Cat and Company (14 page)

Yennifer put her hands together and tilted her head to look at Catherine with a steady gaze. “It seemed to me that you wanted access to the room, not the items that may or may not be in that room. So I complied with your wish.”

“That’s a dangerous game to play, Yennifer,” Catherine said, keeping her voice down. “When you second guess people’s intentions, mistakes can be fatal.”

The door opened and Bedivere stepped in. He hung onto the door handle. “Thank you, Yennifer.”

She nodded at him and left.

“She warned you?” Catherine asked, astonished. Her heart was sinking. This was
exactly
what she had been trying to avoid.

“She didn’t have to,” Bedivere told her, closing the door. “This is my room. I am alerted if anyone enters it. Yennifer knows that.” His eyes narrowed. “I thought you would have assumed the same, too. It’s a basic security precaution that you taught me.”

It was. Catherine couldn’t deny that. So why hadn’t she remembered it? Or had she pushed that knowledge away because it was inconvenient?

“Perhaps you wanted me to find you here,” Bedivere added.

Catherine drew in a sharp, shocked breath. “No,” she said, as firmly as she could. “I was trying to avoid bothering you. That’s why I asked Yennifer to let me in and not you. I just wanted to pick up some of the things I left behind…I thought it might bother you to ask you that.”

“It’s no bother,” Bedivere said softly. “Everything you left behind is in the storage closet in sealed boxes. Or did you think I had destroyed everything?”

She was shocked. Again. “How can you believe I’d think that?”

“Because I wanted to do just that. I wanted to wipe out every trace of you.”

She looked around the room. “Well, you succeeded.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

Catherine rubbed her bare arms again. She had goose bumps. “How can you live like this?” she demanded, her voice lifting despite her determination to stay calm and get through this.

“Brant says this is not living. So the short answer is, I’m not.” He gave a tiny shrug.

It was the total absence of emotion in his eyes and his face that scared her the most. Hundreds…thousands…millions of moments rifled through her mind. Bedivere laughing, the way he had of throwing his head back and giving into a great belly laugh. Bedivere angry. His eyes sleepy with lust. Dancing with amusement. Bedivere had never looked at her with this complete absence of feeling in his eyes. She had always known what his mood was.

Now, there was nothing there.

“You’ve changed,” she said. “You’re hiding from me.”

“From
you?
” He smiled, and it was not a positive expression. “Cat, you’re one of the last people I ever expected to fall into the trap of thinking that everything was about them. You’ve lived too long to make that mistake.”

She shook her head. “I’m not wrong.” In her heart, in her gut, she knew she was right. “I’m not the only one you’re hiding from, although you’re working your hardest to hide away from me. I’m not a fool. You’re right, I don’t for a moment think the world revolves around me. Even so, your world and mine were aligned for a long, long time. I’d be a fool to think that because things have changed, that history doesn’t still carry weight with you. You’re not fickle. You don’t just shrug off that sort of influence.”

“Maybe I have finally figured out how to,” he said.

There wasn’t a single shred of amusement in his voice and that drove her fear a little higher. “If you have, then you’re not the man I thought I could love.”

“I’m not a man, remember?”

She swallowed. “Varkan rights and freedoms determined that both Varkan and human are men in the eyes of the world and accorded the same rights and responsibilities.”

“Including the right to pursue any life I want,” Bedivere replied.

The conversation was deteriorating. She had to turn this around before it moved into territory from where there was no return. She had to stop it now before one of them said something the other could never forget or forgive.

She held up her hand. It didn’t surprise her that her hand shook. “You would never have let an argument go this far, before.”

“As you pointed out, I’ve changed.”

“I don’t think you’ve changed as much as you’d like to think you have.” She gave him a small smile. It felt more like a grimace. “People don’t change, really. It takes so much effort because the inertia is so great.”

“If the leverage is strong enough, anyone can change,” Bedivere said. He straightened up from his lean against the door. “You have no idea the things that I’ve….” He stopped, as though he was reconsidering the wisdom of speaking of such things. “Maybe I’m just evolving into what I was supposed to be all along. I’m the first among the Varkan. We don’t yet know the full life cycle for Varkan. Maybe we all get to change. Over and over. We’re not human, after all.”

Catherine shook her head. “Not you,” she said flatly. “You’re just trying to scare me into thinking some dark malevolence sits inside you. I refuse to believe that. I
know
you, Bedivere. I don’t care what you’ve seen or how it has affected you, deep down you’re still the man…you’re still a good man.”

She had come so close to blurting it out. This was dangerous. She should leave now. Only, reluctance was making her limbs heavy, to the point where she could do nothing else but stay right where she was standing.

Her heart gave a little leap as Bedivere drew closer. Was he doing it deliberately? Trying to make her react to him? He had done that once before, used his physicality to make her aware of what she was really feeling.

The memories rippled through her mind like a series of shooting stars. Kisses. The weight of his body against hers. His hands, the long clever fingers in her hair, stroking her back.

His lips….

