Chapter 4

When Cassidy got back home from a trip to La Grange for a few supplies that had taken far longer than it should have, she parked her mom’s car in the driveway, hated the angle, and backed up to try again. Five times.

When she was finally satisfied that she had the car straight, she popped her head inside the house to tell her mom and dad she was back, then dashed to the schoolhouse to drop off her purchases. In a place like Superstition Springs, driving made not one lick of sense when there wasn’t even a gas station for miles. Folks conserved fuel as much as possible by walking.

Cassidy rarely had much use for straight lines though. So it wasn’t so much of a dash as a meander. The white butterfly population seemed to have exploded overnight and when they lit on the silver sage that dotted the land, their wings provided a sharp contrast to the pink blooms of the plants. It was beautiful.

And she had less than an hour to get ready for the party. She picked up the pace, strictly for Aria’s sake. Her friend had pleaded with her to bite her tongue around Tristan, and Cassidy had grudgingly agreed because she loved Aria and did understand the importance of the party. But she’d told Aria in no uncertain terms that she couldn’t be held responsible for that man and the party would probably benefit from her absence.

When she rounded the bald cypress trunk halfway between Tallhorse’s house and the barn he’d donated for the school, she regretted not driving. Because then she could make an impressive display of skidding the tires to a halt and then backing up in a shower of gravel that lined the path to the barn door where that man lounged against the wood as if he had every right to invade her territory. Again.

She could still back up. Her legs had worked fine a second ago.

Except her body seemed completely incapable of moving as she greedily sucked in the visual of Tristan Marchande with his white button-down shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows and arms crossed with his lithe fingers circling those delicious biceps, late afternoon sun shining down on him like a corona which had the added effect of lowering his eyes to a slumberous, sensual half-mast—okay, probably to reduce the glare—but who cared because gah how amazing was that whole package…

“I’ve been looking for you,” he called, and her heart tripped before she remembered that probably wasn’t a good thing.

“Back for more nonsense about shaping young minds?” she called back and kept walking because this was her schoolhouse, and the stapler she’d bought needed to go on her desk so she could staple things like the tax exemption forms she’d intended to file in her new filing cabinet but couldn’t find a paperclip—

“Not this time,” he said almost pleasantly, which immediately made her suspicious. “I came to ask you on a date.”

“You, um, wha—” That’s when she tripped over her own feet to land in the dirt, face down. In front of Tristan. Good news. The stapler broke her fall, or at least part of it as her hipbone slammed into the box instead of the ground.

Pain shot through her hip a second before Tristan’s hands circled her shoulders, gently turning her over. She let him. It eased pressure off the forming bruise on her hip and wow, her knee had whacked the ground too because it started throbbing.

“Are you okay?” he asked, genuine concern darkening his blue eyes but he was still touching her and leaning over her, his gaze sweeping her with nothing but sheer evaluation, but he was so close and that masculine scent she could not erase from her consciousness seemed to be taking up all the air in her lungs…

“Sure,” she croaked. “I was just testing out the anti-destructive properties of the stapler I bought. Can’t have a defective product on the administrator’s desk. I can report that it will easily withstand being crushed between two objects at great force.”

Tristan didn’t even blink. “That’s a relief. I’ve long been worried about substandard office supplies gracing the classrooms of America.”

Wait a minute. He wasn’t going to give her grief about acting like an underdeveloped duck in the presence of swans? Gaze narrowed, she stared at him, searching for the punchline, but he simply stood and took her with him easily as if she weighed nothing, and in the grand scheme of things, her frame probably did clock in at half the size of his solidly built one, not to mention that he might actually be a good foot taller than she was…

Focus.

The moment she regained her feet, she stepped away from him, desperately seeking space where Tristan didn’t bleed into its very molecules. But the problem was her. She had this fine awareness of heat where his hands had been. And an even finer awareness that at least half of her consternation lay in the fact that he was being nice to her and she didn’t like it.

Or rather, she liked it, but far less than she trusted it, which was a lot on both counts.

“Thanks,” she muttered, wishing she could think of something to say that would let him know she was onto his game, but she wasn’t and had little hope of getting there when her brain didn’t make connections well under the best of circumstances. “I’d say I’m not normally this clumsy. But I am.”

