Catch

by Kenyon, Toni

  The cat leapt into her lap and began rigorously scenting her chin. Tamsen couldn't help giggling and her furry friend purred in response.

  "Have you missed me, Azzie, hmm?"

  Azriel's purr sent reassuring shivers through to her earlobes. She nuzzled into his furry head, the cold, fine skin on the top of his ears stroking her hot cheeks. Cooling the emotional fallout, helping her find some sense of calm. "We've gotten through a lot together haven't we, Azz, and we'll get through this too, won't we?"

  Kissing the top of his fluffy head, she tucked him under her arm. "We can't leave you here all by yourself, can we, Azzie? I need you. Now, where's your cage, hmm?" Big yellow eyes peered inquisitively at her, but he made no move to break free from her grip.

  She found the golden cage on top of the utility cupboard. A newspaper from nearly eighteen months ago lined the bottom, confirming her suspicions it had been quite some time since Azriel had been anywhere.

  "Your shots must be overdue. We'll have to get you to the vets, my little friend."

  Either he understood every word she was saying or - more likely - the sight of the cage brought back terrifying memories. He struggled in her arms, almost making a break for freedom before the lid came down firmly, holding him prisoner.

  "Don't fret. We're just going to stay at Matt's for a couple of days. You'll be fine." Azriel sat hunched, fur standing on end, clearly not fine.

  They stopped by the kitchen to collect cat food. Even rattling the dried food box, which usually prompted a positive response, didn’t work. At the front door they ran into Matt, literally.

  "What the hell?" He looked stunned. "You're not bringing that cat."

  "He comes or I stay." She was non-negotiable. Enough had happened today and she wouldn't be leaving another friend behind.

  "He's a cat. I live in an area with endangered bird life."

  "Fine. We'll stay home then."

  "Do you know how difficult you can be sometimes?" Matt raked his hand through his hair; he looked as exhausted as she felt.

  But she was adamant, she and Azzie were a package deal. "I won't leave him Matt. I couldn't stand it if he ran away - it's enough trauma just dealing with..." The sense of loss hit her again, a full frontal blow. She might as well have been punched.

  "Okay, okay." He held his hands up, looking solemnly at the cat in the cage. "I know when I'm beaten."

  He slipped an arm around her waist, and Tamsen allowed herself to lean into his solid bulk. He felt safe and she needed safe.

  "I suppose we can always lock your little beast up in the house." Matt's expression changed to one of concern. "It is house-trained, right?"

  She smiled. "Of course." And directing her speech to Azriel: "You're an apartment dweller, aren't you, boy?"

  "A tomcat. Great." Matt picked up the dried food and cast his eyes to heaven.

  "He's been done so he behaves himself - unlike some of the men in my life."

  "I'm too tired to argue with you, Tamsen. Come on, let’s get you both out of here before anything else happens."

  Two on a scale of one to ten, with ten being eventful - that's how Matt's day should have been. What it had become, however, was another matter entirely. Macabre and maudlin thoughts filled his mind as he drove the familiar motorway and winding tree-lined roads back home, feeling disconnected from himself, his environment and Tamsen.

  Dusk light fell over the landscape. Cerulean blue sky meeting the dark shapes of the trees. Tension and terror rose inside him as those same trees rose to meet the sliver of a new moon hanging perilously on its back. It looked almost as vulnerable and small as he felt.

  Azriel's pitiful yowling filled the car and Matt’s sense of doom deepened. "Isn't there anything you can do to shut that animal up?" Matt couldn't hide the irritation in his voice. He was intolerant at the best of times; these were not the best of times.

  "He hates car trips." Tamsen's voice sounded flat.

  "Great." Matt flicked on the radio, hoping to drown out the noise. The cat's loathsome wailing just increased an octave.

  "Does he never shut up?"

  "He'll calm down as soon as we stop. It's not far, and considering what we've been through today he's the least of our worries."

  "You're not wrong there." All hell was about to break loose. The thought of Tamsen, his Mother and the shrieking cat were more than Matt's frazzled nerves were able to deal with. He'd tried to talk Marguerite into accompanying him to the airport five days ago and heading home, but she wouldn't hear of it.

