Cat's Cradle
Christine Rimmer
Cat Beaudine Was Nobody's Baby And that's the way she liked it. She could take care of herself - and she knew that marriage and motherhood were for other women, not her. Until the stranger with the familiar face had her wondering if being alone was all it was cracked up to be… .Dillon McKenna Wanted a Family For the professional daredevil, living on the edge had lost its appeal. He knew Cat was the woman for him. Now all he had to do was convince her of that - with the help of the unexpected bundle of joy in the back of his van… .
Cat’s Cradle
Christine Rimmer
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Prologue (#u1c459519-0ac7-5032-b4a0-0516e569d717)
One (#u20521335-d1fc-5e5f-b6d7-e570b85b652b)
Two (#u19258994-01df-5c66-bb38-42c27ed4dc28)
Three (#u6d4c8a62-41d7-511b-8186-c22d86cfd1a5)
Four (#u2b8d8c71-1663-564f-a9a2-1498de0161a2)
Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Prologue
Overhead, the desert night exploded with fireworks: trailing comets, rockets, bursting stars. It was the Fourth of July in Las Vegas, and Dillon McKenna was about to jump a motorcycle over the man-made volcano that erupted every fifteen minutes in front of the Mirage casino.
The crowd seemed to stretch out forever along the Strip. Dillon cruised down the middle of the street, working the crowd like the pro he was. He popped a few wheelies. He rose with a quick, agile leap and stood on the seat. For a moment, as he balanced like a wirewalker, he let go of the handlebars and carefully straightened to his full height. He bowed.
The crowd went nuts. They waved their miniature American flags and threw their red, white and blue hats in the air.
Under his breath, as he bent for the handlebars again, Dillon muttered a low curse. It was hotter than hell’s basement in the heavy crash helmet and the star-spangled jumpsuit that L.W. had ordered made especially for this jump. Sweat ran in Dillon’s eyes, burning. He blinked to clear it away.
He thought, This is the last jump for me. After this, I’m done.
The thought soothed him somehow. Made him care a little more about doing it right for the people this last time around.
The people had been good to him, over the years. They deserved a good show. They didn’t know that he was quitting. Nobody knew yet.
Dillon slid his feet off the sides of the seat and dropped. His boots landed neatly back on the pegs. He waved. The people screamed and stomped and waved frantically in return.
He’d reached Flamingo Road. Time to turn it around and head for the ramp. A voice from the small speaker inside his helmet told him he had two minutes before the volcano went off. He raced the engine, letting off the clutch just enough to make the tires scream and skid as he turned the bike. Then he gunned it again. The bike, which he’d modified himself for this jump, sounded good to him. It sounded just fine.
All up and down the Strip the chant had begun.
“Dil-lon. Dil-lon. Dil-lon. Dil-lon...” A thousand voices speaking as one. To Dillon the sound was barely more than a whisper beneath the roar of the bike.
“One minute,” the voice from the speaker inside his helmet warned. Then the countdown began. “Fifty-nine seconds, fifty-eight...”
Dillon gunned the engine again. He let out the clutch. The faraway chant of the crowd faded to nothing as he shot forward, picking up speed, headed for the takeoff ramp that rose over the lagoon at the foot of the volcano. He hit the base of the ramp and zoomed for the jump. Ahead and beneath him, the eruption began. A sharp, high burst of fire.
He took off from the ramp and soared out into the half block of nothingness going seventy-five miles per hour, with fire belching skyward below him. He rocketed higher, higher, leaving the people and the fire behind. He was standing on the foot pegs, gripping the handlebars, leaning forward, his eyes on the landing ramp, his mind on trajectories, on the arc of himself and the machine. And then he was over the top, into his descent, heading right on course for the landing.
He felt the heavy thud all through him as his rear wheel came down on the lip of the ramp. For a fraction of a second, he thought he was home free.
But then everything went wrong.
Too fast! I’ve hit the ramp too damn fast!
The thought came blasting into his mind as the bike came alive beneath him, fighting him. The handlebars ripped themselves free of his hands.
Nothing held him. He left the bike and catapulted into the air. He fell, somersaulting, noting in a distant way that beneath him, fire had rimmed the volcano and was beginning to bleed down the sides to set the lagoon aflame.
He came down hard on the ramp in front of the runaway bike. Man and bike became tangled. Over and over they tumbled toward the hard pavement below.
The last thing he heard before he blacked out was his dead father’s taunting voice echoing in his head.
It’s your last jump, all right, you worthless piece of trash. ‘Cause you’re a dead man...
* * *
He was back in his hometown of Red Dog City, California, standing on the Beaudines’ front porch. It was a fall evening. He could smell burning leaves. There was a chill in the air. He was seventeen years old. And mean Cat Beaudine was telling him off.
“All I asked was that you get my sister in by nine, Dillon McKenna. One little request. And you couldn’t manage it.”
Adora, Cat’s sister and his high school sweetheart, was holding on to his arm. He wanted to impress Adora. And he wanted to show Cat Beaudine that he was at least as tough as she was.
He opened his mouth to tell Cat Beaudine just what he thought of her.
No words came out.
The porch faded away. Someone said something about vital signs. Faces in surgical masks looked down at him. The eyes above the masks showed concern. From behind the masks came soothing words. About how he was all right. He was going to be all right.
And then he was back on the Beaudine porch again and Cat Beaudine was raising her daddy’s double-barreled shotgun and aiming it right at his heart.
That was when he knew this wasn’t real. In real life, Cat Beaudine had never actually pointed that gun at him; she’d only threatened that she might.
In the dream–or the hallucination or whatever it was–he could talk now. He asked Cat Beaudine, “Why do you care what your sister does? Why do you care if she gets home at night?”
Cat answered, “Somebody’s got to care. Somebody’s got to keep this family together. It’s not a job I volunteered for, Dillon McKenna, but it’s the job I got stuck with. It’s a school night. You said you’d get her in by nine.”
He was still staring down those double barrels. He watched in disbelief as Cat disengaged the safety and wrapped two fingers around the twin triggers.
He threw his hands up, shouting, “Hey, you can’t shoot me just for keeping Adora out an hour late!”
But Cat pulled the trigger anyway.
And pain erupted through him, white and hot. Teeth of fire dug his flesh away.
And somebody said, “Where’s the anesthesiologist? We’re only waiting for the anesthesiologist....”
* * *
Much later, he swam toward consciousness. The pain was different now. It was still there, still eating him alive, but they must have given him something powerful to ease it. Now the pain seemed to be consuming him from a distance. He knew it was bad, the worst he’d ever experienced. But it was kept at bay somewhere, waiting for the medication to wear off just a little so it could leap on him and devour him whole.