His quick smile did absolutely nothing to settle her insides, which degraded the circumstances even further. This little interlude needed to end fast.

“My reflexes are normally a lot better, but I was too far away to catch you. Sorry,” he offered with a graceful flutter of his fingers that reminded her of a concert pianist mid-Chopin.

“Maybe you should think twice before throwing around words like ‘date’ in my presence. That is what you said, right?” Shut up. Why had she reminded him of that madness? Did she want to end up on the ground again? “Why did you use that word? We don’t like each other.”

She skirted him to continue into the schoolhouse because she had things to do. What things, she hoped would become apparent if she got away from his wholly disturbing presence.

He followed her, easily catching up to her in half a stride, his long legs more than a match for hers. “The party. I was hoping we could go together. You know, but not fighting.”

“That’s not a date. That’s not even close to a date. That’s—” She didn’t know what that was, but it sounded like a trap designed to make her look like an idiot, and she didn’t need any help in that arena. “Why would you even suggest something like that?”

So he could flirt with every other woman there while she fumed in the background? Even more likely, he’d meet some gorgeous, chic woman from Austin who’d been talked into checking out Superstition Springs by a friend, the kind who wore designer shoes and had a seven-hundred-dollar handbag that she only used on special occasions, you know, his normal type, and then he’d forget all about his date—

“Because it’s important to our friends,” he said easily. “This may come as a shock to you, but I’m a nice person and I know how to treat a woman on a date. You might have fun.”

“What does that mean?” All thoughts of Ms. Chic Austin drained from her mind as her thoughts shifted to an entirely different scenario of what might happen on a date with Tristan. “Fun, as in you’ll expect me to end up sprawled on your sheets at the end of the night?”

Of course he did. It was Tristan, the man who flirted with women twice his age as easily as he breathed. He womanized as a sport. Obviously, he’d run out of conquests and had his sights set on Cassidy.

“That’s not what I said.”

He pinched his nose between two of his lithe fingers, scrunching up his face in a way that detracted from his angelic qualities not at all. Couldn’t he possibly do one thing that made him less attractive so she could stop feeling like he’d dripped honey down her throat every time she looked at him?

“Then what are you saying?” She reached the schoolhouse door and flung it open, assuming he’d follow her, which he did.

“That I’ve been read the riot act and informed in no uncertain terms that the party is important to everyone. You need to be there and I’m trying to come up with a logical solution to the problem we have being in the same place at the same time without fireworks.”

“And a date is the best you could come up with.”

No point in framing it as a question. Clearly that was the case. An apology might have gone a lot further, but he’d have to realize he’d hurt her feelings at Voodoo this morning first and she’d rather eat her stapler than admit that.

Speaking of which. She pulled the box from her bag and unpacked the stapler, which had survived the impact pretty well and looked nice on her desk. Carefully, she placed the receipt in the drawer where she kept things that should be filed so she could get to it when she had nothing else to concentrate on.

Tristan flipped up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Fine. Don’t call it a date. It’s two people going to a party together who have a vested interest in helping the town attract new citizens. You can talk to moms about your school, and I can talk to…whoever else shows up.”

“The women who aren’t moms,” she filled in flatly. “No thanks. How about I just stay on my side of the party and you stay on your side. If you don’t talk to me, there won’t be any fireworks.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m not the one who has trouble staying on my side. If you recall, I was being perfectly pleasant this morning. You’re the one who flounced off once you figured out I was right about relational comparisons.”

So he did know that he’d hurt her feelings by pointing out how little she understood math. Cretin. “Strictly because Aria told me I wasn’t allowed to fight with you in public anymore. I had to leave before I set you straight. The words that sprang to mind weren’t fit for polite company.”

“Really.” He crossed his arms and grinned like a lion after a particularly tasty antelope had just fallen between his paws. “No one’s here now. Set me straight with non-polite company words. I dare you.”

Ugh, walked into that one. That would teach her to let her temper get the best of her. “Why don’t you just go away instead?”

“Can’t. Party’s in less than an hour. We have precious little time to get this straightened out and slide you into a dress.”

