He was right. Edie did like Thai and particularly pho. The noodle-laden soup based on a richly spice-infused broth had a hundred variations, and Pho Bay Tau carried most of them, from chicken feet to stewed tripe to crispy pork slices. Edie studied the menu like Chloe did the Kids “R” Us Christmas catalogue, her eyes alight with a beautiful sort of greediness.
They decided to share plates, and he insisted she choose. She ordered pho tai gau, a dish of noodles with tender slices of beef and brisket and bun ga nuong, a cold vermicelli salad with chicken, to which he added an appetizer of fried yams and shrimp. She finished by ordering bubble tea. He made a face.
“You don’t like bubble tea?” she asked.
“It’s a textural thing,” he said.
“I understand.” She nodded. “It does feel like a clump of muc—”
“Hey! How about them White Sox?” he broke in.
“White socks?” She blinked, confused.
“They’re one of the Chicago baseball teams.”
“Oh. What about—” Enlightenment dawned in her eyes. “Oh! I see. You were trying to prevent me from drawing a correlation between my bubble tea and mucus!” She looked so damned pleased with herself.
“Futilely trying,” he said.
She burst out laughing with that shotgun blast of humor, spontaneous, unrefined, and completely bewitching. “I’m sorry. I really do have better manners than that. I know I give the impression of having been raised by apes, but my parents really were quite normal. I just speak before I consider whether my comments are appropriate to the situation.”
“Why is that?” he asked curiously, eager to know anything and everything about her.
She gave a delicate shrug. “I haven’t had much experience in the usual social situations. I was in college by the time I was twelve. Not many college kids are asking their twelve-year-old lab partners to hang out with them after class, so I lived outside of the normal college context. My graduate and post-graduate work all depended on precision, detached observation, and accuracy.” She gave him an unexpected grin. “Thus my telling you that bubble tea feels very like—”
“Don’t say it!” he begged, holding up his hand just as the waiter returned with her bubble tea.
With a gleam in her eye, she unwrapped the straw, stuck it into the tall, frosty glass, and sipped. Then she sat back, resting her hands, palms down, on the table. “Ah.”
He shook his head. “You continue to surprise me,” he said.
She tipped her head. “Continue?”
“Yes. I didn’t think you’d agree to go out with me. At least not without a lot more persuasion.” He leaned over the table and confided, “I had a whole list of arguments drawn up that I didn’t get to use.”
She smiled. “I’d hate for you to have to waste perfectly good arguments, and I admit to being curious as to what they are. Please, persuade me.”
“Well, I know the best ethnic joints in town and without me to guide you, you’d be doomed to wander around in a culinary desert.”
“I admit that’s persuasive. Have any more reasons?”
He sat back in his chair, eyeing her. “Yes. I was going to tell you that you need more practice in becoming a convincing Global Gen cheerleader and I am willing to be practiced upon.”
“We’re going to discuss Global Genetics?”
“No.”
“Then that’s an invalid argument.”
“I didn’t say my reasons were valid, just persuasive.”
She looked a little scandalized and a lot intrigued.
“And if all else failed, I was going to dangle the possibility of my bringing Chloe along with us.”
“Would that be so awful?” she asked.
“No,” he answered, then added seriously, “But Chloe doesn’t like Thai food.”
She laughed once more, charming him all over again. Then she said, just a trifle hesitantly, as if uncertain she had the right, “Where is Chloe?”
“At home with her favorite cousin gorging on pizza and playing Candyland.” Once again he leaned over the table, holding her gaze in his. “But you know what the best reason I had for why you ought to come out with me was?”
She shook her head.
“The one you gave, the best reason and the truest: I like you. More than like you.”
Her gaze dipped to her bubble tea, and a soft wash of pink rolled up her throat into her cheeks.
He cleared his throat, worried he had said too much and she’d think he was going too fast. “Tell me about Cupid Cats. I—maybe I’m wrong, but Cupid Cats doesn’t seem like something you’d name a shelter.”
