“Nope. Don’t have a clue what you’re thinking right now.”
“Good,” he stated somewhat enigmatically. “Let’s go.”
It took longer to corral the animals-they associated the carrier with the vet-than it did for Cass to pack. In the end she pleaded with them to be good girls and finally they allowed themselves to be lifted and placed together inside.
When they got back to the house, Malcolm found a crate that worked well with a plastic kitchen bag for a liner, and the cats seemed to acclimate to the new surroundings almost immediately.
“They’ll get lost,” Cass worried as she watched them search out each new smell and new crevice in the spacious home. “They like to sleep with me. What if they can’t find me?”
“They’ll find you. Cats are very resilient creatures.”
“You had one?” Cass asked, noting his comfort with them.
“Lauren did. It liked me and I didn’t mind it.”
“Spoken like a true man.”
His lips twitched. “Like I said, pink and cats-two things men never admit to liking.” He walked over to the fridge and opened it. He pulled out the casserole dish and got a bowl from a cabinet. “You didn’t eat earlier, but I saw you eyeing it up. Come on, admit it-you want some of my casserole.”
She did. “Fine, I’ll eat it, but my point still stands.”
Malcolm heated some up for her and then decided he could have another round. He put two bowls of the heated macaroni and cheese in front of them, along with two glasses of ice-cold milk. They ate at the table and the strange hominess of the act wasn’t lost on Cass. It had been so long since she had sat and eaten at a kitchen table that it actually unnerved her. She fiddled with her fork, pushed the food around and squirmed in her chair.
Malcolm raised an eyebrow in question.
“I usually eat in front of the TV on a mat,” she explained.
“I usually eat in the other room,” Malcolm said. He put down his fork. “You know, you were right about the casseroles. About me, I suppose. I don’t make friends very easily.”
“Why not? I mean, for me it’s a no-brainer. I’m weird. I hear dead people,” she whispered dramatically. “I couldn’t cope as a teen, and school was filled with people who had lost grandmothers and grandfathers and such. Then after the asylum I didn’t want to trust anyone ever again. I got along with the people at the institute. At the time I would have called them my friends. But it was so easy to walk away and not look back. Too easy. I’m trying to fix that now.”
“That’s why you went to see the doctor.”
Cass shook her head. “I was hoping he might help. Part of dealing with this gift is having control over it. Knowing every nuance of it. The channeling is new to me, relatively new, and I wanted a way to categorize it. Dr. Farver was methodical in his testing. I went looking for some ideas, but because he doesn’t believe, he couldn’t really help me. Anyway, that’s my story. Now yours.”
“Well, I don’t hear dead people. I wasn’t committed to an asylum. I’m not considered to be a freak by anyone- that I know of-merely reserved. I was raised by a loving father and an absent mother until I was eleven. Then my dad met Lauren’s mom and we became a family. We were happy.”
“That’s not really an answer.”
“I don’t know that there is one. Yes, I lost my father and it crushed me. Soon after that, Lauren and I lost Becca. She had also been crushed by my father’s sudden death. Neither of those things had been easy. When Dad died, I took over the business and discovered it wasn’t in great shape.”
“You didn’t know?”
“No. He wouldn’t have said. He had too much pride for that. It had been hard enough for him to marry a woman he knew had more money than he did, but to tell her that he had turned around and lost it…Anyway, when I saw the condition things were in, I knew where the stress in his life had come from.”
“I’m sorry.”
Malcolm’s mouth turned up. “No point in apologizing for something you can’t fix. I should have known he was in over his head. Dad was an ironworker but wanted to build a construction company. He had all the people skills he needed. People loved him. I’ll never understand why my mother didn’t. But he didn’t have much business sense. It was his dream that McDonough Contractors would some day be ‘and Son,’ but he wanted me to be a college- educated man first. He died right after I graduated. When I saw that the money was gone, I put everything I had into saving the company. I didn’t want Becca or Lauren to know. I became consumed with hiding the fact that we were all broke. I’d been broke before but they hadn’t. I couldn’t let them down, for their sake or my father’s.”
“All the things I said about you and your money. I thought it all had come so easily.” Cass didn’t have to say any more to know he understood that she was sorry for that, too.
“Not so easily. It took sacrifice. I didn’t take time out for drinks with the boys or poker on Fridays or parties on Saturdays. I had a fiancee when I started. We’d met in college, but she quickly realized that my first priority was the company, and she couldn’t accept that so she left me. She got most of my remaining friends in the split.”
“Ouch.”
Malcolm shrugged. “I’ve got to tell you, though, I wasn’t the chattiest or most popular little boy on the block, either.”
Cass smiled at the image of a very serious boy who had been his little sister’s hero. “Me, neither,” she admitted. “I loved books. Getting lost in them.”
“I loved sports. Watching them, playing them. Getting lost in them, too. I took them very seriously.”
Cass thought about the sports memorabilia in the great room and frowned slightly. She’d been so judgmental about his things and his need to surround himself with them that she hadn’t been able to take them at face value-as pieces of sports history that he enjoyed owning.
Knowing that made the house and everything in it much less intimidating. It made him less intimidating, too. More real. More touchable.
Abruptly, Cass pushed herself away from the table. She scooped up her bowl, rinsed it and dropped it in the dishwasher with a loud thunk as it slipped from her hand. Her back to him, she found a sponge and started absently wiping down the counter in front of her.
“I’m really tired, what with everything that happened today. I’m sure you are, too. I’m going to go to bed now. Probably be out like a light in seconds.” Cass heard the rambling quality in her speech but couldn’t make herself stop. “You’ll want to close your door, though, in case the cats get in. They can be pretty nudgey in the morning when they want to be petted…”
She felt his presence before she felt him. The barest touch of his chest against her back letting her know he was close without overwhelming her.
“Don’t be afraid of this.”
“I’m not,” she insisted. But it was a lie. There were so many things that scared her. Malcolm scared her.
“But you are. You’re afraid of what’s happening between us and that’s okay. Fear is a part of life. It’s overcoming it that makes you brave.” He turned her so that she faced him and cupped her chin in his hand so that she couldn’t avoid his eyes. “Be brave for me tonight, Cass. Be with me tonight.”
The sponge dropped from her hand. She opened her mouth to answer him but before she could, his mouth descended on hers, taking her breath and her response with it.
It would have been yes.
Chapter 15
They were standing in his master bedroom, a massive room done in masculine deep brown and beige colors. Although how they got there Cass couldn’t say. She remembered him kissing her. She remembered kissing him back. She remembered feeling like the more she wanted, the more she needed, and the more he gave. She remembered holding on to him and feeling her feet leave the ground and she remembered not being afraid.
Be brave, he’d told her. She wasn’t sure that she could be, not in this. Maybe if she just let it be sex, then it would be okay. Yes, they had a connection. He’d mentioned it often enough, and though she’d never bothered to
