Flirting With Pete: A Novel

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Angus,” she called softly and scooted a little closer. “Are you there, Angus?” She waited, listened, heard absolutely nothing. It occurred to her that the cat was probably sound asleep somewhere deep in the room, and that her time— of which there wasn’t a great deal left before she had to shower and dress— was better spent exploring Connie’s me-cartons. But the journal was a story, perhaps real, perhaps not, but not immediate in any event. The cat, however, was alive. It was here, waiting for Connie, as it had been doing for nearly four weeks. Casey needed to let it know that she could take care of it, too.

  “An-gus,” she coaxed, inching closer. Connie’s cat, now hers? Sight unseen, she felt possessive of it. “Come say hello, pretty kitty,” she sang, because she hadn’t ever met a cat that wasn’t pretty, hadn’t ever met one that didn’t like being praised.

  Scooting up another little bit brought her within arm’s reach of the door. Leaning forward, she peered through the few inches of opening. When she imagined she saw eyes, she drew back. Not a ghost, Casey. A cat, she reminded herself. Reaching forward, she opened the door a bit.

  The eyes were there, definitely not imagined. They sat two feet into the room and glowed out at her from a shadowed patch. With daylight filtering in behind, the animal was silhouetted. Casey saw the outline of ears angling up from the corners of its head, but little else.

  Waiting for his friend to return. Her heart melted. She might resent Connie Unger for many things, not the least of them making her feel unwanted, unloved, and unfit for the job of being his daughter. But she didn’t resent his leaving her a cat. A cat was as close as she could get to having a living, breathing part of him. A cat was more important than a townhouse. She could do a cat. She could do it very well.

  She extended a hand toward the eyes. “Oh, Angus, I am so sorry. I’m not Connie, but I do love cats. I’d be very happy to take care of you.” She slid forward another little bit, which brought her as close to the threshold as she dared go. She kept her hand out, inviting the cat to sniff it. “Come say hello, big guy,” she coaxed gently.

  “How do you know he’s big?” asked Jordan as he came up the stairs.

  “Big eyes, big ears, big cat,” Casey said and tacked on a prudent, “Yes?” After all, Jordan knew the cat. Jordan also knew the garden. He also knew the house. Casey might have fixated on the unfairness of a stranger knowing everything she didn’t, if she hadn’t been thinking of something she did know. She knew that despite his outward scruffiness, this man smelled of soap, that when she had run her hand over his chest she had felt soft hair under his shirt, that even this early in the day his body was warm. These things were embedded in her brain and, with his approach, became wedged in her throat.

  “Yes,” he confirmed as he rounded the newel post.

  She let herself enjoy the sight of him for a minute, then, like a good girl, returned to the cat. “How old is he?”

  “Eight. He has lots of years left. Connie took good care of him.” Squatting down beside Casey, he called gently, “Hey, Angus. Come on out here. I’m your buddy.” He made a ticking sound with his tongue.

  “Does he have food and litter in there?” Casey whispered.

  “Everything he needs. Cats are pretty self-contained.” He went forward on one knee and opened the door a bit more. “Come on out here, Angus. She won’t bite.”

  Able to really see the cat now, Casey sighed in delight. “He’s beautiful.” Largely gray, with bold white and black markings, he had a square muzzle, a pug nose, and a bib of fur that fanned out over his chest. He was looking right up at Jordan with large, green eyes— large, green, beseechful eyes that might have suggested unhappiness, confusion, or fear.

  “He’s a Maine Coon, isn’t he?” Casey asked.

  “Yes.” Jordan reached for the cat, but the cat drew back. “Hey,” he scolded in a raspy voice. “What’s that about? You know me. I’m your pal.”

  Angus knew that. The look he gave Jordan said as much. You may be my pal, it said as the cat turned wary eyes on Casey, but who in the devil is she?

  “She’s Connie’s daughter. She’s okay.”

