8. Chapter Seven
Chapter Seven
Q uentin stared at Joe.
He could feel the smile that tried to tug at the corners of his mouth, a completely delighted reaction to the unexpected encounter.
Except…a fragment of cynical bastard fought its way free of the candy floss crush and took a last stand in the forefront of Quentin’s brain… did it really look unexpected?
Ah.
No.
It didn’t really, did it? It was one thing if they’d bumped into each other in a coffee shop; it was entirely another to be on the man’s doorstep. That wasn’t a meet-cute, that was…stalking.
And that would explain the slightly worried look on Joe’s face.
Quentin looked at his phone and then at the house number displayed on the side of Joe’s house.
“I think I’ve got the wrong address,” he said. Then he stopped and twisted his mouth to the side in a rueful grimace. “That sounds like a lie, doesn’t it?”
Joe hesitated in the doorway of the house.
“A bit,” he admitted. “What are you doing…”
He finished the sentence, but for once Quentin wasn’t paying attention. The door at the end of the hall behind Joe creaked open, and a big, gray asshole of a cat strutted out.
“Angus!” Quentin said. He took a step forward and then stopped as Joe started to swing the door shut in his face. “You…um…have my cat?”
Joe braced the door against his knee and looked over his shoulder. At the same moment, Angus sat down and started to clean his front foot assiduously. There was a pause as they both watched him.
“He’s really happy to see you,” Joe said.
Quentin rubbed the back of his neck. “Seems to be catching.”
That made Joe look back at him. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s just…It’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? You can see that?”
It was hard to argue with that. Quentin took a step back onto the path and hunched his shoulders into a shrug.
“Yeah,” he admitted reluctantly. “I can see that. But I swear I didn’t hide my cat in your garden just to have an excuse to talk to you. Scout’s honor.”
He sketched a cross over his heart with two fingers. Joe narrowed his eyes and then sighed. He swung the door open and stepped back.
“Come in,” he said.
“You sure?” Quentin asked as he took a step and then hesitated.
“No,” Joe said. Then he rubbed his hand over his face and admitted through his fingers. “Yes. Don’t ask me why…because you were definitely not a Scout.”
“It’s like this,” Benjy said. He held up his hand, his thumb and little finger folded into his palm and the other three fingers held up straight. “...and then you say Scout’s Honor.”
“Oh,” Quentin said. He copied the gesture as he lifted his hand. “Like this?”
Benjy shook his head. “Wrong hand.”
Quentin ‘huh’d’ and swapped hands. This time he got a nod of approval from the pre-teen, although only for the accuracy, apparently.
“Although Scout's Honor means nothing if you weren’t a Scout,” Benjy pointed out witheringly.
Quentin nodded. “I won’t do it again,” he said. “Pilot’s honor.”
That got him rolled eyes and a grudging smirk. From what he remembered of being that age, it wasn’t a bad return on a quip.
He wasn’t sure when he became someone who cared whether or not a tween thought he was funny, mind you. Somewhere in his brain he could feel his past self judging him for that. That guy was an asshole, though, so…
“Here,” Joe said. He set a bottle of water and a plate with bagels stacked on it in front of Benjy. “Go and share with Jessie?”
Benjy nodded and grabbed the plate as he stood up. On his way out of the room, he turned around as he went through the door, pushing it open with his shoulder.
“Are these the ones from Carrs, still?” he asked.
“They’ll be fine,” Joe said. “I’ll get fresh ones tomorrow.”
“Stale bagels,” Benjy groused. “That’ll cheer her up.”
The door swung shut behind him. Quentin watched the expression on Joe’s face and wondered, but didn’t say anything. It wasn’t his place.
Not yet.
“Scout or not,” Quentin said. “I didn’t know you lived here.”
Joe gave him an old-fashioned look and, stepdad or not, Quentin could see where Jessie got it from.
“I believe you,” Joe said. The corner of his mouth turned up briefly. “Thousands wouldn’t.”
Quentin shrugged. “I don’t care about them, though,” he said.
For a moment, they just looked at each other. Quentin, at least, was remembering the taste of Joe’s mouth and the scrape of his hands on Quentin’s skin. Before either of them could say anything, a delighted gurgle from the playpen interrupted them.
They both looked around as Angus, whose new hobby was apparently hopping the wooden rail, carefully tucked himself into the carrycot on top of the toddler. He turned twice, sweeping his tail over Cody’s face as the baby squealed in delight.
“That’s cute,” Quentin said.
“That’s not safe,” Joe corrected.
“Noted,” Quentin said as Joe jogged over to the pen.