He turned his head and cautiously opened his eyes. An IV drip stood by the metal side rail of the bed. It was hooked up to his arm. There was some machine close by that made little bleeping sounds, like bubbles singing underwater. The air smelled of disinfectant overlaid with the scent of flowers. The flowers were everywhere, intended, no doubt, to cheer up the invalid: him.
And there were voices, from across the room.
They whispered to each other.
“My God, L.W. I just can’t.”
“You can. You will. McKenna needs you now.”
“They say he may never walk again. He may be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. It’s too awful, too ugly, I just can’t–”
“For God’s sake, Natalie. Get a grip on yourself. He’s waking up.”
He looked toward the sound of the voices. Two familiar faces swam into focus. Natalie, the woman he had meant to marry. And L.W., the man who’d made his name a household word. Both of them were looking right back at him, their mouths stretched into big, brave smiles.
He felt sorry for them, in a removed sort of way. He wasn’t going to be much use to either of them now. Just as neither of them was going to be much use to him. Because he didn’t kid himself. He’d been broken up enough in his time to have a vague idea of what he was in for. He may have survived his final jump after all. But hell was still waiting for him–a living hell.
A sharp longing pierced him, worse, in a way, than the pain that waited to eat him alive.
It was a longing for home. And for the kind of woman who could take the tough times; a woman strong enough to stand by his side while he endured the months of torment and superhuman effort that were coming up next.
One
Eighteen months later....
Cat Beaudine stood in the doorway of her sister’s bedroom. She took in the room at a glance. On the dresser, the small color television soundlessly played the 11:00 p.m. news. There were balled-up tissues everywhere, looking like sad, crumpled paper flowers, used and discarded in drifts and trails across the pink satin sheets of the bed. In the center of the crumpled satin, surrounded by all those used tissues, Cat’s sister, Adora, lay sprawled facedown sobbing forlornly.
Adora’s most recent boyfriend, Farley Underwood, had left her. And, as always, Adora had called Cat.
Slowly, as if it pained her to lift her head, Adora looked up. She let out a strangled cry. Then she reared back on her knees, her tousled brown hair curling enchantingly around her pretty, flushed face, her cream silk negligee slipping off one shoulder. “Oh, Cat!”
Cautiously Cat approached the bed.
Adora dabbed at her streaming eyes with a wadded-up tissue. “Oh, Cat. Thanks for coming. For always being there over all the years. For being the best big sister in the world. I don’t know what I’d do...without you.” With a desolate moan, Adora held out her arms.
Cat sank to the edge of the bed and allowed herself to be enveloped in her sister’s misery and the heady scent of Adora’s perfume.
Adora moaned against Cat’s heavy winter jacket. “I’m sorry. To be such a pain. But I had to have someone. Some family. You understand, don’t you?”
Cat made a small, sympathetic sound; all that was required at the moment.
Adora sobbed on. “Why me? What is it about me? Why does every man I ever meet end up dumping me? All I ever wanted was what my two baby sisters have. A good man. A family. Someone to take care of me and someone I can take care of in return. Is it too much to ask? Is it unreasonable to hope for?” Adora gave another quivering whimper. “Is it?”
“No, of course it’s not.”
“Of course it’s not!” Adora picked up Cat’s words and gave them back in a wail. “But it never happens. I’m thirty-four years old. How long do I have to wait? And I’m not like you, Cat, perfectly happy wandering around the woods in work boots and baggy jeans with no man in sight, wanting to live out in the middle of nowhere alone in some ancient, run-down shack. I’m just a woman. An ordinary woman. I want a home, with nice window treatments and a baby on the way.”
Adora surrendered to a fresh fit of weeping. Cat held her and made the required soothing sounds. Eventually Adora calmed a little. Then Cat put her arm around Adora and said the things she always said whenever Adora lost a boyfriend.
“You’re too good for him.... You’re better off without him.... Someone terrific will come along soon....”
Adora listened, tucked up in the hollow of Cat’s shoulder, and made tiny, woebegone noises of agreement.
“Oh, Cat. Do you really think the right man could still come along?”
“Of course I do. I promise you. It’s only a matter of...”
But Cat didn’t get any farther, because Adora wasn’t listening. Adora was gaping at the television instead.
“Omigod!” Cat’s sister exclaimed in an ecstatic whisper.
Cat looked at the television. One of those late-night talk shows had come on. A host Cat didn’t recognize was interviewing some dark-haired hunk in designer jeans and fancy alligator boots. “What? What is it?”
Adora clutched a wadded-up tissue to her breast and pointed at the television. “It’s Dillon. Dillon McKenna. Turn it up. Cat, turn it up!” When Cat didn’t move, Adora frantically fumbled around under the mountain of pillows at the head of the bed and came up with a remote control, which she pointed at the television. The sound came on.
“So, Dillon.” The host held up a book with a photograph of a gruesomely wrecked motorcycle on the dust jacket. Beneath the crumpled motorcycle, the word Daredevil was printed in letters that seemed to be on fire. “Tell us about this book you’ve written.”
Cat made a low noise of disbelief. “Oh, please. Dillon McKenna never wrote a book. I don’t buy that for a minute.”
“Shh!” Adora hissed and craned forward toward the small screen. “Oh, God. He looks wonderful.... You can’t even see how bad he was hurt in that awful crack-up in Las Vegas. He looks just like before.”
On the screen, the dark-haired hunk began to talk. “Well now, if you look down in the corner there, you’ll see that I didn’t write it.” He nudged the slender, serious-looking man sitting next to him. “Oliver here did that. He’s the writer.”
Oliver picked up his cue. “But the story is authentic. Just as Dillon told it to me. From his early days in rodeo, through his years as a movie stuntman, right up to the challenges he set himself. Nothing’s missing. There’s every jump he ever accomplished, including that baker’s dozen Peterbilt semitrucks at the Anaheim Speedway. And, of course, the story finds its climax in Dillon’s spectacular, near-death experience in Las Vegas just a year and a half ago.”
Cat watched her sister watching Dillon McKenna. Adora’s face wore a dreamy, faraway look. Farley Underwood might never have existed.
“Dillon really did turn out to be a fantastic-looking man, didn’t he, Cat?” Adora asked.
Cat didn’t even bother to look at the man on the screen. One answer was expected of her. She gave it. “Sure.”
On the television, the host asked, “So what’s up next for Dillon McKenna?”
“You know, I gotta say I’m not sure.”
“No kidding?”
“Yeah. Things are going to be different for me, that’s all I know for certain. I think what I need right now is a real change of scene, a little time away from it all, to decide where I’m going from here.”
Cat only half listened to the rest. She busied herself gathering up some of the drifts of discarded tissues and tossing them into the wastebasket in the corner, waiting for the next commercial break.
At last, her sister raised the remote control and punched the Mute button again. Then Adora sighed. “Oh, Cat. He made good, didn’t he? Dillon really made good.”
