She glanced at him again, noting his hands on the steering wheel. He had nice hands, ones that looked capable of strength, ones she knew capable of tenderness. She remembered the feel of his hand against her cheek before he’d left her house that morning, how often in the brief time she’d known him his hands had touched her casually, but with exquisite sensitivity.
The thought of his strong arms surrounding her, his lips claiming hers, filled her with a delicious heat. She’d almost forgotten that she was capable of feeling desire but something about Clay had definitely awakened latent hormones.
“You cool enough?” he asked as he redirected one of the air vents toward her.
“I’m fine,” she assured him, glad he couldn’t read her thoughts. “I just wonder if this heat wave is ever going to break.” She tried to concentrate on the weather outside and not on the heat storm raging inside her when she taunted herself with thoughts of making love with Clay.
“I heard the weatherman say we might get a break in the next day or two. Rain is supposed to be moving in.”
Ann leaned her head back against the seat and sighed. “Good, I like rainy days. There’s something nice about being safe inside your home while rain patters against the window.” She frowned. “I just hope I feel safe again soon.”
“You will,” he said with conviction. “We’re going to find this nut, Ann, and when we do he’ll never bother you again.”
“I feel so ridiculous about overreacting this afternoon when Barry came by.” She wrapped her arms around herself, stifling a shiver as she remembered seeing him in her backyard. “I just panicked.”
“You did exactly what anyone should do when a strange man is in her yard,” Clay replied.
“Yes, but I don’t want the police department to think of me as the boy who cried wolf.”
“Ann, that’s not going to happen. There’s enough documented proof that nobody is going to dismiss your cries for help.”
Again she sighed. “The worse thing about all this isn’t so much the fact that I’m afraid. It’s that I feel like my life is out of control and there’s nothing I can do to regain control. I’m reacting instead of acting, and I’m not accustomed to doing that.”
Clay smiled. “So you like being a woman who captains her own ship.”
“I’ve never thought about whether I necessarily like it or not. It’s just been a fact of my life. When you’re all alone in the world, you pretty much have to be the captain of your own ship.”
“Consider this a squall you have to ride out. I promise you’ll be in tranquil waters again soon.” He wheeled into her driveway and turned off the engine. “In the meantime, I’m eager to see if the captain can really cook and if she’ll accept help in the galley.”
“All galley help not only welcomed, but actively encouraged.” She laughed, glad she’d invited him to stay for dinner. When she was with him she somehow managed to forget the fearful incidents that had first brought and now kept him in her life. She enjoyed his company, his quick smile and warm gaze.
They got out of the car and walked toward her front porch. As they walked, Ann looked around the yard, wondering where Twilight might be hiding. Dusk was falling and usually the cat could be found at the front door when night approached.
“I wonder where Twilight is,” she said as she unlocked the door, then took one last look around the yard.
“Want me to take a look around?” Clay offered.
“No. He’ll probably turn up in a few minutes. He never stays outside at night for long.”
“You mentioned that before. I can’t believe you have a cat afraid of the dark.”
Ann smiled softly, thinking of the cat who’d appeared on her doorway early one morning, half dead from hunger and missing an ear. “I think he was terribly abused before finding me. Whatever he suffered the night before I found him was horrible enough to drive him to overcome his suspicion of people. I feel like it’s my job to keep him safe from a world that hasn’t treated him very well.” She flushed and laughed in embarrassment. “Sorry, I’m in danger of getting on my soapbox. Cruelty to helpless animals and innocent children, it makes me crazy.”
“Me, too,” he agreed.
“Come on, let’s go see what I can find to fix us to eat.” She went into the kitchen and flipped on the light against the approaching darkness. She motioned Clay to a chair at the table, then looked inside the refrigerator. “What about omelets? I’ve got cheese and mushrooms, scallions and ham.”
“Sounds great,” he agreed.
She began setting items out on the countertop, trying to think of topics for casual conversation. She’d never had to worry about talking when she was with Greg, since he didn’t really care for conversation as much as he enjoyed his own monologues.
