the door behind her, she heard Nancy’s voice in the kitchen. “Imagine my surprise to hear that you and Lou had been out together.”
“Yeah. Funny, huh.”
“Strange, really. I never heard a word about the two of you being, you know, friendly.”
“There is no ‘two of us,’ Nan. When I took Oscar in this morning, I invited her to dinner tonight. You were busy with Bob and the wedding, and she’s good company. No biggie.”
Lou barely had time to be disappointed by Will’s answer before she heard Nancy reply, “Well, it’s just strange, you know, considering how she’s always—”
Lou so did not want her to finish that sentence; Nancy knew all about Lou’s long-ago crush on her brother, and Lou would be mortified to hear it revealed. Closing the bedroom door louder than necessary, she joined them in the kitchen, saying, “Poor Anthony, he’s totally traumatized. We found him in a Dumpster a couple of weeks ago. Heaven knows how he got there. And then he had to be isolated for a while, while he got over a bad wheeze. And he’s cross-eyed, poor baby, so no one seemed to want to adopt him. Then just last week, I decided to take him upstairs to live with me. And now this. Too much shuffling and moving around. It will be a long time until he can settle down and trust anyone.”
Nancy, who stood, hip propped against the stove, indicated the round wooden table in the corner. “Sit. I’m making tea. You want some?”
“Yes, please.” Lou sank into the soft cushion covering the chair, then gazed around, feeling thoroughly at home. All the warmth in this room had been created by Will and Nancy’s late mom, Lorna Jamison, a devoted homemaker and terrific cook, who had died two years after her husband’s untimely death in a railroad crash.
Nancy had not inherited her mother’s propensity for cozy homemaking; instead, the kitchen counters were strewn with books, file folders, old copies of the Courier. A pile of take-out pizza boxes were stacked on an old wicker chair in the corner.
As Lou turned to the other occupant at the table, he stood. “Excuse me for just a moment, will you?” Will said. “I need to make a couple of phone calls.”
After Lou had filled Nancy in on the break-in details, she managed to defer any questions about her evening with Will by asking how the wedding plans were going, which opened up a much more pleasant topic of conversation. As they sipped their tea, and Lou felt the hot liquid reaching the cold places and warming them up, Nancy explained that there was some kind of last-minute problem with the flowers. As the editor of a paper, Nancy was used to putting out fires and improvising solutions, so she was taking it all in stride; Bob, her fiancé, wasn’t. He wanted it all to be perfect, Nancy told Lou, and they both agreed that he was, by nature, both more detail-oriented and more romantic than Nancy.
“So what’s up with you and my brother?” Nancy asked finally, but Lou was rescued from having to answer by Will’s reentrance. Announcing she was thoroughly frazzled and exhausted, Nancy said she was going to bed. She gave Lou a quick conspiratorial wink as she left the room, which made her deeply uncomfortable. There was nothing “up” between her and Will.
But he’d kissed her tonight, hadn’t he? So maybe it wasn’t entirely absurd.
And what if he did kiss you? the voice of reason asked her. It was just that. One kiss.
A really nice kiss.
Which he’d broken off pretty quickly.
As he sat down, Will’s cell phone shrilled. He removed it from his pocket, flipped it open, announced, “Will Jamison here.” If he’d been expecting a specific call, this wasn’t it. Lou watched his face as, surprised, he said, “Oh. Hi.”
It was a woman. Lou knew it immediately, from the way he angled his body away from her just slightly and lowered his voice. “Fine. How about you?” He listened again, turned even farther away from her and said, “Yeah.”
Lou tried not to pay attention, really she did, but her imagination easily filled in the blanks. “How are you?” had been followed by “I miss you” and then “When are you getting back?”
Just then, Will said, “Monday.”
Yup, right on the money, Lou thought, and felt a piercing stab of jealousy. She immediately called herself all kinds of names for even feeling that way. Will had an entire life back in Washington she was not part of. He could even be serious about someone, for all she knew. He hadn’t mentioned that little fact, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t so.
She felt her heart sinking at the prospect of Will with someone he really cared about.
No. Not fair. Was she to spend her entire life mooning over a man who would never choose her?
But he kissed me.
Will hung up, smiled. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she said, brightly, then yawned. It was totally unexpected, as was the next one. And like that, she remembered: she was plain wiped out.
“I have to go to sleep, Will. I’ve been up since four.”
“You mentioned that earlier. Why?”
“We had a little rescue operation this morning. A feral mama cat and six little ones living under a house. The only way we could get them was to surround and surprise them in the dark.”
“Did it work?”
“Somewhat. We got two of the kittens and the mama. You saw her today.”
“Ah, the furious feline.” He smiled his crooked smile and, despite herself, her heartbeat kicked up a notch. “Make that the furious, frantic, feral feline. Kind of has a ring to it.”
“The very one.”
“What about the other kittens?”
“They got away.”
“What will happen to them?”
“They weren’t weaned yet, so most likely they’ll die, if they’re not eaten by a predator first.”
Will was startled, not by what Lou said but by the way she said it. Matter-of-factly, with just a hint of sorrow.
“God, that’s horrible,” he said.
“Yes, it is.” He watched as she tried to stifle another yawn. “It’s also the way nature works—the strong and the cunning survive. I do what I can, Will. It’s not much.”
She rose from the table and took her cup over to the sink. Will watched her small body, the dejectedness in her shoulders. She was so tired and so sad; he wanted to comfort her, as Nancy had done at the front door. Put his arms around her. Hug her.
And not just as a friend.
Man, this was strange. The call just now from Barbara—the financial adviser to a prominent member of the House—had reminded him of the kind of woman he was always attracted to. Independent and self-sufficient, with a high-powered career. Worldly, sophisticated, somewhat self-centered and somewhat cynical, like him.
Sure Lou had a career she loved, and she was both independent and self-sufficient. But she was a generous, giving soul who wore her heart on her sleeve. At her core, she was a nester, a nurturer. He’d always preferred women who were neither. It was easier that way to avoid emotional attachments.
Even so, there it was, that attraction he felt for her. Lou represented life. She cared, and cared deeply, about animals and people and all living things. Sure, she covered it up with a quick wit and occasional sarcasm, and sure, there were old scars and recent pain, but the woman was a definite survivor. Like a plant in the presence of the sun, she always sought the light.
That light was damned attractive to someone dwelling in the dark, as he had been till recently.
But it wasn’t only what she represented; it was Lou herself. He liked her, apart from anything else. Which was why he reminded himself to keep hands off for