“You’re planning to help me get dressed?” she asked with arched eyebrows that had shot up so fast, they ached. “Isn’t your specialty the other way around?”

As he’d blithely informed her the last time he’d graced her schoolhouse with his presence.

“I’ll tell you a secret.” He jerked his chin, grin still firmly in place. “I’m good at both.”

Of course he was. He was good at everything. He could probably do the admin work to start a private school in his sleep, running circles around a woman with a spazzy brain who had to drive clear out to La Grange to buy a stapler because the unstapled papers on her desk had been driving her mad, just sitting there loose where a slight breeze could knock them to the ground, scattering them every which way in a chaotic pattern that she’d spend an inordinate amount of time assigning order to.

“I’m not going to the party,” she announced airily as if it didn’t matter one way or another, when in reality, Aria had begged her not to miss it. But she couldn’t deal with all of this, not tonight. Not when she had less than two months to get the school operational and ready to rumble.

“You have to.”

“No, I’m busy.” To prove the point, she stapled the papers and slid them into the to-be-filed drawer. But now she had nothing in her hands. Well, sorting out the papers was a task too. She reopened the drawer and pulled out the stack. “I have filing.”

Tristan rolled his eyes, and she made the mistake of watching it, which is how she noticed that the motion turned them into a kaleidoscope of colors, none of which should exist in nature and in fact, probably did not because he was from a fairy realm where the deep azures and sparkly cobalts occurred as a matter of course and—

“Stop being ridiculous. I’m trying here,” he said.

And trying hard. But what he was trying to do still escaped her and she had no interest in expending the enormous amount of energy to figure it out. Not that she thought she could.

“What’s ridiculous is you standing in my schoolhouse when you have a party to get to. Chop, chop.” She motioned him away with her hands, shooing him off to go do his thing with as many women as he wished, none of which would be her.

“No one files instead of going to a party.” Clearly frustrated—good!—he ran the flat of his hand along his temple, presumably smoothing back stray hairs as if one would dare escape from his sleek knot. “I know you hate me. Try to get past that.”

“I don’t hate you,” she blurted out before thinking better of it. That was the problem with losing focus and Tristan’s rapid fire conversational style. She had no time to evaluate what she said before she said it.

His expression veered between disbelief and intrigue. “You have a funny way of showing otherwise.”

“Like that’s one-sided.” Now it was her turn to pinch the bridge of her nose. The frustration wasn’t one-sided either. “Why are you still here? Am I not being clear enough? No party. Not with you, not without you. I’m not going because of…other reasons. Busy. Like I said.”

“That little bit of filing won’t take you but five minutes. I’ll help.”

Before she could sputter out a protest, he’d snagged the papers from her hand, leaving her fingers tingling and her lungs hurtling toward non-functional as she got a huge whiff of his aftershave or whatever it was that wafted from his pores that smelled like man and wickedness.

He glanced around her tiny office. “Filing cabinet?”

“Give me those back,” she demanded and reached for them, but he held the sheaf of papers over her head, which tripped a spark of temper so deep she couldn’t snuff it out.

Glaring at him, she jumped in her best imitation of a basketball player going for a free-throw, but that only reminded her that her hip had a forming bruise from the stapler incident and got her no closer to her papers.

“That’s dirty, Marchande. You’re only like four hundred feet taller than me.”

He made a face at her that could mean a number of things, none of which were in her favor. “Let me know when you’re ready to be reasonable.”

All at once, this whole scene crashed down on her and she couldn’t take his smug attitude anymore. “Fine. You can file them.”

Storming from the office, she shoulder-checked him on the way just because, but he scarcely registered the hit to his granite pec and now her shoulder hurt. The new pine floors creaked as he followed her to the door and as she’d expected, he caught up.

“Where are you going?” he asked as he danced along beside her in a sideways lope.

“To the filing cabinet, genius,” she muttered through gritted teeth. “It’s in the storage room.”

“What storage room?” He made a great show of glancing around the barn, most of which they’d left as open space. “I renovated this place, and I would remember a storage room.”

Dear heavens, did the man ever stop talking? “That’s why I’m showing you where it is.”

