Girl Least Likely to Marry (17 page)

Love was for dreamers—not thinkers. And she was most definitely
a thinker.

It just wasn’t
logical
that he
loved her, for crying out loud!

‘Well, I don’t love you,’ she said.

Tuck flinched at her matter-of-fact delivery. ‘You’re telling
me you don’t feel
anything
for me?’

Cassie shrugged. ‘I feel sexual arousal. I feel a Pavlovian
response to your pheromones. I feel a constant state of primal awareness.’

‘Well, that’s a start,’ he said.

‘I’m here because of my libido, Tuck. That’s why you invited
me, remember? It was never about anything other than burning off some lust.’
Even as she said the words she knew they weren’t one hundred percent true. ‘We
always had an end date.’

Tuck took a step towards her. He’d thought they’d grown closer
over the last weeks, that Cassie had started to see their relationship as
something more than a scratching post for her libido. Especially since their
time at Barringer—since she’d told him about what had happened to her as a
teenager.

‘What if I don’t want that any more? What if I want more?’

‘More?’

‘A relationship. Marriage. A family.’

It was Cassie’s turn to gape. Since when had
Mr-Love-Them-and-Leave-Them got so serious? Hadn’t he said her complete lack of
interest in weddings and babies was right up his alley?

‘In a couple of months I’m going home to
Australia,
to continue my aurora research, and next year I’m going
to
Antarctica
for six months. I’m not going to have
any
regrets in my life, Tuck. Not like my
mother. I don’t believe in love and marriage. And children aren’t on my agenda.
You know that.’

Tuck could feel it all slipping away. ‘A career and a family
don’t have to be mutually exclusive.’

‘You can’t even
have
children,
Tuck.’ She saw him flinch at her blunt statement and felt conflicted by how bad
it felt.
Damn it—it was the truth.
‘I didn’t think
you
wanted
them.’

Tuck hadn’t. Not really. Not even when he’d been going through
the fertility process with April. But
she
had, and
it had seemed like something to bond them together even though his infertility
had exacerbated his already battered sense of self.

‘I do now,’ he said, realising the truth of it. ‘I want to have
children with you.’

Cassie shook her head. ‘I’ll be gone for
six months,
Tuck. And it won’t be the only time my career will have
me travelling. You’d be okay with that, would you?’

Tuck blanched at the thought. He missed her like crazy during
her twelve-hour days at the university. Six months would seem like an
eternity.

Cassie nodded at his hesitation. ‘Clearly this is not working.
I’ll move back to the dorm.’

She headed for the bedroom. She should be calm. It was, after
all, a logical decision to move on now things were not as she’d originally
agreed. But her heart was thumping and there was an ache in the pit of her
stomach as if she was ravenously hungry but there was nothing she wanted to
eat.

Tuck took some deep breaths before he followed her in. His
heart thundered and his head spun at how everything had unravelled so quickly.
Cassie was throwing her clothes into her case when he joined her.

‘Don’t do this,’ he said from the doorway.

Cassie shook her head. ‘It’s logical,’ she said, not looking at
him. ‘I moved in because it was logical and now—given the way that we both
feel—it’s logical for me to move out.’

Tuck didn’t know what he’d expected. Women he’d split with
before had never been this calm. There’d been tears. Anger. Threats. It should
have made a nice change, but it only made it virtually impossible to reach her.
She’d reverted to her comfort zone of logic and sense and that was as far
removed from gut and emotion as was possible.

He was angry and frustrated, but it seemed futile in the midst
of her calm, detached packing. How could he get through to a robot? It was
ironic that when he’d finally fallen in love with a woman it was with one who
was incapable of returning it.

His Great-Aunt Ada would have said it was
poetic justice.

‘Don’t,’ he snapped, moving into the room. ‘Stay. I’ll move.
I’ll go back to New York. Stay until you’re done here. It’s paid up for three
months.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Cassie said, automatically concentrating
very hard on the job at hand instead of the growing gnaw in her gut. ‘This is
your place.’

Tuck reached over and slammed the drawer shut. ‘I said don’t,’
he barked. ‘You want logic? A dorm is no place for a grown woman. It makes
sense
for you stay here. Put some of those IQ points
of yours to good use and
figure it out.
’

Cassie couldn’t look at him as he loomed over her. His
pheromones wafted off him in strong waves and despite the situation her nostrils
flared. If he didn’t go soon she was going to act in a very confusing and
contradictory manner.

