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The one who hated his guts.
Taking a plane would have been quicker. The hour flight from San Francisco to Orange County, even with all that standing around airports beforehand, would have got her to her grandmother’s bedside in far less time.
But Cat would need her car when she got to Balboa. Southern California wasn’t meant for those who depended on public transportation. And Gran had said her surgery wasn’t until tomorrow morning. So even though she hadn’t been able to leave until after work, Cat knew she’d be there in plenty of time.
Besides, it wasn’t a matter of life and death.
Yet.
The single renegade word snuck into her brain before she could stop it.
Don’t think like that, Cat admonished herself, sucking in air and trying to remain calm as she focused on the freeway. Gran wasn’t dying. She had fallen. She had broken her hip.
Lots of people got broken hips and recovered. They bounced back as good as new.
But most of them weren’t eighty-five years old.
Which was another nasty thought that got in under her radar.
“Gran’s a young eighty-five,” Cat said out loud, as if doing so would make it truer. Exactly what a “young eighty-five” meant, she didn’t know. But it sounded right.
And she knew she couldn’t bear the thought of losing her grandmother.
Normally she never even thought about that sort of thing. Ordinarily Gran seemed just the same as she had always been—no different—or older—than when Cat had come to live with her twenty-one years ago. Margaret Newell had always been a strong, resilient healthy woman. She’d had to be to take on an angry, miserable orphaned seven-year-old.
She still was resiliant. Cat reminded herself. She just had a broken hip.
“She’ll be fine,” she said, speaking aloud again. “Absolutely fine.”
But even though she said it firmly, she feared things might be changing. Time was not on her grandmother’s side. And someday, like it or not, ready or not, time would run out.
But usually she didn’t have to think about it. She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want Gran’s mortality thrust front and center in her life right now.
Or ever.
She was momentarily distracted by a pinging sound in the engine of her fifteen-year-old Chevy that she didn’t think should be there. She didn’t ordinarily depend on her car as her first choice of transportation. Foolish, perhaps, but in San Francisco, she didn’t need to. The bus or Adam, her fiancé, took her wherever she needed to go.
Of course she had intended to get new tires before she came down to see Gran at Easter. But Easter was still a month away. So she hadn’t got them yet. Besides, she was hoping Adam would come down with her. Then she might be able to put off getting them even longer.
But, in reality, Cat knew she should have got them last week. She should have been prepared. When your only living relative reached eighty-five years, you should always be prepared for anything. But “anything” seemed to imply “dying.” And there she was back at the grimmest of possibilities again.
Damn it! She slapped her palms in frustration against the steering wheel.
“Don’t die,” she exhorted her grandmother now, though only Huxtable and Bascombe, her two cats fast asleep in the backseat, were there to hear her. They both slept right through her exhortation.
“You’ll be fine,” Cat went on as if her grandmother was listening. She infused her voice with all the enthusiasm she could muster. The cats ignored that, too. They ignored pretty much everything she did or said that didn’t have to do with cans of cat food.
“It’s no big deal, Gran,” she went on firmly. But her voice wobbled and she knew she wouldn’t convince anyone—especially no-nonsense Maggie Newell.
But she said them again. Practiced them all the way to Southern California because if she sounded convincing, then they would both eventually come to believe it. That was how it worked.
“You can make it happen,” Gran had told her long years ago, “if you sound convincing.”
And Cat knew for a fact it was true. She remembered those months after her parents had been killed and she had come to live with Gran and Walter. She’d been devastated, angry, a ball of seven-year-old misery. She’d hated everyone and she was sure she’d never be happy again.
Gran had sympathized, but had insisted that she try to look on the bright side.
“What bright side?” Cat had wanted to know.
“You have a grandmother and grandfather who love you more than anything in the world,” Gran had told her with absolute conviction.
Cat hadn’t been all that sure. It might be true, but it hadn’t seemed like much compared to the love she’d lost at her parents’ death. Still, she knew Gran had to be hurting, too. If Cat had lost her parents, Gran had lost her only daughter and her son-in-law. Plus she’d suddenly been saddled with an opinionated, argumentative child just when she and Walter were getting ready to retire and do what they wanted to do.
Still, Cat had wrapped her arms around her chest and huddled into a small tight cocoon of misery, resisting when Gran had slid her arms around her skinny shoulders and said, “Let’s sing.”
“Sing?” Cat had been appalled.
Gran had nodded, still smiling and wiping away the tear streaks on her own cheeks. “There’s a great deal to be learned from musical comedies,” she said firmly.