She jumped as Clay joined her at the counter. “I’m a great chopper. Just give me a knife and cutting board and I’ll do the honors on the ingredients.”
“It’s a deal,” she agreed.
Within minutes Clay was busy chopping as Ann made coffee and toasted bread. “You enjoy being a policeman, don’t you?” she asked as they worked together.
“It’s been a good career, but it’s almost over.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Almost over? What do you mean?”
“I’m retiring in a month.”
“Retiring? Surely you’re kidding. You aren’t old enough to retire.”
He grinned. “I’m almost forty-two. I’ve put in twenty years with the department. My goal has always been to retire before I got too old to enjoy it.”
Ann looked at him searchingly, still finding it hard to believe that a man as vital, as youthful as Clay intended to retire. “But, what are you going to do? I mean, do you have another career in mind?”
“Nope. I’ve got a ticket to Hawaii and a plan to spend some time lying on the beaches and exploring the islands.” He flashed her a boyish smile. “It’s been a dream I’ve worked toward for years. I want to live the life of a beach bum.”
Ann stared at him. “But where will you live? Are you going to buy a house?”
“No way.” Clay sliced the mushrooms with an expert flourish. “I don’t want any financial commitments, I’ll sleep on the beach or in a rented room. Perhaps I’ll be a vagabond, going where the wind and my whims take me.”
Ann buttered toast and placed two more slices of bread into the toaster. “Sounds like a nice way to spend a vacation, but I wouldn’t want to live that way for any length of time.” She fought against a wave of fragmented memories, distant painful remembrances from her past. “Personally, I need a home base, a place of safety that belongs to me.”
“Different strokes for different folks, I guess,” he said, finishing with the mushrooms and beginning to chop scallions.
“You must have started in the department when you were young,” Ann said.
“I started in the academy on my twenty-first birthday. I always knew what I wanted to do with my life. What about you? What made you decide to teach?”
“When I was in high school, I had a wonderful English teacher who challenged me and encouraged me. She made such a difference in my life, I knew I wanted to emulate her and become a teacher.” Ann smiled at the memory of Mrs. Johnson, the teacher who’d taken the time to see beyond the frightened young girl she’d been and had encouraged Ann to develop dreams and go after them. “I love my job,” she finished simply.
“It’s nice to like what you do. My mother thinks I’m crazy to retire,” Clay admitted. “Do you think I’m crazy?” He set the knife down and looked at her with his warm, brown eyes.
Ann smiled once again. “I’d be crazy to make any kind of a value judgment on how you want to live your life. I believe each one of us has to follow our dreams, and if that’s your dream then you aren’t crazy.”
He finished with the onions and washed his hands in the sink. “So, tell me about your dreams. What do you want out of life?” he asked as he dried his hands then moved to sit down at
the table.
“You’ll think my dreams are terribly boring,” she protested as she busied herself pouring the omelet mixture into the awaiting skillet.
“Who am I to put a value judgment on your dreams?” he asked, teasingly giving her words back to her.
She laughed. “Okay, someday I’d like to get married and have a family. That’s my dream for the future.”
He nodded. “And it’s a very nice dream, just not for me.”
Ann cut the omelet and slid half onto each plate, then set the plates on the table. “If you don’t mind, why don’t you pour the coffee while I check to see if Twilight is waiting at the front door.”
“Sure,” Clay agreed easily. As Ann left the kitchen, Clay felt a twinge of relief. There had been something almost too compelling, too intimate in sharing dreams with a woman in the comfort of a kitchen while night fell outside the windows. At least he’d told her about his imminent retirement plans.
He couldn’t deny there was some sort of chemistry between them, a spark of sexual energy both exciting and confusing. At least if anything got out of control, she couldn’t fault him for not being truthful. She knew in a month’s time he’d be gone. If she wanted a relationship of any kind with him, she knew it would be a brief one.
