Chapter 25
“I can’t. I just can’t—” The whispery voice on the phone shuddered to a halt, and Grant’s whole body tensed. He’d been happily sketching away, even as he’d hit the talk button with his free hand. On high alert now, he dropped his pencil and got to his feet. “Madeline? Is that you? Are you okay?”
“I am. Yes. It’s me. I am okay. Yes.” Instead of reassuring him, the oddly worded line had the absolute reverse effect.
“I’m coming right now. Don’t hang up.”
It was no good. Madeline was already disconnected, but hell, it wasn’t like he wouldn’t be able to find her.
He hit the shop first and was right. All the lights were blazing, despite, he checked his watch, it being almost 9:00 p.m. Her being there this time of night wasn’t unusual, but all the lights? That was a change.
Grant took the porch stairs two at a time, grabbed the doorknob, and was about to knock with his other hand—but the knob turned. He was in. The door was unlocked this late after closing? An itchy anxiousness crawled over him.
“Madeline?”
“In here,” she croaked, and he breathed a little easier.
He found her in the dining room section—her favorite place to haunt, it seemed, though now he hated thinking the word “haunt” in relation to her, even casually.
She was huddled on a ladder-backed chair, clutching a green velvet cushion with gold tassels to her stomach.
She looked up as Grant approached, and he was shocked.
Her eyes were swollen and puffy, her face was splotchy from crying, and her hair was an uncharacteristic mess as if she’d tried to pull it out by the handful and, failing to do so, had shoved it back behind her ears.
Worse, she seemed deflated, somehow. Fragile.
Words he’d never associate with Madeline in a hundred years.
Grant wanted to take her face in his hands and rub away the tension he saw in the lines by her mouth with his thumbs.
He wanted to press his lips to the three sharp grooves between her eyebrows.
He wanted her to rest against him until she was strong again.
Everything in her rigid body language said, Stay Away, however. And yet . . . she’d called him.
“Mads.” His voice faltered. “What is it?”
She shook her head, pressed her lips into a hard line, and closed her eyes briefly. Moisture beaded on her lashes. “Only my sister calls—called—me that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I like it.”
Grant nodded but felt no reassurance, only deeper worry. “So . . .” he tried again. “What’s up?”
“It’s stupid. I shouldn’t have called you.”
“Of course, you should’ve. Anytime. Always.”
She squeezed the pillow tighter and rocked back and forth in her chair. “He’s just a cat. It’s not like losing a person. I know, I know.”
A rock of sorrow and horror thudded in Grant’s gut. “Something’s happened to Boots?”
Madeline shook her head again. “Not ‘Boots,’ no. Apparently, he’s Garfield.”
Grant suddenly registered a crumpled sheet of paper on the floor by Madeline’s foot. The Found Cat poster. Everything clicked at once.
He scrubbed his face with his hands. “Someone claimed your cat?”
“Well, I guess that’s the whole point, right? He wasn’t really mine.”
Grant grunted in disagreement. “I’ve never seen a cat belong to one person so much—and Garfield? That doesn’t suit him at all.”
For a second, Madeline’s demeanor lightened. She almost smiled as she nodded. “Right? You should’ve seen the look he gave the woman when she called him that.”
She slumped again almost immediately, however. “I know he’s just a cat,” she repeated, “but it just, he just . . . He was such a good friend. He really helped me. I’ve been trying so hard, and—” Her voice broke. “It’s stupid. I’m a moron.”
Grant thought about how inheriting Grover along with his Dad’s mess in the aftermath of Holly’s devastating betrayal had been, probably literally, a lifesaver.
Having to feed and water his dog—and thus himself, so he could continue to care for the dog.
Being forced to go for regular walks and not just hole up in the house.
Having something warm and alive and unconditionally affectionate when everyone else gossiped about him or thought he’d gone off the deep end .
. . He had to look away for a moment. Then he cleared his throat.
“It’s the furthest thing from stupid, and you are the furthest thing from a moron.”
She laughed shakily. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Grant sank into a chaise longue beside the doorway leading to the living room section of the shop. “Join me?”
To his surprise, she did. Carefully setting the cushion she was gripping aside, she plunked herself down between his legs, her back to his chest. He dropped his chin to her crown and wrapped his arms around her. “I can’t even imagine what another loss feels like on top of everything else.”
“It just . . . brings back a lot of stuff, you know?”
He nodded against her hair.
“At first, I was totally prepared to give him back—I was.” She said the last bit as if Grant had expressed doubts about that.
“But then, I admit, so much time passed, I kind of forgot he wasn’t really mine.
I never should’ve hung all those stupid posters—but then, if I hadn’t, maybe it’d be my fault someone else felt like I do now. ”
Grant doubted the previous owner had ever felt as bad as Madeline did.
“He’s just a cat,” Madeline repeated, “but that’s why I thought loving him was . . . safe.” She sighed heavily and didn’t have to say anything else. Loving someone or something was a lot of things, but safe wasn’t one of them.
Grant couldn’t talk, so he merely nodded again.
A few minutes later, she half turned in his arms and looked up at him. “He was a really good cat, though. So good.”
Grant looked down. “Okay, don’t get too carried away. I’ve met him, after all. ‘Really good’ is a huge stretch.”
It was apparently the right thing to say at the moment—thank goodness—because she grinned a little.
