Читать книгу Cat's Cradle - Christine Rimmer - Страница 7

“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.”