Talking After Midnight

by Dakota Cassidy

  For the past three months, he’d made weekend trips to Atlanta to see his mother since she’d been admitted to Oakdale. He’d watched Cat and Della interact from afar when they were engrossed in a jigsaw puzzle, or watching a television show. He’d actually admired the ease with which Cat soothed Della when she was frustrated, by simply touching her hand, leaning in close and whispering something in her ear that settled her right down.

  Pretty Cat had all the qualifications to help heal Della that he apparently lacked.

  How was he supposed to know his mother read that kind of fiction? In fact, he’d never seen her with anything but a knitting book in her lap in all of his thirty-seven years.

  Damn, he wished Adeline were here. She’d know how to help, but she was on active duty in Afghanistan with only the occasional Skype session or phone call to ease his uncertainties.

  The last thing he wanted was for his mother to slip back into her deafening silence. If she found out he was part of the reason Cat had been fired, leaving all her Oakdale time eaten up to pound the pavement looking for work, Della would slay him with that sour look she’d perfected since her stroke.

  Flynn gripped the steering wheel while he stared at Cat’s back. Now what?

  Anything. He’d do anything to help get back his mother’s will to live. The doctors all said she was perfectly capable of becoming fully functional again. They said she had to want to fully function. Somewhere between Adeline leaving for Afghanistan and his father’s passing, Della had just lost interest in the business of living.

  When it had happened, he couldn’t pinpoint, but it was clearer each time he visited her, which made the decision to leave New York, at least temporarily, an easy one.

  The stroke had brought new focus; shed light on some underlying issues causing his mother to suffer. He’d been too blind to see them—too busy with work and his own life.

  But he was here now. He’d leased an apartment, he had wheels and he was going to make it right.

  With his mother and with Cat.

  Two

  “Cat?”

  Swiping the tears from her eyes with her thumb, Cat looked up to find one of her all-time favorite former patients at Oakdale’s Cancer Center, Landon Wells, staring down at her, his handsome face so elegant and understated, his eyes sharper than they’d been in a while.

  Landon was in his early-to-mid-thirties, she guessed. He wasn’t construction-worker hot with ripped abs and miles of hard tanned flesh. He was distinguished, the epitome of a Southern gentleman, with all the outward qualities the image evoked, and they’d struck up a friendship over the course of his recovery that she treasured.

  She loved his drawl, his upbeat personality, but mostly, she loved their conversations that often spanned hours as she waited for her mother to finish her therapy and he wiled away early mornings and afternoons in his recuperation from chemotherapy. He’d wheel himself along the long corridor connecting the cancer center to the nursing home specifically to find her.

  There was always something going on in his private wing as laughter spilled out into the hallways and Liberace’s music filtered softly between the chatter.

  Colorful people strolled in and out during visiting hours, and he never lacked for dozens and dozens of flower deliveries, which he always donated to the other patients’ rooms.

  When he’d found out she worked at the connecting coffee shop, he’d coaxed her—with his charming wit—into bringing him coffee every morning by telling her the coffee in-house tasted like piss-water.

  From that day on, Cat brought him his favorite cinnamon latte each morning before she stopped to see her mother and head off to work.

  Cat chuckled every time she recalled the exchange they’d had several months ago when he’d come to Oakdale and exactly five visits into their early-morning, caffeine-laced affair.

  “I’m gay, just so you know.” He made mention of it like he was commenting on the weather, leaning over the edge of his wheelchair, his expensive silk pajamas pressed and crisp.

  She’d fought one of many grins he inspired. His honesty was refreshing, if not unnecessary. “I’m not. Just so you know.”

  He gave the newspaper he held a sharp snap before opening it and said, “Just keepin’ you informed. I didn’t want you to think our chats and my request to have you personally make my coffee had anything to do with unbridled lust or the desire to sweep you off your feet. I just like the way you make the swirls in my whipped cream look like puffy clouds of white perfection. There’ll be no nursing-home affair here. So don’t you go fallin’ in love with me, hear?”

