12. Chapter 12
Chapter twelve
Charles
I could have kicked myself for that light, fatherly kiss. What in hell did I think I was doing? Kate is a good fifteen years younger than I, and my best friend’s baby sister, to boot.
But what the heck had James been about when he practically shoved her out the door of his car and fled the night he dropped her off? Did he have a secret paramour he didn’t want his sister to know about? Or was he up to something else? He’d made himself scarce since then, too, only making the occasional video call to check in on his sister or to talk business with me.
I use the remote to retract the tv screen into its console, take the wine glasses to the kitchen and rinse them out. I start to put them in the dishwasher, but realize it is running. So I wash and dry them the old-fashioned way. Then I hang them back in their cabinet. No sense in leaving good crystal out for the cat to knock off.
The temptation to have another glass of wine is strong, but there will be work tomorrow. I should not court an accident involving the bum leg or waking up with a hangover. I get down an ordinary glass, fill it with water, down it, and take myself off to my lonely bed.
The next morning, I get up early and go down the hall to the exercise room. I get in some work on the exercise bike, then on the rowing machine. My muscles tell me just how badly I’d been neglecting myself in the last few weeks. It wouldn’t do to add a crippled man to Kate’s already considerable workload. I should get Cece down here to practice her physical skills, too. She loves the climbing wall and the swinging rope.
I have breakfast with the girls and go with them and Gidget on the quarter mile walk around the gardens. Mr. Fluffy goes, too, dashing ahead of us to lie in wait and pounce, then lag behind.
“This is like a private world up here,” Kate says. “It is so nice not to have to worry about Mr. Fluffy falling off the roof or getting run over by a car.”
“That would be one ambitious car to run over something up here,” I say. “Em and I planned it— a place where kids and pets could run and play where we wouldn’t have to worry about them running in front of cars or getting kidnapped. You might say that it is a tiny world, with most of the rough edges filed off it.”
“But not all of them,” Kate says, looking at me with those sharp hazel eyes narrowed.
“No,” I agree, “not all of them. But very few where they can hurt Cece, or even Gidget or Mr. Fluffy. The main reason Gidget has a run is because she chews and digs.”
Kate grins at me. “How ungratefully puppy-like of her.”
I smile, wry humor twisting my lips at her accurately aimed lance of wit. “True. Still, we like our couches, flower beds, and phone books intact.”
“Oops!” Cece says and dashes ahead with Gidget. I sigh. I still haven’t asked her about the phone book. By this time, it is probably best just to let it go.
“She loves that puppy,” Kate says. “It would be too bad if Gidget ate something that disagreed with her. She has a nice run, and she doesn’t have to stay in it all the time. I’m just teasing you.”
“Teasing me?” I widen my eyes at her in pretended disbelief. “How shall I ever overcome the shame. I shall be scarred for life.”
I find that I enjoy Kate’s sense of humor. Even though she had lectured me severely on the proper care of crystal ware when I mention I couldn’t put the wine glasses in the dishwasher. Or when she firmly took the casserole dish in which she’d cooked the meatloaf back out, scraped, then rinsed it before running a load of dishes.
Manuela had always taken care of all the kitchen duties. The fates had truly smiled on me by persuading Kate to be part of my household. But it wouldn’t do to let her know that.
“Oh, you!” Kate says, then runs after Cece and Gidget, who have nearly gone out of sight around the curve of the building. I admire the way she runs, with long-limbed economy of motion, like a dancer or a marathon racer. It makes me long to take up the chase, and perhaps catch her, and . . .
My leg twinges, and I give up any such foolish notions. I make my way more cautiously after them. The artificial hip is far better than most of the alternatives, and for the first three years it had been fine. But lately, it was not behaving quite right.
Mr. Fluffy weaves around my ankles, nearly tripping me up. “Dammit cat,” I say, without rancor, “Are you trying to get us both hurt?”
Mr. Fluffy jumps up on a low wall around a bed of succulents, plants his fluffy bottom, and fussily washes an already pristine paw.
I decide to follow his example and flop down on a bench facing the bed. “You’ve got it good,” I say. “Your only job is to get petted and to purr.”
Mr. Fluffy gives me an inscrutable green-eyed look and begins washing the other paw.
“Yeah, I know. It’s a tough job being a kid’s rag doll, and then soothing her to sleep at nights.”
My soliloquy is interrupted by the three runners, looping through the gardens from the other direction, having made it all the way around the house.
Kate comes over and sits down on the other end of the bench. Her face is flushed from the exercise, and she is breathing deeply, which does interesting things to her modest bosom. She is wearing a white cotton shirt that is open at the throat, and each strong breath reveals the soft swell of her breast and a hint of the lace inset on her bra. Her special scent, a mixture of lemon, coconut, and young woman, washes over me. Who knew that wholesome could be so enticing?
Cece and Gidget chase each other around the bed of succulents, causing Mr. Fluffy to arch his back, hiss, and retreat among the plants.
I came to a sudden decision. “Why don’t you bring your laptop and books to my office today?” I know that she has applied to graduate school and is already trying to read ahead for her classes since it doesn’t look as if a teaching practicum would be available in the near future.
“Are you sure?” Kate asks. “What if you need to make phone calls?”
“I did those yesterday, and they’ve slowed down a lot. I have mail that I need to answer today and some reports to read. If you share my office, I can help you keep up with Cece.”
“Thank you. She’s been increasingly reluctant to nap. Where does she get all that energy?”