For both of them.

‘Okay. Thank you,’ she said.

Tuck nodded. He went to the bedside table and picked up his
wallet and keys. ‘I’ll send for my stuff tomorrow.’

Cassie didn’t acknowledge him. She didn’t turn to watch him
leave. She just stood by the drawers and listened to the door slam, the car
start up, the garage door open, the car drive away.

And, despite knowing logically it was better this way, the pain
in her gut grew bigger.

TEN

Bad news travelled
fast, and Cassie spent the next week taking phone
calls from her concerned friends, assuring them that she was fine, that it was
for the best. That she and Tuck had only ever been a temporary sexual thing and
he’d got too emotionally involved.

And she believed it. In her head.

But the gnawing pain just didn’t seem to go away, no matter how
much she ate. On top of that a heaviness had taken up residence in her chest.
And once again her work was shot. But this time it wasn’t about her libido or
her hormones, which was the most confusing thing—because even though she’d never
really understood that at least she was familiar with it.

This was about something else entirely. It was about
him.
She couldn’t stop thinking about
him.
Memories of their time together interrupted her
days and bombarded her dreams.

Their Sunday mornings together reading the papers. Sharing an
evening meal and talking about their day. Their quiet companionship every night
as they worked on their projects, her at the desk in the bedroom, Tuck propped
against the bedhead, a game turned on low.

And the trip to Barringer. The mystery plane ride, the open-top
Cadillac, exploring the crater with him, eating candy floss, their night of
stargazing, opening up to him.

And the hot, wild sex under a desert night.

Yes, okay, some of her thoughts
did
linger on their crazy, insatiable sex-life. Because she did miss the sex too.
But she’d always figured that the sex would be the thing she’d miss
the most
when their relationship ended.

But it wasn’t.
She missed him.
She
missed him being around. Being right there. Filling up the spaces in the
kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom. Filling up the silences. She missed turning
around to talk to him, to show him some miraculous cosmic image, to talk about
the intricacies of her project, to ask him about his.

She hadn’t realised how silent her life had been until Tuck had
been there, filling it up with light and sound and noise.

It wasn’t logical to feel this way. She
never
had before. It didn’t make sense.

But it wouldn’t go away either.

And then the weekend swung around and it was all that Cassie
could do to drag herself out of bed on Saturday. She hadn’t been sleeping well,
despite the medication, and when she did she dreamt of Tuck. It didn’t seem to
matter what she did, what drug she took, how hard she worked or how late she
stayed up to thoroughly exhaust herself, she couldn’t switch her brain off from
thinking about him.

The last thing she felt like doing was hitting the research—and
she
always
felt like hitting the research. She knew
it would be a distraction from her thoughts, something to help get her through
another long day, but when she got there a whole batch of new images had come in
overnight and she found herself thinking about Tuck even more. One of them was
an ultraviolet image of a star cluster on the edge of the solar system, and it
reminded her of the blue of Tuck’s eyes so much she lost her breath.

She itched to ring him. To tell him about the majesty and
beauty of the pictures. He’d been as fascinated by the images on her laptop as
she had, and this image more than any other seemed to resonate with her.

It was like staring straight into his blue, blue gaze.

Damn it.

At three o’clock Cassie gave up trying to be productive and
headed for home. The next six weeks stretched ahead interminably, and she hated
that what should have been the highlight of her life had completely lost its
lustre. She would forever look back on it and think not of her exciting time in
one of the great cradles of learning but of Tuck.

The only consolation, as she put one foot in front of the
other, was that she got to go back to the apartment instead of the dorm. At
least she could be miserable in solitude.

When she got in she stripped off her leggings and fell into
bed. Utter exhaustion finally took over and, as her head hit the pillow, she
fell headlong into a dark and troubled sleep. Elusive images of Tuck and her
mother intertwined with deep-space images so they seemed to float in a galaxy of
stars, and every time she reached out to touch him, to touch her mother, they
disappeared in her hand like rainbow mist.