Cat hadn’t known what a musical comedy was. She’d sat, resisting, stiff as a board. But Gran had persisted. She didn’t have a good voice, but she had all the enthusiasm in the world.
She sang “Whistle a happy tune,” and then she sang “Put on a Happy Face.” She had smiled into Cat’s unhappy one and kissed her nose. Then she’d sung “Belly Up to the Bar, Boys.”
It was so absurd that even feeling miserable, Cat had giggled. And Gran had hugged her tighter, and then the dam inside her broke, and she remembered how she had by turns sobbed and laughed in her grandmother’s arms. They’d sobbed and laughed together. And Cat could still feel the solid comforting warmth of her grandmother’s arms around her that day. She longed to put her own arms around her grandmother now.
“It will be fine,” she had told her grandmother on the phone that afternoon, refusing to let her voice crack. “We won’t only sing. We’ll dance,” she vowed. “You’ll be dancing in no time.”
In her mind’s eye she could see Gran dancing now. It made her smile—and blink away unshed tears. There. That was better.
Gran was right: you had to sound convincing to be believed—especially by yourself.
It did work. Cat knew it worked. At least in cases of misery—and in cases where the outcome was up to her.
If theme songs weren’t one hundred percent foolproof it was because one time she’d been a fool and dared to believe in something she had no control over. Warbling “Whistle a Happy Tune” had got her through making new friends at her new school and in the Girl Scout troop. “Climb every Mountain” had helped her through swimming lessons and eighth grade speech. “Put on a Happy Face” had forced her to smile through teenage angst.
And if “Some Enchanted Evening” had failed her, it wasn’t because there was something wrong with the song. There had been something wrong with the man.
She’d loved. But her love had not been returned. So she’d learned her lesson.
That was all behind her now. Now she had Adam who really did want to marry her, who smiled indulgently and shook his head and called her “Little Mary Sunshine,” though sometimes she wasn’t entirely sure he thought her sunshiny attitude was a good thing.
Adam was a banker, a very serious banker. Cat didn’t mind serious. She didn’t mind that he was a banker. It meant he was trustworthy. Dependable. The right sort of man to start a family with.
And more than anything Cat wanted a family.
She flexed her shoulders and tried to ease the kinks out of them. Bascombe mewed and poked his head between the two front seats. She wondered if he sensed that they were coming home. He’d been born on Balboa Island, had spent the first two years of his life there. They were south of Los Angeles at last, heading toward Newport and the beach. It was past one in the morning now and she was tired. Her only stop had been for gas in King City. Now she yawned so widely that she heard her jaw crack.
“Almost home,” she told Baz. But the moment she said the words her stomach clenched, because once again the memories came flooding back, reminding her of the days she’d thought that Gran’s old house would become her home again, that she’d marry and raise a family there.
And now—now it wasn’t. She wasn’t.
“Don’t go there,” Cat warned herself.
Because every time she did, she thought about Yiannis Savas and she grew hot and flustered and mortified all over again. Everything in her wanted to turn around and head straight back to San Francisco. For more than two years, she’d done exactly that—stayed well away from him.
But this time she couldn’t because Gran was counting on her. She had to suck it up and act like the grown-up woman she was, and forget all about the airy-fairy fool who’d had her head in the clouds—or in the song lyrics—that had only brought her pain.
Determinedly she turned on the radio and tuned in the heaviest metal she could find. Baz hissed in protest.
“Sorry,” she said, but he couldn’t have heard her over the noise.
No matter. She needed it. Usually when she came down to visit Gran she tried to time it for when he was out of the city or, better yet, out of the country.
But this time she feared her luck wasn’t that good.
When Gran had called she’d said Yiannis had brought her to the hospital. He was wonderful to her, of course. As always Gran couldn’t say enough good things. Yiannis was “so thoughtful. So helpful. Taking care of everything until you get here.”
What “everything” meant had not been specified.
“But I know you’ll help him when you get here,” Gran had said confidently.
The words had made the skin on the nape of Cat’s neck prickle. Help Yiannis? Not likely.
Whatever needed doing, she would do it herself. She would step in, take over, and that would be the last she would have to see of him. Fine with her. And she suspected it would be fine with him, too. Yiannis wouldn’t want her around “getting ideas” the way she had the last time, would he?
Her cheeks started to burn again.
“I told him you’d help,” Gran had said firmly when she hadn’t replied.
Cat wasn’t going to say what she was thinking. It wasn’t the sort of thing you said to an eighty-five-year-old woman on her way to surgery the next morning. So Cat had made noncommital noises that could be construed as agreement.
“Couldn’t be bothered to stay and see you settled in?” She did say that and it sounded about right. Yiannis wasn’t one for commitment. Even the two hour variety.
