“And if she couldn’t really love me back,” Sam forged on, “that doesn’t even matter in the end. I love her. I’m her family.”
“Don’t be absurd, man! We love her, too.”
“Sure you do, but Myles love is conditional, based on performance. And now she can’t perform—your perfect little doll’s broken. So what good is she now to you guys?”
Winston edged back a step and glanced over his shoulder. “Sam, I’ve got to go. I’m meeting Fisher…lunch. You’re sure you won’t—”
Sam held out his hand. “Then give me your hand, Win.”
Winston let out his breath, managed a smile that didn’t come near his eyes and held out his hand. “Sure, Sam, no hard fee—”
Sam’s fingers clamped on his wrist.
“What the…” Chin rising in alarm, Winston tried to back away but was drawn inexorably closer. His breath rushed out in a hiss, then he stopped resisting. “Sam—”
“Sam!” Jessica called from her bag. “Sam, please! Don’t!”
“Nice hand,” Sam marveled, holding Winston’s hand up to the light. “I’ve always wondered, did your old man choose your mom on that basis, that she’d throw brainy kids with long, clever surgeon’s fingers?”
“Sam, come on.” Winston tried to laugh. “Look—”
“What do you have ’em insured for?” Sam turned Winston’s wrist first this way, then that, as if he admired a priceless object. “I take it you’ve insured them with Lloyd’s? Half a million, Win?”
“A million,” Winston growled. “Apiece.”
With his free hand, Sam touched her brother’s splayed, captive forefinger. “Two hundred thou’ per finger, my, oh, my.” His face slowly lifted until his eyes were level with Winston’s. “Your hands are your life, Win.”
“Sam, look…” Winston stole a glance over his shoulder, but no help was in sight.
“You take Jessica’s life…then I take yours, one twohundred-thousand-dollar digit, by one. Is that clear?” The drawl bad crept back into his voice; somehow softness made it all the more deadly.
“Look, I know you’re upset—”
“Who’s upset, Dr. Nimble Fingers? I’m just tellin’ you, if you write DNR on her chart, if you get clever and tell ’em to stop feeding her, anything tricky at all like that, I’ll hunt you down and break your every damn finger. By the time I’m done with you, they’ll call you Dr. Hamburger Hands.”
Winston tried to laugh, but it came out a whinny. “Get yourself under control, man! I know how ydu feel, but—”
“You don’t have a clue how I feel, so I’m explaining, very carefully, and you better listen up. Now you go tell your old man that the same applies to him. I’ll start with your fancy fingers, and I’ll finish with his. If he takes Jess’s life from her, he’ll never cut out another heart. You go tell him I said so.” He tossed Winston’s hand aside.
Winston scuttled out of grabbing range, then halted. “I know you’re upset, Sam, but th-th-this—this is unforgivable.”
“Yeah.” Sam swooped up Jessica’s carrier.
Winston glanced toward the nurses’ station, then backed away as Sam advanced. “I could call Security, have you thrown out on your ass this minute.”
“I don’t recommend that. I really don’t.” Sam paused in the door to Jessica’s room.
“But I’ll make allowances for your emotional state, as long as you realize—”
Sam shut the door in his face, threw the bolt, then stood there, staring at the door. “God Almighty!” he whispered.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“SAM, LET ME OUT.”
“God, what an idiot I—” He stooped, unzipped the bag and helped her scramble up into his arms. Shaking with adrenaline, his muscles pumped with it, he leaned back against the door. “I meant every word, but still…”
“Did you mean you loved me?” That’s all that matters!
“I blew it. That wasn’t the way I should have…” He hugged her fiercely, then dropped his chin on her head. “I should’ve had my mom call her mom, maybe that would’ve…” He tipped his head to rub his cheek roughly back and forth across her ears. “Stupid!”
“No, that wouldn’t have helped. Mother always follows my father’s lead, and in this, he’ll take Winston’s word.”
