But now he was home and she was in his lap and his arms. He could touch her, and had already spanked her, once, although it had been a somewhat dissatisfactory event, as far as he was concerned. He wanted the whole package. He wanted to be her husband, and everything that came with that. When he was an adolescent and Clint had spoken to him of his love for his wife, and their special kind of relationship, he’d found himself both turned on and touched in a way he’d never expected to be. Nothing he’d ever heard about or read had ever hit him in quite that same manner, and he knew that it was right for him.
And, as he matured, he came to recognize that it was more than that, that it was Catherine herself that was right for him, whether or not he ever got a chance with her in this lifetime. He’d made up his mind, before he’d entered college, that he was going to do whatever it took to make himself enough money so that he could come home one day and be around her, even if he had to include Clint in that equation. It would be enough just to be able to see her occasionally.
He’d heard of Clint’s illness through his mother, and had wanted to come home, but frankly, he was at a delicate spot in his business dealings, and he wasn’t sure that he could get away. Besides, they were both very private people, and he knew that neither Cat nor Clint would have wanted anyone else hanging around them, and if they did, it wouldn’t have been him.
When Clint had passed, he’d sent Cat a small arrangement – deliberately not of lavender roses – expressing his sympathies, but he hadn’t been able to get away for the funeral, and, in a way, he was somewhat glad of that. Finn wasn’t at all sure he’d be able to trust himself to give her the time she needed to come to grips with his death, so he forced himself to stay away almost longer than he had intended.
But he was back now, and he intended to claim her, in every way that was physically, emotionally, spiritually and psychologically possible, and Clint’s ghost was not going to get in his way. In fact, he liked to think that Clint would be happy to turn the reins over to him, as he fully intended to love and honor – and guide her - as much and as capably as he had.
She sniffled and sobbed, and he leaned over and fed Kleenexes to her, which she accepted gratefully. When the heartrending sobs had subsided a bit, she raised her head a little from his chest, her hair plastered against the side of it by her tears, and said in a watery voice, “You’re still here.”
Tears were still rolling down her cheeks, and it was all he could do not to cry himself at the sight, but he had to be strong for her. Without loosening his hold on her one bit, Finn reached out and brushed a hunk of it out of her swollen eyes. “Yeah, ain’t that just a bitch?”
There didn’t seem to be anything she could do to move this mountain of a man if he wouldn’t go on his own, and he was wonderfully warm and comforting, so she let herself just put her head back down on his chest and fall asleep.
It was very hard for Finn not to jump up and down at that small victory, but he tried to satisfy himself by merely kissing the top of her head. To his delight, she fell asleep almost immediately, and he cursed very colorfully when, not five minutes later, the phone rang.
He took it upon himself to answer it, knowing it was his mother by the caller ID.
“Hi, mom.”
“Oh, you’re still there?”
“Yeah, I stayed and made sure she had something to eat.”
“Good boy!”
Finn rolled his eyes, trying to come to grips with the fact that he would never be much more than eight in his mother’s eyes.
“How is she?”
“Tired and depressed and she’s lost weight, so that’s why I made sure she ate some of the chicken you sent. She’s sleeping now. I was just about to leave.” Her arm snaked around his waist to hold him when he said that, as if she didn’t want him to go, and his heart melted further.
“Man, I hope she isn’t slipping back into a depression like she got into just after Clint died.”
Finn’s interest was piqued. “Oh yeah?” He tried to play it off casually, but wanted to know more.
Luckily, it wasn’t hard to get his mother to talk. “Yeah, we were really worried about her there for a while. She didn’t much deal with his illness and the inevitability of his death, I don’t think, while he was sick, and once he died it all hit her really hard. She nearly faded away to nothing right in front of our eyes. We need to make sure she eats.”
Well, he had been planning on just tucking her into bed and leaving, but that settled that. He was going to make sure that she ate something more – pretty much anything but junk food – before he left, and he was going to make sure that she ate regularly from now on, whether she liked it or not.
“Definitely. Can’t have that,” he replied, hoping he sounded casual enough.
“Well, I’ll see you when you get back. Don’t forget we’re going over to Meme’s.”
“I won’t. Love you.”
“Love you too. Drive carefully.”
“I will.” As much as he would have loved to have let her sleep on him all afternoon – and even more so all night, he had other commitments today, and he wanted to make sure she got something more to eat before he left, and he had a feeling there might be a bit of an issue about that, knowing Cat. He wanted to introduce the idea as soon as possible, so that if he needed to discipline her, they could get it done and over with and get her fed before he needed to leave.
He began to wake her, slowly and carefully, knowing how much she hated to wake up, especially abruptly. All through those summers he’d spent with Clint, he’d carefully catalogued in his mind every tidbit he could about Catherine, and he remembered nearly everything – likes, dislikes, pet peeves, preferences and opinions. Finn decided that the best way to wake her was with a soft, undemanding kiss.
