Built to Last (Harlequin Heartwarming) (7 page)

“He’s certainly in shock,” she said with a frown. “And he has a fever. You don’t know when this happened?”

Their heads shook in unison.

“We’ll give him some fluids and start him on antibiotics right away.”

“Is Pirate a he?” Emma asked.

She grinned. “It’s a boy.”

It was Jo who asked nervously, “What about his eye?”

The veterinarian made a humming sound in her throat as she gazed at Pirate for a long
moment. “Well,” she said with a sigh, “the obvious course would be to remove the damaged eye.” She held up a hand when they all began abortive questions. “Cats do very well with only one eye. He’d never know the difference. Of course his vision wouldn’t be quite as good, and he’d have to be indoor-only—”

“Can his eye be saved?” Jo interrupted. She’d been watching Ginny’s distress.

“I can’t save it. However, I can refer you to a specialist who might be able to. I do think it’s possible. The eye looks to be in good shape and the socket isn’t damaged badly. However,” she warned, “you’d be looking at a pretty big bill.”

In the end, Jo decided to let her buckle an Elizabethan collar around the kitten’s neck so he wouldn’t scratch the eye, put ointment on it and gently cover it with a bandaged cup. With antibiotics and instructions in hand as well as the address for the eye specialist, they left with Pirate.

Dr. Sullivan had agreed to look at him right away. They stopped at home first, where Helen decided to come as well.

“I’ll leave a note for Kathleen,” she said,
hurrying back into the house and reappearing in remarkably short order.

Dr. Sullivan looked with some amusement at the crowd, but let them all in while he examined Pirate.

“I think we can save his eye,” he concluded, “although it’s difficult to tell how much of his vision will be intact.”

“We’ll never know, will we?” Jo laughed shakily. “He can’t read an eye chart for you, can he?”

He laughed, too. “We do have ways to check. His eyes will follow movement, for example, just like ours. But no, I won’t be able to tell if his vision is twenty-twenty.”

The cost, as he outlined it, made Jo’s heart sink. They shouldn’t have come at all. She couldn’t afford a bill like that. And she didn’t even want a cat!

But Emma and Ginny both looked at her with anxious eyes. “Is that too much?” Emma whispered.

“Can we have a minute to talk about it?” Jo asked the veterinarian.

“You bet. There’s no one else in the waiting room. You have it to yourselves.”

They huddled, conscious of the receptionist
within hearing distance. Jo cradled Pirate in one arm.

“I can’t afford anywhere near that much,” she said bluntly, feeling horribly guilty with the tiny bundle looking up at her with his one good eye. He looked so pathetic in the wide plastic collar that was almost bigger than he was.

Ginny shrank at Jo’s words.

Helen wrapped her arms around her daughter. Biting her lip, she said quietly, “I can’t, either, but maybe we could pool our money. I could come up with…oh, two hundred dollars. I know that’s not much, but…”

“I’ll bet Mom would, too!” Emma declared, eyes filled with hope. “I’ll call her!”

Hating to think what Kathleen would say about today’s adventure and seriously doubting that she would pony up money for a cat she wouldn’t want, Jo nonetheless offered her cell phone.

While she dialed, Ryan said gruffly, “I’ll contribute.”

“But…you don’t even live with us,” Jo said, then realized how it sounded.

His gaze rested on Ginny, and his voice was brusque. “I care.”

Emma handed the phone to Jo. “Mom wants to talk to you.”

Jo explained the situation. Kathleen was silent for a long moment. “Just what we need,” she muttered.

“No kidding,” Jo admitted. “I’m sorry. This is my fault.”

“What else could you do?” She sighed. “It really seems to matter to Emma. Lately, not much does.”

Jo was silent.

Another sigh. “I can afford, say, three hundred dollars. Is that enough to help? We can put off doing the downstairs bathroom. Maybe I’ll get a different job soon. One that pays better.”

“Okay. Thanks. I’ll let you know,” Jo said, breaking the connection.

They added up their contributions and realized they needed a few hundred more. Jo, wishing she’d lined up a part-time job, mentally tallied her bank account and her bills, trying to decide if she’d have enough for tuition if she made up the difference.

“I’ll pay the rest, too,” Ryan said. “Despite what Kathleen seems to believe, I have more money than I have any use for. She just
doesn’t like to take it from me. But this isn’t for her.”

Emma started to cry. Jo was shocked to feel a sting in her eyes as well. “Thank you,” she whispered.

Ginny asked, “Can I hold him until they take him?”

