by Kay Hooper
Ching half-closed his pale eyes and lifted his chin. “Yah,” he said softly. He was smiling. Most cats, Lara had decided, wore an almost permanent smile because their faces were made that way. But not her cat. Ching smiled only when he wanted to. And, despite his Asian antecedents, his pointed face was wholly scrutable. Right now, he was pleased.
Lara eyed him uncertainly. What did he have to be pleased about? Surely not Devon’s presence. Ching’s habit of hiding under furniture whenever there were visitors had been born in kittenhood; a gregarious cat when he was taken outside his own domain, he tended to be suspicious of invaders and disliked being visited himself.
Before she could react to the unusual pleasure of her cat, Devon returned to the living room and sat down on the couch beside her. He was holding two cups and handed one to her.
“Tea?” she asked, accepting the cup.
“Hot and sweet. Drink it, Lara.”
She sipped cautiously, unwilling to look at him: They weren’t in the dark any longer, and she felt wary of seeing that strangely moving pain shadowing his eyes. Forcing her voice to remain even, she said, “The traditional remedy for shock. Do you think I’m in shock?”
“I’d be surprised if you weren’t. You could have been killed a little while ago.”
“I—I would have been, if you hadn’t—”
“My pleasure,” he interrupted.
Lara frowned at her tea. “What were you doing out front, by the way? Your car was parked in back.”
“Nick asked me to check the front door and make certain it was locked.”
Perfectly reasonable, of course. Lara told herself not to be so damned suspicious. Devon certainly hadn’t been driving that truck. She looked at Ching, finding his gaze fixed meditatively on Devon. Unable to help herself, she stole a glance at the man, and saw that he was returning the cat’s steady regard.
“Ching, I gather?” he murmured.
“Yes.”
“Hello, Ching.” Devon’s voice was conversational.
“Prroopp,” the cat responded politely. His smile widened, curling up at each end. Suddenly, he reminded Lara of the Grinch, evilly bent on stealing Christmas—or whatever else wasn’t nailed down.
She took a hasty sip of her tea, stole another glance at Devon, and found herself caught. He was looking at her, and with only a foot or so separating them, his eyes were far too intense. She felt a pang she couldn’t define, a strange tug inside her, as if he held one end of a link that was connected to some vital part of herself.
“Was it just an accident, Lara?” he asked softly.
His voice wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. “What else could it have been?” she managed to ask unsteadily.
“You tell me.”
“It was probably a drunk driver.”
“Was it?” His lean face, so expressionless until then, changed, softened somehow as a faint smile curved his lips. It wasn’t a humorous smile, and yet it held a curious charm. “Then why are you afraid?”
“I’m shaken up. You said it yourself—I’m in shock.” She had gained control of herself by then, refusing to give in to panic or fear of him.
“And I’m a stranger,” he said.
“Now that you mention it, yes.” She lifted her chin much as Ching had done, but she wasn’t smiling.
What might have been a glint of amusement stirred in his eyes. “In some cultures, saving a life means it belongs to you afterward.”
“Not in this one.”
“Yes. Pity.”
Lara felt a little puzzled, and very wary. She had seen purely male interest in a man’s eyes before, and was startled to recognize it in Devon’s. Her own reaction to such interest in the past had been somewhat tepid, leaving her with the conclusion that she wasn’t a sensual woman. But that unsettling warmth in Devon’s eyes awoke something she’d never felt before, something that made her ache. She remembered the stark feeling of his hard, powerful body against hers, and heat curled in the pit of her belly.
She jerked her gaze from him, staring down at her cup. Dangerous. Lord, how dangerous it was for her to feel this for a stranger.
“Lara?” He watched her, aware that she was shaken not only by the near miss, but by him as well. He had felt it himself, that strange, instant affinity; he didn’t like it, and he didn’t trust it. He was tired, she was vulnerable. It was just that. Only that.
But he couldn’t stop looking at her, couldn’t block this intense awareness of her. Not what he had expected. What had he expected? A shattered woman, perhaps? She certainly wasn’t shattered. Her pale green eyes, a shade as bright as new grass, held no defeat; she was wary and controlled, but it was obvious the numbness was dissolving. Would she panic now that someone was bent on disrupting the stalemate of months? Somehow, he didn’t think so. Panic, he thought, was alien to this woman’s nature.
“Lara, look at me.”
She did, her gaze steady and guarded. No, he thought, there was no panic. Shadows, yes. Pain. Loneliness that came from being set apart from others. But shrewd intelligence and humor and perception lurked in her eyes.
He told himself that he was a bastard; it wasn’t the first time such a thought had occurred to him. He smiled. “Have dinner with me tomorrow night, after rehearsal?”
“I don’t think—”
“Please?”
Lara found herself nodding, and she was hardly surprised by her acceptance. That dark velvet voice…She got up when he did, waiting while he took his cup to the kitchen.
“Housebroken,” he offered with a smile when he came back into the living room.
“Only because you want to be,” she said involuntarily.
He chuckled, but didn’t comment. Instead, he said, “Since your car’s back at the theater, I’ll pick you and Ching up tomorrow for rehearsal. We can bring him back here before we go to dinner. Quarter to six?”
