Cattitude (19 page)

Belle clasped her hands together in front of
her waist and braced her feet. “I’m not going.”

“You will.” Max stood just inside the
doorway, blocking her route of escape, his thumbs looped inside his
belt.

Tory laughed. “You may as well give in. The
only one who doesn’t let Max get his way is Belle.”

For the first time since Max had hauled her
in here, saying Tory was going to dress her so they could go out to
dinner, Belle smiled.

“No,” she said.

“Yes,” Max said.

“Every woman likes to dress up and go out to
dinner.” Tory plopped onto the bed, the mattress bouncing. “We can
share a dessert. Something chocolate.”

“No.”

“I get it! You’re afraid someone will see
you.”

“I’m not afraid of anything.”

“Then stop arguing and go,” Max said.

“Your mother doesn’t like me.”

“I won’t let her make you feel
uncomfortable.”

Tory laughed, a sound like music. “Who do you
think you are? Superman? You’d have better luck stopping a speeding
train and jumping tall buildings.”

“Sorcha is coming. She can’t stay cooped up
here.”

“I was out all day,” Belle said.

Max watched her closely, the way she would
watch for a mouse she was waiting to catch. “You are afraid.” His
voice and his expression softened. “All right, I won’t force you.”
He nodded at Tory, the softness disappearing. “Get dressed. We
don’t want to be late.” He strode out of the open door without
glancing back.

“Wow!” Tory stood. “Max backed down. That
never happens. How does that make you feel?”

Belle bit her lip. She should be feeling
smug. Why wasn’t she? Was this human body changing her already?

“I’m going.” She reached for the green top.
She was Belle. She wasn’t afraid of anything.

***

Phil tramped away from the one-story house,
his shoulders hunched to shield him against the biting wind. The
sun was lowering and no one was answering the door. He should have
gone to the house earlier today when he’d seen the garage door
open. Should have given them the
brother-looking-for-his-scatterbrained-sister story that he’d made
up. But he knew what had held him back.

They might tell him where Sorcha Anders was.
He had the kind of face people trusted. A boy next door openness
that matched his character. No one looking at him would think he
was a murderer.

But that’s just what he would be.

He shuddered, colder inside than out, cold
all the way to the marrow of his bones. All the way to his
heart.

He slid into his car and pulled the door
closed, shutting out the chilly wind. But his heart still felt
cold. Encased in ice while his stomach burned.

Putting his elbows on the steering wheel, he
dropped his head into his hands, his palms pressing against his
forehead. “Help me do what’s right, God,” he whispered. He wasn’t
particularly religious, but he believed in emergency prayers, and
this one was life-or-death. “Help me.”

He waited for long moments, but no answer
came, no insights, no visions. Just the eerie whistle of the wind
that reminded him of a sound bite in an old horror movie, just
before the monster stomped on scene and ate the village
natives.

Another woman would have been nervous sitting
in the restaurant, eating strange food with implements she’d never
used in her life and wearing clothes she’d never thought of putting
on. But another woman wouldn’t have been a cat in a woman’s body.
And another woman wouldn’t have seen more scenes like this in
The Love Chronicles
than she could count.

Belle glanced down at the clinging green top
and black pants that Max had looked too long at when she’d walked
out of Tory’s bedroom, staggering a bit in Tory’s impossible shoes
and wondering what was wrong with humans that they did this to
themselves.

“Aren’t you eating your salad?” Rose
asked.

Since she was the only one not eating her
salad, Belle glanced across the table at Max’s mother. This was the
first time Rose had spoken to her tonight.

“No,” she said.

Tory laughed.

“Vegetables are your most important part of
the meal.” Rose stuck her fork in the green stuff on the plate in
front of her. “They give you most of your vitamins and
antioxidants.”

Belle let her sniff tell Rose what she
thought of her opinion.

“Puhlease.” Tory made a face. “No lectures
tonight or I’ll gag.”

“You’ll appreciate me when you’re a mother,”
Rose began.

Belle zoned Rose out, glancing around the
restaurant. People sat around tables covered with white linen,
everyone talking and drinking and eating in groups. Just like in
The Love Chronicles
when Maureen caught Jake with her
identical twin Darlene and threw wine into their faces.