There was no arguing with that. Cat smiled. “He certainly did.”
“Did you hear what he said, about not knowing what he was going to do next? About how he’s thinking he needs a little time away from it all?”
“Yeah, I heard it.”
Adora’s emerald eyes were shining. “Do you imagine he might come back home?”
Cat imagined no such thing. The way she saw it, there was absolutely no reason on earth why an international celebrity like Dillon McKenna would want to return to the tiny mountain town of Red Dog City.
“Well?” Adora prompted.
“Well, what?”
“You heard me. Don’t you think that he might come home?”
“No, I don’t.”
Adora frowned. Cat’s answer had not been the one she’d hoped for. But then she brightened again. “If he did, you’d be the first to know, wouldn’t you? After all, you take care of his house.”
Cat picked up a few more tissues and aimed them at the wastebasket, achieving a swift series of slam dunks. Then she pointed out patiently, “Adora, he hasn’t stayed there even once since I’ve been caretaker of that place. He rents it out through the real estate agency that hired me to take care of it. It’s just income property to him.”
“Well, I know. But still. It’s a nice house. If he wanted to get some time to himself, to think about life and things, that house would be just the place to go.”
Cat reached for her sister’s hands and clasped them firmly in her own. “Look.” She put her forehead against Adora’s. “Will you forget Dillon McKenna? Think about yourself. Are you feeling better now?”
Adora pulled her hands free and fiddled with her shredded tissue. “I guess you want to go home and go back to bed, huh?”
“I’d be lying if I said no. But I’ll stay if you—”
“No. Really. Seeing Dillon again kind of cheered me up. I suppose I’ll be all right now. At least all right enough to make it through the night.”
“Good.” Cat bent forward to brush her lips against Adora’s cheek.
Adora forced a brave smile. “Thanks again. I mean it.”
Cat stood. “I’m at home if you need me.”
“I know.”
Two
Dillon McKenna climbed down from his Land Cruiser, ignoring the dull throb in his artificial hip joints as he did it. The snow on the ground made a crisp, crunching sound under his boots.
The house looked good, he thought. From this side, it was all natural colored wood and soaring angles. The other side, which faced the deck and a deep ravine, was floor-to-ceiling windows so that even on the darkest days, the place was full of light.
Dillon took in a big breath, savoring the cold, mountain freshness of the air. From a nearby fir tree, a chickadee trilled at him. And from somewhere not far away came the thwacking sound of an ax splitting wood. Be- neath a spruce tree at the side of the driveway a blue pickup was parked: the caretaker’s, Dillon imagined. Dillon shut the door of the Land Cruiser, flipped up the collar of his sheepskin jacket and followed the sound of the ax.
He didn’t have to go far. Around the other side of the house, on the little ledge of level ground that extended below the deck before the land dropped off into the ravine below, he found the caretaker. The man’s back was turned to Dillon and for a moment, Dillon stood and watched him.
Rhythmically and efficiently, the man sunk his ax into a log, lifted the log high and brought it down on the chopping block. Bemused, Dillon admired the grace of movement, the economy of each stroke.
He smiled to himself. Nineteen months ago, he wouldn’t have looked twice. But there was something about having half the bones in your body broken, about being put back together with plastic and metal and a good surgeon’s gall, that made a man appreciate the simple things—like watching a skinny caretaker whack up the firewood.
Just then, the caretaker seemed to sense that he was being observed. He brought the ax down so it bit into the block. Then, leaving the ax stuck there, he straightened and turned.
Dillon noticed right away that the fellow had delicate features and smooth golden skin. But it took him a few seconds to register that the man also had breasts—high, round breasts, which very nicely filled out the front of his—er, her—worn red flannel shirt.
As Dillon gaped, the man who had turned out to be a woman removed the work gloves she was wearing and shoved a hand through her shock of short, raggedly cropped straw-colored hair. Then she squared her slim shoulders and strode purposefully toward him.
As she drew closer, he noted that her eyes were the shimmering gray-blue of a scrub jay’s wings. Recognition dawned in those eyes at precisely the moment he realized who she was: Adora’s overprotective big sister, Cat Beaudine.
Home at last.
The thought rose from the depths of him and bloomed on the surface of his mind. It occurred to him that he’d dreamed of her, though he couldn’t remember when or what the dream had been about.
“Dillon? Dillon McKenna?” Her disbelief was clear in her voice.
He felt a wide smile break across his face. “The very same. Hello, Cat.”
Now she was the one gaping. Dillon could understand that. Aside from a possible occasional glimpse of him on the news or in a magazine, she hadn’t seen him in about sixteen years. She very well might have been at his father’s funeral seven years ago, but he didn’t remember seeing her then. In any case, it had been a long time. It would naturally take her a minute or two to get used to the changes time makes. Seeing her again had sure given him a jolt.
Dillon stuck out his hand. They shook. Her palm was rough, callused from hard work. Her bones, though, were fine and long. He let his gaze wander, noting the dew of moisture on her upper lip and the charming way her pale hair curled, damp and clinging, at her temples. Her body heat came off of her in waves after her efforts with the ax. Her scent, on the cold winter air, was both sweet and faintly musky.
Within his own, her hand jerked a little. He realized he’d held on longer than was probably appropriate. Reluctantly he let her go.
She forged ahead with the pleasantries. “How are you?”
“All grown-up now.”
A small vertical line appeared between her brows. “Yes. Yes, I see that.” She sounded preoccupied suddenly—and not pleased at all that he wasn’t a kid anymore.
Dillon felt jubilant. He was thoroughly enjoying himself. She was exactly the way he’d remembered her. Except for one thing: back then, he hadn’t thought her intriguing in the least.
“Ahem. Well.” Now she was making a big deal of pulling her gloves back on—to let him know she was returning to the chopping block, he imagined. “This is a surprise. When the agency called to tell me to open up the house, I figured—”
“That the new occupant was just another one in the endless chain of short-term tenants?”
She nodded. “But then, I suppose I should have expected it might be you, now I think about it. We heard you were looking for a little time away from it all.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
She looked away for a moment, as if she hesitated to tell him. Then she shrugged. “You said it. On some late-night TV show a few weeks ago.”
He couldn’t resist a little jab. “I’m surprised you were watching. You never were a big fan of mine.”
She looked right into his eyes then. “Hey. Out here in the wilderness, we like to keep informed about the ones who made it big. And you picked the right place if you want to be alone. Six miles outside of Red Dog City in the dead of winter is about as alone as anybody could want to get.”
He chuckled. “It’s less than forty miles to Reno, in case I get too lonely.”
“Those can be very rough miles when the heavy snows come.”
“I know that. I was raised in these parts.” He dared to tease her. “Are you trying to get rid of me already, Cat?”
