Still, something inside just wasn't satiated. He wanted more.
Rick stepped out of the shower and pulled on a robe. He needed to see Jennifer again and couldn't imagine why.
Two of her cats had joined Jennifer on the bed.
Rick found her protectiveness of those little animals endearing, although he'd never been a cat fancier. Had Jennifer ever thought about having human children? To his surprise, the idea didn't fill him with panic the way it had when any of the women he'd dated started talking about families. It should. What did he know about being a parent? Nothing.
He bent over and kissed Jennifer's hair.
Jennifer smiled but didn't open her eyes. "See you in a couple of hours," she promised.
Rick spent a few minutes stretching, then went through the basic forms, but his heart wasn't in Tae Kwon Do.
He wasn't sure whether Jennifer's move into his bedroom was a one-time thing, or something a little longer lasting, so he decided to use his office while she slept. He needed to check his e-mail and make sure everything was under control at the office. Surely that could get his mind off this impossible fascination with Jennifer.
He fired up the computer and logged onto the company’s intranet.
Some days, nothing went right. For once in the years he'd run the company, there were no immediate fires that needed his attention. Eric, his second in command at tattoo.com, had e-mailed him with the information that they'd heard from some New York media conglomerate who claimed to be interested in a partnering arrangement, but that was hardly an emergency. In Rick's experience, big claims about partnerships usually boiled down to a junior marketing assistant wanting a free tattoo design.
He told Eric to go ahead and look into it.
Ten minutes after he'd logged on, he was done. Bringing Eric on as President had been the smartest decision he'd made since he started the business. It let him spend his time doing what he wanted with life.
Right now, though, his strange reaction to Jennifer left him more than a little confused about exactly what he wanted to do with his life.
He shook his head to clear out overly-philosophic thinking and notebook caught his eye. It was labeled Plans for Rick Engle's Life. If that wasn't a sign, he'd swear off psychics for the year.
"Mind if I take a look at your notebook?" he called through the wall.
"Whatever," came the mumbled reply.
He flipped it open.
Ten minutes later, Rick knew exactly what was wrong with his life and precisely why Jennifer was spending all of this time with him. Her notebook didn't come right out and say she'd go to bed with him to make him a better person, but it didn't take much reading between the lines. Jennifer was in the rescuing business and he was her target. So much for his over-active fantasies.
He grasped the notebook in one fist and stomped toward his bedroom. He could nip this problem in the bud.
"Want to talk about your big plans for me?" Rick asked. He tossed the notebook on the bed next to Jennifer, scattering the cats who’d formed a protective shield around her.
Those kittens were a lot like him, he realized. They probably thought they were helping Jennifer out, just as he had. Little did they know that they were victims of Jennifer's excessive kindness.
"Huh?' She stretched, exposing more of her slender body than he wanted to see right then.
"I was curious about whether you intended to bring me in on this transformation, or whether I was just supposed to watch."
***
Jennifer looked at Rick, then at the notebook he'd tossed on the bed next to her. Her first reaction was pure anger.
"How dare you go through my private things?"
"What are you talking about? I asked."
She had a vague recollection of Rick shouting something from the next room. "Obviously I wouldn't have agreed if I'd understood what you were talking about."
Rick didn't back down. "Yeah? Well in retrospect I can see that. It's too late for that now."
"You could have--"
He bulled ahead. "Of course I certainly understand why you wouldn't want me in on this metamorphosis. It's only my life. I'm the experimental rat, right. Keep me fat, oversexed, and happy."
Rick was asking for it and Jennifer opened up. "For once you said something right. You are a rat. And you forgot one word. Lazy. Look at you. You're smart, creative, and you have the talent to do just about anything. Well, guess what? It's Monday and you're hanging around doing nothing at all. On Friday you were shopping, not working. And you spent all weekend messing with your truck." She paused for a moment, forcing herself to be honest even though Rick didn't deserve it. "Well, you did work on a car for a while, but that's all. What a life. What a career. No wonder you don't want to be improved."
Rick folded his arms across his chest. She'd read that this was body language for rejecting her ideas. Even if she hadn't studied up in Cosmo, she could have guessed from the glare in Rick's eyes.
"Let me think." Rick pretended to ponder. "I spent Friday helping someone move because she couldn't follow her apartment complex rules. That's close to an ideal lazy day. Then--"
"Hey--" Jennifer tried to break in.
Rick kept going. "Saturday you conked me on the head with a ten pound frozen fish. Can't get much more perfect than that."
"That was an accident."
"Right. That's why it doesn't hurt as bad as what happened Sunday."
"What are you talking about?" All Jennifer could remember about the previous day was hours of passionate lovemaking. Unless Rick was that angry about her father's criticism.
"In my circles, it's called pity-f-- that is, pity-sex. You know, when you go to bed with a guy because you want to change him, not because--"
"Is that what you think? That I made love with you just because--"
Rick patted her notebook. "Page ten, I think."
"I never--"
"Read it and weep." He picked up the notebook and started flipping through it.
Jennifer grabbed it out of his hands. "I told you not to read that."
"All right then, you read it. Read me that part on page ten. I need to keep it straight in my mind."