“He’s still not there,” Ann said as she returned to the kitchen, a frown marring the smooth skin across her forehead.
“You want me to go out and take a look around?” he offered.
“No. Let’s go ahead and eat before it gets cold. I’m sure Twilight will show up by then.”
As they ate, Clay tried to keep the conversation light, regaling her with stories from his youth. Although she laughed at the right places, kept up her end of the inane conversation, she occasionally tilted her head as if listening for something and he knew she was worried about the cat.
He offered several more times to go looking for the feline, but she protested, insisting he eat and that Twilight would be grounded for missing curfew.
“Every time I missed curfew, my mother would make me clean the whole house the next day. I thought it was the worse punishment she could inflict on me.”
Ann laughed. “It was probably good for you, although I have to admit, I hate to clean.”
Clay looked at her incredulously. “But this place is spotless.”
“I have a woman who comes in to clean once every two weeks. It was the first gift I gave myself when I bought the condo.” She smiled ruefully. “In fact, she’s due next week, so don’t look too closely at things. Who knows what kind of dust bunnies you’ll find.”
“Dust bunnies I can handle. It’s the dust monsters that live under my bed that worry me.” Clay made a mental note to check out the cleaning lady.
She laughed and again he felt a warm burst of pleasure sweep through him at the deep, throaty sound. She was a woman meant to laugh. The expression of merriment lifted the shadows from her eyes, banished the darkness he sensed resided inside her.
“So tell me, what dire ways did your mother punish you when you were bad?” he asked.
She closed up. Her smile faded and she seemed to turn inward. “My mother wasn’t much of a disciplinarian.” She flashed him a tight smile. “Besides, what makes you think I was anything other than a perfect child?” She started to rise from the table.
“Sit still,” he commanded. “You cooked, I’ll clean up.” She settled back in her chair and he poured her a fresh cup of coffee, then began to clear the table.
“Why haven’t you ever married?” she asked, then flushed. “I don’t mean to be personal, I’m just curious.”
“It’s all right, I don’t mind answering, although I’m not sure I have a good answer.” He carried the last of the dishes to the sink, then turned back to her. “I guess I’ve never met a woman I could imagine spending the rest of my life with. Besides, I knew from a pretty young age that I wanted an early retirement and family commitments would make that particular dream a little more difficult to achieve.”
“Don’t you ever get lonely?”
He shrugged. “Sure, but not often.” He turned back to the sink, unwilling to confess to her that whenever he got lonely all he had to do was think of his dad’s death, and the dreams his father had never experienced. His father had sacrificed his dreams for his family, and Clay wasn’t willing to do the same thing. “Besides, whenever I get really lonely, I just go sit for a few hours at my mom’s. She believes every silence should be filled and it doesn’t take very long before I’m not lonely anymore.”
“She sounds like a delight. You’re lucky to have her.” Her voice held a slight wistfulness.
“When did you lose your parents?” he asked as he put the dishes in the dishwasher.
“I never knew my father and my mom passed away when I was fifteen.”
“Tough break. Where did you go when she died?”
“Oh, it’s a long, boring story.” She stood up and carried her cup to him. “I’m going to check for Twilight again.”
As she left the room, Clay once again realized he’d learned next to nothing about her past. Throughout the entire dinner, she’d adroitly turned the conversation away from herself. What he couldn’t decide was if she’d done it intentionally or if she was merely a woman unaccustomed to talking about herself.
“I can’t understand it,” she said as she walked back into the kitchen. “It’s pitch-dark outside and Twilight has never been out this late.”
“Let’s go outside and hunt,” Clay said, knowing she wouldn’t relax until the cat was inside safe and sound.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“Of course I don’t.”
The air outside was redolent with the scent of flowers and dew-laden grass. Thick humidity made it almost difficult to breathe and overhead clouds chased across the face of a full moon.
“Here kitty,” Clay called softly, listening for taletell rustling. Nothing. He heard nothing but the whisper of a night breeze through the trees and Ann’s voice echoing his call.