“Oh?” She looked up. Her brown eyes were warm and sparkling. “And what would that be? ‘Commit to the Care of an Abandoned or Rescued Cat Who May or May Not Have Emotional and/or Physical Issues for Anywhere from a Few Years to Two Decades?’ ” She cocked a brow.
“Yeah,” he said, and grinned.
“Oh, all right. It isn’t my name. It came with the place. After I took the job with Global Genetics, I was looking for a cat to adopt. I always wanted a cat of my own. We had them when I was growing up, but after I went to school, it didn’t seem fair to get a pet when I wouldn’t be able to spend much time with it. After I joined Global Genetics, I had the time and I knew I wanted to adopt a shelter cat, so I went looking and chanced upon Cupid Cats. It was shutting down, the old director was moving out of state, and she didn’t have anyone to take over.
“I went back to my apartment sans cat, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the place. The more I thought about it, the more sense it seemed to make for me to just take over the place and the care of a dozen cats—and we have about three dozen in foster homes—rather than taking only one and relegating it to hours of being alone.”
Jim listened, nodding and slowly becoming aware that something was different about her speech patterns. She sounded natural, unaffected, and relaxed, her five-buck words all but disappearing. She was comfortable with him, he realized. It made him feel as though he’d won the lottery.
The waiter brought the batter-fried shrimp and yams; she took one, chomping into the greasy little morsel and sinking back in her chair, her eyes rolling up in ecstasy. “Oh . . . my . . . word,” she murmured around a mouthful of fritter. “Even if I didn’t like you, I’d go out with you if you kept taking me to places like this.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
She finished the fritter and polished off another two in quick succession. He watched her, enjoying her enjoying the food. Finally she wiped her fingers on one of the paper napkins and pushed herself back from the table. “Speaking of cats, do you think Chloe’s about ready to give up trying to persuade Ishy-Pixie through the front door?”
“I don’t know. Is she becoming a bother to you?”
“No!” Edie hurriedly denied. “Not at all. I like Chloe. She’s . . . I’m really fond of her. I just don’t want to see her disappointed, and I really don’t think Ishy-Pixie is going anywhere.” She glanced up, meeting his eyes. “She’s a very old cat.”
He understood. “Yes.”
“But Chloe still seems convinced that Ishy-Pixie is the same cat you and your wife owned.”
Jim laughed. “There’s no way she could be. I don’t even know how old Pixie was when we got her. I got her for Steph on our first anniversary. I was thinking of a kitten, but there was something about the mother cat that just . . . I knew Steph would love her. She was scrawny and malnourished but definitely mature. The vet’s best guess was that she was six or seven, and then we were married eight years before we got pregnant with Chloe. So if that was Pixie, she’d be more than twenty years old and have had to have traveled fifteen hundred miles.”
“And you don’t believe that could happen.”
“Do you?”
She surprised him. “In science, we’re always looking for explanations for things that seem impossible.” She lifted her shoulders. “Sometimes we find them. Sometime we don’t. Whether or n
ot we know the processes by which something occurs does not negate the fact of something. It doesn’t matter what I believe is possible. What is, is.”
“You know, Steph might have said something like that.” As soon as he spoke the words, he regretted them. The last thing a woman on a date wanted was to hear about the dead wife. But once again, Edie surprised him.
“Really? She was a pragmatist, then?” she asked as a waiter slipped the bowls of pho in front of them.
He laughed. “Not at all. She was a complete romantic. She loved old-fashioned gardens, the sort with more weeds than flowers, and lace curtains and piano music. And cats.”
“She sounds . . . lovely,” Edie said, but she said it sincerely. It wasn’t a throwaway conversation ender, a sort of “Yeah, yeah, your dead wife was a peach. Now let’s talk about me.”
“Tell me about her,” Edie said, her elbow on the table, her chin resting in her palm.