  Angus did not look appeased.

  “I wouldn’t have pegged Connie for an animal person,” Casey mused. He had always seemed too formal.

  “Cats. That’s all. Actually, Angus is all. Dr. Unger wasn’t wild about other animals, not even other cats, and the feeling was mutual. The only lap Angus’d ever sit on was Dr. Unger’s.”

  “And Connie allowed it?” Casey asked, surprised as she looked up at Jordan.

  He met her gaze. “You mean, the touching thing? I guess that only applied to people. He was an old softie when it came to Angus.”

  “Why?”

  “Why did he love Angus?”

  “Why didn’t he love people?”

  Jordan shrugged.

  A shrug didn’t do it for Casey, and while this man surely knew more about mulch than he did about the human mind, he was all she had at the moment. “Did he ever drop a hint— you know, suggest that his father beat him? Or that he grew up with people who couldn’t bear to be touched? Or that he was sexually abused?”

  The gardener slid her a dry look. “If that was the case, he clearly overcame some of it, since he sired you.”

  “One night. That’s all he was with my mother. And what he had with his wife isn’t what I’d call a marriage.”

  “They seemed happy enough together. Besides, who’s to say she wasn’t the one who wanted to live apart?”

  “If that was so,” Casey suggested, “maybe it was because he wouldn’t touch her. I’d think that would drive a woman crazy after a while.”

  “Not all women are like you.”

  She drew back. “Excuse me?”

  “Not all women define themselves in terms of sex.”

  “I don’t do that.”

  “What was that down in the garden about?”

  “Making a point that I’m different from my father,” she informed him. “I like being with people. I like touching people. My greatest dream is to wake up each and every morning with a warm body beside me, and I’m not talking about a dog or a cat.” She couldn’t believe she’d said that— couldn’t even believe it was true— but the damage was done. She hurried on. “I can’t begin to fathom what made my father not want that. I’ve had dysfunctional clients. I’ve had socially dysfunctional ones and sexually dysfunctional ones, but only a handful were as solitary as Connie Unger appears to have been. He was abnormal. Brilliant. But abnormal.”

  “And you’re normal,” Jordan observed. “Brilliant, too?”

  She held his gaze. “No. I couldn’t have gotten a Ph.D. if my life depended on it. I struggled through high school, struggled through college, and I sure didn’t set the academic world on fire in graduate school. But I’m a very good therapist.” With that reminder, she glanced at her watch. “Oh God.” She scrambled to her feet. “I have to get going.” She remembered the cat. Her eyes flew to the door, but he was gone. She looked questioningly at Jordan.

  “Back inside,” he said. “Waiting.”

  Again, Casey melted. “That’s so sad.” She went right up to the threshold. “Angus? I’ll be back.”

  “You could go in and see him.”

  She could. But she wasn’t ready. “Maybe later.”

  “You’re not afraid of a cat, are you?”

  Casey gave him a look that said she was not, and started across the landing toward her room. She was barely halfway there when she suddenly turned. Jordan had just risen. “Those cartons upstairs— the personal ones. Are they arranged any particular way?”

  “Like how?”

  “Chronologically?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You helped him move stuff up there.”

  “I didn’t examine the contents. That’s not my place. I’m just the gardener.”

  Casey had the absurd notion that he was more. Not knowing if it was true and, if so, what it meant, she felt threate
ned. “If you’re just the gardener, what’re you doing up here?” She didn’t see a watering can, didn’t see pruning shears or a mister. “Shouldn’t you be down with the tulips?”

  “We don’t have tulips.”

  “Pansies, then.”

  “Viburnum, agapanthus, gardenia, verbena, lupine, aquilegia, heliotrope. No pansies.”

  “All those?”

  “For starters.”

  “Well then, you have your work cut out for you, don’t you.”

  He stared at her for a minute. Then, holding both hands up, he sauntered toward the stairs. “The cat’s yours. Do what you want.”