  Cat had dramatically sighed, throwing a hand over her forehead while fighting a fit of laughter. “Thank goodness. I was gettin’ worried I’d have to lose a few pounds just so you could do the sweeping,” she’d joked as she rubbed her belly.

  Landon had cocked his sandy brown head full of hair, which gleamed under the bright lights of the rec room, and asked, “Are you disappointed?”

  “That I don’t have to lose a few pounds?”

  “That I’m gay.”

  “Are you disappointed I’m not?”

  “Not even a little.”

  “Ditto. So, a game of checkers?”

  Since that day, they’d found a contentment with one another, a morning banter Cat looked forward to, so much so that she woke with a smile of anticipation, knowing Landon would be in the rec room each morning while her mother was in therapy. He’d sit at the same table in the corner by the big picture window, and smile that same engaging smile.

  More important, their mornings together reminded her decent people still existed. And Landon was surely a front-runner in that category.

  Landon’s specialty was kindness, and his genuine love of people. He’d sometimes sit for hours, chatting with the other patients or just watching people pass by the window on their way to some part of the facility. Didn’t matter what walk of life you came from, Landon wanted to know you.

  He listened to the family members of the patients—complete strangers. Really listened, to everyone from tired mothers visiting sick relatives, who rocked crying babies in strollers, and whose only form of adult conversation all day might be the words they had with him, right down to Hans, the janitor who was earnestly trying to learn to speak English. Landon spent two hours with Hans every week, tutoring him so he could pass his citizenship test.

  Landon’s benevolence at Oakdale was legend.

  He donated not only large amounts of money to the chemotherapy wing, but also an extravagant amount of his time reading to the patients, playing the piano, strolling with them, pushing their wheelchairs when he’d grown strong enough and sharing meals with them.

  Rumor also had it, he was filthy rich and just a little eccentric—or off his rocker if you listened to some of the meaner gossip at Oakdale. Judging by his clothes and Sanjeev, the man he called his “faithful friend in service,” who brought Landon’s visitors to see him in a shiny limousine each day, money wasn’t a hurdle Landon had to jump.

  But Cat never paid any attention to the rumors swirling around Landon—his soul was warm and deeper than the deepest well. His gobs of money were unimportant to her.

  Money wasn’t everything. Though today, it was something. It was something she needed buckets of if she hoped to continue to give her mother the best care in the state of Georgia.

  “Move it on over, lady,” he teased, dragging her back to her current predicament with a swish of a finger at the place beside her on the bench.

  Cat slid an inch or so on the cool stone, leaving the long curtain of her hair to hide the profile of her tearstained face. “So how’re you feelin’, Landon Wells? Stronger these days, I’d suppose from the looks of that handsome face of yours.”

  He did look stronger, fuller in the face, and the color in his cheeks had returned.

  Landon lifted his face to the sunshine and sighed. “I feel good, Kit-Cat. Life’s good. So good. How you feelin’? How’s your mama?”

>   About to be put out on the street? “She’s mending. Seems like it takes such a long time with her diabetes in the mix, but you know Mama. She’s a real trouper. So what’re you doin’ back here? I thought you were sprung last week?”

  They’d thrown him a big party when he finished his last dose of chemo—Cat had blown up balloons and made a cake with the help of the staff and patients.

  “Just a quick checkup to be sure all my parts are in workin’ order.”

  She wrapped her arm around him and gave him a squeeze. “I never doubted we couldn’t get rid o’ the likes a you, Mr. Wells. I’m so glad you’re stickin’ around.”

  “So, I stopped by the coffee shop to get some of my Kit-Cat love, but you weren’t there, and that Arlo was cowering in the corner while a big gorgeous man gave him what-for. Somethin’ about you being fired. What gives?” he asked.

  A gorgeous man yelling at Arlo? Huh.

  Landon nudged her shoulder when she remained silent, the clean scent of his cologne drifting to her nose on the warm air. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She swallowed hard, so angry with herself. “Nope.”