Jo nodded and knelt to gently transfer the bundle of kitten and towel into the little girl’s arms. Then they returned to the reception desk.

“We’ve decided to go ahead and try to save his eye,” she said.

“Oh, good!” The receptionist smiled at Ginny. “He’s such a handsome boy. He’s going to be a beautiful cat!”

“He is, isn’t he?” Jo took one last look at the small face with the huge ears and the cute orange splotch on the otherwise white face. She felt like crying again. What if he didn’t survive the surgery? The other vet had said he was in shock. And he was so small! Maybe he wasn’t strong enough…

“We’ll take good care of him,” the receptionist said gently, taking Pirate from Ginny. “I promise. Dr. Sullivan will do the surgery this afternoon. We’ll call as soon as he’s finished.”

“Okay.” Jo swallowed. “Thank you.”

They trooped back out into the late-afternoon sunlight. “Well,” Jo said, “that wasn’t quite the walk we had in mind, was it, girls?”

Emma laughed even as she sniffed and wiped her wet cheeks. “I’m being dumb. It’s not like we’ve had him forever.”

Ginny tugged at her mother’s sleeve and looked up at her rather than Jo. “We can keep him, can’t we?”

Helen’s eyes met Jo’s for a brief instant. “Honey, it’s not going to be my decision. The house is Kathleen’s.”

“But Mom’s going to help with the vet bill!” Emma exclaimed. “That must mean—” She stopped.

Jo admitted, “I didn’t ask her. I guess I assumed, too…”

Ryan came to the rescue once again. “I’ll take Pirate to my house if Kathleen won’t let you keep him. You can visit all you want.” He smiled wryly. “But you know what? I think you’ve got a cat.”

In the car, Jo moaned, “Oh, no! It’s my turn to cook! I should have put the casserole together. I’m sorry. Dinner’s going to be really late.”

“Let’s just have leftovers,” Helen said prac
tically. “We have a whole bunch of dibs and dabs in the refrigerator. Ginny is happy with macaroni and cheese, and I wouldn’t mind a salad and some of those scalloped potatoes from yesterday.”

Flooded with gratitude, Jo asked, “Really? I’ll make my casserole tomorrow night.”

They had to park half a block away, an inconvenience that was going to become an annoyance when winter rains and chill came. Every morning, Jo had to think where she’d left her car the afternoon before. Once, she’d had to park two blocks away. She’d liked having her very own reserved spot with her condo.

Ryan came in with them as if it were a matter of course. The way he chose to walk beside Jo gave her a warm tingle, too, as if he liked being with her, or maybe was giving physical form to his support of her if his sister was mad.

Kathleen must have been hovering, because she appeared from the living room the moment the front door opened. “Well?” she demanded. “What happened?” She saw that their arms were empty. “You didn’t…?”

“He’s going to have surgery,” Jo said. “With
your contribution, we came up with enough money.”

“Oh!” She pressed a hand to her chest. “You scared me for a minute.”

“He’s really cute, Mom.” Emma’s face was alight. “He’s orange and white and fluffy, with the sweetest face. And he purrs even though he must hurt.”

“I’m glad you rescued him,” Kathleen said with a smile for her daughter and a swift, meaningful one for Jo. “You would have felt terrible if you hadn’t.”

On the spot, Jo decided that maybe she liked Kathleen after all. So she was a princess; any divorced woman had to adjust. But she’d had the guts to leave her husband for Emma’s sake, and she had enough pride to refuse to live on her brother’s charity. So what if she had a little bit to learn about not assuming other people were willing to work for her just for the sheer pleasure of it? Obviously, her heart was in the right place.

Emma gazed beseechingly at her mother. “We can keep him, can’t we?”

Kathleen’s brows rose. “Are you kidding? After we spend a fortune on him? You think we’d just give him away?”

“You mean…we
can?
” the teenager said in wonder.

“Of course we can.” Kathleen gave her a quick hug, as if hoping she wouldn’t have time to reject the embrace.

Emma squealed, and she and Ginny danced around. The adults smiled and watched. Under her breath, Kathleen said, “When the cat claws the couch, remind me how happy he made Emma.”

“I will,” Jo promised.

Ryan just grinned. “Trim his claws,” he advised.

“Well.” Kathleen drew herself up with her customary briskness. “I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry.”

“We have lots of leftovers we can heat in just a few minutes,” Helen said again.

“Works for me,” Ryan said easily.

For once, his sister didn’t ask who’d invited him. Her gaze did flick speculatively from him to Jo, however.

But all she said was, “Then let’s go inspect the refrigerator.”