  "Looks like your landscape people have finished." Tamsen cut short his morose musing.

  He barely recognized the entranceway to the house off the bush-clad right of way. "If I'd known going away would speed the process, I'd have gone weeks ago." At least he wouldn't have to unload Tamsen and her precious feline at the top of the drive and have them all risk life and limb on some sort of suburban assault course - he could deliver them right to the front door, a convenience he hadn't even realized he'd missed until this moment.

  The engine died and the feline wailing came to an accompanying halt.

  "Oh, thank you, God." Matt clasped his hands together in appreciative prayer, gazing at the ceiling of the vehicle. "I don't know what I've done to piss you off lately, but whatever it is, surely I've done my penance."

  "Maybe you just need to talk to him more." Tamsen's matter-of-fact tone caused a flood of Catholic guilt. Her straightforward approach to spirituality often caught him off guard.

  "Come on. Let's get you and the demon cat settled in."

  "Don't listen to him, Azzie. He's just upset 'cos God's punishing him."

  "I'm not being punished!" He relieved her of the cat cage so she could get out of the car. The cat eyeballed him through the bars and he had an unnerving feeling they just weren't going to be friends. Some people were cat people and some people were dog people; unfortunately, he was the latter and Azriel seemed to have worked that out already.

  "If you give me the front door key, I can get him inside and then come and help you with the rest of the bags."

  Matt popped the boot before obediently passing over keys and cat, glad to be relieved of the furball from hell. "It's the biggest silver key," he told her, all too aware that, the way things were going, this might well be the one and only time she put a key into his front door.

  Foreboding feelings manifested in the far reaches of his mind. He tried to brush them away but they stubbornly remained. He could almost feel them taking root, like the moss and lichen that crept up the cold, southern corner of the house.

  Shuddering, he turned his mind back to the task at hand. He was determined they should have some time to sort this mess out, and wanted her to stay until at least after the funeral. She needed somewhere safe to grieve. He'd witnessed first-hand what suppressed grief could do to a person: it made them bitter and cold. Tamsen was too lovely and vibrant a person for that.

  Gina's life had affected her almost on a daily basis, now he worried that the fallout from her death could destroy the woman he'd grown to love.

  Tamsen struggled in the door with the cat cage in one hand, Matt's keys in the other and the box of cat biscuits, which she'd absentmindedly picked up off the floor of the car, tucked under her arm. She kicked the door closed behind her and then remembered Matt was following with the bags.

  "Damn!" She put Azzie down and attempted to open the front door. To her dismay it wouldn't budge.

  "You need to put the key in again - it's a deadlock."

  Tamsen screamed in shock. Spinning around, she dropped the dried food, the lid popping off the box and light brown and yellow circles and crosses spilling all over the polished wooden floor. It looked like midgets were playing some obscure game of noughts and crosses.

  "I didn't know Matthew had a cat?" The look on Marguerite's face advertised in no uncertain terms she wasn't a cat-lover.

  "He doesn't, he's mine." She unlocked the deadlock and opened the door, to find Matt materialize
d on the doorstep. Thank God, she thought, he could save her from a fate worse than death - his mother.

  "Mother."

  "Matthew."

  Tamsen didn't understand the apparent lack of love between them. Why did Matt have her here if they so obviously disliked each other?

  Marguerite almost looked through Tamsen. "And why, pray tell, has she brought an animal with her?" Marguerite had an enviable, upper-class way of sounding spiteful while still managing to keep a pleasant expression.

  "Tamsen's staying for a few days." Matt sounded tired and Tamsen felt unexpectedly sorry for him.

  "She simply can't. I'm in the guest room." Marguerite sucked in a breath and puffed out her chest, a superior smiled pasted on her face.

  Tamsen lost patience with the up-herself social climber. "Not a worry." She picked up Azriel and strode past the unpleasant woman. "I'm in Matt's room with him."

  "I'll be along with the bags in a minute, babe." From the pain in Matt’s voice Tamsen knew it would be a long few days.

