Beauty & the Beasts

by Janice Kay Johnson; Anne Weale

  “Will do!” Caroline said. The front door closed a moment later.

  Having failed on the first pass through the house, Madeline started all over. This time she found her quarry tucked in a fleece bed on top of a cage. The old cat grumbled but didn’t struggle as Madeline popped her into the carrier.

  Fastening the carrier door, Madeline peered inside. “He’s not going to hurt you, Sassafras, my sweet.” All the S’s hissed soothingly off her tongue.

  Carrier in hand, she stepped out the front door but stopped on the doorstep, her heart sinking. The parking lot had emptied; not only was Joan’s station wagon gone, so was Caroline’s small blue Honda. The only two vehicles left were Eric’s pickup and Madeline’s car. Why hadn’t Caroline said she was leaving?

  Feeling light-headed, Madeline kept going. The gravel crunched underfoot. The door to the feral building opened easily. Inside was the admitting area, well organized and spotless. She carefully closed the door behind her. It was either very quiet in here, or her heartbeat was drowning out all other sound. Did Eric hear her coming? Did he know it was her?

  Did he care if it was her?

  She turned down the hall. The door to the surgery room stood ajar. Now his voice, low and husky, came to her.

  “Are you waking up there, guy? Come on, take deep breaths. You’ll feel better before you know it And just think, Madeline can find you a home now.” Pause, then another, “It’s okay. Don’t worry.”

  To hell with Joan. Panic rising, Madeline stood stock-still a few feet from the door. She couldn’t do this.

  She eased one foot back. Sassafras let out a piercing meow.

  Even bigger and broader-shouldered than she remembered, Eric filled the doorway. To her hungry eyes, he looked wonderful, face lean, lines carved deep from nose to mouth, lab coat rumpled. Pure male, with those big hands that she knew were so gentle with the animals—and with her.

  “Come on in,” he said quietly.

  She drew a shaky breath. “Hello, Eric.”

  “Caroline said you were coming.” His voice was like one of those touches: calluses just a little scratchy, banked strength, incredible restraint.

  Her own came out in a squeak. “I thought she’d still be here.”

  “I told her not to wait.”

  “Oh.” She stood there, everything she should say to him crowding her tongue, tangling it so nothing got said. “I…I have Sassafras here.”

  “Let’s take a look.” He backed into the surgery room.

  She followed. The stainless-steel table gleamed; in cages along one wall, two older kittens were lifting groggy heads.

  Eric’s hand brushed hers as he took the carrier. “Madeline…”

  “Eric…” she said at the same exact moment.

  His clear light eyes took in her face with the intensity of a surgical laser. “You first.”

  She squeezed her fingers together. What if he planned to say, I’m dating someone else now. Or, Let’s not let the fact that we dated for a while get in the way of our working together here. What if he was just trying to smooth the awkwardness? “No. You, please.”

  “All right.” Eric backed away from the table where he’d set the cat carrier, then leaned against the windowsill and rubbed his hands over his thighs. “I, uh…I wanted to apologize.” He grimaced. “I knew you were sensitive about your looks—you’ve made that plain enough—and what do I do but ignore your feelings. The truth is, it’s easy to compliment someone. It’s a hell of a lot harder to tell someone how you feel. Madeline—”

  “No!” The word burst out. “Please! I’m the one who should apologize! I…I led you on and then I turned coward at the last minute. Nothing I can say is adequate, but…I’m sorry.” Tears burned in her eyes.

  Eric made a guttural sound and crossed the tiny room in two long strides.

  “No!” she cried again, backing away. “Let me explain. Please.”

  He stopped abruptly right in front of her and held up his hands. “All right,” he said roughly. “Explain.”

  Poor Sassafras was blessedly quiet Madeline bowed her head. “The thing is, I started acting and modeling when I was only five. Well, my mother entered me in a beauty pageant first. I won. An agent approached her…” She didn’t even remember her first assignment. Those early years were a blur: hot lights, adults giving overly simple orders in saccharine tones, dumb clothes. “It must have been too tempting for her. My dad was nowhere around, and Mom was an LPN—a licensed practicing nurse. Surviving financially had to have been a struggle. Here people started offering all this money if I’d just work for a day, a week…” She let out a long breath.

