Full Circle Love (A Four Part Anthology of Cat & Zach Stories)

by Lori Leger

  “It’s fine, Cat.”

  “No. No, it’s not fine. It may be fine a week from now, or a month from now, but today, I feel like I’m betraying my fiancé, and I’m sorry, but it’s not you. Why can’t any of you understand how out of place I feel here? I had a life in Dallas. It was a good life. I remember being happy. This…” She threw her hands up in the air. “This is the part that seems alien to me.”

  “Cat—”

  “No, Zach! Every time I open my mouth, I hurt your feelings. I know I do. I don’t know what to say or do, to keep that from happening. God, I hate this!” Her outburst annihilated the only barrier holding back her tears. Within seconds, a series of hiccupped sobs turned into uncontrollable blubbering.

  Zach wanted to crawl in a hole, hide until things were back to normal. It didn’t take long to realize that if he felt that way, surely she must feel the same…times about a hundred.

  “Come here, Cat-tastrophe.” He lifted her gently from the chair and wrapped her in a hug, his chin resting on the top of her head. “It’ll be all right, and I do understand. I swear I do. We’re all as clueless as you about how to handle this.” He attempted to brush his hands through the mass of tangles and knots in her hair, and had to settle for rubbing her back, instead. “I can tell you one thing that will definitely help.”

  “What?” She sniffed, using the sleeve of her robe to wipe her eyes.

  “You need a nice hot shower, someone to wash your hair, and maybe even a long soak in a tub afterward. I know I felt a hell of a lot better once I got to go home and shower.”

  “That does sound good.” She spoke through watered down sniffles. “Do you think they’d let me?”

  “It won’t hurt to ask. You want to go now?” When she nodded, he helped her back into her chair and steered her to the double doors. Back inside the hospital corridor, he pulled up short at the intersection, nearly colliding with a nurse pushing an empty bed. “Whoa there! We don’t need any more accidents.”

  Cat gave him a low chuckle. “Nope, and if you see anything resembling a giant bumble bee heading for us, run like hell.”

  “Don’t worry, I will.” He delivered her safely to her room, stopping once along the way to ask a nurse about a shower. Once Cat declined Zach’s offer of assistance with the shower, he stepped out of the room to give her some privacy.

  He sat in the lounge sipping from a cup of black coffee when something she’d said came back to him. He jumped to his feet, narrowly avoiding a lapful of piping hot liquid.

  “Hell yeah,” he whispered, as the grin on his face widened. “That’s what I’m talking about!”

  “I live here?” Cat perused the neat yellow and white wood-frame house, its front porch bordered with flowerbeds filled with purple and yellow petunias.

  Zach opened the truck door for her and helped her step down. “Yep, for the last four months of your life.”

  “I’ve always liked this place. Who’d you say I was renting from?”

  “Doctor Barton, a.k.a. your future stepdad, I’m thinking.”

  Her gaze flew to him to see if he was serious. “My mom is seeing Doc Barton? Are you sure?”

  “Well, I’m sure they’re a couple. I can only speculate on the future stepdad part, but they go everywhere together.”

  “That’s…good…good for her. She’s too young to spend the rest of her life alone.”

  “I think so too, and they both seem happy when they’re together.”

  Cat took the front steps gingerly, wincing at the pain from bruised and battered ribs, and clinging to Zach’s arm for support. She waited, catching her breath, as he unlocked the front door for her. As it swung open, she caught her first glimpse of the place she’d inhabited, barely recognizing some of her things in such a strange surrounding.

  He helped her to one of four chairs scattered around the small living room.

  She sat carefully, looking around. “Where’s my couch?”

  “You sold it.” He sounded apologetic. “We agreed to start fresh. No pieces of furniture we’d…ah…had any experiences on…with other people. Or rather, you insisted, and I agreed.”

  Remembering the last time she and Chris had… She let her thought trail off as her face heated with embarrassment. “What’d you do with yours?”

