Beauty & the Beasts (3 page)

But he did of course; the first step was calling Noreen and finding out what was going on in Garth’s life that was so much more appealing than a summer with his father.

He waited until nine-thirty that evening, hoping Garth would be in bed so that Noreen could talk without an audience.

She answered right away, but when he asked if his son had gone to bed, she said wryly, “Bed? I doubt it. But he is in his room. Probably with earphones on.”

“He’s, uh, seemed a little different lately when
we’ve talked. Anything going on I should know about?”

“Nothing serious,” she said immediately. “Otherwise I’d have told you. He’s been in trouble at school a couple of times—a fight with another boy, talking back to a teacher—normal things for a boy his age. But his grades are still decent, and I figure it’s just a stage.” She was silent for a moment and he sensed she wasn’t done. Her voice changed. “Eric, I’m remarrying.”

Remarrying.
He waited for a reaction more profound than mere surprise. They’d been divorced for—what?—six years now. No, five-and-a-half. But before that she’d been his wife for ten years. Shouldn’t he be jealous? Resentful, because she’d moved on so completely?

“Congratulations,” Eric said automatically.

“Thank you.”

“Garth hasn’t mentioned anyone. Who is he?”

Either he was numb, Eric thought, or he really didn’t care. He felt mild curiosity at most.

Until it occurred to him that the advent of a new stepfather probably had something to do with Garth’s desire to stay home this summer.

There’s all kinds of stuff happening here this summer.

Like a new father.

Noreen was telling him about the man she loved. Chuck Morrison was a corporate type, something to do with plastics. He was kind, civilized, supportive of her career, tolerant of Garth’s occasional sullenness.

Eric felt a burst of rage. Who the hell was Chuck Morrison to be with Eric’s son more than he, Eric, was? And “tolerant” sounded goddamned condescending.

It was hard to make his tone civilized. “How does Garth like him?”

“Well…” Noreen sounded doubtful. “He seemed to like Chuck fine as long as we were just dating. Since we’ve become engaged, he’s been a brat. I figure he’ll get over it. It’s normal for him to be scared about such a big change, right?”

“Yeah, I imagine so.”

“In fact,” she spoke faster, with more animation, “we’ve planned the wedding for early June so that Garth can be there, but then he leaves immediately to stay with you. That way, we can have a leisurely honeymoon and some time on our own before Chuck and Garth butt heads.”

“I see,” Eric said mechanically. For once he knew something about their son she didn’t. Garth didn’t want her to have a leisurely honeymoon and some time alone with her new husband.

But Eric didn’t tell her. He wished her well, they discussed the airline tickets he’d be sending for Garth and said good-night.

His resolve hardened. He couldn’t do a damn thing about Chuck Morrison, corporate executive, playing father to his son from September through May, but he wasn’t going to give up his own time and his last chance to remind Garth that he already had a father.

CHAPTER TWO

“L
ILY, WILL YOU SEE
if Mrs. Peterson needs a different size? She’s in room three. I’ll get the phone.” Madeline paused only a moment; Lily, although just twenty-two, was a dream with the customers. When she smilingly complied, Madeline moved behind the mahogany counter to answer the telephone. “Madeline’s. May I help you?”

The caller was her mother. “Madeline, did I get you at a bad time?”

Aware of a customer browsing a rack of suits only a few feet away, Madeline didn’t allow herself to. frown. Her mother, who lived in Southern California, often chose to call her at the store rather than waiting for evening. “No,” she said, “although I do need to leave in five or ten minutes.” She wondered how prompt Dr. Eric Bergstrom would prove to be.

“Oh.” Her mother dropped the single word forlornly. Given their usually distant relationship, that was out of character for Gloria Howard. “Well.” Her customary briskness returned. “I was simply wondering if a summer visit would be convenient for you. Perhaps in July. I thought I might stay several weeks.”

Madeline turned her back on the customer. Several
weeks? They hadn’t spent more than a week in the same house in the past fifteen years! Not that they argued or did anything else dramatic; it was just that they had little to say to each other. Or too much, which amounted to the same thing, as none of it
could
be said. Not if they were to maintain their pretense of a normal mother-daughter relationship.