Angus was unceremoniously evicted from his perch and, with an offended flick of his tail, went to lie down on an alphabet-mat thing at the far side of the crib. Joe ignored him as he checked Cody over, wiped a mitten’s worth of cat fur off his palms, and unclipped him from the cot.
While he was occupied with picking up the toddler, Quentin glanced around the kitchen.
He’d expected something nice. Gateway was full of nice houses in sprawling suburbs, luxury apartments, and good schools.
The ranch-style McMansion with the glossy kitchen with an olive green range and the live-edge oak kitchen table fit the area.
The on-its-last-legs Chevy parked on the drive outside, primer visible on the bumper and driver’s side door, and the fence in need of painting that he could see through the back window… not so much.
There were marks on the walls, too, where things that had been plugged in for years had been moved. The coffee maker was still there, but…in his mom’s house, it would be a mixer…was gone.
Joe had said he was a teacher. They didn’t get paid enough , but Gateway had good schools, and Alaska paid incentives. It would probably be enough to live on for one, maybe for three if everyone tightened their belt a little. Four?
That might be a stretch. A belt only had so many holes.
Joe said something.
Quentin shifted his attention back to him. “Sorry?”
“Do you want a coffee?” Joe repeated, and then added pointedly. “For the road.”
Quentin acknowledged that with a rueful smile. “Just a glass of water?”
Without thinking, he held out his arms to take Cody. It was just to free up Joe’s hands, to make his life easier. Joe looked at him for a moment and then handed the toddler over.
“Hey,” Quentin said to the round, goggling face that stared at him. “How have you been?”
Cody answered that by sticking one hand on his mouth to chew on.
“Last thing I saw you touch was a cat,” Quentin said. He carefully took Cody’s fat wrist in his thumb and forefinger to gently extract it. “You should probably stop that.”
“No!” Cody declared furiously.
Toddlers were stronger than they looked, and Cody apparently knew his own mind. After a brief struggle, Quentin left him to it.
“So,” Joe said as he opened the fridge to get a bottle of water. It was, Quentin noticed as he glanced over, pretty sparsely stocked. “It really was just chance that my kids found your cat?”
He sounded unconvinced. Cody pulled his hand out of his mouth long enough to offer the wet, spit-bubbled fist to Quentin as he confidently said, “Cat!”
Quentin politely declined the offered fingers. He delved into his pocket to find a tissue and wiped Cody’s hand off with it.
“I said ‘Scout’s Honor’,” Quentin pointed out mildly. “Doesn’t that count for anything?”
“I think Benjy covered that.”
Joe twisted the lid off the bottle and set it and a tumbler in front of Quentin.
“I can call character witnesses, if it would help?” Quentin said.
He pointed up at the sky with his thumb as he added, “And I was 35,000 feet when Angus was caught on camera leaving the daycare. So, unless you tracked me down, followed me there, and bribed that idiot who works there to leave a door open…it was chance.”
“If I had that sort of time on my hands, I’d nap,” Joe said. “I wouldn’t repeat that around Jessie, though. She has a stash of Girl Scout cookies she needs to offload and might take it as a suggestion.”
“Angus won her over?” Quentin asked as he ignored the glass, and Joe’s pained look, and took a swig out of the bottle.
He leaned back in his chair, the spindles knobbly against his back, as he checked out the apparently dozing cat.
“Little girls are his natural prey in the wild. I think it’s the fluff. ”
Angus opened one eye, a sliver of green bright against his fur, and gave Quentin a disgruntled look for that bit of slander.
“She reads a lot,” Joe said. He hooked a chair out from the end of the table and sat down, pulling his foot up onto the seat to take advantage of his infant-free lap.
His long fingers laced together over the frayed white denim of his knees.
“Lots of girls saving the family farm by winning a big horse race, or their rescue dog proving themselves doing Search and Rescue in a storm. I think she just told herself one of those stories about her and Angus. When she didn’t get to keep him, it just didn’t seem fair.
But that’s not your problem. He’s probably a very expensive cat. ”
“Angus? He should be, the amount of paperwork and babies he’s produced,” Quentin said.
He hesitated for a second as he fended off Cody’s attempts to shove a handful of Quentin’s shirt into his mouth for a snack.
The idea that had popped into his head was basically perfect.
It would be a win-win for everyone involved.
The only problem was that it was a crazy thing to suggest. He should probably put the idea on the back burner while he thought through the consequences.
Instead, he heard himself say, “But if she wanted to rent him—”
Joe looked alarmed. “The last thing we need is kittens,” he said.