“Good night, Edith,” he said.
“Good night.”
There was nothing more to say. He pushed open the front door and headed outside for his car. She held the door open, watching him leave.
He turned. “What are you doing here so late, anyway?” he asked.
She didn’t answer at once; instead her long elegant fingers played lightly over Ishy’s small triangular face. A smile flickered briefly across her soft lips. “I belong here. Good night, Jim.”
She closed the door.
Chapter 5
“Look! Look! Look!” Chloe announced two weeks later as she burst through the front door of the Cupid Cats Shelter.
Edie was standing by the reception desk talking to Carol, the same middle-aged woman who’d been manning the front desk the first day Jim and Chloe had come to Cupid Cats. She looked around, and Jim noticed at once that her hair was loose, falling in thick waves that framed her face and looking ridiculously silky. A few tendrils curled against her temple, inviting someone to tuck them back. Not someone. Him.
She wore a drab T-shirt, the only virtue of which was the scoop neck that exposed her delicate clavicle and the very topmost swells of her breasts. His gaze fell to her long legs, covered by capris that looked as if she’d bought them from a geriatric cruisewear catalogue. And still the sight of her galvanized him.
“Look!” Chloe was bouncing up and down in front of Edie, holding up the doll that her cousin Mandy, away at state college, had sent as an early birthday present.
Edith recoiled. “What is it?” she whispered.
“It’s KidZ DivaZ’s Chloe!” Chloe screeched in jubilation. “Chloe! Like me!” She thrust the plastic doll into Edie’s hand.
Reluctantly, Edith turned it over in her hand. She cleared her throat. “How laudable of the toymakers of America to model empathy for the less fortunate by producing dolls with birth defects,” she said, smiling. “And how laudable of you, Chloe, to so wholeheartedly embrace your ‘special’ dolly.”
“What’s she talking about?” Chloe asked her father.
“I’m not sure.”
Edie turned to Jim and Carol. “With what is the doll supposed to be afflicted? Macrocephaly? Hydrocephalus?”
Dear God. She thought the doll was some sort of politically correct empathy doll. Not a bad guess, he admitted, looking at the sticklike little plastic body mounted by a gargantuan head with bulging eyes and overinflated lips.
“That’s it,” Carol tch’d, scooping up her cell phone and dumping it in her purse. “That’s it. I’m getting you a subscription to People magazine. You gotta know what a KidZ DivaZ doll is. Every little girl in America has one or wants one.”
“Why?” Edie asked, sounding lost.
“I don’t have time to explain. I gotta get to my son’s house. I have babysitting duty tonight.”
Edie’s amber-shot brown eyes swung toward him inquiringly.
“It’s not supposed to have anything wrong with it, Edie. It’s just supposed to be cute. At least the sub-ten set seems to think so.”
Edie stared. “You’re teasing me. This doll is seriously malformed—” She caught Chloe’s eye and made the unexpectedly politic gesture of dropping the subject.
No one Jim knew was more out of touch with popular culture than Edie. She didn’t own a television, she didn’t read tabloids or magazines, and she didn’t go to movies. Until a few days ago he’d assumed she didn’t have any interests outside of her work and the shelter. But that was before he’d discovered that his prim, starchy little scientist was a closet epicurean and total foodnetwork.com junkie.
For two weeks he’d been trying to lure her into having dinner with him and Chloe. She always refused, so last week he’d stopped by a Greek restaurant that was getting rave reviews in the local press and picked up some food. The sensuous appreciation on Edie’s face when the smell of braised lamb in lemon had hit her nose had made the price tag worth it. And when she’d licked her lips, the tip of her tongue slickering the plump bow of her lower one, he’d gone weak in the knees. He caught the sound of her inhaling, and her eyelids slipped half shut as she’d sighed with pleasure.
Nope. No two ways about it. It might be well hidden, but beneath that well-controlled, cool, and collected exterior lurked the heart of a sensualist.