She didn’t smile. “No, of course not.”
“Good. Because I’m here to stay—for a while, at least.”
“Well, that’s your business.”
“You’ve got it right there.”
They stared at each other. Then she coughed. “Listen, I’m sure you want to get comfortable. You’ll find the house was cleaned from top to bottom.”
“By you?”
She shook her head. “I don’t clean houses. The agency hires a service for that.” She went on briskly, “The water’s on and I turned on the heat a couple of hours ago, so it should be pretty warm by now. I was just trying to get in a little more wood, in case you’d also like a fire. I don’t know who took care of delivering your wood for you, but most of the logs are too big for your stove.”
Dillon experienced the most ridiculous urge then. He wanted to march over to where her ax was embedded in the block and hack up a few logs himself, just so she’d know he was as much of a man as she was. The urge totally astonished him. Lately Dillon thought of himself as grown beyond minor displays of masculine ego.
And besides, he’d probably only end up doing damage to himself if he started showing off with an ax right now. He was still learning to control all the new pins and balls he had where a lot of his joints used to be.
“So anyway,” she was saying, “I’ll just get back to work. I’ll finish up here, then carry a load inside and lay the fire for you.”
He had a better idea. “Listen, forget splitting any more wood for now.”
“But I—”
“Just bring a load into the house and get the fire started. I’d appreciate that.”
“Okay, I—”
“And then we’ll have a beer.”
It took her a moment to absorb that suggestion. Then the protests began. “No, I—”
“Come on. For old times’ sake.”
Her glance collided with his for a moment, then shifted away. “No, really, I—”
“Yes.”
She looked at him again, stared straight into his eyes and tried to shake her head. She didn’t succeed. “All right.” The minute the words were out, her face flushed a captivating shade of pink beneath her tan.
“Good.” He strode toward her and brushed past, leading the way before she could change her mind. “The beer’s in my truck. I’ll get it and join you inside.”
From behind him she made a strangled little sound that was probably the beginning of a protest. He didn’t wait to hear the end of it, but trudged away from her as quickly as his rebuilt hips and reconstructed left knee would carry him.
By the time he’d put the Land Cruiser in the garage and let himself into the kitchen, she was standing on the other side of the glass door that opened onto the deck, her arms loaded with firewood. She spotted him through the glass and telegraphed a questioning look. He set down the bag of groceries and the six-pack of long necks he’d brought in with him and hurried across the huge main living area to let her in.
Once inside, she tossed the wood into the box by the wood stove, then pulled off her gloves and stuck them in a back pocket. Dillon went to get two beers from the six-pack on the counter as she knelt to lay and light the kindling. He took a few minutes to empty the bag of groceries and when he returned, she was feeding in a couple of midsize logs. That done, she rose.
He handed her a beer. They both drank. Through the window of the stove, the fire licked at the wood, a cheerful sight.
Dillon gestured in the general direction of a couch and two chairs, which were grouped nearby. “Have a seat.”
Cat shook her head and looked down at her old shirt and khaki work pants. “That couch is beige. And I’ve been under the house checking the pipes.”
He started to tell her he couldn’t care less about the damn couch. But then he decided that the state of her clothing was only an excuse. She didn’t want to sit down. She didn’t want to get too comfortable.
He let it pass and stared out the wall of windows. Beyond the deck the world seemed to drop away into a sea of snow-laden evergreen. In the distance, the mountains overlapped each other, disappearing into a gray veil of afternoon mist.
“I can hardly believe I’m here,” he mused aloud after a moment. He glanced around the big room and then out the windows at the spectacular view once again. “God. It’s beautiful.”
“Yes.”
He lifted the beer and drank, then found himself telling her, “I bought this house seven years ago.”
She made a sound of polite interest, but said nothing.
“It was after my father died. I saw an ad for the place while I was here, so I drove out to see it. I fell in love with it and took it. I think it made me feel that I’d arrived, the fact that I could buy a vacation house just because the mood struck me.”
She spoke then, her tone matter-of-fact. “You’ve done well for yourself, Dillon. You have a right to be proud.”
He studied her, thinking about changes. Pondering the effects of time. Deciding that the way a man saw the world sometimes changed more than the world itself. Like the woman before him.
Sixteen years ago, he hadn’t seen the deep inner calm she possessed. Or the world of strength and dignity in her eyes. Hell. Back then, he hadn’t given a damn for strength and dignity in a woman. He’d thought her tough and mean—and she had been. He was sure she still was when circumstances demanded.
“We heard you had a bad accident a while ago,” she said.
“Yeah. I jumped a man-made volcano at the Mirage in Las Vegas. The jump was a success. Unfortunately my landing left a lot to be desired.”
Now her eyes were kind. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey. Breaks of the game.”
“Well, at least you look as if you’re recovering well enough.”
“More or less. Everything works, just slower and stiffer.” He raised his beer and drank. “So tell me about home.”
“What about it?”
“Well, the Beaudine family, for starters, I suppose. You can tell me how your mom is and how all your sisters turned out.”
She fiddled with the label on her beer bottle, as if she suspected he’d just thrown her a trick question. “My mother’s remarried.”
“No kidding?”
“Yep. Just a few years ago, to a retired housepainter. She met him playing bingo over at the community hall. You could say he sort of swept her off her feet, I guess. They tied the knot a few months after they met and they live in Tucson now.”
“What about the little ones?”
“Phoebe and Deirdre?”
“Yeah.”
“They’re not so little anymore. Both married, as a matter of fact. Deirdre lives in Loyalton. And Phoebe’s in Portola.”
“Not too far away, then?”
“Right.” She took another sip of beer.
“And how about you? Are you married?”
“Me?” She looked surprised that he’d ask such a question. “No, not me.”
It was the answer he’d expected, but still, he’d wanted to be sure. He was tempted to probe a little deeper on the subject, to ask her why not? just to see how she’d answer. But he decided against that. She was too edgy. Any probing on his part would probably send her flying out the door.
He kept it light and predictable. “How about nieces and nephews? Got any of those yet?”
“Five.” She was fiddling with the bottle’s label again. “Deirdre has three daughters. And Phoebe has two boys.”
“Wow. Now that’s hard to picture. Not only married, but with kids. They were just little girls when I left.”
She sipped from her beer again, looked away and then back.
He went on with the next question. “And what about Adora?”
He saw that he’d blown it as soon as the name was out of his mouth. Cat’s hand tightened around the beer bottle. A moment before she’d been edgy, but now she was ready to get the hell out. He knew exactly what was going through her mind: What in the world was she doing here, sharing a beer with her sister’s old flame?
She forced a tight smile and proceeded to tell him all about Adora. “Adora is just fine. Still single. She has her own beauty shop, right in town on Bridge Street. It’s called the Shear Elegance Salon of Beauty. She lives in an apartment above the shop.”