  “I took it to the dump. It…was…in pretty rough shape.”

  “Hm, I bet.”

  “I have a dog, smart ass.”

  “You probably are a dog,” she snorted, stopping short when something soft rubbed up against her bare legs. “Whose kitty?”

  Zach leaned over to pick up Chableu and scratched his head. “It’s okay, Chableu. She doesn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  “He’s mine?”

  “Yep. I gave him to you as a homecoming gift your first week back. You adore him, by the way.”

  “Of course I do. Look at that handsome face!” she cooed as Zach settled the kitty in her lap. Within seconds, he’d pushed his head under her chin and began purring loudly.

  “He missed you. You’ve never been away from him overnight before this.”

  “Poor Chableu. I love him, Zach. He’s beautiful. Is he litter box trained?”

  Zach nodded. “Neutered, litter-box trained, and what’s even better, you’ve got him house trained as well. He scratches on the door to go out and you keep his litter box on the porch.”

  “That’s quite brilliant of me, if I say so, myself.”

  “I thought so, too.” He turned in a slow circle, both arms spread out. “You recognize any of this?”

  She looked around. “My own stuff, but not the surroundings.” She struggled to stand, finally accepting his arm to help her. She walked slowly around, surveying the small, but extremely neat rooms, arranged exactly as she would have arranged them, decorated and accessorized to suit her tastes.

  “It looks a little bare, though.”

  “Well, you’ve been moving stuff to our house. You’d planned on packing up some of this and taking it to St. Vincent’s closet this week.”

  She stopped in front of several framed shots around a bayou, gasping at the exact moment a heron emerged from the water with a fish in its beak. Another of a gator, up close and personal, had her sending Zach a curious gaze. “I’m not getting rid of this, am I?”

  “No, you were looking for some special frames for them, and looks like you found them.”

  She studied the setting in the photos. “Where is this place?”

  “I took you out to my secret spot and called old Wally gator in for you. He’s inhabited that place for as long as I can remember.” He pointed at the group and beamed down at her. “These garnered you a few first place prizes in contests, and a spot in a national magazine.”

  “It did? Where’s the magazine?”

  “It won’t be out until this fall.”

  She nodded. “Secret spot, huh? Was I blindfolded during the drive?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, I guess it’s lucky for you I can’t remember.”

  He snorted and shook his head. “That is so wrong.”

  She laughed and leaned in closer to study the photos, finally giving him a nod. “I’m not surprised about the awards and magazine. They’re that good.”

  She entered the kitchen next, opened the fridge to examine its contents. It contained all the same items she kept in her other fridge, such as carrots, celery, sweet peppers, tomatoes, bagged salads, yogurt, thin sliced deli meats, assorted dips and dressings, and a container of left over pasta.

  “Do I drink this kind of beer now?” She examined a six-pack of domestic beer, taking up space beside her favorite wine.

  Zach came to stand beside her. “No, but I do.”

  She shut the fridge without a word, and then checked out her cabinets of dishware, drawers of silverware, and the well-stocked pantry. She meandered into the bedroom and bath; saw her possessions neatly arranged in the spacious rental, rather than her cramped Dallas apartment that cost tr
iple of what he said her rent was on this place.

  “Yep, I must live here, all right.”

  “Either that or we’ve arranged for a massive cover-up,” Zach volunteered.

  She coughed and couldn’t keep from rolling her eyes.

  Zach laughed and pulled down her largest suitcase from the closet. “Fill it up with whatever you think you’ll need.”

  She hesitated before going to her dresser. “I still don’t think I should be staying with you.”

  “You can’t stay by yourself, Cat, at least not for a few days. You’re the one who gave the thumbs-down on staying with your mom and Kellie. That leaves me.”

  “I could have gone to Marissa’s. She offered, too.”

  “She also said since she has to be at the hospital twelve hours a day, you’d be better off with me.”