  “But you kept working.”

  She peeked upward and saw anger darkening his eyes. “Constantly. I never went to public school. My mother tutored me for the first five or six years, then I attended a performing-arts school in L.A. Of course, I was hardly ever actually there.”

  “Didn’t you tell your mother you hated it?”

  “Not until I was a teenager.” She made a face. “Before I got rebellious at about fifteen, it was just…life.”

  “And your money?”

  “As my manager, Mom took a cut. That’s what we lived on. The rest she invested. I used some to start my business. I still have quite a bit. My mother wouldn’t steal from me. She has too many… principles.” Oh, how dry that sounded!

  He searched her face. “You hate her, don’t you?”

  “No.” Although there’d been times she wondered. “I wanted her to love me for myself, not for my face and what it could earn.” There. She’d said what she hardly acknowledged even to herself.

  She still wanted her mother to love her. How pathetic, she thought, disgusted at herself. Did nobody ever completely grow up? Or was she the only one still mired in childhood?

  Eric lifted his hands as though to grip her shoulders, but stopped short of touching her. Instead, his fingers flexed, then curled into fists before he shoved them into his pockets.

  “And now,” he said emotionlessly, “you want someone else to love you for yourself. Not your face. Or your breasts.”

  “Is that so unreasonable?” she begged.

  He uttered a raw profanity. “No. God almighty, no!” His head went back, and he rubbed his neck. “I’m a cretin.”

  “You didn’t know.”

  “I knew.”

  “Eric, I’m the one apologizing, remember?” In-explicably she felt steadier. “I’m the one with the problem. It’s…okay to think I’m beautiful. I guess,” she admitted, “I want you to.”

  He focused on her face again, his eyes glittering, his mouth a taut line. “Are you telling me it’s not too late?”

  “If—” she had to clear her throat “—if you haven’t decided I’m a flake.”

  “Oh, God.” Voice pure grit, he closed his eyes. “Do you know how jealous I’ve been of my own son?”

  “No,” Madeline whispered.

  “I saw you talking to him. You laughed, and touched his shoulder.”

  “I thought…you wouldn’t mind if I kept bringing him here.”

  “I was glad. For him. But for myself—” now at last he gripped her shoulders, and she felt a tremor in his hands “—I wanted it to be me, even if we were nothing more than friends.”

  She’d flattened her hands on his chest, but at that she pulled back in alarm. “Is that…what you want? To be friends?”

  “What do you think?” he asked, and then he kissed her.

  She couldn’t think. Her mind was incapable of any activity beyond simple dizzy awareness that his mouth was heaven. Hard, sensuous, skillful. And more—this kiss had a desperate edge that shook her as deliberate seduction never could. She whimpered, and her arms slid up around his neck. His hands moved to her back, her hips, lifting her, pressing her against his length. His teeth closed on her lip.

  And, oh, the magic words he murmured as he strung kisses along her jaw, down her throat, over her T-shirt to the swell of her breasts.
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br />   “You’re not just beautiful on the outside, you know. You talk to those damn cats, in that husky little voice, as though you’ve got enough love to make up for the rest of their wretched lives, and I want some of it. When you laugh, it makes me smile the rest of the day. And you listen to me. God! do you know how long it’s been since anybody really listened?”

  Her bones dissolved and she arched her back as his hands slid up under her shirt. “No,” she croaked.

  “No?” His head lifted, and sudden sharp awareness returned to his eyes. “Oh, my God,” he said, straightening. His fingers clenched on her shirt, and then he released her, spreading his hands wide as he backed away. “Here I go again. You give me a reprieve, and I’m on you like those poor lonely damn cats in the house. Madeline, I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” She felt stupid. And bereft.

  “No. I don’t want to be friends.” A muscle jumped in his cheek. “But I have some self-control, believe it or not. Let’s start over. You weren’t ready for sex. Fine. I want you, but not until you’re sure, really sure, I’m not just lusting over your body.”

  “I’m sure.” Was she?