He cursed his careless mouth, yet saw no choice but to blunder along in the same vein. “So she’s doing well, then?”
“Yes, very well.” Cat set her nearly empty beer on a side table. “Listen, it really is getting late and I have to get going.” She turned for the door.
All Dillon could think of was that she was getting away from him. He reached out and grabbed her arm. “Wait.”
She froze, then whipped her head around to gape at him. Her stunned expression told it all: men rarely dared to touch her. And now that a man was touching her, she didn’t know what to make of it.
She was what—? A year older than he was, if Dillon remembered right. Thirty-five, maybe thirty-six. And right now, looking in her face, he could swear that in all those years, she’d never once moved in ecstasy beneath the hands of a man.
“What?” she asked in an astonished whisper.
Dillon said nothing. He really had nothing to say, except Don’t go, which he knew wouldn’t keep her there. The silence expanded, seeming to fill the large room.
“What do you want?” Her voice still sounded amazed, but there was a little more force in it than a moment ago.
Again, he didn’t answer.
Under the heavy fabric of her shirt, her skin was warm and supple, the muscles beneath like flexible steel. She was strong. “Let me go.” This time it was a command.
Dillon’s hand dropped away. There was no further point in holding on, anyway. The moment he’d stolen through the sheer audacity of daring to touch her had passed.
Like a person stirring from a waking dream, Cat blinked and shook her head. He wondered what she’d do next, if she would get mad because he’d grabbed her arm.
He didn’t think she would. Not if he handled it right. Not if he gave her an out she could live with—like pretending that nothing at all had occurred. Which it hadn’t. Not really. Not yet.
“Listen, thanks for warming things up.”
She studied him narrowly for a moment, then shrugged. “No problem.”
Her eyes were cool and level. He thought of the winter world beyond the window. To the untrained eye, it might seem a frozen expanse of white. But warm-blooded things moved there, if you knew where to look.
“Is there anything else I can take care of, before I go?”
A provocative remark occurred to him; he chose not to utter it. “No. Everything looks fine.”
“Well, then...”
“Thanks again.”
She gave a brief, tight nod. Then she turned and left him alone.
Dillon stood before the wall of windows for a long while after Cat was gone. He was feeling good. The best he’d felt in a long, long time.
After the wreck and the disappointments, after the long months of pain and sweat and fear as he forced his legs, through endless hours of physical therapy, to learn to carry him again, it was good to stand by a window in a house he loved and look out over the mountains in winter. It was good to be here. To be home.
And it was also good that Cat Beaudine was so damned competent. Because he’d already decided he was going to need a lot of help from the caretaker to get himself settled in.
Three
“Well? Have you seen him?”
Startled, Cat whirled around. Adora stood in the middle of Cat’s living room, smiling.
“Feel free to just walk right in,” Cat muttered.
Adora looked minimally regretful. “The kitchen door was open.”
“Right.”
“So. Did you see him?”
“Who?”
“Oh, stop it, Cat. You know very well who.”
“Dillon McKenna.” Cat said the name with resignation.
“Yes. Dillon.” Adora gave a voluptuous little sigh. “Everybody’s talking. He stopped in at the grocery store on his way through town. Lizzie Spooner bagged his groceries. And I know darn well that agency you work for must have called you to tell you to open up the house. That’s where you’ve been, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I was there for a while,” Cat conceded, then hastened to add, “And I also had the house out on Turner Road to see to. And the place on Jackson Pike.”
Adora looked reproachful. “I called you three times. Why didn’t you call back?”
Cat cast a rueful glance at the answering machine, which sat on her desk beneath the stairs. The message light was blinking. “I just got in myself.” She bent to finish the task of adding more logs to the banked fire, which had burned down to coals in her absence. When the logs were in, she shut the door on the side of the stove. “Want coffee?”
“Tea would be nice.”
“Tea it is.” Cat headed for the kitchen, where she got down two mugs and the can in which she kept the tea bags. Adora wandered into the room behind her. “How do you do it? It totally mystifies me.”
“How do I do what?” Cat went to the kitchen stove, which was half electric and half wood burning. On the wood-burning side, a huge kettle simmered. Cat stoked the fire there as she had the one in the front room.
“You know what,” Adora said. “How do you live out here in the middle of nowhere without a soul to talk to half the time?”
“I like my privacy.” Cat gestured toward the living room, where several tall bookshelves lined every available wall space. “And I read a lot.”
“How in-tel-lect-u-al.“ Adora teasingly drew out each syllable, then tipped her head and wondered out loud, “Don’t you ever miss all of us together, the way it used to be?”
Cat thought of the house where she’d grown up. It hadn’t been a very big house in which to raise four daughters. There had only been one bathroom, which had always been occupied with one female or another putting on makeup or fixing her hair.
“Well, do you miss it?” Adora prompted when Cat didn’t answer right away.
“Not as much as I like my privacy.” Cat poured water from the kettle over the tea bags.
“I miss it.” Adora’s eyes were as melancholy as her tone. “I’m a family sort of person.”
“I know.” Cat smiled in understanding. It had been hard on Adora when their mother remarried. Charlotte Beaudine Shanahan had always been a man’s woman. And from the day she’d met her second husband, her grown daughters had faded to the background of her life. That was just fine with Cat. And Phoebe and Deirdre both had families of their own now. But Adora felt deserted.
“Come on,” Cat said gently. “Take off your coat.” She indicated the table. “Sit down. Drink your tea.”
Adora sat, then slipped out of her coat and draped it behind her on the back of her chair. That accomplished, she grinned at Cat, who’d taken the seat at the end of the table. “Okay. Tell me all about it.” She actually rubbed her hands together in delighted anticipation. “You saw him, didn’t you?”
Cat restrained a sigh. She didn’t even want to think about her unsettling encounter with Dillon McKenna. And she certainly didn’t want to talk about it.
“Cat. Did you see him?”
Cat wrapped her tea bag around her spoon and squeezed the last few drops from it.
“Oh, come on.” Adora let out a little puff of air in disgust. “What is the matter with you? Are you trying to torture me?”
“No, I’m not trying to torture you.” Cat set the tea bag on the edge of her saucer and lifted the cup to her lips. “And yes, I saw him.” She took a careful sip.
“Oh, I knew it.” Adora actually bounced in her chair. “I was right, wasn’t I? He needs some time to...reexamine his life. To decide where to go from here.”
“He didn’t say that in so many words.” Cat set the cup back on the saucer. “But I think you’re probably right.”
Adora preened a little, dipping her tea bag in and out of her cup. “Do I know him or what?”
“Adora...” Cat began, and didn’t know how to go on.
“What?”
Cat thought of the reckless, troubled Dillon McKenna who had left town sixteen years ago. And of the self-possessed, disturbingly compelling man she’d met that afternoon.
