The Marrying Man (10 page)

"We got the lists, Mr. McKendrick," said Kevin, bounding into the room with his siblings close behind, "but my sister can't write."

 
"Great," said Riley with as much enthusiasm as he could muster under the circumstances.
 

Sarah appeared at his side. "I can so write," she said. "Mommy taught me to write my name."

"You'll have to show me," he said, pretending great interest in the contents of Cat's refrigerator.

"What are you doing in there?" Ben popped up on his other side. "You're not supposed to keep the door open that long."

"You're right," he said, straightening up. "Bad example."

Like being caught making out with the kid's mother right there in broad daylight in the middle of the kitchen. If a man was looking for trouble, that was one damn good way to find it.

Cat was seated at the table. Looking at her, you'd never know she'd been anything but domestic in that kitchen. Sarah climbed up on her lap and pushed a sheet of bright yellow paper into her mother's hands. "Read my list, mommy," she demanded. She was Cat all over again and he had to smile as he looked at her.

Cat hugged her daughter as she read the list aloud. "'Feed the fish. Put away my toys. Watch television.
.
'" She gave Sarah a kiss atop her head. "This is a great list, honey. You did a good job."

The little girl beamed with excitement. "I wrote it myself, mommy. I thought up all the words and Kevin just put them on the paper."

The boys snickered but quickly stopped beneath their mother's sharp-eyed glance. "Your sister put a lot of thought into her list, boys. I hope you did the same."

"So now what?" Kevin asked, staring up at Riley. "What'll we do next?"

He looked at Cat and their eyes locked. A look from her was worth a night in another woman's arms.

But it wasn't enough.

Chapter Six

Maybe if he hadn't kissed her she might have had a chance but the moment his lips met hers, Cat knew she was lost.

He'd kissed her the way women dreamed of being kissed, an erotic blend of tenderness and heat, of fierce need and sweet surrender that had toppled her defenses. She'd felt that kiss deep in her soul, in her heart, in every cell and fiber of her body. And she still felt it now, hours later, as she sat at her desk and stared at the mountain of unanswered correspondence waiting for her to organize it.

She'd wanted him more in that moment than she'd ever wanted anything or anybody in her entire life. Nothing else had mattered, not reason, not sanity, not the fact that they were quite probably the most mismatched couple in the United States and destined to remain so.

She sat there in her office, oblivious to the steady hum of her computer, and considered the situation. The man had ice water in his veins. The kiss had been his idea, but if it had meant one blasted thing to him, you'd never know it by the way he'd been acting ever since. A split second before the kids burst into the kitchen, they'd broken apart, and instantly it was as if the kiss had never happened. Cat had looked deeply into his green eyes, searching for a clue, a sign, anything that would indicate he'd felt a fraction of the wonder she'd found in his arms but there was nothing.

The rat.

Missy and Taj, two of her housecats, leaped up onto the desk, sending letters and magazines flying every which way. Scooter, who'd been sleeping at her feet on a bed of manuscript pages, grumbled loudly then lumbered off to find another place to nap. She hoped it was on top of the cowboy's pillow. Scooter drooled. It would serve him right.

The louse.

She ripped open a few sweepstakes offers from Publishers Clearing House and managed to waste a good half hour affixing gold seals and labels to various locations on the entry forms, all in the name of efficiency. It occurred to her that she could be putting her time to better use but she pushed that thought from her mind. Somebody had to win these things, a fact even the anal-retentive, clock-watching Riley McKendrick should understand.

The monster
.

Even her own children were turning against her. The only one who was still normal was poor Jack, and that was only because he was in bed with the flu. By tomorrow Riley would have the kid asking for a horizontal file for his birthday. She'd seen the way the other little traitors hopped to it when the cowboy barked out an order. Wasn't this how fascism got its start?

The whole thing was disgusting. With McKendrick's help they'd color-coded clothes and toys and schoolbooks, and even followed him down to the basement to tackle the dozens of unmarked boxes that had followed them from their old house, and the house before that. The same boxes Cat had assumed would follow her one day to the old age home.

Well, not if Riley McKendrick had anything to do with it. Wasn't it enough the cowboy was turning her present inside out--did he have to stick his nose into her future as well? She'd grown attached to the idea of having those mystery boxes with her to warm her in her old age.

She pushed back her desk chair and rose to her feet. She couldn't just sit there while he turned her children into little robots with calculators tucked into their lunchboxes. Her nerves were on edge, she felt like she was coming down with something, and the fact that he was pretending that kiss never happened was suddenly more than she could take. If you were going to kiss someone the way he'd kissed her, the least you could do was own up to it.

With righteous fury in her breast, she marched through the hallway and downstairs to the basement where the situation was even worse than she'd thought. Kevin, Michael, Ben, and even Sarah were sorting through boxes of old comic books, doll clothes, and toys. They even looked like they were enjoying themselves. The radio in the corner was on full blast, the puppies were playing with a pair of old baby blankets and two of Taj's kittens practiced their pouncing on shadows cast against the floor.