Edith Handelman was driving him crazy, and she didn’t even know it. She was driving him crazy with her spiky lashes and her dewy complexion, her trim ankles and elegant fingers, the way she screwed up her brow in concentration, the way she laughed, abruptly and loud, and then looked surprised by it. She was driving him crazy with her vulnerability, her deadpan wit, and tender heart. But most of all she was driving him crazy with her total failure to recognize that she was driving him crazy. She had no idea she set his blood afire, that thoughts of her had begun creeping into every hour of his waking day and plaguing his nights.
Every other weekday he took Chloe by the hand and went calling on Edie at Cupid Cats. “Calling,” quaint and old-fashioned a term as it might be, was the only one that fit the bill for what he was doing. He was sure his mother would have been vastly amused, but he wasn’t. He was frustrated, exasperated, and physically damned uncomfortable. He wanted to grab her and do things to her, with her, for her. He hadn’t even held her hand yet.
“That’s okay, Edie,” Chloe was saying. She took back her doll and gave Edie a comforting pat on the hand. Chloe was growing used to Edie’s lack of familiarity with all sorts of important things such as Webkinz and SpongeBob SquarePants. “Didn’t you ever have a doll?” she asked curiously.
“Good question,” Carol muttered, rummaging in her purse for her keys.
“Yes,” Edie answered. “When I was ten my parents ordered me Anatomy Jane, which, as its name implies, was an anatomica—” She caught Jim’s eye. “Yes. I had a doll. Just not as . . . interesting as this one.”
This seemed to satisfy Chloe. “Can I go see the kittens?”
“Yes. As long as it’s fine with your father.”
“Yes, Chloe, go ahead.”
She bolted, leaving Jim with Edie and Carol. Edie looked at Jim, opened her mouth, and shut it again; then she spun on her heels, leaving him standing behind and watching her in bemusement.
Carol glanced up and smirked. “Man, she really likes you.”
“Yeah. She could barely drag herself away,” Jim replied drily. Last week he’d contrived a meeting with a potential investor just so he could insist Edith come along. Rather than growing more comfortable with him, she seemed to have taken a giant step backward. Oh, here at Cupid Cats she might be eager and inquisitive and unexpectedly droll, but as soon as she stepped outside, she reverted to the stiff, gauche brainiac.
The only breech in her armor was her blushes. She blushed gorgeously, ravishingly, a delicate apricot stain that sifted like the finest powder across the pale porcelain perfection of her skin . . . and she blushed every time she saw him, which meant he was finding all sorts of lame excuses to visit the research floor.
He was flat-out smitten, but something was going to have to give. He’d hit a wall, and he didn’t like it.
“Ha!” Carol’s hand dove into the bottom of her monstrous tote and returned triumphant with a set of keys. “Look, I’ve worked with Edith for years now, and I’d say I know her about as well as anyone without a PhD in this town. I just want you to know that she’s not as strange as she seems. Don’t get me wrong—she’s plenty strange, but most of that comes from lack of experience.”
“Listen, you don’t have to tell me—”
“Yeah, I do. She really does like you and, well, you’re not that hard to read.”
He didn’t deny it. “So, what am I supposed to do about it?” Jim asked, leaning over the counter separating them. “I’ve asked her to dinner and she won’t go.”
“Have you ever asked her why?”
“Yeah. She says she wouldn’t feel comfortable with a social relationship, seeing as how we’re cowo
rkers. I told her there was no company policy against coworkers fraternizing, but she—”
“Hold everything, sport,” Carol interrupted, holding her hand up. “You didn’t actually say fraternizing?”
“Well, yeah. I thought she’d appreciate it if I put it in the same terms she would use.”
She stared at him a second, then muttered, “If that isn’t a male way of thinking, I don’t know what is.” Shaking her head, she brushed by him on her way out the door, pausing only to say, “If anyone comes in to see about a cat, tell them to come back tomorrow,” and with that she was gone.
Meow.
He looked down. Pixie-Ishy, or Ishy-Pixie as Edie now called her with a straight face but a sparkle in her eyes, looked up at him from slowly twining her way around his legs. He bent down and carefully scooped her up.
“Hello, old sweetheart,” he murmured, chucking her gently under the chin. The old cat climbed her front legs up around his shoulder and rubbed her face against his jaw. Her purr sounded rattley, and she felt as light and insubstantial as a November oak leaf. “There’s nothing to you, is there, little girl?”