“What?” Adora demanded. “Talk to me. What?”
Cat spoke carefully. “Well, people change, that’s all. You were kids when he left here, both of you, barely eighteen. You’ve each...done a lot of living since then.”
Adora’s soft chin was set. “I know him. He was my first love. A woman knows. What else did you talk about? What happened? Tell me every bit of it.”
Cat looked at her sister and wondered if there was any way to terminate this uncomfortable conversation.
“Talk,” Adora prompted.
“There really isn’t that much to tell,” Cat answered, feeling guilty, though there was no reason to. Nothing had happened. Dillon McKenna had offered her a beer. She’d accepted. They’d talked of mundane things.
Adora was blissfully ignorant of Cat’s uneasiness. She bounced in her chair some more. “Tell me anyway. Every little dinky word he said.”
Seeing no way around it, Cat quickly described her encounter with Dillon, leaving out only those stunning few moments when he’d held on to her arm. When Cat was finished, Adora sat back in her chair and took a sip of her tea. “Well. That sounds good. Very good.”
“Adora, it was an exchange of information, nothing more.”
“To you, maybe.”
“Adora...”
“It was the part where he asked if I was doing well, that was the key, see?”
“No, I don’t.”
“You told him how I was, and then he asked again. He’s anticipating. Just like I am. Wondering what it will be like when at last we meet once more.” Adora’s chair scraped the old linoleum floor as she stood. “I’m going to go to his house and welcome him home. Right now.”
“Adora, maybe you ought to just—”
“I’m going.” Adora’s chin was set in that way it used to get when she was little and their mother told her she couldn’t do something she wanted to do.
Cat reminded herself that Adora was a grown woman. If she wanted to go and pay a visit to an old boyfriend, that was Adora’s business and nobody else’s.
Cat forced a smile. “Suit yourself.”
“I will. I most definitely will.” Adora scooped up her coat from the back of the chair and shoved her arms into it. Cheeks flushed and eyes aglow, she headed for the door.
* * *
The next day was Saturday. Cat’s phone rang at nine. Positive it would be Adora with all the details of her re- union with Dillon, Cat let it ring three times before giving in and picking it up.
“Hello, Cat.” The deep, warm voice didn’t belong to her sister.
An exasperating shiver traveled up the backs of Cat’s legs, and then spread out to take over her whole body. She waited for it to fade a little before she spoke.
“Hello, Dillon.”
“Listen.” He sounded very offhand. “Since yesterday, I’ve had a little time to go over my situation here.”
His situation? What did that mean?
“And it looks as if I’m going to need someone to take care of a few things for me.”
“What things?” The two words were suspicion personified.
Cat thought she heard a chuckle, but perhaps it was only static on the line. “I need more firewood split, for starters. And I’ve bought a decent sound system, VCR and big-screen television. I understand you’re good with electronic equipment, so I was hoping you would set them up for me. I also ordered a satellite dish that will need to be hooked up. And there’s the exercise equipment for the gym downstairs. I was told the delivery crew would assemble it, but you never know. And I have a lot of books—I’d like some bookcases made. I’ve heard you do carpentry work.”
Cat didn’t answer. She was thinking that he’d certainly learned a lot about her abilities in the past twenty-four hours.
She was also thinking that he was offering her paying work. And Cat always needed paying work, especially in the winter months, when all the construction jobs were shut down. She was buying her small house and the five acres it sat on. It was a big investment for someone of her limited means.
But Dillon McKenna represented danger—to her peace of mind, if nothing else. Yesterday, he’d grabbed her arm for no reason and not let go until she’d ordered him to. She wanted to believe that was all that had happened.
But somehow, she didn’t believe it.
And then there was Adora, floating out the door yesterday with stars in her eyes....
“Cat?” Dillon prompted, cutting through her thoughts.
“Yes, yes, I’m thinking.” Cat cast about for some way to put him off. “Listen, I appreciate the offer, but I’m afraid you’ll have to speak with the real estate agency. I can’t just—”
“I’ve already taken care of that.”
“Excuse me?”
“I called the agency. They said it was fine with them if you and I wanted to work out our own personal relationship, now that I’ll be living here full-time.”
Our own personal relationship. Cat didn’t think she liked the sound of that at all.
“I’ll pay well.” He named an hourly figure. It was twice what she would have asked for most of the work he’d described.
Cat thought of her mortgage. She thought of the improvements she wanted to make to her house next summer: new insulation and double-paned windows that would significantly reduce her firewood consumption. Cat’s house wasn’t like Dillon’s. For her, there was no central propane heat to keep the place toasty. She counted on firewood to provide basic heating.
“Do you want to think about it for a day or two, and give me a call back?” He sounded completely relaxed about the whole thing.
And Cat decided she was being ridiculous. Nothing had happened between herself and Dillon McKenna. And nothing would happen. He was still recovering from major injuries and needed someone to help him get settled in. And she needed the money.
“No, there’s no need for me to think about it,” she said. “It sounds fine to me. When do I start?”
There was a millisecond of a pause. She was absolutely positive he was going to say, Right now.
But he didn’t. “A lot of the equipment is coming in Monday morning. Could you be here by ten or so?”
She agreed that she could.
An hour later Adora called. Her soft voice vibrated with excitement. “I saw him. He seemed really glad I dropped in. And guess what else?”
“What?”
“He needs help with some projects around the house. And I know how much you need any work you can get. So I told him about all the things you can do. He said he was going to call you this morning. Has he?”
“Yes.”
“I knew it. Aren’t you going to thank me?”
“Thanks,” Cat muttered with heavy irony.
As usual, the irony was wasted on Adora. “Anything for my big sis.”
Cat hung up the phone knowing exactly what Adora was up to: creating connections. If Cat worked for Dillon, then Adora had another reason to drop in at his house now and then.
It would never have occurred to Adora that throwing Dillon and Cat together could create any problems at all. Adora was ten times prettier than Cat. And besides, Adora knew very well that her big sister simply wasn’t interested in men.
* * *
The delivery van with the television, VCR and stereo arrived at Dillon’s at nine-fifteen Monday morning. Dillon had them bring it all into the house. He showed them where he wanted the huge TV, and then had them leave the rest of the equipment in the middle of the room. When they were gone, he set about ripping into the boxes, strewing packing material all over the place. He wanted it to look as if he’d really tried to make some progress at getting it all set up on his own, but he just didn’t know what he was doing.
He hoped Cat wouldn’t think too deeply about this. Because if she did, she just might begin to wonder why a man who could redesign a motorcycle couldn’t figure out how to hook up his VCR to his big-screen TV.
* * *
When Cat arrived, she found Dillon sitting on the floor in the huge main room. He was surrounded by torn-open boxes and slabs of polystyrene and packing plastic and he was reading what looked like some sort of instruction booklet. Behind him loomed a brand-new television with a gigantic screen.
