He scowled. “What’s brought this on?”
“It’s for Nicole’s sake. She’s only little, but I think it’s important for her to be around her extended family, don’t you?”
All at once his features softened. He acknowledged her comment with a nod. “I couldn’t agree more,” he said, turning her heart over. “By the way, we’ve got a Christmas tree from last year around here somewhere. Ask Nesta.”
“Yes, she’s already told me.” She idly began stirring her soup, remembering how Nesta had said one of the gardeners usually decorated the artificial tree each year. It had made Cassandra wistful. She’d never had a real tree, not as a child and not with Liam, who had suffered from hayfever.
“Is there a problem?”
She stopped stirring and glanced at Dominic. “I was thinking about getting a real tree for our first year.” No one need know, but it had been a dream of hers for so long now. A silly dream. “It would be nice, don’t you think?” She so much wanted this Christmas to be as normal as possible.
He merely nodded. “If that’s what you want. Just let Nesta know. She’ll arrange it.”
He started eating and she did the same, glad he hadn’t noticed how sentimental she was being. Having a real tree was such a trivial thing to be concerned about when there was so much else going on in her life, but she didn’t want him to know what a sap she really was about this. And perhaps next year they could even go and pick out a tree together. As a family.
He mentioned it to Nesta when she brought in the main meal shortly afterward.
“Mrs. Roth and I have already discussed it, but I think a proper tree would be just the ticket this year.” The housekeeper agreed with a smile.
They discussed it some more, then Nesta collected the soup bowls and left. Cassandra was tempted to mention the money, but knew she couldn’t spoil the rest of her birthday dinner. She would wait until after they’d finished eating.
It seemed to take ages before they’d eaten their way through the roast lamb and were finishing up with a chocolate cake. Thankfully she was spared a happy birthday sing-along, then Nesta brought in the coffee.
“Everything’s tidied up in the kitchen,” the housekeeper said, collecting the dirty plates. “I’ll just pop the dishwasher on, and then I’m going back to my apartment.” She glanced at the few things left on the table. “There’s not much here. I’ll clean it up in the morning, if you don’t mind?”
Dominic nodded. “That’s fine, Nesta.”
Cassandra’s heart had begun to thud now that the moment to talk to Dominic was near, but she managed a smile for the other woman. “It was a delicious meal, Nesta. Thank you so much.”
Nesta looked pleased as punch as she left the room and quietly closed the door behind her.
Dominic glanced at Cassandra, his lips twitching with amusement. “Do you think she’s telling us we won’t be interrupted?”
“She was pretty obvious,” Cassandra said, trying not to hyperventilate. She didn’t want to be interrupted, either, but for a different reason. She had what she was going to say all worked out.
Taking a calming breath, she lifted the coffeepot, trying to extend the moment, allowing time for Nesta to leave. “Coffee?” she said, hoping he didn’t notice her hand shaking a little.
“Thanks. We’ll have a brandy afterward.”
The brandy would have been better right now. A double.
“That would be nice,” was all she said, then poured the coffee, and they leaned back in their chairs and drank it in silence for a few seconds.
She couldn’t wait any longer.
She placed her cup down on the saucer. “Dominic, do you remember I mentioned my sister?”
He looked surprised. “Yes.”
“Well…she needs some money.”
His face hardened in an instant. “Really?”
She winced inwardly at his clear disbelief. “Yes.” She had to push on. “She’ll lose her house unless she pays two thousand dollars by Monday.” She swallowed. “So…um…I was wondering if you could lend it to me and I’ll put it straight into her bank account.” She’d already decided at least that way Penny might accept it as a gift from her, rather than a loan transferred from his account.
“I wondered when you would get down to needing money,” he said curtly.
Her heart thudded over at his tone. She actually thought she saw a glint of disappointment in his eyes. “It’s not for me. It’s for my sister, I swear.”
His lips twisted. “Sure it is. That’s why you want me to give it to straight to you and not put it in her bank account.”
“But—”
“I don’t know what you want it for, Cassandra, but you’re just going to have to wait until Liam’s estate is finalized.”
“Dominic, please. You have to believe me.”
“I do? Tell me. Why should I believe a woman who has proven herself to be an unfaithful wife and a gold digger? A woman who lies for a living?”
At the unfairness of it, anger rose inside her. She hated perpetuating the myth that she was only about wealth, but all this had been thrust upon her in the first place. She needed to remind him of that.
She lifted her chin. “Nicole and I are entitled to our inheritances, Dominic.”
He glared at her. “I haven’t forgotten.”
“I married you because of the money, Dominic. Not for it.”
“There’s a difference?” he scoffed.
