Purring, she rubbed her cheek against his hand. “I can live with that.”
He balanced it on top her head, a golden crown, and admired the effect. “Goes nice with all that fur.”
Nicer than you may ever know.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
FLOATING ONE FATHOM above oblivion, she wasn’t aware of his touch at first. Warmth kindled in her belly, then burned outward from there, turning nerves to molten copper. A song of pleasure started softly, then grew till her body shuddered with its rhythm. “Mmmmm…” She rolled over onto her side and arched her back. “Don’t stop.”
Sam chuckled. Knuckles touched her taut belly and stroked upward, ruffling fur. “Lazy cat. You plannin’ to sleep your life away?”
Cat? Jessica opened one eye, then closed it. “Please tell me I’m dreaming.” Leaning above her, Sam was disguised as a giant. And she wore a cat costume, authentic right down to the toenails.
“I’m gone,” he said, instead, giving her stomach a smack. “I left you some ham in the kitchen, sleepyhead.”
“Wait! Don’t go,” she protested as he walked away. “Take me with you!” But she couldn’t follow him without stretching—every instinct demanded that. By the time she’d pointed her back toes, he was stepping into the elevator. “Sam!”
“See ya, slugabed.” The doors closed behind him.
“Rats.” Suddenly too heavy for her own legs, she sat. Looked around, blinking at half speed. “How late did I stay up last night?”
She remembered nothing after she’d tried to follow Sam into his bedroom and had been politely, but firmly, shoved back out the door. “How late did you stay up last night?”
Cattoo wasn’t saying. She was so deeply asleep not even a psychic whisker twitched.
“Talk about burning the candle at both ends…” Jessica shambled toward the kitchen. “Cup of coffee, that’s what we need.”
There was none to be had, not even the dregs from Sam’s mug, which apparently had been loaded into the dishwasher. She studied the coffee grinder, then gave it up. “Not in this lifetime, without thumbs.”
She shuffled off to the bathroom. “Could we be coming down with the flu?”
No comment from Cattoo.
“Distemper? No, your shots are all up to date.” Simple sleep deprivation, she concluded, while she stepped on the uncapped toothpaste tube, then bit off a mint-flavored mouthful. There was no doubt she was usurping most of Cattoo’s normal daylight hours. So Cattoo was perhaps switching all her conscious hours to the night?
And when do we sleep, in that case? Or do we?
And if we don’t? Any doctor could give you that prognosis—bad news. No organism -could function without sufficient sleep. Not for long.
“I’ll worry about this later.” She yawned till her jaw cracked. Right now a nap seemed in order. Trudging out of the bathroom, she looked right and realized that Sam had left his bedroom door ajar. “Aha!”
She dreamed of falling and awoke with a yell—to find the bed rebounding violently. Sam had thrown himself facedown onto the mattress beside her. “Stupid cat.” He caught her and dragged her across the bedspread. “Lousy, worthless animal, how’d you get in here?” He buried his face in her fur.
“What’s the matter, Sam?” He wasn’t crying, but tears trembled in his voice in place of the usual laughter. “Sam?”
“She won’t wake up,” he muttered, rubbing his nose against her. “I’ve been talking and talking and talking to her. She’s in her own room now, so we finally have some privacy, but it didn’t do any good. I washed her face, rubbed her hands till I was afraid I’d hurt them, whispered in her ear, sang to her, told stupid jokes…She heard nothing, Jez. There wasn’t a blip on her monitor. Bloody hell.” He hugged her till she squeaked. “What do I do if…” He rolled onto his back, taking her with him. “What are we going to do?”
“We won’t give up, that’s what we’ll do.” She touched her nose to his cheek, inhaled his scent and shuddered with joy. “We’ll figure it out, Sam.” Somehow. “But first, would you just hug me like that one more time?”
He cradled her on top of his chest. Eyes closed, face clenched, he stroked her—ruffling her fur backward, then smoothing it down, a backward ruffle, then smooth—till she sang for joy and his face gradually relaxed. Every breath he took lifted her in a slow-motion ride of dazzled bliss. I remember this, yesss. Peace. Joy. Belonging. At last, heart speaking softly to heart, they slept.