  "Mother, why are you still here?" Matt was exhausted. The last thing he needed was a confrontation, but it looked as if he was going to have one anyway.

  "I told you before you went to Melbourne with that...that..."

  "Tamsen. Mother. Her name is Tamsen." Anger boiled in his gut, a long, slow boil; it had been simmering all day and so far he'd kept it capped. If his mother wasn't careful she’d would wear the lot.

  "It's not worth me making the effort to remember that woman’s name, Matthew. She's not you. Now, Angie, she's your type. I've spent a lot of time with her while I've been here and I think she's prepared to forgive you and come back."

  "Mother..." He was trying hard to be civil, but all he wanted to do was shake her. "I've had the day from hell. I'm going to order in a pizza and then go to bed with my girlfriend. My girlfriend, Tamsen!"

  He was so close to Marguerite as he spat out his words she jumped. "I suggest you forget Angie ever existed and make arrangements to be on the first flight back to Sydney tomorrow or - " he lowered his tone to menacing "- I can't be held responsible for some of the things I might say or do."

  It had all become clear to Matt. His crisis of faith at the Cathedral in Melbourne. Finding Gina strung up in Tamsen's flat. Life was short. He needed to make some changes and the first of them was standing up to his mother.

  He moved to within an inch of Marguerite's face, so close he could see where her translucent face powder collected in the small vertical creases between her eyes. "I have no desire to destroy what's left of our relationship, Mother, but if you continue to meddle in my life then I will." Her eyes were wide with shock. "Are. We. Very. Clear. On. This?"

  Marguerite inched slowly away from him, eyes like saucers, never leaving his. "We'll talk about it in the morning, Matthew." She turned and bid a hasty retreat, he assumed to the guest room.

  He'd have to suction her out.

  Azriel lay stretched out and purring at Tamsen's feet. He'd circumnavigated the room, satisfied himself there was no way out, and eventually settled next to her prostrate form. Matt, poor exhausted soul, didn't object when the litter tray went into his adjoining bathroom. He'd even been so kind as to bring her little furry friend a saucer of milk to wash down his dinner. Tamsen figured Matt must be too beat from the scene with his mother. She shuddered, thinking about the woman. The words vile and wretched came to mind.

  A nightmarish day and now hunger had set in with a vengeance. However the gentle vibration of her companion's purring went a little way to soothe her spent soul.

  "A la carte dining, mademoiselle." Matt swung a pizza box into the bedroom, bowing lavishly and placing it, complete with garlic bread and potato wedges, on the duvet. Azriel lifted his head, sniffed the cardboard suspiciously, gave Tamsen an I-wouldn't-eat-that-if-it-was-the-last-morsel-on-earth look and returned to his slumber.

  She giggled. "He's not impressed with your cooking, but I'm past caring."

  "Well, I'm not trying to impress him." Matt leaned over placed a gentle kiss on her forehead. "It's nice to hear you laugh."

  "I'm so over crying. I'm sure there are no tears left. I've cried myself dry."

  Matt opened the pizza box and the room filled with the delicious aroma of spicy meats and melted cheese. "Aw shit." He looked mortified.

  "What's the matter?" Aside from her salivating like Pavlov's dog, what else could possibly have gone wrong now, she wondered.

  "I forgot you don't eat meat and this is full of the damn stuff."

  "Spare me. It's not a moral decision; it's a liver function decision. I ate Bambi last week, remember?"

  "Oh, yeah, I forgot."

  "Now hand me a piece before I have to resort to violence."

  Matt grinned and took great delight making a big deal of extracting a piece of pizza, collecting the stretchy strands of mozzarella cheese and twisting them into a tidy bundle. He then placed the whole arrangement on a red-and-white checkered paper napkin - the kind that doesn't manage to keep the grease from the cheese off anything, but looks good. It reminded her of Matt's mother: pretty, tastefully designed and packaged, but not much use for anything at all.

  "How'd it go with Mother?" She couldn't help stressing the r so it came out as a low growl, and was amused when Azriel's ears went back and his tail frizzed, as if he understood.