Dillon looked up. “Thank God you’re here.”
Cat’s stomach felt agitated. Fluttery and strange. She silently ordered the bizarre sensation to go away as she slipped out of her jacket and hung it by the front door.
“What’s up?” She schooled her voice to be calm and professional.
Dillon squinted at the booklet he was holding, turning it this way and then that. “Help.”
Cat approached warily and peered over his shoulder. The booklet was the instruction manual for hooking up a VCR. In a dry tone, she suggested, “You might try turning that right-side up.”
He gave her a mock-threatening scowl. “Don’t get smart. Are you here to work or make fun of me?”
Some little devil inside prompted her to deliver a snappy comeback. She quelled the devil. She remained businesslike and distant, as she’d promised herself she would be. “What can I do?”
“Sit down.” He patted the space right beside him.
She hesitated, thinking it wouldn’t be wise to sit too close to him. And then she decided that if she didn’t sit close to him, he would think she was nervous around him. And she wasn’t nervous around him. Not in the least.
He held out the booklet. “Come on. Take this. Do something about it.”
She took the booklet and dropped next to him. Then she did her best to concentrate on the diagram he’d been looking at.
“God,” he said.
She shot him a suspicious glance. “What?”
“Oh, nothing. Just wishing.”
She knew she shouldn’t ask, but she did anyway. “Wishing what?”
He snorted. “That I could get up from here with one-tenth the ease that you got down.”
“Do you want to get up? I’ll be glad to help you.”
He shook his head. “Not yet. I’m working up to it gradually.”
This close, she could see that there were little gold flecks in the velvet brown of his eyes. His chin had a cleft in it. Cat seemed to remember that his blade of a nose had once been straighter. He’d probably broken it jumping out of a building for a movie or riding a bucking bronc in a rodeo.
She couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Why did you get down, if you knew it was going to be a problem getting up?”
“Hey, I have to do the tough things, if I ever want them to be anything like easy again.”
“Will they ever be easy again?”
“It’s relative. I’ll never run a marathon, if that’s what you mean.”
They were smiling at each other.
Cat reminded herself once more that she was here to work, not hear all about how Dillon McKenna was dealing with the changes his accident had made in his life. She looked at the booklet again. The page showed the terminals on the back of the VCR. It was a very clear and simple diagram. She glanced up at Dillon, to tell him this little task should be a piece of cake.
But something else entirely popped out of her mouth. “Has it been hard for you?”
He answered frankly. “Yeah. On a lot of levels. But it was time for a change anyway, you know?”
“How so?”
“Well, sometimes, in the past few years, I’ve found myself wondering exactly what it was I had to prove. Risking my life to jump a pyramid of sixty Buicks on a souped-up Harley started to seem more stupid than heroic to me. And the accident at the Mirage was bad. I’ve been broken up a lot in my time, but this was the worst. I was on my back or in a wheelchair for six and a half months.”
Cat thought of her own good, strong body. She depended on it to perform for her. How would she deal with it if she couldn’t walk for six months? Not well, she suspected. Not well at all. “I’ll bet you went nuts.”
“Yeah. You could say that.” He grinned rakishly.
Cat stared at his lips. They were wide and nicely shaped, lips made for rakish grins. There was a faint, jagged scar on his upper lip, like a tiny lightning bolt.
“What’s that?” She reached out, almost touched the scar, but stopped herself just in time.
Dillon knew what she meant. He touched the scar himself, lifting his dark brows at her in silent question.
She nodded in confirmation.
“A steer hooked me. Back when I was still riding the rodeos.”
“With its horn, you mean?”
“You got it. Ripped my lip in half. But that was fifteen years ago. It’s faded almost to nothing now.” He leaned in closer to her, so she could get a better look.
Cat leaned in, too, though she could see perfectly fine from right where she was. She realized that the gold specks in his eyes seemed to be glittering, like tiny flakes of pyrites in a mountain stream. And she also liked the smell of him. A clean smell, with a hint of something else, a little like cedar, tangy and sharp.
Right then, the door chimes rang.
Cat jerked bolt upright as a hot blush went shooting straight up to the roots of her hair.
“I...um...”
But Dillon seemed totally unconcerned. “Great. That’s probably the equipment for the gym.”
She took her cue from him. After all, if he thought nothing had happened, then nothing really had. Had it? She’d only leaned in close to look at that scar on his lip, that was all.
He smiled ruefully. “Either help me up from here—or answer that, will you?”
“Sure. No problem. I’ll get it.” She leapt to her feet and flew to the door.
It was the gym equipment. Since Dillon had to sign for it and show them where he wanted it, she helped him get up as soon as she let in the two delivery men.
The main living area of the house was upstairs, including the master suite. Downstairs was a central room off of which branched three more large rooms and two baths. One of those rooms had been intended for a gym; its walls were lined with mirrors. The equipment had to go in there.
Once everything was inside, it turned out that the delivery men actually were fully trained in assembly of the equipment. So Cat left Dillon to supervise them and went back to the upper level to tackle all the electronic gadgets that waited there.
By one in the afternoon, the delivery men took their leave and Cat had the chaos upstairs under control. She showed Dillon how to work all his new electronic toys, pointing out that he wouldn’t get anything but a few public stations on his fancy big screen until he either hooked up to cable or brought in that satellite dish he’d mentioned.
He said the dish was due this week. “And let’s have lunch. I’m starving.”
“I have a sandwich in my truck,” she said. “But aren’t we done for the day?”
He shook his head. “Don’t forget the wood. I like a fire, especially in the evenings. And I seem to have used up nearly all of what you split for me Friday.”
That was okay with Cat. As the hours added up, so did the money. “I’ll go eat and—”
“What do you mean, you’ll go eat?”
“I told you. I have a sandwich in my—”
“It’s probably peanut butter and jelly, right?”
She felt defensive. “What’s wrong with peanut butter and jelly?”
“So it is peanut butter and jelly.” He looked ridiculously proud of himself to have guessed. “I knew it. And forget it. You’re not going to sit out there on your tailgate, eating peanut butter and jelly in the freezing cold.”
“This is silly. It’s not that cold. And I like peanut butter and jelly.”
“Fine. Save it for a snack later. I’m making lunch.”
“But I—”
“Forget arguing. I’m the boss. Don’t make a big deal out of this, all right?”
She looked at him measuringly for a moment, feeling one-upped somehow. She was suspicious. But why? He hadn’t been any more than casually friendly with her all morning. Had he?
Oh, what was the matter with her? There was nothing going on here. Wild Dillon McKenna had grown up into a very nice man who was paying her good money for honest work—and who was willing to throw a free lunch into the bargain.