Jessica awoke when he scratched her ears. “What d’you think you’re doin’ up here?” he grumbled. “Hussy. You better not have fleas.”
She yawned deliciously. “Speak for yourself, Texan. Is your flea collar up-to-date?”
Rolling over, he dumped her on the mattress. Limp with contentment, eyelids half-mast, she lay there watching him. Maybe I should just stay a cat? It would almost be worth it, to be with him like this.
Right, she reminded herself, and the first time he brings a girlfriend home? How happy would I be as his pet then? I’d scratch her eyes out, then go for his throat.
“I’ve been thinkin’, soft thang,” he drawled, stroking. “How do you figure Jess felt about her cat?”
“There was only one person in the world she loved more.”
“I have to connect with her somehow. Call her back from wherever she’s wandered off to.” His hand grew heavier, squeezing half the breath from her body, as his face grew bleak. “But maybe…maybe I’m not the guy to do it? When all is said and done, I’m the guy she nearly broke her neck runnin’ from last week, down in New York.”
“Oh, Sam, don’t blame yourself for that!”
“And I’m the guy she walked out on, all those years ago. The guy whose postcards she’d never answer, whose phone calls she’d never take.”
“Sam, I’m sorry.” She’d been so busy hurting, so busy guarding her own precious dignity each time she’d shut him out, she’d never once stopped to think he might be hurting, too.
“So why should she take my call this time?” He stared past her, breath hissing between his teeth. “On the other hand, if not me, then who else is there to try?” His unthinking caress flattened her to the mattress, a full body massage. “Her idiot parents have already given up on her. They think there’s nothing there to talk to. That she’s gone away for good.
“So the last thing Jess needs is them hanging around, convincing her they’re right. She’s been a good girl all her life—too good—buying whatever load of crap they were selling, no questions asked. I can’t have her doing that this time.” His hand ruffled, then smoothed, ruffled, smoothed. A nerve ticked at the corner of his eye. “Guess it’s damn lucky they aren’t sticking around. I might kill that cocksure, son-of-a-bitch doctor-daddy of hers if I thought he was giving her the wrong notion. Probably should have, anyway, years ago.”
“Oh, Sam, my maniac knight. Crazy Texan.” She crept closer beneath his hand, till their noses nearly touched.
“But if I’m not the guy for the job, then maybe you’re the girl?”
“How do you mean?”
“Maybe you really are her no-name cat, strolled in by some miracle. Or maybe you’re just Ms. Any-Ol’-BlackCat, USA. But does that matter? You know what they say ‘bout all cats lookin’ the same in the dark?”
“Sexist pig.” She nuzzled him. “We have political reeducation camps for specimens like you. Ought to just put you up against the wall, but it’s such a shame to waste prime beefcake.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Sometimes…you make my brains buzz. Maybe I’m allergic to cats? Technically allergic, I mean.”
“Or maybe you need to wash out your ears, then listen. But what were you starting to say? I’m the girl for what job?”
“Anyway, how’d you like to come have a chat with my— With Jess?”
“How’d I—“ She shot to her feet. “How’d I like to own the stars, the moon, half-a-dozen Van Goghs and my own body? Oh, Sam, do you mean it?”
“Hey, hey, set
tle down! If you’re going to run around yelling, we’ll just forget all about it.”
“Oh, I’ll be good!” She sat, curled her tail tightly around her toes and stared at him, shivering with excitement. “I’ll be so good, so discreet, so tactful, so…so grateful, Sam, if you’ll only take me to me. Please?”
He laughed. “Much better. But can you act like that for more than two minutes?”
“Try me! Oh, try me right now!”
He glanced at his watch. “Too late to try it tonight. But first thing tomorrow? Whoa!” He laughed as she ducked under his arm and kissed him.
“I AM GETTING SEASICK,” Jessica announced after the only other passenger stepped off the hospital elevator. “You’ve got to stop swinging this thing when you walk.” The thing was a bowling-ball bag that Sam had discovered in a closet of the loft. He’d cut a few discreet holes in it for ventilation, though they served just as well for observation. He’d tucked her inside, then zipped the carrier shut.
“Shuddup,” Sam muttered just as the doors rolled open for the next floor. Two nurses stepped aboard. “Howdy,” he added too heartily.