They moved from the front yard to the back, where the foliage was thicker and more difficult to search. “Come on, Twilight. Where are you hiding?” He started on the left side of the porch, hunting under bushes, looking up in the tree branches. Nothing. No sign of the bedraggled alley cat.
He moved to the right side of the patio, where the light didn’t quite reach and shadows hung deep. It was there he found Twilight.
The cat lay on his side, not moving, foam ringing his mouth. A can of tuna was on one side of him, a note tucked just under his hindquarters. “Oh God,” Clay breathed. He leaned down and gently pulled the note free and read it. REVENGE IS SWEET WHEN IT’S LONG IN COMING. BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU EAT, SWEET ANN.
Clay’s hand shook with suppressed rage. “You bastard,” he muttered. “I’ll get you, you sick bastard, if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Clay? I didn’t find him anywhere.” Ann said as she walked out on the patio. “What about...” She froze, her gaze following Clay’s to the cat. With a heartrending cry, she fell to her knees.
Chapter 8
Ann crawled on her knees to Twilight, her pain too great to verbalize, her loss too intense for tears. Someplace in the back of her mind, she knew what had happened. The tuna can and the foam told her that Twilight had been poisoned, but it all seemed surreal. She felt as if she were swimming in a dream fog, and if she could just wake up, Twilight would be fine.
She crouched over the cat. “Oh, baby,” she said softly. With the gentleness of a mother, she gathered Twilight in her arms. “Why, Clay? Why would somebody do this?” She tangled her fingers in the warm fur. Warm. The fog dissipated. “Clay...I think he’s still alive.”
With three long strides Clay reached her side. “Are you sure?”
Ann placed her palm against Twilight’s chest, adrenaline surging through her as she felt a faint, but discernible heartbeat. “He’s alive, Clay. He’s alive.” Temporary joy raced through her, coupled with a dreadfu
l anxiety.
“Get him to the car, I’ll lock up the house. We’ve got to get him to a vet.” Clay grabbed the tuna can, then took off toward the door.
“Grab my purse,” Ann yelled after him, her heart aching as if broken as she gently picked up the limp cat.
Within minutes they were in the car, headed for an emergency animal clinic Ann knew was open all night. “Come on, baby, hang on,” she whispered to Twilight.
The tears she’d been too stunned to shed earlier now trekked down her cheeks. Twilight had been her family, a waif like herself. She stroked his ear, the gray fur above his eyes, despair making her feel hollow inside. Losing Twilight would be like losing a part of her soul. “Turn left at the next light,” she instructed Clay, relieved the animal clinic was just another block away. “It’s the second building on the right.”
Clay pulled into the lot. The moment he shut off the engine they exited the car on the run.
“May I help you?” A young female receptionist greeted them. Her eyes widened as she saw Twilight in Ann’s arms. “Come on back.” She motioned them through a doorway and into what appeared to be an exam-operating room. “I’ll go get Dr. Turwell.”
Dr. Turwell took one look at the cat and asked Clay and Ann to go back to the waiting room. Clay handed the doctor the tuna can he’d brought along. “This probably contains whatever poison he ate,” he explained. As they left, the doctor began giving Twilight oxygen.
Ann and Clay sat down on the worn love seat in the waiting room. “Oh, God, I don’t know if he’s going to make it or not.” Ann’s hand trembled as she looped a strand of her hair behind her ear.
She felt sick and knew it was grief that caused her stomach to ache and her heart to hurt. Not Twilight, please God, not Twilight.
“Twilight looked like a pretty tough cat to me,” Clay replied softly.
She nodded. “Yes, he looks tough, and he’s had a tough life, but really he’s quite fragile.” She closed her eyes, willing back a renewed burst of tears as she remembered how Twilight would curl up at her feet at night, how he purred his contentment when he’d cuddle close to her chest and she’d stroke his fur. For so long, Twilight had been husband, child and parent to her. He’d been a friend who offered unconditional love.
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