It took the simultaneous beating on her door and the ringing of
her mobile phone a few hours later to yank her out of the increasingly
distressing dream. She woke with a start, her heart pounding, disorientated for
a few moments. Then the noises started to filter in and she leapt from the bed,
heading for the door, collecting her ringing phone on the way and answering
it.

‘Hello?’ she said as she walked.

‘It’s us!’ A chorus of voices reverberated through her ear.

‘We’re at your door,’ Reese said.

‘Let us in,’ Gina demanded.

Cassie faltered for a moment as she neared the door, then
hurried to open it, the phone still pressed to her ear.

A cheer of, ‘Surprise!’ and a cacophony of party horns greeted
her. Cassie hit the ‘end’ button on her phone just in time as her
gal pals
descended upon her, pulling her into a group
hug.

‘We’ve come to get you drunk,’ Gina said, waving two bottles of
champagne in the air.

Marnie, her perky blonde ponytail swinging, frowned at Gina.
‘We’ve come to
cheer you up,
’ she clarified, and
Cassie guessed things were still a little cool between the two women.

‘How are you, hon?’ Reese said, hugging her hard again. ‘My
cousin’s obviously been hit too many times in the head.’ She pulled back. ‘I
could probably get Mason to send around some of his Marine buddies and rough him
up a little, if you like?’

Cassie was temporarily speechless. She’d been struggling along
for over a week now, pretending she was okay, but just having her oldest friends
here made her feel as if she actually
was
going to
be okay. That she was going to be able to survive this thing she didn’t even
understand.

It had never occurred to her to call them to her side, but she
was so glad they were here. Tears sprang to her eyes. She blinked them away—for
Pete’s sake, she
never
cried!

‘We have movies,’ Marnie said, holding up three DVDs that
looked distinctly science-fictiony.

‘And we’re ordering pizza,’ Reese added. ‘Do you have a local
number? I can’t believe Tuck wouldn’t,’ she said, wandering off to investigate
the fridge for a magnet or a menu.

Gina looked around and whistled. ‘Nice digs. You scored well.
Did he leave anything we could trash?’

Cassie shook her head, feeling more tears threaten.
‘Every thing’s gone.’

Gina hugged her. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘We’ll trash talk about
him on social media instead, like all good ex-girlfriends. Now, come on—where
are your glasses?’

Cassie was swept up in the noise and light that was the Awesome
Foursome and it felt good to be part of them again. To be part of their circle,
to feel their love, to know that they’d slay dragons for her.

Or at least contribute to the hire of a hit-man.

And they didn’t talk about Tuck—not to start with anyway. They
drank champagne and toasted friendship and regaled Cassie with stories of their
own recent lives while they waited for the pizza to be delivered. But as they
sat at the table to eat the questioning began.

Gina went first. ‘You want to talk about it?’ she asked in her
usual blunt manner.

Cassie didn’t know. She’d certainly listened to enough tales of
woe and break-up stories from her friends over the year she’d lived with them to
know
talking about it
was what you were
supposed
to do. But it really hadn’t been a position
she’d envisaged herself in.

‘Not really.’

‘Was it the newspaper article?’ Marnie asked, extending her
hand and placing it over Cassie’s forearm where it lay on the table.

Cassie shook her head. ‘I don’t care about some stupid headline
in some stupid gossip rag.’

‘No…I meant the paternity suit,’ Marnie said as she gently
squeezed Cassie’s wrist.

‘No.’ Cassie withdrew her arm and reached for a slice of
pepperoni pizza. ‘I don’t care about that either. And it’s been dropped
anyway.’

The women all looked at each other as Cassie bit into her
pizza. ‘Did he snore?’ Marnie asked.

‘Drop his wet towels on the floor?’ Reese suggested.

‘Pick his teeth at the table?’ Gina said.

‘I know,’ Marnie said. ‘He was vulgar with his money.’

Reese snorted. ‘Hardly. I know… I bet he treated you like some
Texan princess—a china doll.’

‘Or maybe he was just lousy in bed?’ Gina said.

Cassie almost choked on her pizza at the last suggestion,
necessitating some back-bashing action from Gina.

Reese pushed Cassie’s champagne towards her and said,
‘Drink.’

When Cassie had her voice back she said, ‘He did none of those
things. He had perfect manners with food and his money and was well
house-trained. And he most definitely was
not
lousy
in bed. The man achieved the impossible with me.
Time and
again.
’

Cassie’s belly looped the loop at the thought of how many times
Tuck had brought her to orgasm.