  “No.” He gave a wry smile. “This isn’t exactly the time and place, anyway.”

  Sassafras chose that moment to utter a plaintive meow.

  “I guess not,” Madeline said. Although it would be easy not to care where they were.

  “Can we go to dinner?”

  “My mother has probably already got ours in the oven.”

  He swore. “Lunch tomorrow?”

  Madeline nodded.

  A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth and then failed. “I missed you.”

  She swallowed and blinked to forestall tears. “I missed you, too.”

  “Good.” Eric gave her a quick hard kiss. “Okay, let’s take a look at this cat.”

  COMING IN THE DOOR from work on Friday, Eric scooped up Hannah, who, as always, was waiting to meet him. Early or late, she never missed. At first he’d worried that she sat there all day staring patiently at the closed door. But Garth swore she didn’t; apparently she just had good hearing.

  “Hey, Dad.” Garth lounged on the living-room couch with a black kitten on his shoulder. “Look, Ron’s checking out the house. I don’t think he’s scared at all.”

  Mannequin slept on an ottoman only a few feet away, no more interested in this kitten than she was in anything else. Eric couldn’t decide if she was brain-dead or just placid. As long as she didn’t need life support to keep breathing, he supposed it didn’t matter. Lord knew she wasn’t any trouble.

  “Good,” Eric said. He ran his fingernails down the little guy’s spine. “Now why don’t you put him back. Teresa invited you over for dinner. Says Mark would be happy to have you spend the night, too, if you’d like.”

  A scowl immediately clouded the boy’s open expression. “I won’t spend the night. And I don’t want to have dinner there.”

  “Tough,” Eric said unsympathetically. “I’m going out, and I don’t want to leave you alone all evening.”

  Garth didn’t move. “I don’t need a baby-sitter. I’ll just stay here.”

  “No, you’ll go to Teresa’s.” Eric tried hard to keep his voice level and pleasant. No point in letting this escalate to a major confrontation. Nonetheless, he wasn’t caving in. He and Garth got along better these days, but his son was spending entirely too much time alone. They still had half the summer to go; it was time he hung out with some other boys. And, dammit, he and Mark had been friends in the past!

  “Why?” Garth burst out. “Where are you going, anyway?”

  “Dinner with Madeline.” He hadn’t told Garth about yesterday’s lunch; somehow his renewed relationship with Madeline still felt insubstantial, unreal. He needed to know they were going somewhere with this before he put up with anyone else’s scrutiny.

  If he expected any emotion from Garth, it was delight. He didn’t get it

  His son’s face flushed. “But you’re not seeing her anymore!”

  “We had a talk and decided to give it another shot,” Eric said mildly. “That okay?”

  “No, it’s not okay!” Garth shot to his feet and had to grab Ron, who tried to leap to safety. For once, the boy didn’t think about the kitten first. “I don’t want you to date her!”

  Eric shook his head in hopes of clearing it. This couldn’t be happening. But no. His son still stood there, bristling.

  “You like her!” Eric exclaimed. “I don’t get it.”

  “She’s my friend! Not yours anymore!”

  “But she was your friend before…”

  “She hasn’t called in days and days!” Garth spit out. “Now I know why! All she can think about is you! She was probably just friendly so I’d talk about you.”

  “Madeline isn’t like that.”

  “Oh, right.” His son sneered. “If Mom can be like that, so can she!”

  “Your mother loves you,” Eric said wearily. “She’s on her honeymoon, for God’s sake.”

  “Who’re you going to dump me on when you get married?” Garth spun on his heel and half ran to his bedroom.

  “Garth!” Eric bellowed.

  Slam.

  Now what? Eric gently deposited Hannah on the back of the couch and went to stare out the window. Should he cancel with Madeline? Leave the boy here alone? Insist Garth get ready to go to Teresa’s? Try for another father-son talk?

  He rubbed a hand over his jaw. Was Garth really afraid that Madeline didn’t like him for himself? Did he think his father wouldn’t have time for him if he was dating? Or did Garth even know himself why he was upset?