“I should’ve handled it some other way, but how? When he said that, I didn’t want to break his hands, I wanted to break his self-satisfied, smirking face! Lost my temper, and maybe lost Jess while I was at it,” he whispered into her fur. “Talk about winning the battle and losing the war—I blew it!”
“You didn’t blow it. You did your best.” She lifted a paw to his cheek. “You did, Sam. Once Winston makes up his mind, you couldn’t change it with a crowbar. He thinks he knows everything—so whose advice is he going to take but his own? There was nothing you could do, my crazy knight, my Texas wild man, but thank you for fighting for me. I loved it.”
He sighed, and seemed comforted for a minute. Then he carried her over to the bed and knelt beside it. “Jess baby? It’s me. They’ve gone, and it’s just me. Me and my— your—our—fur-ball friend, here.” He touched her body’s still hand. “Could you stand me touching you, or have you had enough manhandling to last you a while?”
If it’s you touching me, I could handle about a lifetime’s worth. Oh, did you mean it, Sam, that you loved me?
He must have heard some part of her consent, because he sighed, then rose to climb onto the bed. He stretched out full-length alongside her body and tucked Jessica in between them. “Oh, babe…”
She twisted around to brace one paw against his chest. “You know, I always thought you married me on one of your impulses—an it-seemed-like-such-a-great-idea-at-thetime finale to a champagne picnic. And you always had a soft spot for strays, so I thought maybe that’s what I was to you. Take home a shy, nerdish virgin. Show her what life and loving’s all about, feed her up, teach her how to play, and if she has six happy months, then, hey, she’s well ahead of most of the rest of the world, who never get loved at all. Then turn her out—now that she’s tutored, she’ll do just fine on her own, then it’s on to the next one, a blonde this time.
“I guess that’s what I thought you were doing, thinking. But was it more than that, Sam? More than kindness and friendship? Did you really love me?”
Sam tipped his head to consider her, then tickled her chin. But he was working out his own line of thought. “You know, babe, I was just talking with your brother…”
Jessica snorted. “That was a conversation? I suppose now I get to hear the edited version.”
“He said that I was outside the loop, since we were divorced. That it was up to your family to determine your…treatment.”
“As it were.”
“And of course, technically, he’s got me dead to rights. But what I’m wondering is—untechnically speaking, in the court of the heart, not the law, which we all know is an ass—am I being a fatuous, sentimental, pushy fool, inflicting myself on you like this? Just because I’ve carried a torch for you all this time doesn’t mean you remember me from Ad—Hey, stop kissing me, cat. I don’t kiss anything in whiskers.”
Still focused beyond her, he wiped his cheek, then sighed. “I sure wish you’d wake up and tell me a thing or two…”
“Such as?” There was nothing she needed to know beyond what he’d just said, if only she could believe it.
“Like I always figured I knew why we broke up—I had to work it out for myself, since you sure weren’t about to tell me. But I’ve been wondering these last few days if I got it right, or if all this time I’ve been wandering off in left field?”
“What did you think went wrong?”
“Me, I figured you’d just never really loved me. I was your first man, and if numero uno is any kind of a semicompetent, halfway gentleman—sex itself is such a snazzy little concept—I imagine a young girl…” He paused. “And don’t give me that woman’s lib stuff—you were a baby, babe. Anyway, I im
agine a young girl confuses all that lovely feeling with love for the first guy that helped her discover it. Am I right?”
“Maybe sometimes…” She flexed her claws against his chest, then relaxed, flexed, relaxed. “But when it’s that way, wouldn’t it fade once the novelty wore off? In my case, a day hasn’t passed, Sam, when I didn’t speak your name in my mind. I bet I’ve worn a groove in my brain, saying your name.”
“Of course that’s bound to fade, once she’s learned all his tricks. Maybe she even wakes up one day and starts wondering—what it would be like with some other guy?”
“Never crossed my mind. I swear it. You don’t really think—”
“And I reckon I was begging for a kick in the teeth, persuading you to marry me with a bottle of champagne. I mean, I never set out to do that, that day, or that way. I’d had in mind doing it right—full moon, roses, diamond ring—though that was a problem, since I was dead broke with tuition loans back then. You in a long dress, me in a tux on one knee, saying pretty please, violins in the background, or at least a guitar.” He laughed and shook his head. “That’s the way I meant to do it. Instead, I drag you off to a justice of the peace, and you don’t even know what state you’re in, much less what a state you were in.”