  The crisp material of his suit rustled against his skin. Landon always wore suits and ascots in every color of the rainbow—even on the hottest of Atlanta days. “Surely you don’t think I’d leave a damsel in distress, do you? It’s obvious you’ve been cryin’. Cat and I can’t have my favorite barista cryin’—so out with it.”

  “I’m not your barista anymore.”

  “Oh?”

  “You heard me right. I managed to get myself fired.”

  Landon put his hands to his heart with a dramatic gesture and a comical pouty face. “Say it isn’t so.”

  “I wish I could.” It was very much so. What was she going to do? At one of the most crucial points in her life, where it was imperative she have a steady job, she’d still managed to dig herself a hole.

  “Care to explain why?”

  “My big mouth.” There was no use sugaring it up. It was the truth. She could have let Arlo lie about her to Flynn McGrady. Surely her pride was nothing compared to how important it was to keep a steady income for her mother right now.

  “Bah! You? A big mouth? I won’t hear it. Your mouth is pretty as a picture and hardly big. It’s just right for your face.”

  That made her smile for a moment. She tucked her hair behind her ear and looked over at him with eyes that teased. “Are you sure you’re gay?”

  “As sure as I am Liberace and I were somehow gypped out of an enduring, lifelong union by some insane mad scientist and his attempts at frozen embryonic separation.”

  Cat let her head fall back on her shoulders when she laughed. “Dream big or go home, I always say.” She patted his arm and smiled her gratitude. “Thank you for making me feel better, kind sir. I want you to know, you always bring a ray of sunshine to my day. I’ll always remember that.”

  Landon grabbed her hand, leaving a cool imprint on her palm, and tucked it under his arm. “Oh, no. You’re not gettin’ away that easy. We’re friends. I never leave my friends cryin’. Besides, now that I’m sprung, what’s gonna happen to me if you don’t make my cinnamon latte at the coffee shop every mornin’? Nothing, and I do mean, nothing, will ever be the same for me. And don’t you tell me that heathen Arlo will make ’em. He couldn’t make a cup of coffee if Juan Valdez taught him himself. How will I ever go on?”

  “Call Juan Valdez?” she teased, closing her eyes and allowing the warm breeze of early spring in Georgia soothe her.

  “That’s a brilliant idea. I’m sure I must know someone somewhere who knows him. Until then, what shall we do about your unemployment?”

  His question startled her. “We? We don’t have to do anything. I have to get online and start lookin’ for work.” Dread filled the pit of her stomach.

  How was she ever going to find a job with her employment history? She’d hung on tooth and nail to her job with Arlo. She’d bitten her tongue more times than she cared to count, except when it really counted.

  “What if I told you I can help?”

  “I’d tell you to keep your bags o’ money to yourself. Now, let’s not kid each other here, Landon. I know you’re rich. And if I didn’t know, Sanjeev dropping by your room every day, driving a slick limo and bringin’ the finest linen napkins my eyes have ever seen for you to wipe your mouth on, or all that fancy food you had flown in from Bobby Flay’s personal kitchen when you were at the hospital, would have been a sure clue.”

  She didn’t begrudge Landon his money or his fineries, but it wasn’t as though she couldn’t see with her own eyes he had plenty to spare.

  People probably used him all the time because of it. She wasn’t one of those people. He was a friend, not an ATM.

  Landon gazed at her as the sunlight filtering through the big oak tree whispered across his smile. “Those napkins at Oakdale are scratchy and they chafe. You’d think for all the money they charge to stay there, we’d get better damn napkins. I won’t apologize.”

  Cat chuckled. “Heaven forbid, I’d never ask you to. But if Sanjeev wasn’t enough, the running tab at the coffee shop you keep for the women at the homeless shelter who go out job-huntin’ every day would be.” If she hadn’t already been a smidge in love with Landon’s heart, finding out that piece of information would have cinched the deal.

  “Homeless women from the shelter need coffee, too.”