She responded nicely, too, opening her mouth to the gentlest of pressures and making him moan at her warm, sleepy compliance. His hand found her braless breast, slowly, giving her more than enough time to raise an objection, but she didn’t, as the edge of his thumb found an already pert nipple and she sighed slightly into his mouth. Her hands sought his hair, which he kept a little longer than Clint had, but as soon as those small hands found his broad shoulders and she woke up to exactly who it was that was kissing her, she jumped away from him like a scalded cat, standing well away from him.
“Don’t do that!” She rubbed the back of her hand over her lips, as if wiping his kiss away, but it was that her lips were tingling from the feel of him. Her whole body was humming, and he’d barely touched her. She was cold now, from the lack of his body heat, and furious that she’d noticed it. What was he doing to her, damnit?
And he just sat there, grinning like an idiot.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” she asked rudely.
“Not quite.” Finn rose and went to her fridge. “What would you like to have for lunch?”
“Lunch? I just had breakfast. Don’t you remember? You were here for it. You’re too young for senility. That’s my excuse.”
He was disgustingly affable, to a point, still peering into her fridge and assessing the food situation. “Okay, then what would you like to have as a second helping of breakfast? Or a mid morning snack? You have more casserole, hot dogs, some unidentifiable deli meat . . .”
Cat crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not hungry, thank you. You can leave now.”
He’d already graduated to rifling through her cupboards. “Spicy chicken Ramen, Oodles of Noodles, Spaghetti O’s –” he held the can up and looked back at her, “Spaghetti O’s? Really? I wouldn’t have guessed.” Then he started listing things again, “Peanut butter, Fluff, raspberry jelly . . .”
“You’re too young to be deaf, Finn, but I just said I’m not hungry.”
“PB and J it is,” he pronounced, looking in her breadbox but finding it empty and turning back to her with a curious look.
“It’s in the freezer.”
“It’s in the freezer,” he repeated, finding it
while mumbling, “of course it is, Finn. She has a perfectly good breadbox, but she keeps the bread in the freezer, of course, you idiot. Doesn’t everyone?” Setting the ingredients in front of him, he said conversationally, as he constructed a sandwich, “You should really put a note in there saying something like, ‘See Freezer’, so that people don’t get confused . . .”
“People don’t, since I’m the only one living here,” she growled.
He put the sandwich on the plate, and added chips from a bag on top of the fridge, and offered it to her, then snatched the plate back from her, not that she was reaching for it anyway. “Do you like your chips with your sandwich, or in your sandwich?”
“It’s not my sandwich, so make it whatever way you like.” Cat shrugged her shoulders.
Finn placed it on the snack bar and said quietly, “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Catherine, as many times as I need to. It’s your choice whether you eat with a sore bottom or not.”
He was glad that glares couldn’t hurt him, or he’d be stone cold dead, but then he actually watched her stubborn set in, and her jaw clench.
“I am not hungry, so I am not eating that sandwich. Make of that what you will.”
What he made was her butt very sore, and her eat the sandwich, and he barely moved a muscle doing so, because she hadn’t noticed – being years out of practice and all - that he’d already moved his food onto the rung of the bar stool he’d pulled out in front of him when he put the sandwich down, in anticipation of her defiant answer. Clint had told him she could be stubborn sometimes, that occasionally she got something in her craw and just decided that she needed to prove her point to him that she was an independent woman, when there was never any doubt in his mind – ever – that she was a very independent woman. He’d never considered that the fact that he spanked her diminished her in any way, least of all, her independence.
But, as he’d said, she sometimes couldn’t get her head around something he really wanted her to do, almost always something that truly was for her own good – go see a doctor for a test, or take a particularly disgusting medicine, or some such thing, and she would flat out refuse to do it. It went against her usual affable nature, but then, everybody had their quirks. It was up to him – the man that loved her – to make sure that his woman didn’t cling to quirks that could get her into trouble, and if she did, then she needed to be corrected, in no uncertain terms.
He had her over his raised knee, baggy knit pants around her ankles where she definitely didn’t want to encounter them, followed alarmingly by her pretty and delicately purple flowered panties. “Are you out of your mind?” she yelled and wiggled and tried to hit him, but he’d already maneuvered the chair well out into the kitchen, and himself well out of the way, so there was nothing for her to hit, and nothing for her to latch onto to assist herself in any way, either.
“Bastard!” she yelled.
“Ah ah ah-hh,” he chided, giving her a very hard swat and she embarrassed herself completely by fairly bellowing because of it. “Watch your language, Catherine. You’ll find I’m a good deal less lenient about that kind of thing than Clint was. You always had much more of a potty mouth than I would have let you get away with.” He leaned down a little towards her, but not enough to do her any good, damn him. “Than I will let you get away with,” he corrected.
Each swat made her wish – more than the one before - that she had just eaten the blasted sandwich. Why couldn’t she just have eaten the friggin’ sandwich? She always ended up regretting it when she got stubborn like this. Always. It never ended well for her – or her backside - and yet she always let herself get her back up about something stupid, not that she’d ever admit that any of her various causes were stupid. On the contrary, she would defend them to the death.
But she ate the blasted sandwich.
Standing up.
While glaring daggers at him.
