Cat's Cradle

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.”