How Cassie Got Her Grind Back(Divine Creek Ranch 23)(7)
Samson made a fingers walking gesture toward the door. “She ran. It means exactly what I said.”
Ivan scowled at him and shook his head as he stirred his soup. “You gave her the steely-eyed Dominant stare and scared her off, didn’t you?”
“Fuck. What the hell is that, anyway? I looked at her, yes. How could I not? She’s gorgeous—”
Ivan held up a hand to halt his twin brother before he could get rolling. If ever two men were less alike in temperament, he wanted to meet them. “You remember what most of the men in her family were like? Talk about dominant and demanding.”
Samson paused with the spoon halfway to his lips, and then his shoulders slumped. “Shit.” He glanced at the workers rushing around the kitchen in concerted movements and rubbed his hands over his face. “I haven’t seen her in thirty years. I suppose I could’ve used a different approach.”
“Your favorite John Wayne quote comes to mind in times like these, brother. ‘Life is hard. It’s harder if you’re stupid.’ You should’ve tucked all those dominating tendencies of yours away so you didn’t intimidate her. So are you ending your embargo of all things Divine if it includes the now single Cassie Resendez?”
“Resendez,” Samson said, a frown forming on his face as he took another bite. “Joseph told me that was her last name. I recall only one Resendez family from Divine.”
Ivan chuckled, but it wasn’t a happy sound, and focused on his next spoonful of soup.
“No. No fucking way,” Samson said, his voice gravelly with dislike. “Bill Resendez?”
“Yes, but she’s single now.” If he’d known she’d divorced before today, although he might’ve been tempted, he would’ve let Samson know. Samson had fallen for her the moment he’d set eyes on her the first day of their freshman year. He didn’t have a prior claim on her like Samson did. But he’d adored her just as much back then.
“All these years, I imagined she was happy. That was the only reason I never went looking once I got back to the States. Years had gone by. I couldn’t just butt into her already established life.”
“I’m just as guilty,” Ivan said, taking out his smartphone. “I wanted her to be happy, even if it was in Divine, married to that fucking asshole.” While Samson finished off his soup, Ivan flicked through the apps and then started a search. He smiled when he found what he wanted—her gorgeous, beaming face on Facebook. She was standing next to a stunning wedding cake she’d evidently created, displayed atop a glass bakery case.
Samson cleared his throat. “What are you doing? What’s that goofy look on your face?”
Ivan shrugged. “Taking action for once. You just want to give her steely-eyed looks guaranteed to intimidate.”
“Cassandra took me by surprise, damn it. What were you doing?”
“Sending Cassie a friend request on Facebook.”
“Good luck with that. She probably doesn’t want anything to do with us.”
Ivan blinked and then scoffed at him. “Why in the world would you think that?”
“After all this time of never checking in and everything we went through back then? She’d probably like to continue on with her life without dredging all that up.”
His phone chimed as he was about to shut it off, and he grinned at the notification that’d just popped up. “Actually, she just accepted my friend request.”
It was Ivan’s turn to be on the receiving end of the steely-eyed stare. “What were you doing, sending her a friend request?”
He waggled his eyebrows. “Jealous? I should’ve done it before now. It’s a friend request, not a date request. I think I’m getting past dating age, anyway,” he said, rubbing his knee, which had started to ache because he’d been sitting.
“You liked her back then.”
“That baby was put to bed thirty years ago, brother. She was yours. End of story.”
Samson leaned on the arm of his chair and crossed his ankles. “You remember those rumors that used to go around town while we were growing up?”
“Which one? There were so many. Take your pick. The one about Hank doing it with Dorene Lester in the field house and getting caught by the coach? Or the one about Chance and Clayton Carlisle getting caught smoking weed down by the creek?”
Samson scowled. “No! Fuck that penny ante shit. And the rumor about Chance and Clayton was untrue. It was their cousins who came to visit from out of town that Jack Warner’s dad caught down at the creek sharing a joint. And Dorene Lester was with them. That girl got around. But no, that’s not the rumor I’m talking about. I mean the stories we used to hear about marriages having more than the usual number of partners but they were keeping it under the table.”