“As I recall, I was in a state of terror, Sam. I was terrified you were going to sober up and realize what you were doing before you said ‘I do.’ But you were feeling that, too? You mean you wanted us as much as I did?”
He smoothed his palm over her body’s forehead, then up through her hair. “I wanted you so much, I lost my head and grabbed, babe, just when I should have gone slow. So I guess I figured it always served me right when you woke up one day and realized you wanted out. That I was a detour, not what you’d planned to do with your life.”
“Sam, I never; never, never wanted out. That’s not why I left you. I left you because I was a prideful, silly, untrusting idiot, who couldn’t believe someone as wonderful as you could love someone like me. And it only got worse once I found out that it wasn’t just me—that the whole world thought you were special.
“You see, I never thought it could last, Sam. So when I saw Timmy’s mother that night, I guess I’d been expecting her—or somebody like her—to come along from the very start.” She pressed her nose to his chest and lay there, remembering. She’d always loved lying in bed with him, her head pillowed on his shoulder, his soft, speculative drawl rambling on for hours in the dark. “What else did you want to ask me?”
“And I wanted to ask you to forgive me, Jess, for not supporting you better, ’bout going to med school. It’s just—-” he sighed “—I never could believe you really wanted it yourself. I mean, I know they’d been grooming you for exactly that since the day you could walk. And Lord knows you worked like a dog to get the grades you needed. But I just didn’t see you getting any joy, out of medicine. I thought if you lived that life, you’d be living it for your old man, not for yourself.”
“And you thought right, big guy.” Jessica ran a paw down the hard curve of his chest for the sheer joy of touching him.
“That’s no way to live, without joy.” Sam twisted around to pull a rose from the vase at her bedside, then rolled back to brush the blossom along her pale temple. “I used to notice how you’d light up, around flowers and growing things. I kept thinking you should look for something softer than medicine, something artistic, or hedonistic. That maybe you’d grow up to be a landscape designer, or a rose hybridizer, something that would let you work in the sunshine, not trapped under these damn fluorescents, and not dealing constantly with people, when you were so shy.
“I wanted you to choose your own direction in life, not trudge along the path your dad laid out for you. It’s a setup, letting somebody else choose the game and the rules, then spending the rest of your life wondering why you don’t play the game so well. Why you don’t measure up to the other players.”
“You wanted me to make up my own game, my own rules,” she remembered softly. “I remember you yelling that at me once in the middle of one of our fights, but I was too upset to understand…”
“But I’ve come to realize, babe, that I made myself part of your problem, not your solution. I was just one more know-it-all man barging into your life, deciding what was best for you, then trying to use my love as the bribe to make you do it. That’s not really love, or if it is, then it’s a clumsy, misguided, hurtful kind of love.”
He pulled the petals from the rose and strewed them softly, one by one, over her cheeks, her forehead, into her hair. Holding the last petal, he butterfly-brushed it along her lips as he whispered, “So I do beg your pardon, sweet Jessie…and I’d give anything—anything at all, babe—to have the chance to do it over again and this time do it right.” A tear trickled down his nose, and he swiped it aside.
“You…love me.” It was as hard to say as it was to believe—miracles didn’t come easy, and maybe they shouldn’t. “You really love me? Oh, Sam…Sam…” Sam Antonio mio, maybe this is why I wasn’t snatched directly off this earth? Maybe these are the words I was left behind in a cat to hear? Because a universe that contained stars and roses and cats, and a love true as Sam, might well contain a god merciful enough to grant her this one last, miraculous revelation. So if anyone’s listening, then…thank you!
Closing her eyes, she held her breath, half expecting that this was an end of some sort. That when next she opened her eyes, she’d see heavenly clouds, or see Sam, framed by a woman’s eyelashes, not those of a cat.