“Yes, there is.” Their marriage had been about keeping her daughter, even if it was tied into the money she needed for the nursing home. Yet how to explain all that to Dominic without him learning about Joe? If he learned about Joe, then he might learn about her “blackmailing” Liam, and then she could still lose her daughter.
He pushed to his feet. “The lawyers are already working on it,” he snapped, and walked out of the room.
Cassandra didn’t have time to react, but as she heard Dominic’s footsteps go down the hallway, it was the disgust in his voice that made her heart ache with defeat.
A short time later, his Porsche started up and drove away. Oh, God. She hated that this raised the hostility even higher between them. But what really threw her was a truth hitting her in the face. A truth she could no longer escape.
She’d fallen in love with her husband.
And he hated her with a passion.
He should have known, Dominic told himself as he gunned his Porsche down the freeway, anger settling like a steel weight in his chest.
Since their wedding he thought he’d managed to understand this part of Cassandra. That she’d felt vulnerable as a child and it had made her crave security…that she was a gold digger who had valid reasons for marrying for money. But there were simply some things too big to ever accept.
And that was all the more disappointing because he knew now she had a depth to her he hadn’t suspected before. She wasn’t superficial like he’d thought she was. She was deep, but of course, that didn’t mean her integrity was beyond question. Obviously.
Hell, he’d come to admire the way she’d survived all that life had thrown at her, but he’d been a fool to forget what she was. She had no hesitation in manipulating him. Sharing her childhood. Telling him she wanted to do volunteer work. Not telling him about her birthday. It had to have been for show.
His disappointment tasted like bile.
Dammit, he still didn’t understand why she needed to win him over in the first place. She already had his wedding ring on her finger. She already had a Roth child. And now she had him in his bed.
What the hell else could she want from him?
Capitulation?
A declaration of love?
Was she a control freak who had to have every man fall in love with her, and all the better if it was a wealthy husband to twist him around her little finger? No chance.
She’d be waiting a long time for that. She might think she knew how to manipulate a man, but she was in for one hell of a shock. No one manipulated him and got away with it. Not even the woman who’d mothered his child. At the next off-ramp, he turned the car around and headed back.
At the discovery that she loved Dominic, Cassandra sat in silence for a while after he left, feeling as empty as the coffee cups on the table in front of her. Love had only ever taken what it could from her and left her hurting. It probably wouldn’t be any different this time.
She loved Dominic.
And now she had to pretend that she didn’t. Could things get any worse than this? It was hard enough knowing he had the upper hand, but now she also had to live with the fear of giving herself away to the man she loved. Certainly he would use it against her if he knew. The Roth men were good at that. Liam certainly had no problem using her love for him to get himself a trophy wife, turning her heart totally against him. She didn’t want that to happen with Dominic.
She made a pact to herself then. She would keep her love for Dominic a secret. It would keep her going during the years ahead when he continued to believe she was something she wasn’t. After all, she couldn’t fool herself into believing it would be any different in six months’ time, not even after the letter with the lawyer was destroyed and the threat of Liam’s “truth” disappeared.
That letter was the instrument that could take her daughter away from her, but there was still nothing anywhere to prove to Dominic that his wife hadn’t married Liam for money or had his child for the money. The proof was there in the money having gone into her account. Sure, she could prove she’d paid the half million to the nursing home for the bond, but that didn’t prove to Dominic that she hadn’t had Liam’s child for her own selfish reasons. Even if she told Dominic about Liam’s letter and its contents, it would still be her word against a dead man’s, and who was Dominic going to believe? His beloved brother? Or the wife he believed to be a gold digger and an adulteress?
Yet how could she share her life with Dominic and say nothing about Liam paying her to have his baby? Because that was true. Liam had paid her, except he’d been the one to blackmail her, not the other way around. Oh, God, what a mess.
And even after all this she still had to get the money for Penny. She could ask Dominic again, but she knew she wouldn’t. Somehow she would find a way. She had to. And soon.
Knowing her best ideas occurred in the bath, she dragged herself upstairs and ran the water with some bubble bath. Soon she took off her clothes and put her hair up with some pins before lowering herself into the warm suds.
Closing her eyes, she leaned her head back against the end of the bath, letting the scented steam rise up to calm her. It was hard trying to unwind when both fear and love were jumbling around in her heart, when she knew she needed money and she needed it this weekend.
Slow down, she told herself as she mentally forced herself to step back and let her brain relax. If she didn’t take it easy, she’d never see the forest for the trees.
Yet she couldn’t help thinking how ironic it was that for someone who had supposedly married for money, she had little of value. The only true thing she had of monetary value was an expensive diamond necklace that Liam had bought her, and it had been taken away to be appraised as part of his estate. But she was never going to part with that. It was for Nicole. A keepsake from her father.