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“We met your father then,” Li said. “Right before he died.”
Cassiel was not often taken by surprise in a conversation. He had to remind himself not to get angry. It wasn’t as if they were trying to sideswipe him with information, and not every surprise was a bad one. However, he may have used a bit more force in his tone than necessary when he replied.
“I didn’t know you knew my father. Uncle Gabriel. Did you know the Copelands knew Dad?” he asked, interrupting his uncle’s conversation with Rafe.
Gabriel looked surprised. “I didn’t,” he said, recovering more quickly than Cassiel had, and betraying less.
“Wait, Dad, you knew the Lorings?” Elias asked from across the table.
“A bit. Well, I knew Michael,” Anthony said, glancing around. He suddenly had everyone’s attention. “He was in the UK quite often at the time. We have—sorry,had—several friends in common.”
“Which friends?” Francesca asked.
To an outsider, all they would see in his mother’s expression was polite interest, but to Cassiel, who knew better, she was laser-focused. And for good reason. Cassiel’s heart sped up. He was ready to jump in with a few possible ways to downplay some of his father’s potential connections in London, but if the Copelandsknew, then there would be no way from letting that bomb drop right here in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner. He was contemplating changing the subject altogether but didn’t get the chance.
“You never came out to London with Michael, did you, Francesca?” Anthony said to her. He frowned as if just realizing now how odd that was. “But I suppose it was mostly for work. For a while, Arc A and my company had a joint project. It was real estate related, as I recall, and our mutual friends were all attached through that project.”
Francesca sat back in her chair, relaxing. “What are the chances of that?” she said pleasantly, gesturing to Elias and Bianca in a way that included how the two of them had met and paired up all these years later when their fathers had known each other in another country. “Such a small world.”
“It sure is,” Anthony agreed, looking at his wife again, and obviously recalling warm memories of how this small world had paired him up with her.
Get a roomCassiel thought cynically, before steering his mind back to the problem at hand. Just because Anthony and Michael had known each other through work did not allay Cassiel’s fears as easily as they did for his mother.
There was a reason Cassiel had to spend so much time in London, and he wasn’t quite sure that they were out of the woods in this conversation yet. His eyes flicked to his uncle Gabriel as he spoke.
“I’d love to meet them, these mutual friends. We should arrange something for when we’re all back in London,” Cassiel said, knowing his uncle would be able to read his subtext. Cassiel would look into it and see if the Copelands knew. “When do you fly back?”
“Next week,” Li replied. “We want to spend time with our son, but—” she leaned close so it was just between her and Cassiel, “—I think he would rather spend time with someone else right now,” she said, indicating Bianca.
Unfortunately, Cassiel thought of the sex tape and cringed inwardly. “I think you might be right,” he said, doubting that this sweet lady knewhowher son was spending his time with Cassiel’s sister. He had to come up with some way to get that out of his head. He kept reminding himself that helikedElias now and that they were going to be friends if it killed Cassiel.
He took a sip of his wine and looked at them from across the table. Their heads were bent together as if they didn’t even want the air they breathed to be too far removed from the other. Cassiel looked away. But on the other end of the table were Rafe and Abbe. Even from here, he could see that Abbe had her hand on Rafe’s upper thigh under the table. She literally couldn’t keep her hands off of him.
Cassiel shifted in his seat, subtly rearranging himself and trying like hell not to think about a soft hand brushing up his inner thigh. He asked himself when the last time was he’d gotten laid and realized it had been months. He had to fix that.
Usually, it was no problem, but he’d fallen out of contact with his last batch of hook-ups. He could remember quite how it had happened, just that he’d started to find them all lacking in one way or another. He chose his female companions based on two things—firstly, on their looks. And secondly, on how likely they were to become a pain in the ass. He did not want a challenge. He did not want someone complicated. He was not looking for witty banter or thought-provoking nuggets of wisdom. What he wanted from a female companion was very straightforward. He wanted to have a good time, then go home and sleep in his own bed.
He made sure it was a good time for them too. From his first encounter when he was fifteen, he had understood that he had the kind of body that women enjoyed. She’d been eighteen and she’d asked to see if the rumors were true. They were. She’d come back a few nights later with a friend, and then they’d both started passing the word around. Cassiel Loring was hung like a horse and you could ride him all night.
He'd been hurt, though he’d never told anyone that. That first night he thought she’d cared about him. She’d given him a pitying look, called him a cute kid, and told him not to take sex so seriously. Since then, he hadn’t.
He heard his sister laugh at something Elias said. They had the same sense of humor. He never thought anyone would ever understand Bianca’s jokes, but Elias got them. Not only got them, but he could also yes-and them. Cassiel saw the way Elias’ breathing sped up at the sound of her laughter, like his body switched on at the sound of her happiness. Cassiel wondered what it would be like for a woman to get his jokes, to see her eyes flash and hear her laugh just for him.
The food came and he dragged his thoughts away from the fact that there were three happy couples and three sad sacks at the table. His mother and her current husband were spending time apart. Again. And his Uncle Gabriel never dated. Cassiel didn’t like knowing he was in the sad sack club. Before, he’d always seen himself as unattached and satisfied, but lately the thought of going through the motions with yet another girl to get to the satisfaction part didn’t appeal to him like it used to.
The peripatetic rocket launcher in his pants begged to differ. It didn’t help his situation that right across the table from him Abbe’s nipples got hard every time she looked at his brother, or that when she leaned toward Rafe she shifted her hips, grinding into the seat of her chair like she couldn’t wait to get on top of him. Cassiel watched her do it again and was pretty sure his dick was going to pop up and flip the damn table.
It wasn’t that he wanted Abbe. She was pure fire, but apart from the fact that she was his brother’s girl (and Cassiel had unfortunately been down that road before and would never do it again) Abbe was too goody-two-shoes for him. He wanted someone who would go to the mats with him. Someone who wouldn’t take any of his shit but would take every inch of his… hereallyneeded to stop thinking about this. Or make his cock a promise to feed it later and maybe it would go back to sleep. Some girl had sent him a few naked pictures of herself, asking him what he wanted to eat after Thanksgiving dinner, and making not-too-subtle hints that she hoped it would be her. He should send her a text, to let her know he was going to come over later, but he didn’t do it.
The problem was, the only girl he’d actually wanted to get under him lately was the worst possible person to let into any part of his life, let alone his private life. Cat Murphy, the reporter sniffing around the Loring family’s business, seemed to have put a combination lock on his fantasies lately, and he couldn’t think about sex without imagining her. But, of course, he couldn’t go anywhere near her. Cassiel wouldn’t put it past Cat to sleep with him just to be able to write about it in one of her online gossip columns, or worse, in the book she wanted to write about his family. She was intent on finding something on the Loring family and try as he might, Cassiel hadn’t been able to shake her. Sleeping with her would be disastrous for his family.
He still wanted to sleep with her, though. And yes, he was aware of the fact that he probably only wanted to sleep with her because he couldn’t, but he couldn’t control it. He wanted her. And thinking about her was definitely not going to help deflate his growing erection. Shit. He had to think about something else. The situation was becoming dire. He was even starting to imagine that his family was talking about her.
“Cass. Did you hear that?” Rafe was asking.
Cassiel looked up from his wine. “Hear what?”
Rafe looked at him like he couldn’t believe he had to repeat this. “That Cat Murphy had approached Elias, trying to get an interview out of him.”
