Wicked Game by Mercy Celeste Read Free Book Online Page B

was complicated, that didn’t mean hers was. After synchronizing schedules with Sam and texting the daily doings to Jaime’s phone, she actually had very little to do.
    In short, Cass was bored. Even verbal warfare with Jaime had lost its appeal, after she figured out he was still just a restless kid who needed something to do to keep him out of her hair. Then came that day, while sitting at a red light, the back of her soccer mom car filled with paint supplies and groceries, that she realized her soccer kid was Jaime Dalton.
    That day in mid-June, she came to another realization that bothered her even more than the fact that she’d somehow become Jaime’s mother. Jaime was avoiding her. The big bad scary football player was avoiding little old her, and she had no idea why.
    Well, besides her need to argue with him every time he opened his mouth. Or her almost obsessive need for his approval of each room as she brought it to life. After a month of having no one else to talk to about the things that bothered her, she included him in her observations on the daytime television schedule and her sudden fascination with the strange goings on on The Jersey Shore . Somehow, she identified a little too closely with Sookie, or Snookie, or whatever the hell her name was. Except for the slutty clothes, big hair, and the orange skin, of course.
    Now that she thought about it, all of those clothes she’d bought her first day in Miami were still hanging in her closet, unworn. She’d found clothes at the local Target that fit her stay-at-home-mom life much better than the sexy secretary stuff she’d found in the boutique. One day she was going to haul out the black cocktail dress and wear it to vacuum the new carpet in the living room.
    She’d even found time to use the pool, and suits that didn’t show as much skin as those at the boutique. It really was nice to take a swim without having third-degree chemical burns everywhere her clothes touched her.
    Of course, her mother had started letting her calls go to voicemail, as had two of her college friends who had real lives.
    Yes, Cass decided, she was bored out of her ever-loving mind and was ready to stake Jaime Dalton to a palm tree outside and watch him burst into flame. Oh wait, that would be one of the vampires on that dirty HBO show.
    Cass banged her head on the steering wheel after this realization and drove herself home, where she unloaded the trunk. And like a good little SAHM, she went inside to whip up a good meal for her man in thirty minutes or less. Rachel Ray would be so proud.
    * * * *
    For nearly four weeks, Jaime had been avoiding his new personal assistant like the plague she was. For four weeks, he made sure he was out of the house before she came down to occupy his office. He came home for lunch, usually to find her on her hands and knees digging in the flowerbeds, or the kitchen cabinets.
    Lately, she was up to her elbows in paint, and if he saw one more fabric sample, he might have to throttle her. She talked a lot. About everything, from what books she found at Barnes and Noble to the dating woes of the guy who mixed her paint at The Home Depot. He now knew the Cassandra rankings of all of the coffee shops nearby, and just how far it was on foot to the library. Hell, he didn’t even know where the library was located.
    Somehow, she managed to find the art community and was slowly sneaking in paintings and objects that looked suspiciously like naked sticks. One day soon, he was terribly afraid that he was going to come home and find she’d taken up dog walking for the neighbors.
    Cass was bored.
    She didn’t say anything to that effect, but he could tell. Her brain was moving too fast. And if he hadn’t known before he decided it would be a good idea to hire her, he knew now that when Cassandra was bored, she drove everyone around her crazy. Unfortunately, for the last four weeks, everybody was just him.
    It was his fault. He’d taken her away from her