Tell her about Steph? He hadn’t spoken about his wife, not at any length, in years. His sisters avoided mentioning her as though the very name “Steph” was hurtful. It wasn’t. Nothing about his memories of her caused pain or regret. They were simply wonderful memories that made him grateful for the years they’d shared.
“She had this gift with people, this ability to not only listen, but hear. Do you know what I mean?” he asked after a moment. “She understood people even if she didn’t agree with them. I think that’s rare. Most people want to be understood.”
“Yes,” Edie said, nodding. “Did she have a career?”
Jim smiled. “She worked part-time—the morning shift at this little patisserie making croissants. She’d get up at three thirty in the morning to do it. She said she did it because they always let her bring home the day-olds, but she loved it.”
“Geez. She ate croissants every day?” Edie asked, sounding a little incredulous. “Was she very fat?”
She surprised him into laughter. Only Edie would ask such a question. And he loved her for it. “Not fat . . . substantial. At least that’s what she called it. I called it womanly. Everything about her was oversized: her appetite, her bad language—man, she swore like a sailor—her smile.”
Edie nodded thoughtfully
“What about you, Edie?” he finally said, finishing his bowl. “Any Mr. Dr. Handelman in your past?”
She did not answer at once, concentrating on her food. Just when he thought she might not answer at all she said, “No. I was engaged for the two years before I joined Global Genetics, but the marriage never made it beyond the theoretical stage. He was a brilliant conceptual engineer I met at a symposium at MIT.”
“Am I sorry?” he asked.
“Are you sorry?” she repeated.
“That it didn’t work out between you and him?”
“Oh. You mean am I sorry it didn’t work out? You’re trying to gauge whether to be dismissive of him, or conciliatory.”
“Exactly.”
Her brow furrowed as she gave his words her usual intent consideration. “Neither. It made no sense for us to enter a marriage. We both understood that.”
“Why?” he asked, reading something . . . something lurking in the shadows of her clear amber eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”
“He wanted children, and I discovered that I couldn’t have children,” she answered easily enough, but he could see the hurt it caused her by the way she avoided his gaze. She picked up her paper napkin and began shredding it.
He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her, but he couldn’t. “What about adoption?”
“He wouldn’t. He felt that with his genius and physique—and he did have a nice physique, though not as nice as yours—the world ought to be able to benefit from his donation to the genetic pool.” She’d finished fringing one edge of the napkin and began on the other.
Jim stared, incredulous. “He didn’t want to deprive the world of his genes?”
“Yes.” She nodded. Shred, shred, shred. “It makes sense. Although with the world population exploding beyond terra firma’s capacity to sustain it, a case could be made for childless unions—”
“Edie,” he interrupted, “he left you because you couldn’t have his baby?”
“It was a mutual leaving,” she replied primly. She turned the napkin, moving on to side three.
“I’m sorry.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be. That’s one of the things I like most about you. You don’t feel sorry for me.”
“I’m not sorry for you,” he said in surprise. “I’m sorry for the guy who thought his swimmers were so important that he let you go.”
For a minute she just stared at him, and he could read her thoughts as clearly as a screaming headline on a gas station tabloid: You are kidding.
But he wasn’t. “Done with that?” he asked, nodding at her empty bowl.
“Yes.”
“Then let’s get out of here.”
They drove to a small park near Edie’s condo and took a long walk in the soft summer night. Crickets and the occasional cicada serenaded them. They spoke eagerly, filling in the gaps left during their conversations at the shelter. Edie liked to cycle to work; Jim swam five mornings a week. She’d been raised in Seattle; he’d been raised here. They talked about everything and nothing, and Jim could have kept her walking the two-mile loop around the park until dawn, but he was afraid she’d drop in her tracks if they kept up much longer.