Jo was very careful not to look up at the tall man who stood so close, his powerful upper arm brushing her shoulder. He might have seen her interest stamped on her face.

But then, she thought, it was beginning to look as if she might get what she wanted. That is,
who
she wanted. Why not? She’d set the ground rules, and he hadn’t even tried to negotiate them. Probably he was no more interested in marriage at this point in his life than she was, never mind having children. After all, he already had two.

In fact, he was perfect for her. Unattached, distanced enough from his marriage to be fun but not so far from it that he was cruising for wife number two. Jo and he could be friends. With neither of them wanting more.

Jo had begun to be very glad she had decided to rent a room in this house.

P
IRATE CAME HOME
two days later, his eye stitched shut and covered, to Ginny’s delight, with a patch. He was still stuck in the Elizabethan collar, which he shook with ferocity and frequently managed to wedge in narrow openings, where he would scream until someone came to rescue him.

A couple of times, Jo heard Kathleen mutter, “I can’t believe we wasted that kind of money,” but never in either of the kids’ hearing. Jo also caught her crooning to Pirate as she rescued him or cradling the sleeping kitten almost absentmindedly while she paid bills or dusted. Work on the bathroom continued and Jo saw Ryan a couple of times, but life centered on Pirate.

The girls came rushing in the door from school every day, dying to see the kitten. Ginny had never looked so much like an ordinary little girl.

At dinner one night, she asked if she could take him to show-and-tell in her class. “I
asked Teacher specially, because they don’t usually let you bring your pets, and she said yes if you come, too, Mom, so you can take him home after.” She fixed hopeful eyes on her mother.

Helen, who had been especially quiet until now and had dark circles beneath her eyes, said, “Oh, dear. When is show-and-tell?”

“Friday.”

“But I work.” She sighed. “What time?”

“Two o’clock, Teacher says.”

“Oh, honey.” Helen’s voice ached with regret. “I don’t see how I can. If we could take him in the morning…”

“It has to be for show-and-tell.” Ginny’s shoulders slumped, and she whispered, “That’s okay.”

Jo could not believe she was doing this, but she offered, “I could take him.” When Ginny’s head shot up, Jo said, “I know you’d rather have your mother, but I don’t have a Friday afternoon class. I’ll bet Emma would come with me, too.”

“Yeah!” Emma was hovering in the kitchen doorway, unwilling to sit down at the table heaped with food but also reluctant to miss any conversation that might have to do with
her. “That would be cool! We could hang around afterward until school lets out.”

Oh, joy, Jo thought. But it wouldn’t kill her. She didn’t have to like kids to want to see Ginny’s face brighten the way it did now.

“Really? You could bring Pirate?”

“Sure. If that’s okay with you, Helen.”

“Bless you,” the girl’s mother said fervently.

When the phone rang, Emma pounced.

“It’s for you, Jo,” she said a moment later, looking pouty.

Done eating anyway, Jo took the phone to the living room.

“Jo? It’s Aunt Julia.” Her aunt, an attorney, explained that she was flying tomorrow to Fairbanks to depose a witness and had arranged a night stopover in Seattle on the assumption that she’d be able to see Jo. “I could rent a car if you can’t make it to the airport….”

“Don’t be silly!” Jo exclaimed.

Aunt Julia had been the next-best thing to a mother she’d had. There had been tension between Aunt Julia and Jo’s father when she was a child. Her father had to have known that his wife’s sister didn’t particularly like
him. But he hadn’t stopped her visits to Jo and Boyce.

Jo and her aunt had visited more often when Jo had been in the Bay Area; business seemed to bring Aunt Julia up from L.A. every few months. But now it had been…oh, as much as five months since Jo had seen her.

Thus she found herself at the airport the next evening, waiting for disembarking passengers at the Alaskan Airline gate. Businessmen in dark suits carrying laptop cases strode briskly out without a glance, while a young, weary-looking mother with two toddlers came through the gate, scanned the crowd, then burst into tears when she saw the face she sought.

“Daddy! Daddy!” The older of the two children broke away from her mother to run to the man who swept first her, then the woman into his arms.

“They cried and cried…” Jo heard, as the family moved away.

Jo shuddered. Imagine traveling with two kids that age! Better yet, imagine how everyone sitting in their vicinity had suffered.

“Josie!”

She jerked her head back, to see her petite,
stylish aunt parting a family cluster as if she were Moses and they, the Red Sea. Aunt Julia was rather like that, her gaze fixed on her own goals so firmly that others generally did give way.

