Under the Neon Sky by Jay Rankin

Author:Jay Rankin [Rankin, Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biographies
Publisher: Springbrook Digital Publishing

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Honey, this town is filled with bad endings. Before you realize what’s happening, you could find yourself in trouble.”

“Oh, Jay, for chrissakes! I’m just entertaining myself while you’re at work. You told me to go out.”

I didn’t have high expectations for my talk with Cassy. Rocco had been the first to mention her drunkenness to me, but she was probably smashed every night. No conversation could change that.

“I know, Cas.” I felt a sense of dread. Our relationship was on the edge of something not good.

We were at the spec house, screwing antiqued bronze knobs and pulls into the kitchen cabinets and drawers. The interior was coming together while my marriage and the housing market were going south. I’d been doing a lot of the work myself now that Sam was spending every free minute with Capri. Probably his wife thought he was with me.

“I know how to keep guys away from me.” Cassy flashed a quick grin. “Remember the dawgs?”

A moment of expansive recollection overcame me. Cassy had been mixing drinks in a swirl of cigarette smoke when I first laid eyes on her in a Santa Monica, California, bar. Her extraordinary beauty made me a regular there, with ten buddies—wild men called “the dawgs.” Some of us worked construction, the others were Hollywood stuntmen, and we all knew how to party loud and hard. We knocked back gallons of booze, laughed till we were sick, tried to hit on Cassy, and then did it all again the next weekend. God, it was fun. I had to admit, she kept me at bay for so long, I gave up any hope of scoring with her.

Then one night I came into the club early, without the others, and ordered dinner while I sat at the bar. Cassy waited on me, and we talked for the first time. I thought she was nice. Hoping she had learned from our brief conversation that I wasn’t as big an asshole as she’d thought, I asked her out.

“I don’t date customers,” she’d said with absolute finality, and I didn’t challenge her. But I could tell she was interested, and the chemistry between us was powerful.

A few weeks later my sister tagged along to the bar with me and the dawgs. She took one look at Cassy and asked, “Who is that girl? She is gorgeous! Look at her beautiful eyes!”

I filled her in.

Later that night my sister faked a visit to the restroom but actually followed Cassy into a storage area. She introduced herself and then said, “My brother really likes you. I can vouch for his being a good guy. Maybe you could break the rules once and go out with him?”

When I found out what she had done, I wanted to kill my sister, but her lobbying knocked down Cassy’s defenses. A week later, when she served the dawgs a tray of tequila shots, my glass had a piece of paper wrapped around the rim. I opened it discreetly and found her phone number written in a neat, feminine hand.

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