She had to get real here. These misgivings she kept having about his motives were completely in her own mind. She was Cat Beaudine, after all. She knew the things people said about her when they thought she didn’t hear.
That she was tough and strong and someone you could count on. And about as feminine as Paul Bunyan. Men were her friends. Men were her equals. But men never looked at her the way she’d seen them look at her sisters—or even her mother, for that matter.
And there was no reason in the world why Dillon McKenna—who could probably have just about any available woman in the Western Hemisphere—would see her any differently than other men saw her.
She smiled at Dillon. “Well, thanks then. Lunch would be nice.”
After she had washed her hands in the half bath off the kitchen, she went and sat at the table. Dillon was just pulling a cooked, cut-up turkey out of the refrigerator.
“Where did you get that?”
“At the store.”
“All roasted and cut up like that?”
He confessed that he’d done the roasting and cutting up himself. “I like to cook. Especially lately. It’s one of the few things I can do for myself that hardly hurts at all.” He got out a cutting board and a big, gleaming knife and began slicing meat off the breast section. Cat’s stomach rumbled, the meat looked so good. He winked at her. “You should have seen me in my wheelchair, flying around the kitchen. I was impressive.”
“I’ll bet.”
When he had a nice, tall stack of meat sliced, he got out bread, mayonnaise and lettuce and assembled two fat, wonderful-looking sandwiches. With them, he offered pickles and cranberry sauce and tall glasses of milk.
“You were right,” she told him, after the first heavenly bite. “This beats the heck out of peanut butter and jelly.”
When lunch was over, Cat went outside and split wood for two hours, carefully re-covering the pile of logs when she was done. Then she carried what she’d split into the garage and stacked it against a wall, so that it would be protected from the elements as well as reasonably easy for Dillon to bring in.
By then, it was growing dark. She was ready to go home. She stuck her head in the kitchen door, thinking she’d just give a yell and tell Dillon she was leaving.
But he was nowhere in sight. When she called, she got no answer. She was forced to step inside.
“Dillon!” She moved through the big kitchen, into the main room. It was then that she heard music, coming from downstairs.
She followed the sound and found him in his newly set-up gym. He was wearing a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, standing before one of the walls of floor-to-ceiling mirrors, doing bicep curls with a pair of fat dumbbells. On the floor at his feet was a portable tape player/radio—the kind that kids call a boom box. It was blaring out music by Talking Heads.
As soon as he saw Cat, Dillon put down the dumbbells and switched off the boom box. “Gotta get a stereo in here, too.” He straightened again and came toward her.
He was sweating. There were dark stains on his shirt—at the neck, chest, belly and beneath his arms. Little beads of moisture slid off his damp hair and tracked down his flushed face and corded neck.
Cat felt overwhelmed suddenly, by all that heated male flesh. And then she wondered again what her problem was lately. Since she’d been old enough to wield a hammer, she’d spent her summer months working construction crews on whatever building projects came her way. She toiled right alongside a bunch of sweaty guys with their shirts off and she never thought twice about it.
“All finished?” Dillon asked.
“What? Oh. Yeah. All done.”
“Same time tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?”
His expression was bland, but the gold flecks in his eyes seemed to be dancing. “Yeah. You know. The day after today.”
“You need me tomorrow?”
“You bet.”
“For what?”
“A thousand things.”
“Like what?”
“The satellite dish might arrive.”
“And what else?”
“Let’s talk about it then. Ten o’clock. As usual.”
She felt provoked, though she couldn’t figure out why. “As usual. What does that mean? I’ve only worked for you for one day.”
“Is this an important point?”
“Of course not. I just want things clear, that’s all.”
“Fine. What isn’t clear to you?” A single crystalline drop of sweat dripped down the bridge of his nose. He swiped at it with the back of his hand. She saw the inside of his forearm, shiny with moisture, as hard as a rock and ropy with tendons and veins. “Well?”
She felt dazed. She couldn’t think. “I...nothing.”
He was smiling again. “Good. I do appreciate this.”
Now she felt like a fool. “Of course.”
“Tomorrow, then? Ten o’clock.”
“Yes. Tomorrow. Ten o’clock.”
Four
The satellite dish did not arrive the next day, but Dillon’s books did.
He put Cat right to work measuring and estimating the cost for new shelves in the living area and also downstairs in the big central room. Next, he decided a trip to Reno was in order that very day, to purchase the lumber. He insisted they both had to go, since she was the one building the shelves and he was the one buying them.
She told him that there was absolutely no reason he had to go with her to get the lumber.
He gave her a grin that actually looked shy. “Yes, there is. I want to choose the wood myself. Please?”
He was really laying on the charm, she thought, and refused to admit that it was working. She looked away—anywhere but into those coaxing brown eyes—and gestured at all the open boxes of books strewn around the room. “I don’t get it. What’s this new thing you’ve got about books?”
He made a tsking sound. “Now, Cat. Was that a nice thing to say?”
She glanced at him again, wondering what he was up to. “What do you mean?”
He was pretending to look wounded. “You’re referring to the fact that I almost flunked out of high school my senior year, aren’t you? You can’t understand how a loser like I was could have grown up to need a whole houseful of bookcases.”
“I did not say you were a loser.”
“No, but you thought it. And hey, it’s okay. I was a messed-up kid. It’s not a secret. But now I’m not a kid anymore. And I like to read. When I first started doing gags for the movies, it was books that kept me sane.”
“Gags?”
“Yeah, gags. Stunts. Same thing.”
Cat asked, “Why did books keep you sane?” though she’d told herself all last night that when she came in to work for him today she would keep the talk strictly focused on the job at hand.
Dillon was only too happy to forget the job at hand. “In the movies, it’s always hurry up and wait. You can wait hours, days, for the weather to clear. Or for a shot to be set up. I learned to carry a book along with me all the time. Then when it came time to wait, I had something to occupy my mind.”
Another question she had no business asking found its way out of her mouth. “Did you ever go any farther in school?”
He bent, a little stiffly as always since his return home, and snared a book from one of the boxes. He looked at the title on the binding, then gently opened it to the first page. “Nah. Never got around to it—not that any reputable college would take me.” He glanced up from the book. “What about you? Did you ever get to college?”
“No,” she said quickly, wondering why in heaven’s name she’d asked him that question about going farther in school.
“Why not? I seem to remember that you were a real brain. There was even a scholarship, wasn’t there?”
Cat stuck her hands into her pockets and looked out the window at the trees and the ever-present winter mist. “Yes.”
“What school was it? I forget.”
She wanted to tell him she didn’t wish to discuss this with him, but that would be making a big deal out of it. And if she made a big deal out of it, he would sense that she often regretted missing her chance for a college education. She didn’t want him to know of her regret. It was too personal. And she was being careful to avoid anything personal with him.
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