When she eased open the flat panel covering of the storm shelter about fifty yards away from the schoolhouse, Tristan’s expression grew priceless as he peered down into the dark hole. “What is this place? I came out to the barn every day for weeks and never saw this.”

“It’s a storm shelter,” she explained though why she felt she owed him even that much remained a mystery. “It’s not that uncommon in Texas where we have a lot of severe weather. Tornadoes and such. Tallhorse donated it to the school as well, so this is where I keep stuff I don’t have room for in the main building. Which is most things.”

She led the way down the stairs to the solid weatherproof door and fiddled with the knob until she remembered she hadn’t grabbed her keys from the desk. Dang it! Tristan had her all turned around. Just as she was about to whirl on her heel to retrieve them, the door popped open.

Ugh. Obviously she hadn’t locked it back last time she’d ventured down here. How long had that been? A day? Two? Stupid brain. When she got distracted, she forgot simple things very easily.

Flipping on the light, she pointed to the long wall where her new filing cabinet sat. “There you go. Have a grand old time with your filing.”

Tristan’s eyebrows lifted over his wide eyes as he absorbed the large room. “This is something else. Does everyone build a place like this to escape tornadoes? There’s a TV set and everything.”

Glancing around the shelter, she shrugged as she took in the couch, refrigerator and other luxuries that she’d grown used to. “Well, Tallhorse is a bit eccentric, in case that’s news to you. He built this place in the sixties as a bomb shelter and kept it more as a game room of sorts, I guess. It’s not that far from his house. He gave me all the stuff and I figured it could be used as a teacher’s lounge or whatever.”

Tristan set the papers down on top of the filing cabinet as he ventured farther into the room, letting the heavy door shut behind him, and suddenly, the room got a whole lot smaller. It shouldn’t have mattered. Door open, door shut. Tristan Marchande filled every space he entered, including her, and she shouldn’t let herself get so affected by that.

But with the door closed, there was an extra layer of madness that clung to her skin, as if they were the only two people left on earth and she might have to repopulate the human race with this man and oh, goodness, she could imagine it all in flagrant detail which shouldn’t be making her shiver in the most delicious way possible—

“I have to go,” she ground out hoarsely and waved a hand at the filing cabinet as she edged toward the door. “File. Or don’t. I’m going to, you know. Go.”

Blindly, she felt for the knob and turned. Only it didn’t. She firmed her grip and twisted again. No give. She rattled the knob and tried again.

“Is it stuck?” Tristan asked unhelpfully and came up behind her, his heat bleeding through her simple jeans and T-shirt as he peered over her shoulder.

“I don’t—no. Maybe. It won’t turn.”

Tristan reached out and tried it, his elbow brushing her arm intimately. “It’s locked. Where are the keys?”

“It’s not locked. It can’t be locked.” Panic swirled through her gut instantly, whipping up into a whirlwind that squeezed her stomach tight. “It wasn’t locked in the first place, or it wouldn’t have opened.”

Right? Between Tristan being too close and the stuck door and Tristan and her lungs trying to compensate for the double dose of air her body was begging for and Tristan, she couldn’t think. She batted his hand off the knob and twisted again as hard as she could and pushed on the door at the same time. It didn’t budge.

“Cassidy.” His low voice snaked through her as it vibrated in her left ear and his position felt far too sensual all at once.

She scrambled away and kept going until she hit the edge of the couch on the far wall. “Don’t call me that.”

His brow quirked. “Cassidy? Did your name change in the last two minutes?”

“Yes. No.” Dear heaven have mercy. There wasn’t enough air in here for one person, let alone two, and if he kept saying her name like that, she’d use up both of their allotments in under five seconds. “Just get the door open.”

In one long stride, he crossed to her—the opposite direction from the door—and cupped both his magic hands around her jaw, lifting her face up to the light. All she could do was stare up at him as heat flushed through her. Yeah, she saw the evaluating glint in his deep blue gaze, just like when she’d tripped earlier. He was concerned, that was all, but it didn’t matter when his fingers were brushing her face and this position put her lips in the best possible proximity for a kiss and all she could think about was what that might feel like…

He was going to kiss her.