“Howdy yourself, stranger,” the prettier one returned, after eyeing him up and down. “Looks like you took a wrong turn on the way to the bowling alley.”
Oh, very funny! Her tail lashed out, whacking the inner wall of her carrier, thump…thump.
Sam gave the bag a jerk. “Reckon I did,” he drawled, laying on the corn-pone accent—Hicksville by way of Harvard. The flirtation continued for two floors, Sam tapping his foot to cover the muffled thumps coming from the bag, the nurses giggling too hard to notice. “You’re going to get us thrown out of here,” he muttered once the women had departed.
“It’s you who’s attracting attention, not me.”
“Stop growling,” he growled as the doors opened and a man on crutches gimped aboard.
He was right, of course, but as tightly strung as she was, she found it easier to focus on Sam’s deficiencies than on the coming encounter. Why did I have to fall for a man who loves women? Why did you have to marry me if you had no more fidelity than the average tomcat? Painful as these questions were, at least she’d faced them for eight years. They were the devils she knew.
The devil she didn’t know was looming ever closer. It was only two floors away now. Then one floor. What do I do if this doesn’t work? Oh, God, what do I do then?
The elevator stopped and Sam stepped out. Striding down the corridor, he broke into a brazen whistle of “The Girl from Impanema.” The bag swayed sickeningly to the bossa nova, and Jessica gritted her teeth. He’s as nervous as I am, she realized as he stopped at the nurses’ station to chat up the staff, then ask how she’d passed the night.
“No change, Mr. Kirby,” the head nurse said in a tone Jessica recognized all too well. Chirpy briskness hiding compassion. The woman indicated one of several monitors mounted on the inner wall of the station, where a green line pulsed steadily. “She never misses a beat.”
Not necessarily something to brag about. The essence of being alive was change, fluctuation—rises and falls of consciousness, tidal sweeps of hormones. Passion and stubborn will. Unquenchable longings, irresistible impulses. Change, not the endless humming of a machine, a green line pulsing steadily into a future of unspeakable sameness. Oh, God, what if this doesn’t work? Oh, God, Sam, I’m afraid. The bag swayed horribly, and she clenched her teeth, holding her heaving stomach at bay.
The swaying stopped. She heard him suck in a deep breath, then a doorknob clicked and turned. “Jess? It’s me, Sam, your friendly neighborhood pest. Just when you thought it was safe to come out and play, the Texans have landed.” He shut the door behind them. Moving around the bed, he set the bag on a wide windowsill. “How’re you feeling, babe?”
He moved between Jessica and the bed, blocking her view. Pressed to a breathing hole, she could see the foot of the bed and the long slope of a pair of legs covered by a sheet. Sam sat on the edge of the mattress and leaned across it to brace one arm on the far side.
“I brought you a visitor. Nobody I’d care to meet in a dark alley, but you always had kinky tastes. And she tells me she’s an old pal of—” His patter broke off as the door opened and a nurse breezed in.
“Why, hello, Mr. Kirby! How’s our girl doing today?”
“Dr. Myles is doin’ just fine,” he said, a flicker of irritation underlying his response. “Shall I move?”
“No, no, you stay put. I just need to change this bag here…” She suited action to words, switching an empty bag hanging from an IV rack for a full one. “Then we’ll stick this little gizmo in her ear to check her temp…That’s good, perfectly normal, and then…” She completed her inventory of the vital signs, noting them on a chart. “There, that’s it for now. Let’s see, she’s had her sponge bath…she won’t be taking lunch, of course, at least not on a tray…”
“So you won’t need to disturb us for a while?” Sam suggested, though it wasn’t a suggestion. “And if you don’t mind, Dr. Myles would prefer you always knock before entering. Here—here’s that sign 1 made up yesterday to remind folks.” Ushering the nurse out of the room, he leaned out to hang the sign on the doorknob, then shut the door with a thump. “Whew!”
