Especially not if Cassie was at Tommy’s place, whatever the reason.
It was a short five-minute walk over from the Baileys’, but it was true he’d never asked Cassie there before, not in the entire year he’d lived there after moving out from his cousin’s, and he sure as hell wasn’t convinced it was a good idea to do so now. Maybe he should have let Reynolds take her. Reynolds seemed hung up on the Babs chick anyway. Cassie probably would’ve been safe. Far safer than she’d be with him. Though he should forget about his cock for two minutes after what Cassie had been through.
But Reynolds wasn’t going home anyway, as evidenced by the dog he’d foisted on them, who trotted contentedly by their side.
Tommy unlocked the door to his modest bungalow, paid for with ill-gotten gambling gains Officer Vincetti need never know about but probably suspected anyway. Preceding Cassie in, he got a bowl of water for the dog, who promptly flopped down by the couch and slurped, while he tried to remember how he’d left the place to judge what Cassie’d think of it and then immediately remonstrated himself. She wasn’t here for the same reason any other woman had been here before, not that he’d ever cared what the hell any of them had ever thought of his place.
He dropped his keys on the table as she kicked off her flip-flops and went to stare out the picture window at the darkened cove. Raised in the city, he never got enough of the views of trees and water and grass and shit. It was embarrassing.
But Cassie, having grown up in rural Maine, seemed just as enthralled. He flicked on the switch for the light out over his cove to help the almost nonexistent sliver of moon. At the motion, she pulled her sundress over her head and dropped it on the carpet.
He swallowed hard. “So you really do want to go for a swim?”
“I don’t know. Are you going to swim naked?”
Neither of them sounded like themselves.
“I can just swim in shorts.”
He led her to the back door and, once outside, she took off at a run while he kicked off his tennis shoes and tore off his T-shirt to keep up with her. His cove, as he pathetically could not stop from calling it in his head, wasn’t really dangerous at all—it was shielded from the ocean by some jagged rocks that only partially cut off the view—but it was rocky. You had to go into it gingerly. In fact, that was part of his come-on with girls he brought here. He’d keep on water shoes and carry the barefooted girl out into the water. That way she’d be all clingy and he’d wrap her legs around his waist, and sometimes, well a lot of the time, he’d end up fucking her as soon as he carried her out of the water. He liked that.
But he couldn’t think of another single woman he’d been with while Cassie Bailey was right here.
Probably why he’d never invited her.
“Hey, hold on!” he cautioned, slipping on one of the many pairs of water shoes he kept on the edge of the shore. “It’s rocky. You’ll hurt yourself.”
But she dove in with gusto, ignoring him, swimming out so far he had to really work to catch up to her. When he finally did, he grabbed her arm and while they treaded water, which thank God was relatively calm that night, he warned, “It’s not a good idea to swim too far out into the ocean this late.”
Out here, his cove light didn’t do much good. He could barely see her in the inky black.
“Don’t tell me about the ocean, Tommy. I’ve lived on it all my life.”
“Then don’t be a jerk, showing off.”
Yanking her arm away, she swam back toward shore and he followed. When they were close enough to stand, she did so immediately, without judging whether it was safe to do so, and made a face as her bare foot must have taken the sharp edge of a rock.
Without thinking, he swooped her up in his arms, as he would any other girl, and she gave a startled yelp, her arms automatically linking around his neck, causing him to laugh as he carried her toward the grassy bank.
“Don’t you dare drop me!” she warned.
Her almost-bare body was wet and cool from the water that never really warmed up in Maine, but with her shivering skin so close, his own body heated up precipitously.
“Don’t be a bitch. I’m just trying to keep you from cutting up your feet.”
Her fingers tangled in the wet hair at this base of his neck as he set her on her feet on the grass and he took a deep breath when she didn’t move away.
“Is that what you think I am? A bitch?”
He could hear some kind of weird hiccup in her voice as he looked down at her. Suddenly, everything she had been through came roaring back to him but it didn’t hold off the sensation of having a near-naked Cassie Bailey alone with him at midnight or thereabouts in his own backyard.