So, finally, reluctantly, he walked her to her front door and stood looking down into her eyes, tongue-tied and uncertain. She brought out an old-fashioned chivalry in him, though frankly he suspected chivalry was simply a whitewashed version of fear: fear of rejection, fear of overstepping boundaries, fear he didn’t know what those boundaries were, fear if he did step over these undefined boundaries, she’d never go out with him again. He didn’t know what she wanted of him, and what she wanted was important to him, more important than what he wanted, which was to take her in his arms and kiss her breathless.
“So, ah, thanks for having dinner with me.”
“You’re welcome.” She half turned from him and inserted her key into the lock.
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“No. I have a seven a.m. flight to Seattle. It’s work related.”
“Oh. Will you be gone long?”
“I’ll be back Saturday morning.” She turned the key and pushed the door open.
He bit back his disappointment. Three days was too long. “Oh. Well, then, I’ll bring Chloe over to the shelter on the weekend.” It was a question.
“Sure.” She turned back toward him, grabbed his face between her hands, and kissed him full on the lips.
He forgot all about chivalry and boundaries and fear. He clamped her to him, lifting her up and walking her backward through the open door, his lips never leaving hers. Once inside, he kicked the door shut behind them, slanting his mouth sideways so he could see where he was going. The room was a blur of bright colors and textures, and he couldn’t focus because she was raking her hands through his hair, her tongue was playing tease with his, and her breasts were lush and soft against his chest.
“Couch?” he managed to growl against her mouth.
“Bed,” she croaked hoarsely, gesturing wildly to their side. “Bed.”
He looked around, spotted an open door, and swung her up into his arms, moving swiftly into the next room. He spied a bed, not the narrow single he half expected, but a nice roomy queen with a plump, aqua-blue silk duvet. He strode to the side and dropped her down in the middle of it, following her down, a knee by her hip.
She clasped handfuls of his shirt and jerked it out of his waistband, running her hands up underneath, coursing over his belly and chest. He groaned, his eyelids sliding closed with the pleasure of it, kissing her while his fingers worked frantically to undo the damnably small buttons holding her blouse together.
She lifted her shoulders, wiggling out of the blouse and shoving it off the bed. Seconds l
ater her cotton bra followed. Her body was svelte and toned, her breasts full and high. His whole body shuddered, and he felt his cock jerk against his pants crotch.
They were going fast, too fast.
He grabbed both her hands, pulling her into a sitting position. Then he stood up in front of her, raking his hair back with one hand. “Look, I’m getting a little carried away here.”
“Good,” she said. “Me, too. Let’s keep going.” She spoke in a rough staccato, her breasts rising and falling, the sound of her breathy assurance and the sight of her body nearly bringing him to his knees.
“You sure?”
In answer, she rose to her feet, stepped between his legs, and began clumsily unzipping his fly. His erection sprang free, and she delved her hand into his boxers, finding him. She made a soft sound, half hiss, half moan, as her fist closed around him. His head snapped back as he gritted his teeth, seeking control. She let him go, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling his head down to hers. “Yes, I’m sure.”
He didn’t need any further invitation. He hooked his foot behind her ankle and tumbled her gently onto her back on the bed. She went down with a startled gasp, her eyes wide and dark with excitement. Reaching up, he grabbed her slacks’ waistband and stripped them off her in one long stroke. Her panties, white cotton, God love her, followed. He took hold of her knees and pulled her to the edge of the bed, pushing them open and moving in between them.
He slid his hands up the backs of her silky thighs to beneath her bottom, positioning himself at the entry of her body. He moved his hips forward. She was tight and slick, like a heated steel fist gripping him as he entered. She gasped and he looked down into her eyes. They were wide and smoky, but there wasn’t a trace of apprehension there; just a trembling eagerness.
He rocked forward, moving over her, covering her. She felt small beneath him, light, and he wanted to absorb her into his flesh, to feel every inch of her pressing into every inch of himself. He moved and her knees came up, clamping his hips. Her back arched, exposing her throat in an exquisite curve. Her fingers dug into his shoulders as he moved, slowly, with measured, controlled . . .
Cupid Cats Page 18