The pile of discards was astonishing. Board games, toy trucks, G.I. Joe, even one of Cat's old Barbie dolls. She made a mental note to retrieve Barbie later that night under cover of darkness. Some things, after all, were sacred. She watched, amazed, as Ben tossed his Spiderman Halloween costume atop the pile, followed quickly by Kevin's outgrown hockey skates. Were these the same kids who swore that even used chewing gum might be a collector's item some day?

"Hi, mom," said Kevin, looking up from his task. "Gonna have a lot for recycling next week."

She nodded. Tomorrow she'd care about recycling. Right now she only cared about justice. "Where's Riley?"

"I dunno," her son said. "I thought he was with you."

She turned on her heel and marched back upstairs, aware of her children's curious whispers.

"Where are you, McKendrick?" she muttered, peering into the living room, the kitchen, the dining room. A wonderfully delicious thought occurred to her. Maybe he was sprawled across the bed in the guest room, reading Playboy and drinking beer, while the rest of them sorted, color-coded, and alphabetized.
 

She took the stairs two at a time, heart pounding with anticipation. She'd catch him in the act, that's what she'd do, and she'd throw all of his annoying platitudes about schedules and discipline right back in his smug and gorgeous kisser. The thought filled her with glee as she tore down the hallway toward his room.

She flung open the door to the guest room, ready, willing, and able to face down her adversary but her adversary was nowhere in sight. She stepped inside and tilted her head, listening for the sound of running water from the bathroom but heard only silence.

Okay, so he wasn't holed up in the guest room with a can of Coors and the latest Playboy. Maybe he was in one of the kids' rooms, sticking those idiotic colored dots on their toys, the organizing tool that was supposed to make it easy to answer the eternal question, "Which one of you left the roller skate on the staircase?"

She peeked into Kevin and Michael's room. No sign of McKendrick. Same with the room Jack and Ben shared. Jack was sleeping beneath his favorite T Rex bedspread and she pressed her lips to his forehead then smiled. His skin was cool and dry to the touch and she knew it was only a matter of hours until the little boy was back on his feet. Murmuring a relieved prayer, she glanced quickly into Sarah's tiny room then was about to head downstairs when she heard a sound from the one place she hadn't thought to check.

Her room.

Righteous fury turned quickly into shock. McKendrick was not only in her room, he was in her lingerie drawer and she'd caught him with the evidence in his hands.

***

Riley supposed it looked pretty bad, what with him standing there with Cat's underwear drawer wide open and her lacy black bra in his but the evidence was purely circumstantial.

"It's not what you think."

"Put my underwear down!" Her tone was lethal. "Now!"

"You don't understand. I--"

"I understand, all right. I understand you're a filthy skunk with a big problem."

"The dog did it."

"You can do better than that, cowboy."

"Damn right," he shot back, "but I'm telling you the truth. I caught one of your dogs playing with it in the kitchen."

"You did not."

"Remember the hall closet," Riley said. "Does it really seem that impossible to you?"

Her eyes flashed fire. "I don't care how where you found that but stop doing what you're doing right now!"

"Stop doing what?"

"That." She pointed toward his hands. "Do you have to hold it that way?"

The bra cups rested in the palm of his hand. "What's wrong with the way I'm holding it?"

Her cheeks reddened and she reached for the undergarment. "Just hand it over and be quiet."

He glanced down at the profusion of lace, silk, and cotton jumbled together in the drawer. "You'd be able to stuff more junk in there if you folded things."

"Mind your own business."

"This is my business, Zaslow, or have you forgotten the bet?"

"Touch one thing in that drawer and you're a dead man."

He kneed the drawer shut. "So what're you doing in here? Checking up on me? Afraid I'm a crossdresser and I've got my eye on your Jockeys?"

"I--" She stopped abruptly, bra dangling from her fingers like a lacy flag of surrender.

"Don't get shy on me now, Zaslow. Tell me what's on your mind."

"You." She swallowed. "I want to talk about--I mean, we need to talk about what happened in the kitchen."

"The kiss?"

She nodded. "Yes. I want to know why you did it."

"Pretty obvious, wouldn't you say?"

She gestured toward the lingerie drawer. "Pretty obvious, too, wouldn't you say? I still want an answer."

"Why do men climb mountains?" he countered.

"I don't know," she snapped. "Why do they?"

"Because the mountain is there for the taking."

"I suppose you make a habit of seducing women by the Cuisinart every day of the week."

"Trust me, lady. You'd know it if I was seducing you."

"Think a lot of yourself, don't you, cowboy?"

"When it comes to seduction I do."

"Seduction's politically incorrect."

"Not when it's done right."