“Several weeks?” Madeline said, letting no more than faint surprise sound in her voice. “Is this a special occasion?”

“No, not really.” Gloria Howard hesitated. “I just thought…well, we see so little of each other. And I’m not getting any younger.” This last was said lightly, as though she meant it as a joke, but Madeline heard the loneliness underlying her mother’s usual attempt to hide any real emotion.

“Is there something wrong?” The strength of her fear caught her unprepared. What if her mother had cancer or a heart condition? What if she was dying? Madeline edged around again to keep her face averted from the customer who was browsing her way through the store. “Are you sick?”

“No, no, nothing like that. I’d enjoy seeing you, that’s all.” Her mother’s voice cooled. “But if you already have plans…”

Madeline was being let off the hook. All she had to do was say,
Yes, I’m afraid I do.
Then make something up. Suggest a shorter stay. Or that they meet at a nice resort, like Rosario in the San Juans, for a pleasant weekend as they’d done before.

But the sharp fear and the thought,
What would I do without my mother?
had left a residue, an ache
that made her feel like crying. The words “Oh, I’m sorry,” wouldn’t come.

“Mom, I have no plans,” she heard herself say. “You’re right. It’s been ages. July would be great.”

“I’ll let you know exactly when I’ll be arriving.” Back to normal now, her mother sounded as if she were concluding plans for a business meeting. “And of course, I’ll bring my allergy medicine.” A pause. “How many cats do you have now?”

After a brief mental review, Madeline decided not to mention the six kittens currently in her guest bathroom. They’d be gone before July. “Seven. Only one more than last year.”

“So long as I can keep them out of the bedroom…”

It was all Madeline could do to hide her irritation. “You know you can. Mom, I’d better go. I have an appointment.”

Leaving Lily to handle the last hour and close up the store, Madeline hurried out to her Subaru station wagon, parked in one of two slots behind the building.

Several weeks.
Dear Lord. She started the engine with an unusually vehement roar. How was she going to survive?

The drive took her about twenty minutes, which gave her plenty of time to brood. A year before she had bought her first house ever, in White Horse, a small town in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. Today she turned off the highway before she reached the town limits and followed a narrow, winding country road to the shelter.

Where the gravel drive turned into an opening in a split-rail fence, a discreet hand-painted sign showed a black-and-silver tabby curled around the words Ten Lives. The shelter itself, housed in a large 1950s rambler, was hidden from the road by a stand of alders clothed in silver-green leaves that rippled in the breeze.

Madeline parked in front of the detached garage beside Joan’s van, which had the same tabby painted on the side. No unfamiliar cars, thank God; she’d cut it close, arriving only five minutes early.

In fact, she was just closing her car door when a canopied pickup pulled in and stopped right behind her station wagon. Wearing brown cords and a khaki shirt, Eric Bergstrom climbed out slowly. She guessed he was no more excited about meeting her again than she was about meeting him.

Nervousness twisted in her chest, although she hardly knew its cause. He wasn’t the first man to come on to her for no other reason than her looks. He hadn’t even taken it all that badly when she’d turned him down.

No, it was something about the man himself. What made her feel like a hypocrite was her suspicion that she was reacting to his appearance.

Experience told her that the camera would find him magnificent. She hadn’t met a man in a long while with his looks. Tall enough to make her feel petite, he was also lean and graceful, in the way of a natural athlete. Classically handsome, his face was all angles—stark cheekbones, with creases deepening the hollows beneath, and his nose narrow and aristocratic.
In keeping with his Scandinavian name, his hair was light blond, silver and gold shimmering together in the sun. And his eyes, narrowed now as he scrutinized her, were a pale clear gray-green that seemed to see more than she wanted them to.

She immediately regretted the moss green suit that hugged her waist and hips. She should have taken a change of clothes to work.

“Dr. Bergstrom.” She gave him a pleasant aloof smile.

“Ms. Howard.” He sounded brusque; sulking, she thought with a mental sigh. Then he slammed the pickup door and winced.

She took a step forward. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Got kicked today. My own fault.” His face was closed to her; his male pride demanded stoicism.

