Secrets Read online

  “Daddy!” Elsbeth squealed as she ran to him and threw herself into his arms. She snuggled her face into his neck. “You smell good.”

  “It’s called aftershave and it’s guaranteed to drive women wild.” He nuzzled her face. “Do you feel wild?”

  Elsbeth giggled. “Not me, grown-up women. Like Cassie.”

  Cassie waited a moment, but when Jeff made no comment, she said, “Here, sit down and eat.” She put a tall stack of pancakes at Jeff’s place on the breakfast table. The room had a huge bay window, and outside were a dozen bird feeders that she and Elsbeth kept filled with everything from peanut butter to suet.

  “You’re going to make me fat,” Jeff said after he’d seated his daughter.

  “Not with all the exercise you get,” his father said from the doorway.

  As always, Cassie “inspected” the older man when she first saw him in the morning. Her eyes swept up and down him to see if there were any changes in his health. He’d had two heart attacks before she met him, and she lived in fear that another one would take him away from them. He’d told her that when he first moved in with Jeff, after Lillian’s death, Jeff had wanted his father to take the downstairs master bedroom, but Thomas wouldn’t hear of it. They had compromised by making one of the walk-in closets into an elevator.

  “I’m perfectly all right,” Thomas said, looking from Jeff to Cassie then back again. “You two can stop undressing me with your eyes.”

  Smiling at his remark, she turned back to the stove. “How many pancakes do you want?”

  “A dozen at least,” Thomas said as he kissed his granddaughter then sat down beside her. He raised an eyebrow at his son. “Aren’t you a bit cool without a shirt on?”

  Jeff started to say something, but then grinned and pulled his T-shirt over his head. “So what do we have planned for today?”

  The “we” in that made the three of them stop in midmotion. Jeff ate dinner with them and he spent time with Elsbeth on weekends, but he rarely went anywhere with all of them.

  Thomas recovered first. “ We are going to do what we always do on Saturday morning and that’s go to the farmers’ market.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Jeff said, cutting into his pancakes. “When do we leave?”

  Thomas leaned back in his chair and stared at his son. “You’re about to drop some really bad news on us, aren’t you? You’re trying to get into our good graces before you bomb us.”

  Jeff smiled. “Actually, I’m celebrating. I finished the Newcombe project.”

  “That’s wonderful!” Cassie said. Jeff was a structural engineer, and his firm had been working on a huge building project in Virginia Beach for over two years. Jeff had been in charge of it, and the responsibility had nearly killed him. When Cassie moved into the room upstairs, Jeff had been in the middle of the task. She’d never been around him when he wasn’t working long, hard hours. And for the last months, when he did have some time off, if he wasn’t with Elsbeth, he was with Skylar.

  “Does this mean we’ll be seeing more of you?” Thomas asked. “Or will your Somebody Skylar be taking all your time?”

  “Dad, don’t start on me,” Jeff said. “It’s too early in the morning and it’s my first day off in…I don’t know how long it’s been. Just let me enjoy it.”

  “All right,” Thomas said slowly. “Elsbeth and I are going to go work in my garden, so why don’t you go to the farmers’ market with Cassie?”

  “Sure,” Jeff said, “but isn’t Cassie supposed to have days off? Maybe she’d like to do something other than bum around with me.”

  “I don’t mind,” Cassie said quickly. “I’d love the company. I want to get some oysters and scallops, and I need—”

  “Did I hear ‘oysters’?” came a voice from the doorway. It was Skylar, and she was holding up a bag of something. “Hope you don’t mind but the door was unlocked. I let myself in.”

  “Like the cat,” Cassie said under her breath. She lifted the last pancake off the griddle and put it on a plate, then untied her apron and draped it over the big handle on the stove. Skylar was already at the table and pulling out some greasy croissants and coffee in paper cups. It was as though Cassie was seeing the future. When Jeff married Skylar, this is the way it would be. Only Cassie wouldn’t be there to witness it.

  Quietly, she left the kitchen and went up the back stairs to go to her room.

  Jeff caught her on the second-floor landing. “Cassie,” he said. “I’m sorry about this. I didn’t know she was coming. Maybe we can go together another time.”

  Cassie’s pride wouldn’t let her disappointment show. For a few moments it had been exciting to think of being alone with Jeff. “Are you kidding?” she said. “You’re right. I should take the day off. Sounds wonderful! I can’t imagine what I’ll do with all that time to myself.”

  “Oh,” Jeff said and stepped back from her. “You’re welcome to go with us. Skylar’s been invited to go on Roger Craig’s boat, and we’re going with them. It’ll be fun.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be lovely,” she said, “but I really do have my own things to do. Thanks for the invitation, though.” Turning away, she went into her bedroom and shut the door.

  Once inside, she wanted to kick herself. She should have gone with them. She should have accepted his invitation and gone and…And what? she thought. Stand up against beautiful Skylar? Cassie had had her chance with Jeff. She’d spent a year in his house, taking care of his child, looking after his father, cooking for him, making sure his clothes were clean and put away where they belonged. When Jeff couldn’t find something, he asked Cassie. When he wanted an opinion about a structure he was designing, he asked Cassie.

  He was always courteous. There were many times when Cassie had stared at him, willing him to look at her with lust. She daydreamed about his putting his arms around her and kissing her neck. But he never came close.

  Cassie wasn’t the sort of person to push herself onto a man, so she kept her distance and was as respectful toward him as he was to her. But on a few occasions in the last year she made what she thought of as subtle advances toward him. Each time had been the same. She’d heard him downstairs in the kitchen late at night and she’d gone down. The first two times she’d pretended that it was an accidental meeting; by the third time, she didn’t bother. They’d spread out his latest drawings on the big dining table and he’d explained them to her. She didn’t understand a lot of it, but she liked his enthusiasm and his love of his work. She’d made a pot of tea and they’d drunk it all. It wasn’t until the wee hours that they’d parted and gone to bed—without so much as even a tiny impropriety.

  However, in that year there’d been a few embarrassing encounters. One morning she’d walked into his bathroom with a load of clean linens and been shocked to see him standing outside the shower with just a towel wrapped around him. Last summer he’d brushed up against some poison ivy and Cassie had twice coated his sore back with calamine lotion.

  But in all that time, Jeff had never come close to making a pass at her. He’d never so much as brushed her hand with his. He’d never looked at her in any way except as a…If she had to label it, it would be as a kid sister. He was eleven years older than she was, and while it didn’t bother her, it seemed to mean a lot to Jeff—or else he just plain wasn’t attracted to her.

  And since seeing Skylar, Cassie was sure she wasn’t Jeff’s type. His wife, Lillian, had been thin and athletic. Skylar was also thin, although not from athletics. But, like Lillian, Skylar was tall and sure of herself and…

  Skylar was all the things that Cassie wasn’t, she thought. Cassie was short and curvy, and she wore whatever was comfortable and could be washed in the machine. Skylar was sophisticated, a woman who had been places and seen things, whereas Cassie had done little in her life.

  Whatever the reason, it was obvious that, as a woman, Cassie was of no interest to Jeff.

  Cassie stayed in her room for over an hour, waiting until after they’d le