  Cat couldn’t argue with that. Of everyone who’d filled her in on her current life with Zach, Marissa had been the most informed and adamant about her relationship with him. The two of them had been friends since pre-k and they knew each other inside out.

  “You’re crazy about him, Cat,” her friend had substantiated. “And believe me when I say he feels the same way about you. If there is any place in this world you belong right now, it’s with Zach.”

  Cat filled her large suitcase with everything she thought she might need for a week or two then headed for the bathroom. She stood in front of the medicine cabinet rifling through various bottles of vitamins and OTC headache and allergy relievers. She picked up her package of birth control pills, saw it was not only empty, but also two months past the last refill date.

  “Um…do you happen to know anything about these?” She held up the package to Zach’s reflected image in the mirror.

  “You stopped taking them two months ago.”

  “No flippin’ way!” Her immediate, somewhat violent response seemed to shock him as much as it did her. She turned on him. “Why the hell would I do that?”

  His brow furrowed as blue eyes focused on her. “You insisted, Cathryn, not me. You said you wanted to start trying to have a baby immediately.”

  “I have a career!” she said through clenched teeth. “Two of them, actually, and I don’t have time for babies.” She leveled her best accusatory glare at him. “My writing and my photography are important to me.”

  Zach never even flinched. “That’s how you felt with that other guy, Cat. Apparently you feel differently with me in the picture.” He leaned in close to whisper. “That alone, should tell you something.”

  He straightened again and shrugged carelessly. “Regardless, I didn’t talk you into anything. Like I said, that was your decision, and it still is. In fact, I would suggest getting back on them, considering your injuries. You’ve got some fractured ribs I think ought to be good and healed before you put any kind of pregnancy stress on them.”

  She nodded half-heartedly, at a loss for words now that he had busted her balloon of righteous indignation. “I’ll call…” she paused to read the label, releasing her breath in a rush of relief upon seeing the name of her old gynecologist. “Oh, thank God, it’s still Dr. Richard.”

  Zach’s laughter echoed in the tiled bathroom.

  “It’s not funny. You have no idea how traumatizing it is for a woman to switch gynecologists.”

  “If I did, I think I’d have some serious explaining to do.”

  Cat grinned. “I guess you’re right.” She threw several more items into her smaller case and zipped it closed. “I guess that’ll do. If I think of anything else, I can always come back.”

  “Absolutely.” Zach took the bag from her, along with her suitcase and put it in his truck. When he got back to help her, she stood there with her cat in her arms. “Mm…I have a dog, Cathryn. A big dog. I’m not real sure how Chableu will go over with him.”

  “Yeah? Well Zeus is just going to have to get over it. You gave me Chableu as a gift and I’m not leaving him here alone.”

  Zach gave her a sheepish nod. “Okay. We were going to do this eventually, so a few days early won’t hurt. At least I hope it won’t. Did I mention how big my dog is?”

  Cathryn examined Chableu’s paws and nodded, satisfied that his claws were sharp enough to defend himself. “He can handle your big, dumb dog.”

  Zach headed to her utility room, and came back wearing a huge grin, while hauling a pet carrier and some cat food.

  “What are you grinning about?” Cat wished she felt as good as he obviously did about going to a place where she wouldn’t feel as though she belonged.

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  “That list is getting longer, you know. I wish you’d start filling me in on some of that, now.”

  “All in good time, Cat-tastrophe.” He placed Chableu in the pet carrier and got a good grip on the handle. “You ready?”

  She scanned her surroundings, grabbed two bottles of wine from the fridge at the last second and met Zach at the door. “Now I am.”

  “This is your house?” She gasped at the neat, mid-sized Acadian style home raised high off the ground, the pier-support section bricked-in nicely. A bayou branching off from Lake Erin wound its lazy way around one side of the house, far enough not to be a threat during the rainy season, but still close enough for a fabulous view.

  “Yep. Do you like it?”