“We could have rescheduled.”

“Unless you have pet cougars in there—” he jerked his head toward the house “—I think I can handle it.”

Just once she’d like to hear a man admit that, yeah, he didn’t feel so hot and, yeah, he wasn’t up to being big and tough today.
Dream on,
she thought wryly.

“No cougars,” she conceded. “Although Jackson comes close.”

“Jackson?” He fell into step beside her.

“You’ll meet him.” She hesitated, one hand on the door. “I should warn you, although we do clean constantly—”

“It won’t smell like my mother’s rose garden?”
His look was ironic. “You ever done preg checks on a herd of Holsteins?”

“No.” She opened the door.
“Does
your mother have a rose garden?”

“And a raft of prizes from rose shows. Cat shows, too. She breeds Abyssinians.”

Madeline liked the picture his words created: sinuous golden cats sunning themselves by rosebushes in voluptuous bloom.

“I wish mine—” she blurted, and stopped just as quickly. Lord almighty, what was wrong with her?

They’d reached the entry, a tidy room complete with computer, phone and answering machine. Sliding glass doors separated it from the living room beyond. It served, in addition, as a safety net; the sliding door was never opened until the front door was closed so that inmates couldn’t escape.

Eric Bergstrom didn’t even glance toward the living room, where cats were draped on couches and windowsills and the tops of cages, while others paced or cleaned themselves or nibbled desultorily at dried food. Instead, his green eyes pinned hers.

“You wish yours…?”

“Never mind.”

“Grew roses? Bred Abyssinians? Or just liked cats?”

“All of the above,” Madeline found herself saying. “She’s allergic to cats. She has no hobbies. She’s visiting me in July. For
weeks.”

His mouth eased into a smile that showed in his eyes. “And how many cats do you have?”

“Now.” At his puzzled look, she explained.
“That’s what she always asks. ‘How many cats do you have now?’”

“Ah.” His smile was oddly comforting. “So how many
do
you have?”

“Seven.” She paused. “Plus six kittens I’m fostering.”

“That doesn’t seem out of line.” He finally turned to look at the legion of felines in the living room.

A man who didn’t think seven cats was out of line? Maybe she’d been a fool to turn down his dinner invitation.

No, because he’d issued it for the wrong reason. Because…She closed her eyes momentarily. Because the very fact that she was tempted scared her.

“You must have some yourself,” she hazarded.

“Only three.” He flashed a grin over his shoulder as he opened the sliding door and adroitly stuck out a foot to thwart the black cat who shot forward. “But I have a horse. I lost two elderly dogs last year. I’m sure some more will find their ways to my door one of these days.”

Wonderingly she said, “So you understand,” and meant it in more than one way. He understood why she had so many cats, why she cared enough to volunteer here. Why all this
mattered.

This time his glance was unreadable. “Yeah, I understand.” His tone became bland. “So. Lead on.”

She closed the sliding door behind them. “Joan,” she called. “Are you here?”

No answer. The silence meant that Joan was either out in the feral building or had gone to start dinner in her own small apartment. Which
wasn’t
cat-free;
eight who qualified as personal pets lived in the tworoom quarters with her.

“Good God, what’s this?”

Madeline laughed. Mudhen, who always made a point of greeting visitors, was wrapping himself around the vet’s ankles. Perhaps ten years old, Mudhen had arrived several years ago, battered and hostile. His gray coat had a tinge of tan that made it look perpetually dirty; scars twisted his face, and only one eye had survived. But he’d decided the people here were okay, this was home, and he could manage it better than anyone else. Joan had never even considered putting him up for adoption.

“That’s Mudhen.”

“He’s ugly as sin.” But Eric had crouched, albeit with a grimace of pain, and was gently running his fingertips down the homely cat’s broad back. Mudhen’s permanent expression of malevolence didn’t change, but a gruff purr rattled the air.

“We can’t all be beautiful.” It came out tartly, even as she knew that, in this instance, he didn’t deserve her scorn.

His eyes narrowed, but he chose not to react. Instead, he rose to his full height and his voice became more distant. “Shall we get on with it?”