“Fine,” she murmured, wondering if she was out of her mind. Almost certain that she was.
“See you then.” And he was gone.
Lara locked the door after him, then went back into the living room and stared at her cat. “You were a lot of help,” she told him with a shaky little laugh.
Ching sat on the coffee table exactly as he had the entire time Devon had been there. His long tail waved slowly below him; his chin was up, his eyes were half-closed, and there was a distinctly un-feline smile on his pointed face. “Yah,” he said softly.
“You’re weird. You’re a weird cat.”
He blinked seraphically and began to purr. Ching’s purr was no more feline than his other sounds, since it resembled a cross between a human’s tuneful hum and the flutter of a bird’s wings. It was also extremely loud. Lara had gotten used to it, but it tended to unnerve others—particularly since the hum held a definite but elusive tune, always the same one, that no one had yet been able to identify. A veterinarian had once confided to her that a cat’s purr was one of the mysteries of science; he wanted to do a paper on Ching.
Lara moved about the apartment getting ready for bed. She kept her mind blank, unwilling to think about the confusing day behind her or the potentially troubling ones ahead. Still, she was conscious that whatever happened, the limbo of these past months was ended.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. Emotions couldn’t exist in a limbo. No pain or fear, no grief. It provided a kind of peace, even if that was only an illusion.
Sometimes, she thought, illusions were better than reality. Sometimes, illusions were the only havens left.
Out of habit, she turned off her bedside lamp before moving across the dark room to open the drapes. Also because of habit, she looked out first. Since her apartment windows faced front on the main street of town, it was well lighted outside. Across the deserted street was another group of apartments, this one set at right angles; the sidewalk there was in shadow. A faint motion caught Lara’s attention, and she stood perfectly still, her eyes straining.
At the corner of the apartment buildi
ng directly across the way, a patch of darkness moved slightly. Lara waited, holding her breath unconsciously. She stood there for a good five minutes, but couldn’t be sure if she had seen someone leave. Or arrive. Or if she had seen anyone at all. Was someone watching her building? Perhaps even this window?
She left the drapes closed and crawled into bed feeling distinctly uneasy. Ching was already stretched out under the covers. She stroked his warm flank and listened to his rasping purr, and stared at the dark ceiling.
—
At one end of town near a shadowed street corner, a call was placed from an unlighted phone booth. The caller, insubstantial in the dimness, waited for a response, and then offered a flat statement as greeting.
“It’s started.”
The voice on the other end was impersonal. “Does she know?”
“She’s no fool. What do you think?”
“You’ll have to move fast, then.”
“Yes.”
“Backup?”
“No. Not yet.”
“It’s your call.” The voice was accepting. “Keep in touch.”
“Right.” The caller hung up, then glided away from the dark booth like a shadow.
—
On the opposite end of town, another call was placed, this one from a lighted booth at a convenience store. As before, the conversation was terse and largely without emotion.
“Are you in?”
“Yes. She’s taking part in a community theater production. So am I.”
“Anything yet?”
“I threw a scare into her tonight. I have a few more planned. We’ll see.”
“Search her apartment.”
“Of course.”
“We have to have those documents.”
“I know. If she has them, I’ll find them. If she doesn’t have them—”
“Kill her.”
There was a pause, and then the caller said slowly, “That wasn’t the deal, unless she proved to be a threat.”
“It is our new understanding,” the voice said with forced patience, “that she could conceivably know more than we realized. Even without the documents, she’s a threat. Make certain about the documents first—then kill her.”
“Another thousand.”
“You’ll get it. When she’s dead.”
“Very well.”
“Keep in touch.”
“Right.” The caller hung up, then strolled away from the convenience store, whistling softly.
—
When Devon arrived at Lara’s apartment the following evening, she was waiting with a calm she had wrestled into place. After lying awake half the night, she had abruptly fallen into a deep sleep, from which only Ching’s insistent demands for breakfast had roused her. She had managed to work a couple of hours during the day, and had thought a great deal.
The result was her state of calm, and it was different from that of the last months. She wasn’t sure how exactly, but it wasn’t a limbo, and even though some part of her longed to feel that mindless peace again, she was ready to begin living once more.
“Hi,” Devon greeted her casually as she opened the door to him.
“Hello.”
He looked at the big cat in her arms. “Does he have a carrier? I don’t know about cats being loose in cars.”
“He has a carrier,” Lara admitted, feeling Ching stiffen at the hated word. “But I wouldn’t subject you to that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Within half a block, there’d be a report to the police that you were torturing somebody in your car.”
“Somebody?”
“Trust me. Ching doesn’t sound like a cat when he howls. And he would howl.” She smiled a little at Devon’s look of amused surprise. Odd, she thought, that her first impression of him had been one of an enigmatic lack of emotion; his lean, handsome face seemed very expressive to her now. “He’s well trained,” she added. “He’ll behave.”
“A trained cat,” Devon murmured, stepping back so she could come out into the hall. “I always thought that was a contradiction in terms.”
“With most cats, it is,” she agreed, leaving her apartment and watching him firmly close the door. “Not with Ching.”