She turned through the pages and read. Her face started to burn when she got to the section he was talking about. She'd meant it innocently enough, but all of her talk about getting truly close to him could be taken out of context.
A night of getting closer to him than she had to anyone else in the world could make the confusion natural. Natural, that is, if you were a suspicious jerk.
"Trust me, I didn't go to bed with you because I was trying to fix you. I try to help a lot of people--"
"You try to help a lot of cats," Rick corrected. "And from what I can see, most of them are in bed with you."
The cats had crawled around her again, as if trying to protect her. She stroked first one, then another, rewarding them for their loyalty. "Sleeping with cats isn't at all the same as sleeping with humans."
He held his arms out at his sides. "Look at me, Jennifer. Do I look like the kind of guy who needs someone taking care of me? I'm a grown man."
He looked impossibly good. So good that Jennifer's desire perked up. She ruthlessly suppressed those treacherous thoughts. Confusing anger and sexual excitement was natural, she reminded herself.
"So what are you going to do when you're eighty?" she demanded. "You won't be so pretty then. And you certainly won't be able to work on cars for a bunch of sorority chicks."
"I thought I might go on a world tour when I'm too old to mess with cars. You know, see the Pyramids and the Parthenon and the Eiffel Tower."
"Right. With all the money you've made doing what?"
Rick frowned, then sat down on the bed next to her. "You've got a thing about money, don't you?"
Jennifer tried to shove Rick away but ended up pushing herself out of bed instead. She bounced to her feet, then realized she was still naked. "Don't look." She grabbed the sheet from the bed.
Unfortunately, Rick was sitting directly on the sheet. When she yanked it, it yanked back and Jennifer stumbled into him.
"I fell for this stuff once," he told her, resolutely setting her away from him. "You don't really think I'm interested after reading that, do you?"
If he'd been trying to hurt her, he'd succeeded.
"Get up and let me have the sheet," Jennifer ordered.
"Of course." He and yanked the sheet off the bed, then tossed it to her.
She wrapped it around herself trying to cover every inch her body, then struggled to remember what they'd been talking about before she'd found herself so exposed.
Oh, right, Rick had just accused her of being money fixated.
"I don't have a thing about money." Admittedly, more than a few of her fellow members of the Dallas Cat Rescue League had gone to college with only one goal in mind--the affluent husband. She, on the other hand, had come out with a degree in history, a minor in public relations, and a love for cats. One thing she knew for certain, money was low on her priority list.
"You don't? Let me see." Rick ticked off his fingers as he counted what he must consider to be her terrible sins. "You are ashamed of your father because he lost his money." He held up a hand when she started to protest, then continued. "You think I'm wasting my life because I'm not chasing after money."
Rick seemed to run out of steam. "If our acquaintance lasted any longer, I'm sure I'd find other examples."
"Fine," Jennifer retorted. "For your information, I'm not ashamed of my father."
"That's why you were afraid to take me down to meet him the other day."
"I was worried you'd make fun of him."
"Fun of him for what? Finding a job he likes? Did he have that when he was rich? Isn't that an accomplishment?"
"Not if he has to sponge off his daughter." She wasn't being completely fair. Her father had never asked her for money, but he hadn't turned her down either.
"Ha. It comes back to money."
"That isn't what..." Jennifer cut off her answer. She didn't have to waste time arguing with Rick. She could go on with her life.
Except, right now, she had no place to go and no money to go with.
Tough. She would rather live in a homeless shelter than put up with Rick's accusations.
"I'm going," she announced.
For an instant that seemed to take the wind from Rick's sails. "Are you going to your parents' place?"
"I told you they aren't allowed to have anyone live with them." As if she would move in with her parents, even if she could. The possibility of having to watch Rick pull up to the sorority in his truck, then pull out again with miscellaneous sets of blondes almost made her gag.
"So where will you go?"
"Not that it's any of your concern, but Hector from downstairs offered me his old truck. I can live in that."
"Don't make me the bad guy here," Rick told her. "You're the one with the big plans about fixing me."
"Oh, right. I forgot helping you is such a sin. Trust me, if I'd known you were such a jerk, I wouldn't have bothered."
Rick gritted his teeth. From the slight movement of his lips, Jennifer guessed he was counting to ten.
"Put yourself in my place, just for a minute," he said, his voice incredibly calm. "Whether you meant to or not, you gave me permission to read your notebook. Well, I did and I can't undo that. So what was I supposed to do? Let you continue experimenting on me?"
"I guess not."
"So I did the right thing?"
"Confronting me is one thing. Accusing me of pity-sex is something else."
"I apologize for that." Rick looked as apologetic as a battle ax. "Maybe going to bed with me wasn't part of your original plan."
Jennifer decided to give Rick the benefit of the doubt, although she was quite certain he didn't deserve it. "You've got to admit that you're wasting your life away. You might not want my help, but you need it."
Rick shook his head firmly. "There's a cliché about calling the kettle black. Look at you. No job, no home, no money, and a bunch of cats. At least I worked on my car over the weekend. You spent your time showing off your legs for the guys in the garage until I could hardly think. You could have at least checked the classifieds for another job."