She sighed and it felt as if she might simply fade away in his arms. He stroked her gently. She did look a lot like Pixie. How Steph had adored that cat. His chance encounter with a kid and a box full of seven-week-old kittens had resulted in a last-minute replacement for the bouquet of flowers he’d been on his way to pick out for their first anniversary. He hadn’t taken the kitten; he’d taken the mother. Steph had showered all the love of a very loving heart on the little beast.
She’d been one of those people who drew others to her like a magnet, the first to be there with a congratulatory bottle of champagne, the last to leave if someone needed comforting. She laughed often and effortlessly, sang out loud even though she was tone-deaf, and never wore shoes if she could help it. Even in the winter she had to be barefoot. She was a bon vivant and a clown. She’d loved him as much as he loved her, and he would never, ever find her like again. In spite of the Herculean efforts of his sisters.
The ginger cat batted his face with one paw, seeking attention. He looked down into her milky jade eyes.
“Have you been waiting for someone to come back for you, too?” he asked softly, though he knew it was nonsense. Like Edie said, the cat had just fixated on this locale. She wasn’t holding out, waiting for some beloved former owner to come claim her. And had she been, how terribly sad that would be, to think of all the fruitless waiting while the other potential owners came and went. On the other hand, maybe she just didn’t have it in her to love another person.
His brow furrowed thoughtfully. He wasn’t certain if he ought to feel a little guilty that he had fallen for a woman who was about as dissimilar from his wife as he could imagine—except they both were smart, had generous natures, and—he rubbed the cat’s silky little ear tabs—loved cats. But he didn’t feel guilty.
“Daddy, one of the new kittens is an albino. That means it’s all white but has pink eyes like a rabbit!” Chloe’s excited voice preceded her arrival. Edie followed her, cradling a softball-sized bundle of white fur. She looked relaxed, and the smile hovering at the corners of her mouth was soft.
Chloe skidded to a stop when she saw whom he was holding. She approached them slowly, as Edie had taught her, and reached up and scratched the ginger cat between the ears.
“Hello, Ishy-Pixie,” she said with a giggle. She found the cat’s new moniker hilarious.
The cat peered over Jim’s arms at Chloe and purred. Chloe secured Jim’s free hand and tugged him toward the doorway, where Edie stood watching him. He was beginning to be able to read her expressions, surprised he’d ever thought her face empty of emotion. Hers was simply a more subtle countenance. It took study to be able to read it. She was Sanskrit, not graffiti.
“Look, Daddy. Pink eyes!” Chloe said, jumping up and down in front of Edie.
The sudden movement startled the kitten. With a tiny hiss, it scrambled loose of Edie’s clasp and tore up her T-shirt, disappearing over her shoulder beneath her cloud of hair.
“Ouch!” Edie reached back to pull the kitten free, but the little spitball hissed again, tangling further in the thick, wavy tresses.
“Wait,” he said, handing Ishy-Pixie to Chloe. “It’s all tangled up. Let me work it free.”
He stepped behind her and filtered his hand beneath the heavy curtain of hair, lifting it away from the nape of her neck. It was just as silky and fine as he’d imagined it would be. His mouth went dry. Edie froze. The kitten dove toward her far shoulder, yowling as a hind leg got snared. Jim looped one arm in front of her and plucked it off by the scruff of its neck. It gave a piteous bleat and went limp.
“Don’t hurt it!” Chloe exclaimed.
“He’s not hurting it,” Edie said. She sounded a little breathless.
With his other hand, he reached over her shoulder and began untwining her hair from around it.
“Scruffing is used by mother animals to pick up her progeny,” Edie went on in her high, professorial voice. He’d noticed that the more flustered Edie was, the more wordy she got. “You may have noticed, Chloe, that as your father dislodged the kitten from my person, it automatically went limp and is currently quite immobilized. This is an involuntary reflex in neonatal animals that helps facilitate the transporting process. As the animal ages, its weight will disallow such action as the strain of its increased weight on its skin would be painful, but right now the kitten is quite comfortable.”