“From having a clear conscience and going to bed early,” I retort. “She didn’t stay up late playing Scrabble, or get up early this morning to exercise or make breakfast.”
Cece then demonstrates that kids can find rough edges just about anywhere. She trips over Gidget, who had run in front of her, and tumbles onto the rough stone paving.
She sits up almost immediately, wailing at the top of her lungs. She has a scrape on her chin and has skinned her hands. Before I can struggle up from where I’m sitting, Kate has dashed to her side and is quickly checking her over.
Gidget crawls to them on her belly, wiggling and whimpering in sympathy or shame. She licks Cece’s ankle.
“Is she all right?” I ask.
“I think so,” Kate says. “Just light abrasions, and scared.”
“I’m not scared!” Cece protests. “I’m mad! Bad Gidget!”
The puppy flattens herself even tighter to the pavement, then tries to scoot closer.
“Gidget didn’t mean to hurt you,” Kate says gently. “Look at her. You can see how sorry she is. She was excited and forgot to be careful about where she was running.”
“I guess I wasn’t careful either,” Cece admits. “But my chin hurts, and my hands and my knees.”
“You made a very nice five point landing,” Kate says. “Let’s go clean up your five points and put some Band-Aids on them.”
Cece is instantly diverted. “Will the Band-Aids have dinosaurs on them?”
Kate smiles and helps my big girl onto her feet. “I’m pretty sure they will. I think I saw some dinosaur Band-Aids in your bathroom. ”
I have to smile at how easily Cece forgets her hurts. If only dinosaur Band-Aids would solve all problems.
“Charles? Could we bring Gidget with us to the office?” Kate asks.
“Gidget? In the office? After she ate my phone book?” I don’t like this idea at all.
“It looks like rain. I’m worried about her out here alone in her kennel. Puppies are like children. They need companionship and someone to tell them how to behave. Surely with three of us in the office, we can keep her from eating anything she shouldn’t.”
“Please, Daddy, Please, please!” Cece begs. “I’m not mad at her anymore. She was just excited because we were playing with her.”
My heart melts. When Cece looks at me with those big, blue eyes that are so like her mother’s, I can not find it in me to refuse her anything.
Something tells me that eventually this is going to be a problem, but a puppy in the office would surely not be too difficult.
“Alright,” I say. “We’ll try it. But she must not eat the mail or any of my reports. And someone will have to take her walkies every now and then so she does not potty on the floor.”
“Ok,” Cece says. “I can do that.”
“I’ll go with them,” Kate adds. “Don’t worry. We can handle this.”
As we go inside, the first drops of rain begin to spatter down, and there is a mutter of thunder. Maybe it is a good idea to bring the pup inside. She had to be lonesome out in her kennel by herself.
We all troop indoors, including Mr. Fluffy. Kate takes Cece off to her bathroom to get her scrapes cleaned up and to look for dinosaur Band-Aids. The pets obligingly follow me into the office.
Gidget cuddles up under Cece’s desk. Mr. Fluffy leaps up onto the bookcase that stands in front of the window.
In a few minutes, Cece joins me. Then Kate follows, carrying her laptop and book bag. Cece gets out her coloring book and crayons. In today’s picture, the girl astronaut was wearing her spacesuit and walking on the moon.
Kate glances over from where she was setting up her laptop and organizing her mountain of books. “What are you working on, Cece?”
“‘Member how we watched the men walking on the moon? I’m coloring a girl astronaut. Someday, I’m going to the moon.”
“Then you have a lot of hard work ahead of you,” Kate says gravely. “You will need to know how to read books with hard words and you’ll need to do amazing things with numbers.”
“You’ll teach me?” Cece asks.
“As much as I can,” Kate replies. “But someday you will want better teachers who know more.”
“All right,” Cece says. “I’ll start with making this space girl beautiful.”
“A very good idea,” Kate comments, opening what looks like a work journal. “Now, we need to be very quiet, so we don’t bother your daddy. He has work to do, and we want to be invited back.”
Cece nods and begins coloring the space suit with a pink crayon.
Maybe I should start planning for my daughter’s college education. She seems to have a firm grasp on her priorities.
I open my laptop and access my email. It is very quiet in the office. Mr. Fluffy settles down for a nap, Gidget yips softly in her sleep. Since she’s never seen a rabbit, I wonder what she is dreaming about.
Cece’s crayon makes soft shhh sounds across the coarse paper of the coloring book. Kate’s pen flows soundlessly across her journal page. I catch myself watching the neat script unfolding in fluid lines.
Kate looks up and catches me looking at her. Her hazel eyes are wide and startled. In my mind, I scoop her up in my arms and carry her down the hall to my bedroom, where I would peel away that intriguing white shirt, run my hands down those slim hips, sliding down her shorts, exploring . . .
A boom of thunder shakes the penthouse. “Good thing we all came inside,” she says.
“It would seem you are right,” I answer her, as rain begins pounding the window. Then I try my very hardest to read a report about commodities and NASDAQ. But what I really want to know is how her round, firm buttock would feel in my hand as I press her to me.
I can imagine walking around the two desks between, pulling her up out of her chair. I would wrap one arm about her to bring us into full-frontal body contact. I would feel her small breasts pressed against me; she would feel the length of my manhood pressing against her as I cupped her so-feminine backside in my hand. Cece would happily go nap with her pets, and we would go down to my room . . .
But of course, none of those things happen. Nor will they. She is my best friend’s baby sister, and I need to at least act like a gentleman. It is going to be a very long day.