Despite her annoyance at Rick's accusation, Jennifer couldn't deny the truth. She had gotten so caught up in helping Rick that she had forgotten to look after herself. On the other hand, she hadn't realized he found her legs so distracting. She let the sheet slip to show just a little calf.
Rick's gaze froze for just a second, then he visibly wrenched it back to Jennifer's face. "Legs, I mean let's be honest. You're so busy rescuing cats and people that your own life is going down the tubes. Why else would you have taken that rotten job at Schilling's? You can't blame me for that."
Her enjoyment of his Freudian slip took a bit of the sting from his accusation. But only a bit. "My life is fine."
"Now who's living in a fantasy world? Ten minutes ago, you were planning on moving into an old truck."
"I still am. It won't kill me."
"Look around, Jennifer. You'd be foolish to trade a roof over your head, however temporary, for living in a truck. Maybe my life isn't perfect, but fix your own, first, before you go meddling with mine."
Jennifer glared at him, clenched her fists, and waited for her automatic response. She was smart and clever. She'd shove Rick's words back in his mouth.
Nothing came. Could he be right? She'd worked lousy jobs since her father had to let her go. Her social life revolved around cats. Worse, the man who'd helped her discover the legendary multiple-O hated her guts. Rick did have a point. All in all, her life wasn't perfect.
***
Jennifer's glare didn't encourage Rick to continue. He put his hands on his hips and watched. He'd said his piece. If she wanted to walk out on him now, that was her problem.
"I..." Jennifer actually stammered? This was the girl who'd led the Highland Park High School debate team to a state championship?
"You're right," Jennifer told him. She looked around, grabbed a tissue, and blew her nose. "We both need to change."
Rick wasn't impressed by the concession. Still, despite his annoyance that she wanted to change him rather than love him the way he was, it wasn't time to make waves. Especially if the alternative was her moving into Hector's old truck.
"I guess everyone can stand some improving," Rick admitted.
"I don't know what to do," Jennifer told him. "I thought I could keep the job at Schilling's for sure. I mean, how hard is it to run a cash register and help women pick underwear?"
He wished she hadn't brought the underwear topic up. Jennifer's sheet might cover her, but she'd wrapped it so tightly that he could see straight through it.
"What skills do you have?" Rick asked. "Can you program?"
Jennifer looked at him as if he'd grown a second head. "Are you trying to be my career counselor? At least I had a job last Friday. Before you got me fired."
"I thought you were asking for help."
"I wasn't." She paused for a moment. "Do you have yesterday's newspaper?"
"Are you asking for help?"
"Darn it, I guess."
"All right, I'll dig up the newspaper. But why don't you apply at tattoo.com? They're in the neighborhood, so you could walk to work, and they're hiring."
"You're kidding, right?" From her expression, he could have just as well suggested that she go into the blackmail business.
"I happen to know the president. I could give you a recommendation."
Rick loved the sound of Jennifer's laugh. It wasn't quite as appealing when her laughter was directed at him.
"First of all, I hate the Internet. It ruined my father, remember?" She held out a hand to stop him when he opened his mouth to answer. "Second, I'm not going to let anyone take naked pictures of me covered with tattoos. Third, I don't know anything about computer programming. And fourth, think about what you said.
You'd give me a recommendation. What, did you work on the guy's car? Do you really think that would make him trust your recommendation? I mean, if you have such a good in, why aren't you working there?"
Rick shrugged his shoulders. "I'm sure you're right. Just to prove it, why don't we get him on the phone?"
Jennifer's eyes widened slightly as he picked up the cordless phone from the nightstand and pressed the speed dial. "Why do I think you dialed one of your car repair buddies?"
"Because you're a naturally suspicious person?" Rick suggested. "Or maybe because you don't think you've fixed me yet."
"Give me that." She grabbed the phone from his hand. "Who is this?" she demanded.
After a second, she handed back the phone. "It's somebody named Ginger Newton. Don't even try to tell me she's the President of tattoo.com."
"Ginger, it's Rick," he spoke into the phone. "Eric around?"
"He's out with a client, Rick. Do you need me to page him?"
"Yeah. Have him call me at home. It'd mean a lot to me."
Jennifer grinned at him as he hung up the phone. "Nice try. Let me guess. He's out of the country, right? I'm sure he'll call when he gets back. Maybe at the beginning of the next century."
The phone rang.
Without saying anything, Rick passed the phone back to Jennifer.
"Rick Engle's residence." She paused for a moment. "May I ask who's calling?"
She handed Rick the phone. "If this is a joke," she hissed, "you're going to be missing significant parts of your anatomy."
"Rick here."
"What's going on, boss?" Eric's voice sounded anxious.
"Nothing serious. I just need a favor. An old friend is looking for a job. I thought there might be something around tattoo.com that you could use her in. The only problem is, she doesn't trust the Internet."
"None of our clients trust the Internet."
"Yeah. That's why I thought she might be a good match."
Eric laughed. "Send her by and I'll talk with her."
"Here's Jennifer. I'll let you set up the appointment."
Truth about Cats Page 9