  “Do you have any idea how much the bill is each month?” Enormous. That’s how much. But Landon had worked something out with Arlo, and each morning, no less than twenty women filed in to get their coffee and muffins, all courtesy of this kind man’s gold-lined pockets.

  He shrugged as though it was neither here nor there. “They need somethin’ warm in their bellies to start their days. I can provide that. Besides, coffee and muffins always hits my spot. And do you have any idea how ripped off I’da been if you hadn’t kept Arlo on the path of the righteous with that bill?”

  She flushed. Arlo had tried to pad the bill, and when Cat caught him, she’d spoken up and threatened to tell Landon. Another one of her bucking-the-system moments.

  “I suppose you didn’t think I knew?”

  “I...”

  Landon nodded and smiled that handsome smile. “You don’t think I got all this money because I threw it around without payin’ attention to where it was goin’, do you? But that right there—that’s what makes you a good soul, Catherine Butler. Your heart’s bigger than all of Texas. I know. I’ve been there. I’ve seen you with the people at Oakdale. Your mama told me all about what you did for Howard at Arlo’s. You’re a passionate, free spirit, always lookin’ out for the little guy. Sometimes that gets in your way. I’m bettin’ that free spirit of yours was what got you fired today.”

  That comment made Cat wince, her heart tightening in a ball. Her mother often called her just that—a free spirit, happy to enjoy what life doled out rather than forcing it to bend to her will. She’d floated most of her adult life—from job to job, just barely making ends meet. Jack-of-all-trades, master of none. But her life was her own, and she made all the rules.

  And look where that got you today, free bird.

  Cat peeked at Landon. “Do all free spirits have such big mouths and the employment history of a sixteen-year-old at the age of almost thirty?”

  Landon barked a laugh, making the birds under the big oak tree scatter. “Free spirits sometimes need tethering, is all. Still free, just more centered while they’re bobbin’ around up there in the sky, reachin’ for those stars.”

  Those tears of regret burned her eyes again. What was she going to do? She’d just barely been able to make the payments she’d managed to work out with Oakdale as it was. “I’ve made a real mess of things, Landon.”

  “That’s why I asked you what you’d say to me helpin’ you.”

  “I know what you asked me, but I don’t want handouts. So I’d say thank you kindly, Landon Wells, but no thank yo
u. I’m sure there are plenty o’ other people out there willin’ to abuse their friendships with you because you’re rich. I’m not one of them.”

  “I know enough to know a good human bein’ when I see one. Seen more than my share of bad. I can tell the difference.”

  She was here, at this place in her life, because she’d refused to conform to society’s idea of what an adult should be. Turned out, society was right, and most people her age were at least able to help their aging parents if they did what society dictated and got good jobs, planned for the future. But her? Nah. She’d middle-fingered the notion.

  For being such a complete idiot, she didn’t deserve help. “No handouts.”

  Landon smiled again like he had some secret that amused him. “Okay, then. What about a hand up?”

  “To?”

  “You’re gonna call me crazy,” Landon joked, but his eyes twinkled.

  “As if that’s not a hyphen on your name?”

  “So will you hear me out?”

  Her throat went dry. “I’m almost afraid to answer that.”

  “Will you listen if it means you’ll have security and a 401(k)?”

  Cat fought a sharp inhale. All the things she’d never had. Resources she could have tapped into had she played by the rules. “How do you know I don’t have one already?”

  “I make it my business to know everything about the people I like—especially the people I like who are in a nasty pinch.”

  He didn’t say it as though he had a leg up on her, or even like he was looking down his nose at her. “Have you been pryin’ into my personal affairs, Wells? Using all that lovely money to research my sordid past?” she teased.

  But Landon merely chuckled at her reaction. “Now don’t go gettin’ the wrong idea there, pretty lady. I’m not some crazy who wants to collect your skin to make a coat. I know our friendship hasn’t extended outside of Oakdale, but my intentions are all on the up-and-up. So just say you’ll hear my pitch, and if you don’t like what I propose, you can get up and walk away, and never see me again. But not before you tell me the secret to those happy swirls of whipped cream.” He winked.