  "I told her she's got to go back to Sydney."

  Tamsen took another bite of the delicious pizza. "You told her that before we went to Melbourne and she's still here." She wiped some cheese fat from her chin with the inadequate red napkin.

  "I am aware of that." Matt took a huge bite of garlic bread, then howled with pain, his hand flying to his mouth. "Aw, fuck. Now I've bitten my tongue."

  "Sorry, I didn't mean to wind you up."

  "For a change, this time it's not you." He chewed gingerly, his hand still hovering under his chin. "The woman won't see I want to live my own life. Thinks she can bowl over here and tell me what to do, and if that doesn't work, simply sit it out until I do what she wants me to do anyway."

  "You're a lawyer. You could always take out a non-molestation order."

  "I wish." He looked in real pain and Tamsen was sure it wasn't just his mouth.

  Matt rearranged himself and the food on the bed, in the process being the recipient of a disgusted look from Azriel.

  "Does he always behave like this?"

  "Like what?" Tamsen tucked into the garlic bread; no reason for her to have to suffer garlic breath all night.

  "Like he owns the joint."

  "He's a cat. They don't have owners, they have slaves."

  "It's eerie. It's as if he's looking out for you."

  "He probably is. I wouldn't leave him because we've got a special bond."

  "I got that impression."

  "You don't mind him sleeping here with us?" Tamsen knew he did mind, but was hoping that under the circumstances he'd lie.

  "Yes. There's only one pussy I want to share my bed with."

  Tamsen laughed. "Well, looks like you're in for a treat, 'cos tonight you've got two."

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  "Oh, for fuck's sake." Matt's howl of anguish from the bathroom woke Tamsen from a dreamless sleep.

  "What's the matter?" She stretched her legs and found Azriel perched between them. Scratching him behind the ears, she met Matt's hostile gaze.

  He was wearing nothing but a cobalt towel, the contrasting color setting off his black hair, damp and darker looking than usual. A bolt of lust snaked through her and she ran her fingers over Azzie's cool, smooth ears, the sensation similar to running her fingers over the velvet tip of a penis though she wanted the real thing.

  "There's cat litter all over the bathroom floor and I've just had a shower."

  "Don't worry, it'll be clean." It was neither here nor there, she thought - by the time she was finished with him this morning he was going to need another shower anyhow.

  "How do you know that?" Matt's face looked grim;
he almost pouted. She so wanted to taste his lips with hers.

  "Trust me, you don't have to worry. I'll clean it up."

  "I do bloody worry - about everything. That's my problem."

  "Come here." She patted the bed beside her, and on impulse picked Azzie up and dropped him on the floor. "I want to touch you."

  Matt eyed her suspiciously. "You mean, like sex?"

  "No, you prat! I mean like I stroke the cat!" For an intelligent man he could be so stupid sometimes.

  "But your best friend's dead."

  "I'm well aware of that fact, Matthew."

  "Well..." He looked perplexed, but made advances toward the bed, even if they were at a snail’s pace.

  She said, "Someone's died, so I'm not supposed to get horny when a gorgeous man walks in the room half naked?"

  "Something like that."

  "Death always makes me horny."

  "You are so weird."

  "No, I'm not. I bet most people are at it like knives after funerals."

  "You think so?"

  He had at least made it to the bed now and she could smell the fresh scent of soap on his skin. She asked curiously, "What do you think about after you've been to a funeral?"

  "I haven't been to many." He eyed her with suspicion. "You're not a funeral groupie, are you?"

  "No." She ran her fingertips along the edge of the towel, just hooking her nails under the bound edge near his knee, making promises he knew she'd keep. "But didn't you come away sort of energized, full of life in a way you didn't understand? Somehow determined to change at least some area of your life, live in a better way - maybe be a bit more reckless? Because you realized that at any moment it could all be snatched away from you?"

  "Er, not really, not that I remember." He watched her fingers toying with his towel.

  She could see stirring under the toweling. "See, even talking about it's turning you on."

  "I can assure you that talking about death is not turning me on. The very alive feeling of your fingers on my inner thigh is doing it for me, though."