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it.” She looked around the table from one slack-jawed face to another, before turning back to Burke’s reddening countenance. “What did you think I meant?”
    “Game’s over, everyone.” Burke put his cards down so slow Cass couldn’t tell if he was mad or stunned.
    Chairs moved in a flutter of activity. Sel helped Alice to her feet while Jimmy ushered a protesting May Belle toward the front door. It took all of ten seconds to end up alone in a room with him. Alone in the house. He stared at her, unblinking. Cass was pretty sure the verdict on his state of mind was mad.
    Very mad.
    “I said no,” he reminded in a deadly soft voice. “I said it more times than I’d like to count or remember. You’re fine the way you are, why can’t you be happy with that?”
    Cass stared down at her cards, willing herself not to crumple them in her fist. “Because I’m not.”
    “You were before the jackass came back to town. Why are you letting Luke decide what’s important and what’s not?”
    She stood, angry at his blindness. How could he know her for so long, be present for every heartache, and think she had anything to be happy about? “Who told you I was happy? When was I ever happy with the way I am?”
    His frown spread like a dark cloud across his brow. “You always seemed happy to me.”
    “Because you weren’t looking.” Or listening. Or paying any kind of attention, apparently. She crossed the length of the table and laid her cards in front of him. A full house, aces high. “No one has ever looked at me the way Sel looks at Alice. They just assume I would never want them to. Did you ever wonder how that makes me feel? To know no one will ever see me and think of me as anything more than an extension of the men in my life. All anyone sees is Hayne’s sister, Burke’s friend and Luke’s pathetic cast-off. No one even uses my name anymore. I’m a pair of frickin’ initials.” She blinked back tears, stating facts he seemed dead-set on ignoring.
    “Well, not anymore. Whether you help me or not, I’m going to the wedding and I’m going to prove to everyone, even you, that I’m more than a couple of letters. I’m a woman , damn it, and its time people finally figured it out. Especially me.”
    Burke said nothing while she stomped toward the front door, stopping briefly at the closet to pull out his jacket—the suede one he almost never wore, thank you very much—and shrug it on. His Neanderthal brow lowered and she was almost sure she heard him growl, but he still didn’t say anything. Angrier now than she could remember being since Luke came home, she yanked open his front door, ready to bum a ride from any of the people still waiting outside to see what happened. But before she went, she wanted to make sure he had something to truly stew over.
    “Oh and Burke? In case you missed it, dumb ass, you lost the game.”
     
     
    “Didn’t work, did it?” May Belle slid a plate with a half-pound mushroom and guacamole burger and steak fries across the glossy table to Cass.
    She reached for the burger, dejected. “Nope.”
    “Hon, if you wanted a make-over, you could have come to me. You don’t need Burke for it.”
    “He’s the only person who seemed to think I had what it takes to be a girl.” She still smarted at his dismissal. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she suspected he was trying to bluff his way out of a lie, but if she had any hope of changing her future as the Spinster-Time-Forgot, she had to believe him. Or convince him to believe it. Neither one seemed all too possible.
    May Belle made a snorting sound resembling laughter. “Hon, trust me, if you need a bra, you got what it takes.”
    Cass looked down.
    May shrugged as she reconsidered. “Well, if a supermodel can do without, so can you.”
    “Thanks, May. I feel much better now.”
    “Hey, they aren’t bad. It’s kinda hard to tell what you got under such a big T-shirt.”
    “It’s a work shirt.” Cass plucked at the