  What Casey wanted was to divide the morning between exploring the cartons Connie had stored and coaxing Angus out of his room. Once she was dressed, though, she had to review her notes on the day’s clients. She did that while she ate the breakfast that Meg insisted on making, and once she was done eating, she had phone calls to make. She had to give her new office address to clients scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, to her bookkeeper, to the service providers with whom she most often worked, and to a psychiatrist who would prescribe medication for her clients now that John was out of the loop. Once she had done all that, her first client arrived, and then she didn’t have time to think about either Angus or Connie’s cartons. When she was with a client, she was focused.

  She was more comfortable in the office today— which wasn’t to say that she helped herself to a butterscotch candy, though she did consider it. Callard & Bowsers were good. She could have used the sugar pick-me-up a time or two. But they were Connie’s candies. And the comfort today came from making the office her own.

  She did that by spreading out her papers, pushing them around, leaving them slightly askew. Connie would have hated that. But she wasn’t Connie. She wasn’t compulsively neat. Organized, yes. She knew what was in each group of papers. But they were her papers, and they sat beside her computer, with her books on the shelves immediately behind. And these were her clients. She owed them her total attention.

  So she thought only of them until the last one was gone. By then it was six, and she was mentally spent. Needing quiet time, she had Meg fix a tall iced coffee and took it out to the garden.

  The air was heavy with heat and humidity.

  Jordan was pruning the shrubs.

  She was startled to find him there. This was still Tuesday, and he was no longer watering impatiens. She wanted to say something smart, but she was too tired. Taking her drink to the patio table, she sank into a chair and watched him work.

  He was showing the wear and tear of the day. His hair was damp, his jaw stubbled, his jeans dirty at the knees and the seat. Sweat made his tank top inky and gave a sheen to his skin.

  She thought to ask if he wanted a cold drink. But he wasn’t a guest at her cocktail party.

  Though he didn’t look at her, she knew that he knew she was there— and there she stayed, relaxing as she watched him, feeling a lazy warmth inside.

  He took his time, cutting back one branch, then a second. Tossing the cuttings aside, he stood back, studied the shrub, went forward and made another two or three snips. He wiped a forearm over his brow. Minutes later, he ran the back of his hand over the bridge of his nose. His hair was spiky and wet. His shoulders gleamed around a scar or two. He was hot.

  She did feel sorry for him and was indeed about to ask if he wanted a drink when he dropped his pruning shears and whipped his tank top up over his head. He mopped his face with it, tossed it aside, retrieved the shears, and returned to work, but it was only a matter of minutes before he dropped the shears again. This time, he reached for the garden hose— which had been trickling water into the shrub bed— held it over his head, put his face back, and let water flow from there, on down his torso and into his jeans.

  It was a stunning show. Casey barely breathed, not wanting to miss a moment. His throat was strong, his Adam’s apple just protrusive enough. His chest was leanly muscled and dusted with hair. His torso tapered, firm without being skinny. His jeans rested low enough on his hips to expose an arrow of hair and the hint of a navel, but just a hint. Watching the trickle of water over all of that, she was entranced.

  And he knew it. She could tell, because he didn’t look at her once. She had seen heat in his eyes that morning. He was playing it cool now. Nor did that other obvious sign give him away, since he was amply endowed to begin with. But she did want him to be aroused. It wouldn’t be right for her to be so attracted to him and for him not to feel the same fire.

  Unrequited lust did happen, of course. Poor Dylan was attracted to her, and she felt nothing.

  And that, she decided in a moment of wryness, was because she’d been saving it all up for her father’s gardener. The chemistry was here in force. Her body hummed with it. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so physically drawn to a man. Watching him work was a pleasure approaching sin.

  When he was done watering himself, he looped the hose into the center of the shrub and went back to his pruning, and still she watched. She didn’t move other than to sip her iced coffee— simply sat there and admired his body as he bent and straightened, turned, trimmed, and tossed.

