.
“Mushrooms? Ugh.” She sticks her tongue out when she sees me placing them on my uncooked dough, sauce, and cheese.
“Once you taste them, you’ll change your entire stance. These are from a small business in the area who forages for these themselves, and they’re so delicious, you’ll never buy store bought again,” I rave.
Cassandra points a finger at me. “Your family is the kind who all sang songs on the way to the market on Sundays and you got a treat if you were well-behaved, weren’t they?”
“Picked a caramel snickerdoodle practically every weekend for ten years running.” I pat myself on the back.
She chuckles, but then I notice her go quiet as we place the finishing touches on our pies.
“Once this is over. God, I hope it’s over soon …” she rambles, and I lean over to press my forehead to hers.
“It will be.”
Cassandra takes a deep breath. “When it is, I think I’m going to list the house.”
We haven’t spoken about this since my dad let slip that he asked me to get close to her so she’d give us the land.
“You’re sure you’re ready for that?” Even though I loathed Butch, it is still the house where her father lived.
She nods, looking down at her pizza. “Especially with everything that’s happened there since I’ve been back, I need it out of my life. Renovating some parts felt like exorcising some demons, but it’s not mine. I don’t have good memories there. I did the right thing by my dad, even if some say he didn’t deserve it, and now it’s time to close that chapter. So when we figure out who is behind this, I’m going to list the property. Your brother and Dad can put in an offer fair and square, and if it’s the best, I’ll take it.”
“Make them sweat a little, at least put them through a bidding war.” I saunter the minimal space over to her and wrap my arms around her waist. “But I think that sounds perfect. You’re right, you did the right thing by him. A lot of kids wouldn’t have done the same. It’s what made me fall in love with you, your inability to be anything but fair and decent.”
“I’m thinking I’d like to donate the proceeds to some local charities. Places that will make a difference in someone’s life, maybe a portion will go to scholarships for workshops at the playhouse. I don’t know. I don’t need the money.”
I bite my tongue from saying, that at least in his death, Butch could do some good, but I have a feeling that’s what Cassandra is getting at. She’s trying to repent for her father’s sins, and while she doesn’t need to, it’s honorable.
“That’s a really great idea.” I kiss her forehead. “When do you think you’ll do it?”
“Well, I haven’t heard a thing from the private investigator in days. He has nothing to go on. Is it too foolish to hope that maybe they didn’t get what they wanted and are just done? I moved out, I’m here with you. Maybe they just hated my father and would be happy if the house sold.”
“As badly as I want to believe that, I think we’d be a little naive to go with that theory.” I frown because I wish it were true.
Cassandra drops her forehead to my chest. “I know. I just want to move on with my life. It feels like I discovered this next chapter I want to start, yet this thing is keeping me anchored to everything I want to offload.”
I know what she means. It has only been ten days since she moved into the guesthouse, and in those ten days, I’ve become one hundred percent certain that I want to marry this woman. That I’ll be ready tomorrow to hire a realtor and go house hunting in the area. That I’ll let her pick any brick-front colonial we could purchase to fill with scarlet-haired babies. I want it all, right now. It’s taken me many mistakes to get to the right path, but I know without any doubt that Cassandra is the woman I’m supposed to love for the rest of my life.
“I think we both want that more than we can express. Let’s just count our chickens that there have been no more threats, and that we’ve survived basically living with my parents as a new couple. It’ll happen, and then we’ll look back at this as a bump in the road that is so minor, we can’t believe we stressed about it.”
I might be peddling a bit of bullshit, but it’s not like the past two weeks have been all bad. Yes, I can constantly feel her stress and worry, but this time has also given us a chance to spend a lot of our days together.
“What happens after it’s over?” she asks.
We’ve talked a little about her finishing out the commitments she has in California, and her agent, Yaren, has already sent over an itemized list and schedule of what those are. They’ll finish up around the middle of next year but are so sporadic that she’ll never have to spend more than a week at her house in LA. She plans to ask Wilson for some more work at the playhouse, on a volunteer basis, of course, and other than that and the news about selling her father’s house, we haven’t spelled out any more of our future.
