I will not neglect my blog, I will not neglect my blog...

Picture me, in Bart Simpson-esque fashion, writing lines on the blackboard. I'm taller, less yellow, and I do not sport spikes in my hair, but basically the same. I have done the very thing I swore I would not do: I've left my (very few!) readers hanging.

So, here we are, back in O'Connell Creek...

Please forgive me!

***

Christian splashed his face with warm water and patted his cheeks dry with a fluffy white "company towel" as his mother would say. He always made a point to use these special towels whenever he stayed at the house, just to irritate the tiny, feisty woman who raised him.

Christian stared at himself in the mirror and ran a hand along his stubble. He should have shaved this morning, he thought, before he left Boston. He looked scruffy now, unkempt. Cassidy probably thought he was a caveman.

"What is her story?" he thought to himself, acutely aware of the fact that just one floor below she was sleeping starkers in his childhood bedroom. It had scared him a bit to see a strange car in the drive, and even more so to hear the soft snoring from his parents's bedroom as he crept up the stairs, but Cassidy's reaction when he leapt into the room was absolutely worth a little fear. Her mass of wild hair, light brown like the colour of butterscotch, sticking out in all directions, and the sheet slipping just so as she pulled it up around herself was almost too much for him. He had to put on an angry front just to keep his knees from giving out. And he put her into his old room to get her as far away as possible, but also as a tribute to his former teenage self who wasn't allowed to have girls in his room.

The truth was that he wasn't at all shocked to find a stranger in his mom and dad's house. Over the years, he had walked into their house a number of times to find someone crashing on the couch or in one of the bedrooms. Whenever someone needed a place to stay, the townsfolk called Sally and Ed first. They were always up for company, even when they weren't around, though usually they at least left Christian a message so he wasn't caught off-guard.

Christian stripped down to his boxers and crawled into the queen-size bed in the master suite. He laughed to himself as he propped the pillows up, remembering Amanda Brown and prom night in this very room while his mom and dad were out on the boat. The smile left his face when he fluffed the top pillow and caught a whiff of sweet perfume. Soft, very feminine, even elegant. Amanda Brown wore Tribe, in the pink and green bottle; it was aggressive and sharp, like the girl herself, but it got old quickly. The same held for other women over the years: Christian was never sad when their scents left his pillow. For a second here, though, Christian felt a wave of pain thinking about never knowing that perfume. He growled into the pillow before leaning over to open the balcony door wider, inviting the sea salt to overpower the smell of the woman downstairs. He fell into a restless sleep, scowling, trying to think of Boston and the possibilities in front of him.

In the morning, Christian rose from a terrible night's sleep to a car's engine revving. Groggy, he stood up and walked to the French doors, just in time to see Cassidy speed off down the lane. He sighed and shook his head, disappointed that he wouldn't see her this morning. He had planned out how to keep up with the gruff image he had given her the night before, for the sake of his sanity and of his budding business. The very last thing he needed was a woman to distract him from the tasks at hand.