“Seriously, though,” he added a moment later. “He was all right. For a cat.”
She smacked him, then sniffled. Grant liked the feeling of her in his arms, of them not just sitting close but being close. Yet he would’ve done anything for their reunion not to be due to Madeline losing Boots—even have her hate him.
“I don’t get it,” he said, thinking aloud. “You had him for months—and you said he’d obviously been homeless for a while. You put posters everywhere and got nothing. Why claim him now? Who’s the so-called owner?”
Madeline shrugged against him. “The woman said something about a long holiday or something and a house sitter—I don’t even know. I couldn’t take in details properly.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.” Another shuddery sigh. “Thanks.”
At some point—Grant wasn’t sure precisely when because being with Madeline always carried undercurrents of want and desire for him—the mood moved from consolation to . . . something else.
As she calmed down, he loosened his embrace but kept his arms linked around her waist. She remained leaned against him, nestled in the V of his outstretched legs.
Her hands, which had been resting on his thighs, started to move up and down his legs from hip flexor to just above his knee in smooth circles, lightly at first, but then with more pressure until it was like a proper massage.
It felt amazing for many reasons, his sore old-man muscles and prone-to-aching joints being the smallest of them.
His hands flattened against her ribcage, and he realized he was mimicking the soothing circles she had started—and he was increasingly aware of the plump swell of her breasts, which his thumbs brushed at the top of every circling movement.
He wasn’t at full attention but was definitely .
. . engaged in the goings-on. He shifted, trying to get a bit of distance and be .
. . less obvious. Madeline shifted too, however, pushing her bottom into him with a delicious, undulating movement.
Apparently, she didn’t mind his increasing . . . obviousness.
She stopped rubbing his legs, placed her hands over his, and then guided his upward until they cupped her breasts.
Despite the satin encasement of her bra, he could feel her nipples against his palms. He shuddered against her, feeling a warm buzz of happiness, want, and need—and then came to his senses.
This was . . . all wrong. Or, actually—hopefully—it was totally right, just the wrong time.
He dropped one hand back to Madeline’s waist and slid his other hand up, lifting her chin until her face was upturned to his.
She smiled, and he bent his head over hers and pressed a light, upside-down kiss to her lips.
And then, feeling more than a little regretful—even though he knew it was the right thing to do—he whispered, “Not now, not like this. Some time I hope, for sure—but when you’re not so sad. ”
For a second, he thought, or, more accurately and shamefully, hoped, Madeline was going to argue or insist they continue. He wasn’t made of stone. If she was vehement—
But no. She studied him for a moment, then bowed her head and nodded.
A moment later, she got up from the chaise and stepped away from him, smoothing her shirt as she did.
“You’re right,” she said slowly, her voice hoarse.
“A relationship built on having shared misery in common would probably never work.”
Grant’s heart thudded, and his whole body felt cold—and frustrated—at her departure, but even more . . . He was aghast at how badly she’d misconstrued him. And “misery in common”—that’s what she thought they shared?
“No,” he said, willing her to hear him, to really hear him, and hoping that on some level, she would feel similarly—if not now, then sometime.
“That’s just it. I feel joy when I’m with you, Madeline.
I am joyful. And I’m excited about the future—both things I never expected to feel again, even if life somehow got better.
Even-keel would’ve been the best I hoped for.
And now . . . ” He shook his head. “It’s a wonderful thing. I never expected it.”
Madeline just looked at him.
“Walk you home?” he asked softly when she still didn’t speak.
She cleared her throat. “Sure.”
They took the long way, walking the few blocks via sidewalks instead of cutting through the yard because the grass was wet.
The extra time it took was a good thing because Madeline had other problems to unload besides the loss of Boots.
Arriving at her house, they lingered a while at her front door because they were busy talking.
When they finally said goodbye—each of them still showing great physical restraint—she asked, “Holly still due to arrive next week?”
“Ugh, yeah,” Grant said—then smiled to himself, realizing he’d unconsciously used one of Madeline’s expressions, exactly the way you did when you spent a lot of time with someone. “Don’t remind me.”
In the light from the single bulb above her door, Madeline’s face was hard to read, and it gave Grant a funny, uncomfortable feeling that she knew something he didn’t—or thought she did. “What?”
She hesitated, then shrugged. “Nothing.” She reached up and patted his cheek affectionately, and he resisted the urge to turn his head and kiss her hand and thus restart what he had so short a time ago turned off—or slowed down at least.
“What’s that for?” he asked.
“Just a thank you. I . . . really needed you tonight,” Madeline whispered in a rush, as if embarrassed.
Grant was hit with a feeling of great tenderness. “That’s how I feel . . . all the time.”
She shook her head and smiled—but again, there was just a flicker of something he couldn’t read in her eyes.
Grant took the long way back on the return to his vehicle, too, even though his leather boots would’ve kept his feet dry.
He needed to think. As he and Madeline had walked, she’d filled him in on the rest of her crappy day in the sparest of detail.
He was going to help her deal with the van and the bathroom, even if it took a lot of convincing, but—well, it wasn’t enough.
The Boots thing was . . . awful. Totally unfair.
The brainwave hit just as he climbed into his truck. Gwen. Of course. Madeline had mentioned how helpful she’d been. He didn’t have her phone number, but he knew where she lived. Hopefully, she wouldn’t be too put out by an unannounced visit.