As he stood there, smiling beatifically back at her, and making her several more sandwiches for later.
And it didn’t help that he was so darned pleasant about it all. He did a good job blistering her bottom, at least as well as Clint would have in the same situation, she hated to admit, and then he’d helped her up very carefully, pulled up her pants and panties, although she’d brushed his hands away, whereas she wouldn’t have with Clint since he would never have let her get away with that, but then, he was her husband. Finn poured her a glass of milk and was disgustingly solicitous of her the entire time.
He was awful, and she hated him.
Well, she wanted to hate him, anyway. That counted for something, as far as she was concerned.
“Finish the milk, too,” he prodded gently, poking the cup towards her.
If she didn’t stop frowning, her face was going to set into that expression permanently. She had half a mind to take the big mouthful of it she had in her mouth right now and squirt it back out at him, but then she caught him looking at her as if he knew exactly what she was thinking, with his eyebrow all raised expectantly, and then she remembered how that right hand of his, that was right now cradling a can of soda, had felt against her bare rear, and thought better of it and swallowed it all down.
It sucked to realize there were consequences to her actions, again. It sucked big time.
“Thank you. You’ll feel better for having something in your stomach. I’ve left you with mom’s stuff and two more sandwiches. When I come back tomorrow, I expect it all to be eaten.”
Who did he think he was, laying down the rules for her, telling her what to do? He was just the neighbor’s kid –
She was hauled up against him in an instant, her feet dangling well above the floor, her body plastered against his, and he was only using one arm to hold her at her waist and seemed entirely unfazed by the added weight, as if she weighed no more than a housefly. Cat could feel the entire length of him against her - both of them - and knew he was fully capable, and probably had been from the moment he’d stepped in the door. Come to think of it, she knew he had been. It had been hard to miss when he’d come into the house, and then he’d put her on his lap where it had been extremely blatant, and now, here he was again, in all his turgid glory.
His mouth sought hers, and, to her shame, she didn’t even try to avoid it but rather joined his kiss eagerly, so much so that he leaned back a little and looked at her, as if verifying that it was still her, then bent to her again, deciding he didn’t want to consider his luck too closely. Finn’s free hand claimed her everywhere he wanted; he gave it free rein. He clenched what he knew had to be a tender bottom cheek that fit his hand just perfectly at its rounded peak, then let it travel up the curve of her back, under her shirt, reveling in the soft skin of her back, then diving into that sweet smelling hair of hers to hold her head still for his plundering tongue.
Finally, he had to set her aside or he’d take her right then and there, on the floor of the kitchen, and that wasn’t where he wanted to make love to her the first time, so he set her down and stepped away from her, panting and unable to stop feasting his eyes on her. “Dinner tomorrow in Bangor. Think of an out of the way restaurant that none of your friends are likely to go to. I’ll be here at six.” He gave her that look, along with his card, on the back of which he’d sprawled his cell phone number. “I’m not kidding about wanting you to eat that food,” he restated in a tone that made her butt tingle.
Then, with one last long, luxurious kiss that had him biting at her lips near the end that had him barely able to pry himself away from her, he was gone.
The phone rang while she was just standing there in the middle of her kitchen like some dazed schoolgirl who’d just had her first French kiss. She’d forgotten what a Grand Central Station this place used to be.
Of course, it was Jane. “Is my son still there?”
“No,” Cat cleared her throat, hoping Jane wouldn’t notice the hoarseness of her voice. “He left.”
“Good. We’re going over to see Meme.”
/> “Oh, that’ll be good. Listen, thank you for the chicken dish. It’s my favorite.”
“I know. Did you have some?”
“Yes. Finn can be . . .” she searched for the right words, “very persuasive.”
Jane chuckled. “Yeah, he can be, when he wants something.”
Cat bit her lip and shut the hell up on that one.
“He’s worried about you, and so am I. He said he thought you’d lost some weight and were depressed again, are you?”
She cleared her throat again. “No, just sad.”
“You’re clearing your throat.”
Damnit. That was a clear tell that she was hiding something, but she never realized it until after she’d done it a couple of times. Bloody hell.
“Okay, really sad.”
“Oh, Cat, I’m really sorry but you’ve just gotta snap out of it. Get out and do something. You’re spending entirely too much time at that house. Are you taking your antidepressants?”
“Yes, mom.”
“Good. Well, then we need to get you out some. Lemme see whose turn it is to have the girls over.”
“Okay.”
“And lemme ask you something, since you’ve spent some time with Finn.”
Uh-oh.
“Do you think my son is gay, but is just scared to tell me? I mean, he hasn’t had a girlfriend in so long I don’t remember the last one’s name. And he’s never even brought a girl home for me to meet . . . ”
Dear God. The absurdity of the question, and who she was asking it of, made her want to snort in Jane’s ear, but she managed not to. “I don’t think so, Jane. Maybe he’s just not comfortable with being sexual around you at all – hetero or not. And you’ve told me yourself that he’s been flat out, building his business. He doesn’t have time for a girlfriend. You know how those nerdy computer types are.”
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