Publisher's Synopsis
Cassandra Reid ... Cassie. Raised in Rhode Island, by generous loving parents. She was ten when her life changed. When she had to grow up. Her parents died in Montreal of a freak shooting incident in the seventies. It was a stupid thing in a restaurant, she was ten. Their mega fortune was hers. Her father was a founding member of a law firm, and perhaps more important, a Reid. As such, his genealogy took him straight back to the originals on the Mayflower, and later Newport, Rhode Island. Need I mention the Mayflower? They were in Montreal to discuss his run for Governor, quietly, before he threw in his hat. To be part of, and loved by her parents meant so much. For Cassie, she did know the rest of her family from summers with the clan, and was quickly drawn in ... loved. Her maiden great aunt, Ethel Reid, she professed almost one hundred, brought her to Newport's fabled ocean view enclave, teaching self-reliance, opening her to the rest of family. Always hinting at hidden meanings. That perplexed both Robbie, her first cousin, and Cassie. Robbie, a true cousin, also lost his parents to an early snow avalanche at Lake Louise. They grew up like brother and sister in Ethel's home. Cassie didn't finish her first year at Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence, because her one hold on family, Ethel Reid, called and told her this was it ... she planned to die. Ethel had expertly managed the family businesses through three generations of Reid's: clothing, and transportation. She had sold off the clothing lines, and bought heavy stock in the early tech industry, so still very active. Cassie was the main inheritor at sixteen. More money. Her closest family and friend, Robbie Reid ... Cassie's legal and accounting guru, also inherited. He had graduated top in his class at Harvard. One sexy summer in the family enclave in Maine, when she was fourteen and Robbie was four year older, they sat back and laughed it off. When Ethel died, somewhere, because no one was sure, Cassie actually begged him to take care of all of it ... the money. That began a few months of break neck travel for her, tasting more than one lover on hot Caribbean islands, only to be raped. The healing began, not only for losing Ethel, but the anger against men. It was if Ethel reached out to her, guiding. Her aunt had been a free spirit, for all the business side to her life. Two summers, Robbie and Cassie had joined her on the Grand Tour through Europe. The price was learning French and Italian as second languages. During the museums and anthropology haunts, Ethel truly opened her life style to both of them. one that seemed to delight at the The freedom to play in a man's world. Drawn to a graphic designer's position in the paper, Cassie ended up in Savannah, South Carolina. Still sixteen, she pulled her story together. Pushing her age on paper to nineteen, she covered the non-existence of the degree. Loving the work enough to forget that she once had sexual encounters, she met Harry and Sally, an employee husband wife team who did the client interaction.They had a son, Dexter who spent weekends at her house when the Duo was on the road. Love. Less than seventeen, and less than a year into her position, she bought it. This is a redemption for two people. Perhaps their sexual appetites, or love for children, or most probable, an old house who sighed it's decision who would live again.