The longer his hands were on her, the more syllables she used. By God, she’d probably spew out the formula for time travel if they ever actually kissed. He grinned behind her back as his fingers continued to unravel her tresses from around the kitten.
“I didn’t understand any of that, Edie,” Chloe said patiently. “Can you tell me again later, using words I know?”
“Oh! Oh, I’m sorry,” Edie exclaimed, taking a step away.
Jim gave her hair a gentle tug, stopping her. “Stand still and be quiet,” he murmured. “I’m concentrating.”
Chloe retreated to the counter and set Ishy-Pixie down, then flopped cross-legged on the floor. She propped her elbows on her knees and balanced her chin in her fists, regarding them impassively.
Edie didn’t make any further protest. For several minutes he worked on getting her hair untangled in silence, all too aware of the heat of her skin where his knuckles grazed her collarbone, the fresh scent of her shampoo rising from the silky coils of hair near his lips, the size of her, the shape, the aura. . . .
Twice he heard her draw in deep breaths and thought maybe he made her nervous. She was making him a lot more than nervous.
He finished untwining the last bit of hair and brushed it away from Edie’s cheek, his right arm still looped in front of her in a parody of a lover’s embrace. All he’d need to do was turn her and tilt her head up and—
“Is this going to take much longer?” Chloe’s plaintive voice brought him back to earth with a crash.
His arm dropped away. “Nope. Done.”
Edie turned around. Her eyes looked huge, the pupils dark and unfathomable.
Damn, but how had he ever thought she was plain? She was elegant and sparse and . . . sexy as all hell. And he had to get out of here before he grabbed her in front of his daughter. He thrust the kitten at her. She took it, clearly startled, and clasped it to her chest.
“Come on, kiddo,” Jim said to Chloe. “Time to go.”
“What?” Chloe bolted to her feet. “We just got here!”
“We didn’t just get here. We’ve been here twenty minutes.” Storm clouds gathered in his daughter’s face. “Look, I’ll come home early Friday and we’ll stay twice as long, okay?”
Chloe weighed the options.
“I’m not really asking, Chloe,” he said evenly.
Chloe sighed. “Okay.” She popped over to where Edie still stood and reached up, scuffling the kitten’s head and smiling up at Edie. “I didn’t
fill the water bowls, and I didn’t play with the kittens, so you’re going to have to do it,” she confided.
“Okay,” Edie said.
“And don’t forget to give Pippin a hug.” Pippin was Chloe’s favorite kitten, a thin little mouse-colored cat with blue eyes.
Edie looked somewhat taken aback by this directive but simply nodded.
“And me, too,” Chloe added abruptly, and wrapped her arms around Edie’s hips, squeezing tightly.
Over her head, Edie met Jim’s eyes. Her eyes went wide, startled and amazed and . . . something profoundly more. She released one hand from the kitten and reached down, spreading her hand wide on Chloe’s narrow back and pressing her tightly against her.
For a good thirty seconds no one moved; then Chloe let go of Edie and turned around, casually collecting Jim’s hand in hers and leading him out the door. He left, taking heart in being pretty sure Edie was as reluctant for them to leave as he was and plotting a foray to Giorgio’s for eggplant rotini that would send her into a swoon. On Thursdays they also made a buttermilk panna cotta—Thursday. Today was Wednesday.
He’d been so distracted by the closest thing he’d had to physical contact with Edie—and how pitiful was that?—he’d forgotten Melissa was coming over. He glanced at his wristwatch.
“What, Daddy?” Chloe asked.
“I forgot today’s Wednesday,” Jim said, starting up the block toward their home. “It’s a good thing we left when we did, because you’re aunt Melissa will be here in fifteen minutes to pick you up for your sleepover.”
“I don’t want to go to Aunt Melissa’s tonight. I want to stay home.”
Jim looked in surprise at his daughter. This was the first time since they’d moved to their new house three months ago that Chloe had expressed a desire to stay home rather than to spend the night at the home of one of her aunts. She’d always looked forward to sleepover Wednesdays with a fervor that cut at Jim’s heart and made him wonder if he’d done the right thing in moving them out of the old neighborhood, the only home she’d ever known until now.
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