‘Damn, I
knew
he’d be good,’ Gina
said wistfully.

Marnie shot her a quelling look. ‘So what
did
happen?’

Cassie sighed at her well-intentioned friends gazing back at
her, wanting to help. Wanting to understand
so they could make things
better. And who knew? Maybe they could. This was obviously a time when
EQ,
which they all had in spades, trumped IQ, which
she
had in spades but obviously meant
zip.

‘He told me he loved me.’

Marnie looked at her, puzzled. Gina and Reese exchanged an
eyebrow-raise. Yep. Definitely an
EQ
thing.

‘That’s…it?’ Reese asked.

‘But…that’s a good thing, Cass,’ Marnie said gently.

Reese nodded. ‘Most available women on this continent—hell,
most of the unavailable ones too—would kill to hear those words come out of
Samuel Tucker’s mouth.’

Cassie threw down her half-eaten piece of pizza. ‘I’m not most
women. I never have been. You all know that.’

They nodded in unison. Truer words had never been spoken.

Cassie downed her champagne in one swallow. ‘I don’t
fall
in love. I don’t
believe
in love. It’s the most illogical, irrational…
thing
…in the entire universe. So much time and effort
and money is wasted on it. Trying to achieve it, trying to keep it. We’d have a
cure for cancer or poverty or a manned flight to Mars by now if people just
channelled the same amount of energy into
important
things that they do into something as fanciful as love.’

‘No such thing as love?’ Marnie blanched. ‘I thought you didn’t
believe in it like you didn’t believe in God or unicorns or pots of gold at the
ends of rainbows. Not that you
seriously
denied its
existence.’ She took a sip of her champagne. ‘What about the love a mother has
for her newborn baby?’

‘That’s evolution,’ Cassie dismissed. ‘Mothers are
pre-conditioned to love. It hones their protective instincts to keep their
offspring alive in the world so they can go on to continue the species. But what
purpose is there for romantic love?’ Cassie demanded.

‘Procreation?’ Marnie said.

Cassie shook her head. ‘Survival of the species is maintained
perfectly well without it in all species except humans.’

‘Sometimes not even then,’ said Gina, ever the cynic.

‘How about just because it feels good?’ Reese murmured.

Cassie snorted. ‘Lots of things feel good.’ Sex with Tuck had
felt exceptionally good. ‘Doesn’t mean it’s good
for
us. Feeling good is not a reason to do something.’

Reese blinked. ‘Why not?’

‘Because then we only do the things we want instead of the
things we
need
to do. It’s not conducive to the
survival of the fittest.’

The women fell silent at an impasse they didn’t seem to be able
to bridge.

‘Come on,’ Gina said after a moment or two, filling their
glasses again. ‘We’re not here to be downers. We’re here to cheer you up. Let’s
go and watch some movies. We even rented the first three
Star Treks,
just for you.’

Cassie watched as the bubbles in her champagne rose to the
surface. She picked up her glass and raised it towards her friends. ‘Thank you
for all coming. I know this touchy-feely stuff isn’t my forte, but I’m glad
you’re here dishing it out anyway. And I’m touched that you hired my favourite
movies. I know you’d all rather stick yourself in the eye with a hot poker.’

‘Cheers to that,’ Gina muttered as she clinked her glass with
Cassie’s. ‘Now, let’s get this party started.’

By the time the credits had rolled on the third movie it
was well after midnight, the two bottles of champagne were gone and they’d
emptied two more bottles of wine Gina had discovered on a wire rack inside the
pantry.

‘Well, that’s eight hours of my life I’m never going to get
back,’ Gina said as she stretched out on the bed.

They’d all piled into the king-sized bed to watch the DVDs on
the big screen.

‘Feeling better now?’ Marnie asked as she glanced at
Cassie.

Cassie nodded. ‘Yes. Thank you.’ And she did. A night with her
gal pals
had taken her mind off Tuck. She’d even
laughed through Gina and Reese’s alternative running commentary of the movie.
‘Thank you for coming.’

She felt as if she’d gained some perspective, having her
friends around. There was no need to feel so overwhelmed by things she didn’t
understand when she had such great women in her life—at the end of a
telephone.