  Eric moved restlessly. Damned if he’d let a twelve-year-old’s temper tantrum keep him from seeing Madeline tonight. Garth couldn’t be allowed to win. Manipulating parents by sullenness and threats had to be discouraged.

  Frowning, he went down the hall. He stopped and rapped on Garth’s door, raising his voice. “I’m going to take a shower. You get ready to go to Teresa’s.”

  “I’m not going!” his son yelled.

  “You don’t have to spend the night, but you are going for dinner.” Eric didn’t wait to hear further protests. He just hoped like hell Garth didn’t flat out refuse to step foot out of his bedroom. Eric couldn’t quite see himself slinging a struggling teenager over his shoulder and throwing him in the car.

  Half an hour later, dressed in suit and tie, hair still damp, Eric rapped on Garth’s door again. “Let’s go,” he called, and kept moving down the hall.

  After a pause that had his neck muscles locking, he heard the bedroom door open and close behind him. Garth followed him out, got into the car, slammed the door and slouched low in his seat. He didn’t say a word during the two-mile drive to Teresa and Joe Hughes’s big modern house. When there, Eric pulled into the driveway and turned off the ignition.

  Into the silence he said, “We’re going to need to talk.”

  Without looking at him, Garth reached for the door handle.

  “Okay,” Eric said. “Maybe I should have let you stay home tonight. I don’t know. But I do know one thing. Now that you’re here, I expect you to be civil. They’re a nice family. They like you. Mark’s been disappointed that you weren’t interested in coming over. Just because you’re mad at me, don’t take it out on them. Got it?”

  Of course Garth didn’t answer. Eric hadn’t really expected him to. He walked his son to the door and said hi to Joe, who raised his eyebrows as Garth barely mumbled hello and went in, still without saying a word to his father.

  As soon as he was out of earshot, Eric said, “We had a fight. He wanted to sulk in his room. I made him come.”

  “He’ll have a good time.” Joe’s voice was, as usual, calm and amiable. “Mark has a new game on CD-ROM that he thinks is better than eating, which is saying a hell of a lot.”

  Eric laughed ruefully. “I felt so smug when Teresa was having trouble with Nicole. My kid would never act like that.”

 
“Pride goeth and all that.” Joe nodded toward the living room. “Want to come in?”

  “No, Madeline is expecting me. Teresa has the number of the restaurant.”

  “Why don’t you bring her over here for dinner some night?” A smile touched Joe’s blue eyes. “I hear so much about her and we’ve never met.”

  “Sounds good.” Eric slapped him on the shoulder. “Better make it soon. Once the baby’s born, you won’t be doing much entertaining for a while.”

  “I don’t know,” Joe drawled. “At least we have a homegrown baby-sitter.”

  “True.” Eric lifted a hand in farewell. “I should be back before midnight.”

  Anticipation was singing in his blood by the time he parked in Madeline’s driveway. Too bad her mother was still here. Knowing how she’d used Madeline made it harder to be friendly—not to mention that her presence precluded anything more intimate than a handshake between Madeline and him.

  He’d hardly taken his finger off the doorbell when the door swung open. He liked that Madeline never kept him waiting so she could make some kind of grand entrance.

  But it was her mother who stood smiling in the doorway. “Eric, how nice to see you again. Come on in. Madeline’s not quite ready.” She bustled ahead. “Have a seat. Can I get you something to drink?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Madeline’s mother must have been damn near as beautiful as Madeline when she was younger. Her expertly styled hair was darker, but the bone structure was much the same; only the fine lines beside her eyes and mouth and the air of fragility showed the additional years. Sometimes her expression was disconcertingly similar to Madeline’s. What she lacked was her daughter’s warmth.

  He asked about her trip to Lake Quinault Lodge. She raved about the scenery, the service, the rustic rooms. Eric stole a surreptitious glance at his watch. Was he early? No, it was now ten minutes after the time they’d set. Well, Madeline might have gotten held up at work. What was ten minutes?

  Another five minutes passed before he heard a door down the hall open. Heels clicked on the hardwood floor. Midsentence, he lost track of whatever he’d been saying and rose to his feet. A second later the sight of Madeline hit him like a fist to the solar plexus.