Jo hated being called Josie by anybody but Aunt Julia. From her, it had always felt like an endearment. The closest thing to an endearment that anybody ever called her, at any rate.

“Aunt Julia!” she said with genuine pleasure.

The two women embraced. Her aunt pulled back to eye her critically.

“You look well. I’m so glad you’ve chosen to go to graduate school. You were wasting yourself at that backwater library. You’re far too intelligent to settle when you can have more.”

Her aunt’s mantra, one Jo had adopted. Why should she settle?

“Thank you. You look wonderful,” she said warmly, meaning it.

Her aunt was approaching fifty, but seemed to defy age to touch her smooth olive skin or frost her dark hair. She wore her thick hair in a short, sleek style that emphasized elegant cheekbones and commanding brown eyes.
Today’s beautifully cut suit was fire-engine red, as were her fingernails and lipstick.

“My dear!” she said with raised brows. “I make a point of looking wonderful.”

Jo laughed. “I wish I had half your presence.”

“You do. You just don’t know it.” Her aunt gave a man who dared to jostle her a withering stare. “Well? Why are we wasting time? I do have baggage—it’s important I look good for my meeting in Fairbanks. Fairbanks in October! Why couldn’t it be Honolulu?”

Jo, assuming the question to be rhetorical, hurried to catch up with her aunt, who was briskly walking away. “I wish we had a guest bedroom. Did you make a reservation?”

“Nearby at the Radisson,” her aunt told her. “My flight is quite early in the morning. I won’t expect you for breakfast.”

“I have a nine o’clock class,” Jo said. Which she would undoubtedly have skipped, had Aunt Julia commanded it.

“Ah.” Her aunt tapped one red pump irritably as they waited for the ‘people mover,’ SeaTac’s subway from one concourse to another. “I assume you haven’t seen your father?” she asked.

A knot of hurt inside Jo seemed to gain a
new tangle. “No. We rarely talk. You know that.”

“Idiot man,” her aunt pronounced.

Actually, he seemed content enough to Jo, now that he didn’t have to shape his life around the children he’d had to parent alone since their mother died when Jo was seven. Jo had always believed that she and her brother, Boyce, were unsatisfactory as children went. As an adult, she now understood intellectually that the fault hadn’t been theirs. Their father hadn’t signed on to be a single parent. He’d expected to be the breadwinner while his wife handled school lunches, the PTA and skinned knees. He did his duty when he got stuck with all of the above, but he hadn’t enjoyed it and was visibly relieved when first Jo and then Boyce had left home. If he had regrets, they were well hidden.

Jo said nothing. He was what he was. He’d raised her in a way that had shaped who she was. She wouldn’t repeat his mistakes. Heredity did not suggest she would be much of a mother.

Aunt Julia let the subject of Jo’s father drop, talking about the deposition she’d be taking in Fairbanks and the triumph of winning a recent, high-profile murder case.

“With no body, juries are hard to persuade,” she said with satisfaction. “But we all knew the man did it, and he allowed his smugness to slip out a few times. Juries may be made up of people who never read a newspaper, but that doesn’t mean they’re dumb.”

Jo hid her smile. When the defense won, Aunt Julia was just as inclined to rant about the idiocy of people allowed to sit on juries.

Aunt Julia’s luggage was the first to appear, naturally. As children, Jo and Boyce had been awed by her incredible luck. Parking places always opened before her, traffic lights turned green, coveted items went on fifty-percent-off sales, tables in front of the window became available when she stepped foot in exclusive restaurants. She simply sailed through life assuming she would get her way.

Jo grew up wanting to be Aunt Julia.

Her memories of her mother were mere snapshots, a child’s impressions. Mom had been petite and dark-haired, too, with a face that in photographs could have been Jo’s own. Lately she’d realized that she was nearly the age her mother had been when she died. The idea bothered her. In one way it made her feel closer to the woman her mother had been, but that wasn’t totally comfortable. She didn’t
like to suspect that her mother had felt any of her own uncertainty and doubt and childish anger.

Pulling Aunt Julia’s suitcase, Jo led the way to her car. The Radisson Hotel wasn’t five minutes drive from the airport. Settled in the restaurant, they continued to talk.

“Do you know, it’s been almost two years since Boyce and I had Christmas with you in L.A.?” Jo said, after mentally counting on her fingers. “I’m so glad you had an excuse to pass through Seattle. I think that’s the last time we were all together.”

Her aunt sipped her coffee. “You know you’re welcome to visit me anytime.”