Rose picked up her glass of wine. Belle sat
back so if Rose threw it at her, the wine would hit Max, who sat on
Belle’s right, eating his salad. But Rose lifted the glass to her
lips. Belle picked up her own glass and sipped.

“Ptewy!” She spat it back into the glass, but
the bad taste still filled her mouth. “Ptewy, ptewy, ptewy.”

Rose sat back in her chair. “Oh my God. I’m
so embarrassed.”

“Are you okay?” Max leaned over her, his hand
on her back.

“Here, have some water.” Tory picked up
Belle’s water glass and handed it to her.

Belle gulped it down. Maybe she wasn’t as
ready for this new experience as she’d thought. From now on, it
would be tuna and ice cream sandwiches, nothing else.

She wiped her lips with the back of her hand.
“That was awful.”

“You obviously know nothing about wine.” Rose
tilted her glass. “It’s smooth, it’s fruity, it’s—”

“Sour and yucky,” Belle said.

Tory giggled. Max chuckled.

“You may be a philistine,” Rose said, her
nostrils quivering, “but at least you’re not an alcoholic.”

Max’s chuckle stopped. “You’re being rude to
my guest.”

Rose set down her fork. “I don’t know what
you’re thinking. Taking a stranger into your house is irresponsible
and impulsive, not like you.”

“It’s exactly like Max.” Tory waved her fork
like a tree branch in the wind. “He took in Belle when she was a
kitten.”

“This is a woman, not a stray cat.”

A strangled laugh came from Belle’s throat.
Max’s face turned hard, his eyebrows lowering in a way that Belle
knew was not good for Rose. Tory stabbed the fork into her salad
like she wanted to murder it.

“You’re so full of baloney,” she said.

“Tory!” Rose raised her hands to her
cheeks.

The groupings of people sitting around tables
at either side of them shifted, heads swiveling toward them.

Their server trotted over. “Is everything all
right?”

“Just fine.” Max nodded at Belle. “Could you
bring her a glass of milk?”

***

Max had expected that his mother would
restrain herself in the restaurant. It wasn’t the first time he’d
overestimated her good sense.

“Mom,” he said, his voice low, “you taught me
better manners than the way you’re behaving toward Sorcha.”

Her cheeks flushed pinker than the four
carnations in the vase on their table.

“Yeah.” Tory grinned. “Especially when Max is
paying for dinner.”

Rose gave Max a pained look as the waiter
came with Sorcha’s milk. Sorcha thanked him, picked up the glass,
lowered her nose and sniffed. The tip of her tongue came out.
Tilting the glass against her lower lip, she lapped the milk.

Max averted his eyes and tried not to imagine
her tongue lapping at his body, starting high and going lower,
lower, lower...

He blanked his mind and instead thought of
Australia, the Indian and Pacific Oceans he’d long to see, the
Great Barrier Reef, Ayers Rock, the Melbourne Opera House. The
adventures ahead of him.

“I’ll have you know I consulted my doctor
this morning,” Rose said. “He told me cases of true amnesia are
very uncommon.”

“But it does happen,” Max said.

“Not as much as it does on the soaps Tory
likes to watch. Ow!” Rose glared at Tory. “Did you
kick
me?”

Tory smiled wide enough for her canine teeth
to show. “Was that you? Sorry, I thought it was the table leg.”

Max thought smoke was going to shoot out of
his mother’s ears.

“You could cause a serious injury with those
shoes,” she said.

“Sue me.”

“Keep it up, someone will. I’m sorry I gave
you the money to come home. I thought you’d be—”

“On your side? Sorry. Max supported me in my
decision to be an actress, and I’m supporting his decision to do
whatever makes him happy.”

“Even if it ruins the family?”

Tory rolled her eyes. “Could you be more
selfish?”

Tuning out his mother’s reply, Max glanced at
Sorcha. He was sorry he’d insisted she came. His mother was snide,
his sister was a brat. And they had yet to eat their main course,
so there was more to come.

But for a woman with a brain injury that
wiped her memory clean, Sorcha didn’t seem to be concerned by their
squabbling. Instead she gulped down the milk, her head back, her
throat working.