  As the minutes passed, though, her pleasure began to fade, replaced by something darker that had come on like thunder in the heat. She knew loneliness when she felt it; she had lived with it a long time, had felt a greater intensity of late. Now, coming on the tail of intense desire, it was stronger and sadder— and she wasn’t prepared. When her eyes filled with tears, she couldn’t do a thing to stop them. Nor could she leave. She didn’t know whether it was the suddenness of the emotion she felt or the fatigue of the day, but something held her in her seat. Mortified, she pressed her fingers to her upper lip.

  The movement drew Jordan’s eye. He stared at her, frowned, started forward.

  Not knowing what else to do, she bent over, buried her face in her knees, and cried softly. She wanted to stop, wanted it desperately because this wasn’t at all the side of herself that she wanted to show to Jordan. But other wants were so great that they overrode this small one.

  She wanted to be with someone. She wanted family. She wanted to be loved.

  Jordan surely wasn’t the one. Physical attraction did not a relationship make. At that moment, though, consumed as she was with loneliness, she would have given anything for him to hold her, hold her so tightly that the loneliness just burst and drifted away.

  Though her head was down, she knew from the nearness of his voice that he was right in front of her, hunkering down.

  “Can I do anything?” he asked with such gentleness that she ached all the more.

  What could he possibly do? He couldn’t make Caroline wake up or bring Connie back from the dead, and she couldn’t begin to tell him the story of her life. He wasn’t her therapist. He wasn’t even a friend.

  So she shook her head no.

  She had barely stopped shaking it when she felt a touch, so light at first that she might have imagined it, then firmer. It was his hand, fingers and palm covering her hair, conveying surprising solace. For that minute, at least, she wasn’t completely alone.

  She didn’t move, didn’t want to dislodge that hand. Gradually her tears slowed. Aside from the occasional hiccup of breath, she grew calm.

  “I’ll finish up here tomorrow,” he said in that same gentle voice. Seconds later, the hand left her head.

  She didn’t look up. She was too embarrassed. Rather, she listened while he cleaned up his things, carried them back to the shed, then went out the garden door. She heard him start his car, but it was several minutes after that before he drove off. Only then did she straighten, wipe her eyes with the heels of her hands, and return to the house.

  Twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang. Casey had soaked her eyes with a cool cloth and repaired her makeup, so that she was feeling more like herself. Even then, she would have let Meg get the door. But Meg had left for the day.

  She went down the front stairs and pee
ked through the sidelight. A dark-haired, dark-skinned woman stood there. She wore an overblouse and tights, carried a bunch of papers in one arm, and had the most beautiful skin Casey had ever seen— the most beautiful skin and the most prominent belly, though the rest of her was elegantly slim.

  Casey opened the door with a cautious smile.

  The smile she got in return was far more easy. “I’m Emily Eisner, come to welcome you to the neighborhood. You met my husband, Jeff, the other day. We live here on the Court”— she gestured—“four doors down.”

  “I remember Jeff. He did say you were very pregnant, but he didn’t say you were very beautiful, too.”

  “Bet he didn’t say I was black, either,” Emily said with a forthrightness Casey instantly loved. “That gives people a shock. I think I’m the first one of my kind living here on the Court in an upstairs capacity, if you get my drift.”

  Casey did. She held out a hand. “I’m Casey Ellis. I’m pleased to meet you.”

  “Likewise,” Emily said, returning a warm clasp. Her smile faded. “Jeff didn’t know you were related to Dr. Unger. He isn’t privy to the gossip of the household help. My condolences.”

  “Thank you. But I didn’t really know him.”

  “No matter. He was your father. A loss is a loss. And I know you’ve just moved in and that you have plenty to do, but I wanted to return these.” She held out the papers— books, Casey could see now. “It’s music. Dr. Unger and I used to exchange. These are his.”