Jo smiled fondly. “Some Friday night I’ll shock you by showing up on your doorstep. You’ll just be changing into a glamorous little black dress for a night out with your latest boyfriend, who happens to own some dot. com, or is lighting in L.A. between wars that he covers for the
New York Times.
You’ll be appalled to see me.”

The tiniest of lines deepened beside Aunt Julia’s mouth, adding years. “Oh, come, Jo. My life is hardly that exciting.”

It had to be a trick of the candlelight, Jo told herself. Aunt Julia would never age. Or
perhaps she would, but beautifully, so that even white-haired she’d be strikingly beautiful, a woman who stopped conversations when she passed. By then her boyfriends would be far younger than she, still brilliant or powerful or wealthy. Why else would they interest her?

“I always imagined it that way,” Jo said, her smile becoming reminiscent. “I remember watching you dress up one night for a date with that senator you were seeing. I think he was a senator. I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. I thought you looked like a princess. I would have loved to be able to peek from a stair landing at the ball.”

The lines vanished as Aunt Julia laughed. “I suspect the ball was some tedious political gala, and he needed somebody decorative on his arm. I don’t even remember it.”

“Or him?”

“Oh, I remember him.” She waved a hand dismissively. “He was lovely to look at, but I learned he was a puppet with several other people pulling the strings. Not nearly as interesting as I thought he’d be.”

“What about now?” Jo asked, leaning forward. “Are you still seeing that federal judge?”

“George?” Her aunt sounded uncaring, but some emotion pinched her face, bringing back the wrinkles. “No! He fell for a thirty-year-old law clerk and married her. I understand she’s pregnant with twins.”

Jo frowned. Men didn’t leave Aunt Julia for other women. At least, Jo had never imagined that they did. Perhaps her aunt had already lost interest in him, and he was seeking consolation.

“You two seemed so…cozy, that Christmas Boyce and I spent with you. Almost settled.”

“Settling isn’t in me,” Aunt Julia snapped. “You know that.”

Startled by the edge in her voice, Jo bit her lip. “I didn’t mean…”

“He was good company.” She set down her coffee cup with a sharp click. “That’s all.”

“Are you seeing anyone now?” Jo asked tentatively.

“It seems as if everywhere I go, the men are married.” Her aunt snorted. “Men my age are pushing strollers. Ridiculous.”

“Do you ever wish…?” Jo hardly knew how to frame her thought.

“Don’t be absurd!” Aunt Julia’s laugh was hard. “Can you see me, of all people, in a
Lamaze class? Changing diapers, instead of writing briefs? I’m hardly the hausfrau type.”

“Women do seem to juggle work and family more successfully these days.” Why was she arguing, when she felt the same? Yet the words kept coming. “Maybe because employers are more sympathetic. Women don’t have to give up so much anymore to have children.”

“Nonsense!” Aunt Julia signaled the waiter with a flick of her hand. He bustled forward, deferentially taking her order for a sorbet. When he was gone, she continued, “I don’t know a single serious practicing attorney with children. It’s simply impossible to put in those kinds of hours and be any kind of parent or keep a husband content. Oh, there are ones on the lower echelons who put their careers on the back burners for years while they raised children, but they’ll never regain what they lost. And at least law is something you can take up again! Your poor mother had to sacrifice any chance at all of making it as a singer. Not that she didn’t love you, of course.” This was said offhandedly, in a way familiar to Jo, who had heard it a hundred times.
Not that she didn’t love you, but…

Jo dared voice a question she’d always
been afraid to ask. “Was Mom really sorry? I mean, did she say that she was?”

Her aunt chose to answer indirectly, if it could be called an answer. “Do you know, she never sang after you were born? Do you even remember lullabies?”

Jo had to shake her head, although she felt a shimmer of memory, a soft voice crooning in the darkness as they rocked, rocked, rocked. She sensed the warm bundle of her baby brother on her mother’s other shoulder. So the song hadn’t been for her. If there had been a song at all.

“There you go then.” Aunt Julia picked up the spoon in her sorbet as though this subject, too, was closed.

On a flicker of exasperation, Jo asked, “Why did you ask about Father?”

Her elegantly dressed aunt looked up from her dessert with surprise. “I always do.”

“No.” Jo felt oddly combative tonight. “You didn’t say, How is your father? You said, I assume you haven’t seen him, as though… I don’t know.” But she did. Aunt Julia had said it as though she were seeking confirmation of something that pleased her.

For the first time, Jo wondered if Aunt Julia wanted to be more important to her niece and
nephew than their father was. If, in her mind, there wasn’t a competition. Almost as if
she
were their mother, long divorced from him.