Any lingering thoughts of his adventures
wiped out of his mind as the napkin on his lap inched up. He wanted
to press his mouth against her exposed throat, run his tongue down
the smooth column, leaving a wet and warm path down, down and way
down.

He sat back, his spine pressing against the
back of his chair. This was wrong of many levels. She was a guest
in his house. Convalescing from an accident. She didn’t have her
memory back and might be engaged. He shouldn’t feel like this and
he sure the hell wouldn’t give into it.

He’d always been the responsible one, and he
wanted that to change. But this was the wrong time, wrong place,
wrong woman.

The waiter took away their salad plates and
replaced them with their dinners. The bickering stopped while they
took bites of their steak, chicken, fish and pasta. A collective
“Ummm” went around the table, the reason why Morrie’s got away with
charging twice as much as any other restaurant within a thirty-mile
diameter.

It was worth the cost to keep his mother
stuffing food into her mouth for the next half hour instead of
insulting Sorcha, arguing with Tory or disparaging Ted’s business
abilities and maturity. But as soon as Rose swallowed the last
crumb of her caramel chocolate cake, she tapped Max’s sleeve. He
finished off his key lime cheesecake before turning to her.

“It’s time to talk about your plans.” She
held up her hand to forestall him from cutting her off. “We’ve
always talked over the important decisions. It’s what’s kept the
family glued together. We don’t act selfishly and do what we want
when we want.”

Out of the corner of his eyes, Max caught
Sorcha stiffening. He conquered an urge to reach out and curve his
hand on her shoulder. This dinner had been a drawn out torture of
his senses. Every time she nibbled on something, he imagined her
nibbling on him. She was giving him an ache in the groin, his
mother was giving him an ache in the head, and he didn’t know which
was worse.

And he still missed Belle. This afternoon
he’d called the sheriff’s department and then the humane societies
in three counties with no luck.

He faced his mother, pushing thoughts of
Sorcha and Belle out of his mind. One problem at a time. “You’re
all being taken care of. I’m not leaving anyone destitute.”

“But you’re
leaving
.” Rose’s voice
grew shrill. “What if something goes wrong? Who am I going to turn
to?”

He glanced away from her crumpled, pleading
face. Across from him, Tory sipped her wine, gazing determinedly
over his head. Then he looked at Sorcha. She was staring at Rose,
her nostrils flared and her lips peeled back, like an animal about
to attack.

“Maybe,” she said, her voice harsh, her
expression disapproving, “you should turn to yourself.”

His mother gasped. Glasses left lips and the
eyes of Rose and Tory turned to her as she continued. “Mothers
should take care of their children, not the other way around.
Kittens leave—” She frowned, then her brow cleared and she
continued before Rose could gather her venom and attack. “Baby
birds leave their nests. Max isn’t a baby, and it’s time for you to
let him fly. He should do anything he wants and you should be happy
for him.”

He hadn’t thought his mother would screech
while sitting in the county’s most expensive restaurant, surrounded
by candlelight and clinking glasses and well-dressed diners.

He was wrong.

But as she screeched, Sorcha calmly drank her
water and didn’t glance at her, leaving it to Tory whisper sharply
to Rose that she was making a scene and embarrassing them.

But Max...he sat with his hands clutched on
his lap. Sorcha was selfish and lazy and he suspected she was a
liar, but despite all that, she was the truest woman he’d known.
She had no pretenses, no hidden vices or quirks. If she wanted tuna
for breakfast, she had tuna for breakfast. Lunch too, along with an
ice cream sandwich.

If this were another time and another place,
he would suspect he was falling in love with her. But this was now
and in this place. And he wasn’t ready to give up his dream for her
or his family.

A quick affair crossed his mind, but he
rejected the thought. It would be wrong, wrong, wrong.

Too bad the image in his mind felt so right,
right, right.

It was a new day but clouds gathering above
Phil seemed a portent that life was sucking and not getting better.
At least it appeared someone was home this morning, the garage door
up and a Jeep in the driveway. The front door creaked opened, and
he braced himself to look trustworthy and innocent, though he was
here to commit the worst evil a man could do.