  “I love this house—the wrap-around porch and railing, even the staircase on the porch going up into the attic. Is it functional or just for show?”

  “It’s functional, but there’s another one inside.” He smiled as he helped her out of the truck, and then grabbed her two bags.

  “And that bayou. What a remarkable view.” She turned to him. “What did I say the first time I came here?”

  Zach didn’t want to discuss the very first time, when she’d collected his drunk ass from the Dusty Rose. He gave her the second visit’s comments, instead. “Nearly word for word, you said the same thing.”

  She studied the plot of land, just far enough from town to be considered country, but barely a mile from the nearest grocery store. “How long have you been here?”

  “It’ll be five years in October. I think you’ll recognize quite a few items in here.”

  Cat walked inside and covered a gasp by slapping one hand over her mouth. “Oh my God, this place is fabulous!” She turned to Zach. “Is that what I said the first time I stepped inside?”

  He guffawed. “Hardly. You see a lot of your stuff in here, don’t you? Your personal touches?”

  She nodded, looking around. “I do see some of my pieces in here.”

  “Now picture it with raggedy ass furniture, scuffed floors littered with junk mail, beer bottles, and dog hair all over the place.”

  “Huh.” She gazed at the gleaming floors, polished to a satiny gloss and the high quality leather furniture gracing the living area. This place was the perfect combination of rustic masculinity and sophistication. Built-in bookcases lined with classics, framed photography, her own work—some she recognized and some she didn’t—and various relics pertaining to the Cajun culture. Upon closer inspection, she discovered an entire shelf dedicated to her own books, in regular print, large print, and several in other languages. She pulled the ones from the last year, some had just been a file of notes and ideas a year ago. One was a total mystery—a stand-alone novel. She read the front matter of the latest one, written and published in the last month. “Who’s Bayou Bliss Publishing Company?”

  “It’s you, Cat. You decided to delve into self-publishing and started your own company.”

  She whipped around to stare, open mouthed, at him. “Really?”

  He nodded. “Yep. You wrote, edited, formatted, and even did the cover art for that one. Top to bottom—cover to cover—that’s your baby.”

  She got to the dedication, blushed slightly when she realized it was to the love of her life, Zach. She blushed even more at the personalized autograph, a message to Zach, obviously rife with sexual connotation.


  “Your words, not mine,” he said, close enough that she felt his breath on her neck.

  She fought to keep herself from flinching at his nearness, knowing it would hurt his feelings. “I can’t very well deny my own handwriting.” She held up the last two books in her latest series. “The last I remember, I was waiting on edits for this one, and had just finished plotting this one.” She held up the most recent one. “I have no memory of this one at all. Do you have any idea how weird this is for me? First, I see photographs I have no memory of taking, and now I’m holding books I have no recollection of writing.”

  “I know.”

  She gave her head an adamant shake while releasing a slightly hysterical laugh. “Um, no, I don’t think you do.”

  “Look at the bright side, now’s the perfect opportunity to analyze your own work. I guess if you don’t like it, you have no one to blame but yourself.”

  “I can’t argue with you, there.”

  “The same thing goes for the house, since I told you to run with it.” He lifted his hands and spun slowly around. “This is all your handiwork. I don’t know about you, but I love it.”

  “I do too, Zach. I’ve got to admit it’s the perfect mixture of brawn and beauty.” She placed a hand on her head, her breath hitching as a sudden shaft of pain filtered through. “Damn, the headache is back.”

  “You need to rest. You’ve been on your feet too long. Sit down and I’ll get your medication.”

  He tucked her into a spot on the sofa and found the prescription he’d picked up from the pharmacy.

  Within moments, she swallowed the pill with a sip of water from the full glass he provided, and held it out to him.

  “Finish it. The doctor said to keep you hydrated, and resistance is futile.”

  She swallowed the water, knowing from experience, it would be useless to fight him when he wore that look of stubborn determination.

  “Lay back for a minute until the meds take effect, Cat.”