Page 36 of Rumor Has It

Fisting them, I heft both the bags up the circular stairs. Cassidy follows behind. When I drop my luggage on the landing, I take my notebook out of my pocket and set it on top. I do the same with my cell.

Cassidy eyes the placement of the bags funny.

“Is everything okay?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I just thought. Never mind. What I was thinking doesn’t matter.”

I close the space between us and stroke my thumb against her jawline. Her lips part and I take the invitation to kiss her. Cassidy tastes like everything in a country song about one of those girls whose heart you’ll regret stealing.

The earth shifts like sand under my feet. I want to tell her I’m wondering the same things she is. Where I’m sleeping tonight.

With or without my clothes, once we go back into her room, we’re spending the rest of the day in there. But Cassidy has chores she needs to do first and I need to prove to her I’m dependable.

I clear my throat, replying in a gravel-laden voice, “We’ve got boxes to move.”

Ready to get to work, she plucks a ponytail holder from her pocket to tie her hair back, and leads me down the hall. A few paces beyond my suite, and just out of Cassidy’s reach, a chain hangs from the ceiling for the dropdown attic stairs. She stands to the side, making silly comments about me taking the ladder square in the jaw and needing false teeth. When I tug on the chain, the ladder slides down easy as pie.

“What are we looking for?” I take the rungs first.

“Ornaments. They’re stored in red boxes with green lids.”

“What about a tree? Is that up here?”

Cassidy’s gasp has me looking down to where she’s climbing the ladder below me. I get a perfect view of her cleavage.

“Such sacrilege! Do you think so little of my family that we wouldn’t have a real Christmas tree?”

Hearing Cassidy tell me a fresh cut tree for the living room is arriving tomorrow makes me like the Cavanaughs more. She also admits she didn’t actually draw the short straw as much as volunteer to get the boxes down early. Each of the quints’ families rotates putting the tree up in the mansion on Christmas Eve. It stays lit until New Year’s Day.

“I see three bins up here. Any other instructions?” For her, I want to get this simple task right.

“Yeah, keep to the plywood. If you step off the planks, you could fall through the ceiling.”

“Now you tell me,” I tease. The sole of my shoe perched on a rafter moves to the flat wooden surface.

“You’re fine where you are.” She hops up into the attic. “We can both carry one down and come back for the third.”

“Or I could carry them all down for you.”

“Or you could carry yours down and let me hand the rest to you,” she counters, misinterpreting the statement as misogyny. “Really, the boxes are bulky, not heavy. Most of what’s inside is cushioning, so nothing gets damaged.”

I do as she says because I can count the number of times I’ve been in an attic on a single finger. Plus, Cassidy is a pro at hefting her box onto her hip and managing it down the narrow ladder steps.

Her independence motivates me. Hell, I know my family decorated the tree when I was a small kid who hadn’t hit the big time. Except, I pay a decorator to decked the halls at my house and to flock the tree in tinsel and hang the ornaments. Then I show up when Vespa tells me the PR team needs Instagram-worthy Christmas posts.

I pass my box to Cassidy and she stacks it against the hallway wall.

“I’ll grab the last one.” I have a foot on the rung and I want to do this for her.

She grudgingly agrees since we’d have to switch places, anyway.

I climb the ladder with cool confidence and navigate across the plywood like it’s a tightrope. Scooping up the final box, I overestimate how heavy it is and nearly send it flying. Grappling for it before I break something valuable inside, my eye catches on an empty crib.

I take a sharp inhale and two steps back to steady myself. As soon as my brain registers my heel failing to hit something solid, the floor under my feet crumbles. The crib disappears, and my life flashes before my eyes.

Chapter Fourteen

CASSIDY

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