“He just got back from Malaysia last night. He’s exhausted. He needs his rest.” Gran always managed to think the best of him.
But Cat had snorted. She knew Yiannis worked. But she also knew he played. Hard. Mostly what she saw Yiannis doing was playing—chatting up women. Charming them. Rubbing suntan lotion on their backs. Kissing them. Making them fall in love with him.
Then moving on to the next one.
Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel.
Poor Yiannis, she thought, annoyed. Yes, he might be exhausted. But she was willing to bet that if he was in his bed right now, he wasn’t sleeping.
When she finally drove onto the island, the streets were deserted. Even the bars were closed. And while it ordinarily took ages to navigate Balboa’s crowded main streets to get to Gran’s, now she was pulling up to park in just a few minutes. All the lights were off at Yiannis’s house on the front of the lot. But in the back, above the garage, there was a light on in Gran’s living room. Apparently Mr Savas had left the light on for her.
Grudgingly, Cat gave him one point for that.
She opened the car door and, in the unaccustomed silence, could hear the sounds of waves breaking against the shore. Getting out, she stretched, working the stiffness out of her cramped muscles and breathing in the damp sea air. Then, still rolling her shoulders, she opened the back door and reached in, scooping a cat up into each arm.
She carried them past Yiannis’s house, through the small garden and up the stairs to the apartment. Then she opened Gran’s door and shooed the cats in. Then she went back for her suitcase. Lugging it up the stairs, she tried to imagine when her grandmother would be able to climb them again.
Or if she would.
Something else she didn’t want to think about.
Finally she reached the small porch, shoved open the door and heaved the suitcase inside. The cats loped toward her, then wove between her ankles, purring and meowing.
“Food,” she translated and fished a can and their bowls out of her suitcase. While they were eating, she filled the litter box that Gran kept for their visits. By the time she finished Hux and Baz were back, looking for more food.
“Tomorrow,” she told them sternly “Now just chill out and let’s get some sleep.”
They purred a bit more, but she resolutely ignored them. She was too exhausted to think. Her brain buzzed. Her eyes felt scratchy.
At least tonight, with Gran in the hospital, she wouldn’t have to sleep on the sofa.
She went into the bathroom and stripped down to her T-shirt and underwear, too tired to dig through her suitcase for a nightgown. Then she brushed her teeth and shook her head at the sight of her bloodshot eyes in the bathroom mirror. Then, yawning, barely able to keep those eyes open, she pushed open the door to the bedroom, flicked on the light …
And stopped dead.
Yiannis—and a baby—were fast asleep on Gran’s bed.
CHAPTER TWO
“YOU!”
At the squawk of feminine indignation and the sudden blinding overhead light, Yiannis threw up a hand to protect his eyes. Squinting, trying to figure out where the hell he was, he raised his head and saw two things—a sleeping baby on his chest and Catriona MacLean—in her underwear—gaping at him from the doorway.
He gaped right back, as dazed by the view as by the light. Fortunately he had the presence of mind to keep a hand firmly on Harry’s back as the little boy began to stir. “Turn off the damn light,” he commanded, though it rather pained him to do so. The view—as his pupils adjusted—was stunning.
“What?” Cat didn’t move.
Harry whimpered.
“Turn off the flaming light, woman.” Yiannis would have levered himself up and done it for her, but doing so would have disturbed the baby. “Unless,” he added through his teeth, “you want him to start screaming. Again.”
After three hours of virtually nonstop crying that had only tapered off what felt like minutes ago, Yiannis sure as hell didn’t. All his nerve endings were frayed. Harry would probably still be yelling if Yiannis hadn’t finally taken a page out of his brother Theo’s book and settled the little blighter down on his chest.
That at last, had worked. But even as he finally quieted and drifted off, Harry still emitted intermittent heart-wrenching sighs that shuddered through his small frame. They made Yiannis feel guilty, though he wasn’t the one who ought to be, heaven knew.
Fortunately the shuddering sobs were getting fewer and fewer. But he was not inclined to let anyone wake Harry again any time soon. He thought he might have to get up and shut it out for her when finally Cat did what she was told. The light flicked off. But he could still glimpse those memorable slender curves silhouetted in the doorway.
“What are you doing in Gran’s bedroom?” Cat demanded.
What the hell did she think he was doing?
“Guess,” he said irritably. “And shut the door while you’re doing it. I’ll be out when I’m sure he’s settled.”
“Huh.” It was a snort that carried with it a truckload of doubt. But at least she finally pulled the door shut and remained on the other side of it.