Air rattled in her lungs and she gasped. Ice filled her throat, her face, chest, spread through her fingers. He couldn’t kiss her. He couldn’t. But he wasn’t going to anyway, because this was about the door and not being able to open it and the way she sometimes freaked out when she couldn’t control her environment—panic seized her whole body.

“Cassidy,” he murmured maybe more than once. “Stay with me. Tu n’a rien. Breathe. I’m going to get us out of here. Nod your head.”

He demonstrated by nodding and the motion got hers rocking as well, which wonder of all wonders, actually worked to thaw some of her frozen parts. Her brain settled. Then her breathing slowed. They kept nodding together and when his thumb swept across her cheek, warmth tingled through her that she desperately needed.

“You’re okay,” he told her over and over until she believed it. “Say it.”

“I’m okay,” she repeated in a croaky voice.

“I’m here and I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he promised. “The door is just stuck. I’ll get it open.”

She nodded again, feeling a lot like a bobble head doll but she couldn’t seem to do anything other than what he’d commanded. Where had all this compassion come from? He wasn’t this guy normally.

“I’m going to take my hands away now.” The kaleidoscope in his gaze whirled as he watched her carefully. “Steady?”

Not in the slightest. But she stood there with her knees locked as his touch vanished from her face. She didn’t fall over. Somehow.

Tristan fiddled with the door and knob for several minutes, muttering in French with enough emphasis to inform her she probably didn’t want to hear the translation.

“It locks with a key from both sides,” he called over his shoulder. “Why would someone do this? I’ve never seen anything like it. Usually it’s the deadbolt that has double key locks, not the knob.”

“Tallhorse,” she squeaked and cleared her throat. “He had some strange ideas about the Russians and what they might do if, you know, they ever did attack. Don’t forget he has a Ph.D. in Russian Literature, which no doubt contributed to his paranoia. I had to have a secure area for personal records anyway, so I didn’t think of changing it. I have keys.”

“Great. Where are they?”

Stupid. Why had she offered that up like it was some kind of saving grace? “On my desk. In the barn.”

Tristan sank down to the ground, back against the door, running both hands along his temples as he smoothed back non-existent stray hairs from his sleek topknot, his expression troubled. “It would be convenient if they were in your pocket.”

“I know,” she snapped and reeled back her temper.

This wasn’t his fault. After all, he’d just talked her through a panic attack, which he didn’t have to do, and his comment wasn’t designed to point out what an idiot she was. Oddly enough. She’d envisioned him giving her grief over her defects if he ever found out, and all at once as she stared at his long, lithe frame sprawled on the ground of her storm-shelter-teacher’s lounge-filing room, she didn’t have the impression she knew him at all.

“So, you can’t get the door open?” she asked inanely, because obviously he would be doing that if he could.

He shrugged. “Depends. Do you have anything I can use to pick the lock? With a double tumbler, I need more tools, particularly two long, thin pieces of metal. Got anything like that?”

“I don’t—I’ll have to look.”

No way would her mind sift through the inventory of this shelter in its current state. She’d have to do it hands-on. Maybe there was something in the drawer under the TV stand. She yanked it open but only found old newspapers dated from the eighties, yellowed and curling with age. All of the other places where something long and thin might hide yielded nothing.

Her stomach rolled over but she refused to let the panic take over again.

“No metal pieces. But it’s okay. Someone will come looking for us soon,” she said firmly.

She had to believe that. Two people couldn’t disappear from the population of Superstition Springs for very long without someone noticing. Why hadn’t she driven her mom’s car for crying out loud? That would have been a great visual clue as to her last known whereabouts when concerned folks started looking for her.

But Tristan shook his head grimly. “You seem to forget that everyone in town will be at the party soon, having a good time and working on convincing guests to come back. If anyone does note our absence, they’ll chalk it up to us being at odds. When was the last time you and I were in the same place at the same time for more than five minutes without one or both of us leaving in a huff?”

“I don’t remember,” she whispered and fell back onto the couch with a thud. “So, we’re trapped?”

“For the time being.” His laser-sharp blue eyes bored into hers, laden with all sorts of things she had no chance of interpreting. “Looks like we’re going to be spending the night together after all.”