A few moments later, Devon had to agree that Lara’s cat was well trained. Ching sat on the seat between them, his head as high as Devon’s shoulder, since he was sitting up. The cat obviously needed to see where they were going. His front paws dangled, and his pointed face was lively with interest.
“He looks like a rabbit,” Devon said after a glance.
Ching mumbled something, but didn’t look at the man.
“Did he just swear at me?” Devon asked, startled.
“Probably. He doesn’t like rabbits. Ching, behave!”
Devon’s lips twitched. “Why do I get the feeling he’s going to steal every scene?”
Lara smiled ruefully. “He just might.”
When they reached the theater, it became clear that Ching was going to steal the hearts of almost everyone involved in the production—whether or not he stole scenes from the actors. From the moment Lara carried her cat backstage, he was the center of attention.
Hardly an indiscriminate cat, Ching developed a different attitude toward each person. He beamed at Nick’s wife, Susie, but was politely unresponsive to the director’s attempts to charm him. He was somewhat suspicious of Tim, was affable with Pat and Sonia, and hissed at Melanie when she tried to pet him. He took an active dislike to two of the stage crew, including Luke, whose tickle beneath the cat’s chin provoked a muttered comment from Ching that was so profane it easily crossed the boundaries of language.
“Cats usually like me,” Luke said in surprise.
Ching, sitting on one end of the old wooden table, tilted his head to look up at the man through slitted eyes. “Yah!” he said with distinct animosity.
Luke took a step back, almost comically bewildered. “What’d I ever do to you, cat?”
“I’m sorry, Luke, Melanie,” Lara said helplessly. “He just doesn’t take to some people.”
“But will he take to stage direction?” Nick asked, eyeing his newest actor with foreboding.
Lara nodded reassuringly. “He has a large vocabulary, Nick, and he enjoys participating. He’ll be fine.”
“A large vocabulary? Show me,” Nick requested.
As always, and totally unlike most cats, Ching went through his paces flawlessly. He knew all the standard canine obedience commands—though Lara prudently made them requests—and in addition was familiar with an impressive number of commonly used words.
“How long will he stay in one place once you’ve told him to?” Nick asked.
“Until I call him.”
“You’re sure?”
“Unless something’s about to fall on him, he’ll stay put.”
Susie, who had watched intently, sighed and said, “Lara, I wish you’d tell me your secret. My cat barely knows his name.”
Lara smiled a little. “Sorry, it wasn’t my doing, not really. Ching learned most of this on his own. I just happened to notice one day. He’s a bit…unusual.”
Ching began purring.
“I’ll say,” Nick muttered, staring at the cat. “There’s a—that’s a definite tune. Isn’t it?”
“I think so,” Lara admitted. “But I’ve never been able to identify it.”
They all listened intently for a few moments while Ching purred and gazed at them beatifically.
“Beats me,” Luke said finally, and hearing a call from one of his men onstage, he wandered away.
Lara glanced at Devon, who had taken a chair at the table and was frowning slightly as he looked at Ching. The frown gave his handsome face a hard look of danger, and she felt unsettled by it. Then he seemed to feel her gaze, and the frown vanished as he looked at her and smiled.
The smile unsettled her even more.
“I can’t get the tune,” Nick said with a shrug. “Maybe one of us’ll get it ev
entually. In the meantime, let’s run through the rest of the script, and then Susie wants to measure you for costumes. Sonia, Pat, you two go ahead, since you aren’t in this act.”
Ching remained where he was on the end of the table, seemingly paying close attention as the remaining actors went over their lines with Nick. He continued to purr until the director spoke firmly to him.
“Ching, we can’t hear ourselves over your music.”
The cat studied him for a moment, then stopped purring and began washing a striped forepaw.
“Damn,” Nick muttered, then cleared his throat. “Fine. Okay—um—Lara, it’s your line.”
The reading continued without incident. They finished with this first run-through less than an hour later. Susie commandeered Devon for measurements and took him back to the dressing rooms, and Lara wandered onstage. She’d left Ching to be petted and talked to by Sonia and Pat while a wary Melanie watched and Nick frowned over the notes on his script.
“How’d it go?” Luke asked cheerily, approaching where she stood near the wings.
“Fine, I guess.” Lara slid her hands into the pockets of her denim skirt and shrugged. “I’ve never been in a play before, so I’m not really sure. The stage is looking good.” She studied the garden scene, where the witch was to make her evil bargain with Rapunzel’s father.
“I’m waiting for Nick’s approval,” Luke confessed. “I’ve never been involved with a play either.”
“You haven’t?” She looked up at him. “I thought community theaters would use the same stage crews every time. I don’t know why I assumed that, but—”
“They usually do, I understand,” Luke agreed. “But Nick’s foreman was out of town or something, and he advertised. I happened to be passing through town—I’m sort of a gypsy at the moment—and I answered the ad. Which is why I’m here losing my heart to Rapunzel.”
“Blarney,” she scoffed, accepting his words as lightly as they were uttered.
Luke assumed a hurt expression. “Now, is that any way to treat a man who lays his heart at your feet? Of course, I realize that I’ll have to win over Ching first, but I have plans.”