Returning, he stood looking down at her motionless form. “They’re a pushy lot, even the best of ’em, aren’t they? Used to bossing everybody around, I s’pose. All for their own good, but still…Brrrr…”
Transfixed at her peephole, Jessica stared. “That’s me?” It was the same face she’d seen in the mirror for twentyeight years, and yet it was not. Utterly immobile, not much darker than the pillow on which it lay, her face in profile reminded Jessica of the bronze knight she’d seen atop a sarcophagus in an English cathedral years ago—something that might lie there for a thousand years. For all eternity. The marker where once a soul had lived. Oh, God, that’s me?
“So…’bout your visitor…”
As Sam moved toward her carrier, the old admonition popped into her head, its tone sniggering, slyly ironic: Be careful what you wish for. Since the fire, she’d wished for nothing but to be reunited with herself—but now that the moment was finally here?
The zipper snicked overhead, letting in daylight from the window at her back. Sam’s hands slid into the bag, smoothing around her sides.
Now that the moment was here, who was to say that a reunion would play out in the happy terms she’d envisioned—one kiss from a cat, and Jessica Myles awakens like Sleeping Beauty?
“Ssm, wait a minute, I want to think about this!” she cried as he lifted her out. “What if this doesn’t work—I mean, doesn’t work the way I’m hoping? What if I do make the jump, but then I don’t wake up?” Be careful what you wish for…What could be more horribly ironic than to be reunited with herself—in a living death?
“Hey, take it easy.” He tried to cradle her against his forearm, but she twisted to hook her claws into his shirt. “Ouch, dammit!”
Clinging desperately, she tried to chin herself up, bring her face to his level. “I mean there’s no guarantee, is there, that I’ll snap out of this coma? And if I don’t, there’s no guarantee that I can jump back to Cattoo.” Compared with that flesh-and-blood grave marker, life trapped in a cat suddenly didn’t seem half so bad. “At least right now I can move and think and feel!”
“Ouch! Have you gone crazy?” He caught her by her nape and tried to peel her off his chest.
She flexed her toes and clung tighter, pulling his shirt out in two fistfuls. “Sam, I’m terrified! Don’t make me. Please!”
“Hey, what is it, babe?” He brought her in against his chest, winced, but held her, one hand stroking her heaving ribs. “What’s the matter, Jezbel? Fuzzwuzzy? Sillycat?” He sank down on the windowsill, rubbing her shoulders. “It’s just Jess, Jez—just my baby. She won’t hurt you.”
“Oh, God, Sam, I hope you’re right.” Panting, she clung to him, her heart racing against his slower, heavier beat. She
burrowed under his chin.
“S’okay, babe. Honest.”
Eyes closed, shivering, she breathed in his scent. “Oh, Sam, I’m so scared. I don’t want to die, not like that!”
“Okay…okay, settle down, Jez-babe.” He sighed, his cheek pressed to her head, fingers soothing. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all,” he said at last. “I don’t know what’s spooked you, but we can’t have you scratching Jess, can we?” He sighed again. “Guess it proves one thing, anyway. You aren’t her cat, whoever you are.”
“Just let me think a minute,” she begged, shivering, her face buried against his throat. No guarantees. All her life she’d played by her parents’ rules—work hard and then harder still, be a lady, pay your taxes—and reasonable success would be guaranteed, if not unreasonable joy. But here there were no guarantees, only terror and the arms around her. I’m hyperventilating, she realized, noting the symptoms.
He shifted, leaned to reach for something. “Okay. Bad idea. Don’t reckon it would’ve worked, anyhow. Who’d want to talk to a bug-eyed, spooky cat?” Stroking her, he lifted her out from his chest.
She looked down to find herself dangling over the carrier. “Wha—”
“Let’s go back in your cave, then, babe. You’ll feel safer in there.”
“No!” She’d come this far, she was going to turn tail now? Miss the one chance she had? Writhing in his hands, she twisted her feet away from the gaping maw of the bag. “No, I didn’t say I wouldn’t try. It’s just—”
“Hey, now.” He grabbed for a better hold, but she slid between his fingers like a furry eel. “Jez-dammit, come back.”
She slithered down his leg, hit the floor, shot under the bed.
“Blasted animal!” Swearing, he dropped to his hands and knees.
No time to think, no time to cross her fingers or pray. Mad as he was now, he’d give her no second chance. It was now or never. As Sam dived under one side of the bed and grabbed for her, she scuttled out the other, gathered herself, then leapt.
You Again Page 19