Deep within her, something seemed to shift, to tremble, then poise itself for flight.
Sam rubbed the end of her nose. “You snoozin’ off on me there? Must be nice to be a cat, nothing to worry ’bout but the next meal, where the next back rub’s coming from.”
Jessica flattened her ears and hissed.
“Hey, what’d I say?”
She blew out a breath, pressed a paw to his.chest and closed her eyes. But she’d lost the moment, with its odd, shifting momentum—perhaps had only imagined it. So thank-you wasn’t the magic word, either, huh? And I’ve already tried please. She sighed again. Guess I’ll just go back to wishing and praying. And bargaining. But if anyone’s listening out there, I’d give anything to have a second chance. With Sam. Anything at all. She waited, tail tip counting off the seconds…but there came no reply.
When she returned her attention to the outer world, Jessica found Sam, his lips pressed to her human temple, his breathing deep and catchy as a fevered child’s, his lashes quivering to his own troubled dreams.
Who was she to stay awake when the rest of the family slept? She turned to fit spoon fashion against Sam’s chest, lay, eyes half-mast, purr rising like sleepy song in her throat. He loves me. All the time I was loving him, he was loving me.
She stretched contentedly, and his hand slipped from her body’s arm to cup her furry stomach. She kissed his wrist, then closed her eyes. Before this, I just wanted my body back. Now, Sam, I want my life.
SHE AWOKE SOMETIME LATER to the sound of a brisk rap on their door. Then someone tried the doorknob. “Sam, you’d better wake up.” She sniffed his chin. He growled and rolled over onto his stomach. “I mean it; Sam, wake up. If they get the notion you’re locking them out, maybe pulling some kind of a siege, we’ll be in big trouble.” Depending on whether Winston had decided to take action or simply ignore Sam’s threat, they could be in trouble already. The knock came again, louder, and with it, the muffled sound of a woman’s voice.
“Sam, up!” She nipped his earlobe.
“Arr!” He twisted around to clutch his ear and glare. “Crazy, blasted animal, what was that for?”
“The door—” But the knocking had stopped. “Oh, great, they’ve gone. Now you’ve done it.”
They both sat up and stretched. “What is it?” Sam asked around a yawn. “D’you need to go out?”
“Nothing so simple.” If they left, it could well be that neither would be permitted to return. Perha
ps the same thought had occurred to Sam. When she didn’t pester him further, he moved to the chair, opened his laptop and accessed his daily messages. Jessica leapt to his armrest.
How’s it going? was the laconic query from someone named Will.
Having a wonderful time, Sam typed back. I almost committed murder today. Sometimes I hear voices, and— major sign of psychosis—I’m cohabiting with a cat. Meanwhile, Jess…His hand hovered over the keys, then he hit the delete key and held it down until the cursor had gobbled up every word. He typed, It’s not, frowned at this for a moment, then added, yet, but it will, Will.
“You’re not going insane, love.” Jessica reached past his arm to tap a key. “Please, please let me use your laptop, and I’ll explain everything.”
“No way!” he muttered absently, reading. He elbowed her gently off her perch, then scowled at his next message. “No, no, no, no, you don’t want Pilcher’s medium, you know-nothing, you’ve got to use—” Keys rattled, his fingers flew.
“What’s wrong with this picture? You’ll talk to your lab people in North Carolina, but you won’t talk to me. I guess I’d have a better chance of making you listen if I was down there, with a keyboard, and you—” It hit her suddenly. “I could send you a message by e-mail!” She leapt to the windowsill, then spun around twice, chasing her tail. “I wouldn’t have to worry about printing it out. All I’d need is somebody else’s computer on which to—” She flopped over onto her side. “Rats. Never mind.”
They both jumped as a knock came again on the door. Sam scrambled to his feet, scooped Jessica up and dropped her into her bag. “Not a peep,” he warned. “We’ve got trouble enough as it is.”
From her spy hole, Jessica watched him stride to the door, square his shoulders and open it. The tension went out of him. “Oh, it’s you. Hello.”
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