She shivered and thrust the memories away. That wasn’t going to help her now. She had to stay in control. “I don’t know what happened to you. I’ve picked up enough hints from the way everyone looks at you and treats you, and the way they stop talking when they realize I can hear, to know that something bad happened. You don’t have to tell me. I don’t have a right to demand explanations anymore. Whatever it was, Bedivere, it can’t possibly reach deep enough to change who you are at the core. You’re too strong for that.”

He laughed. It was a horrible sound, harsh and grating. “Too
strong
? Dear heavens above, Cat, you have
no
idea the depths….” He drew in a sharp breath. “I was in the Silent Sector. I remember that much and you know that too, because that’s why I recognized the alien craft. What you don’t know is where I went next because even
I
don’t know. Connell is obsessed with putting it together, when he has a spare moment to work on it, although I doubt even he’ll be able to account for everything I did out there…wherever I was. I only know where I ended up because that’s where Connell and Brant found me and they remember it far too well.”

Catherine hugged herself again. The chill was settling into her bones. “Where were you?” She almost whispered it. Did she really want to know?

Bedivere had gradually drawn closer. Now he was standing over her, making her tilt her head back to look at him. He locked gazes with her, holding her attention. “I killed people, Cat.”

She drew in a shuddering breath. “Not you.” The denial rose quickly. Instantly.

“I was a champion at murder. They called me Killer.”

The savage pits. She had heard whispers of them, dark rumors spoken from the corners of mouths in the spacer bars where the real news travelled first. Horror gripped her throat and made her eyes sting. “I refuse to believe you would willingly do something like that.”

“I did do that,” he said flatly. “I was good at it.”

Before she could control herself and prevent it from happening, tears formed and fell. They were hot and hard and made her chest and her eyes and her throat ache. This was her fault. These horrible things he was saying, they were because she had let him leave.

Bedivere shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking. It’s not because you weren’t there to save me, Cat. It isn’t your fault.”

He was still able to guess her thoughts with such accuracy it felt like mind reading. It just made her cry harder and she hated that he was watching every tear fall, measuring her weakness.

“I said I wasn’t good enough for you, do you remember? That first day you told me that Devlin had asked you to help him?”

“How can I forget?” Her voice was hoarse. It had been a casual comment about a passing moment of amusement—that Devlin Woodward himself had offered her a job. Three hours later she had stood in icy shock, watching Bedivere pack a bag and leave. “You keep measuring yourself against the entire galaxy and of course you come up short,” she added.

He nodded. “It may have been vanity to think I could ever be a match for you, Cat. Now I know absolutely how wrong I was to even dare to think so.”

Her heart felt as though it was tearing itself in two. How could she stop this? How could she make him take back these terrible things he was saying about himself? How could he honestly believe them? Somehow, he did.

Catherine stirred herself. There had to be a way to fix this. There simply had to be. She would not consider giving up.

“You’re wrong. Again,” she told him. “You keep making this mistake, Bedivere. You’ve always thought you weren’t good enough to deserve love, especially from me for some bizarre reason I’ve never fully grasped. People don’t love other people because they’re good enough to deserve it. They love them because of exactly who they are. If we only loved people who rise high enough in the ranks of moral and decent behavior, who earned that love by whatever criteria we think is important, then every thief and liar would die from loneliness. Every man and woman who had ever made a mistake would be alone. Every Varkan would be isolated and locked up because screwing up is what
defines
you! You have to have a human emotional meltdown just to find Interspace and learn how to use it. The only way to
be
Varkan is to make mistakes!”

Bedivere was watching her carefully. He was listening. She could see the thoughtfulness in his eyes. Hope flared. He was
really
listening.

“Making mistakes and how we deal with those mistakes is what defines humans, too,” Catherine pressed on. “It’s not everything that makes us human and Varkan, but it’s a big part of it. I loved you because of everything you did and didn’t do, every mistake, every weakness and flaw and all the strengths you never gave yourself enough credit for.” She was crying again and wiped her cheeks quickly. Tears were simply a human weakness, after all. “Bedivere, you’re never going to be perfect. No one is. That’s not what I love about you.”

He jerked, as if she had hit him. Perhaps she had. And he was looking at her properly now. She could see life in his eyes and his face. It had been there all along, and he had been hiding it from her. Now he’d removed the baffles.

Her hope soared. “Devlin is a great man,” she said gently, “but he doesn’t make me laugh. Not the way you could make me laugh…and I miss that.”

A moment ago it had felt as if he was standing too close to her. Now, it seemed as though there was a yawning chasm separating them. Catherine could feel herself almost leaning toward him. It would be so easy to lift her arms and press herself against him. It would be like all the other times that had come before, feeling his hard length against her, his arms around her, his breath on her flesh. His heat.

She didn’t dare move.

The only sound in the room was her heart thundering in her head and her chest.

Bedivere’s gaze skittered over her face and settled on her mouth.

Her heart almost stopped. Her breath caught. Her whole body willed him to take the kiss he was contemplating.

How long did they stand there with the promise of a kiss hanging between them, drawing them closer and closer? It seemed to last for at least half her long life time. Centuries had passed more quickly than those few aching moments, while hope and fear battled in her chest and longing made her body pulse.

Then Bedivere drew in a breath, his shoulders lifting. He straightened and stepped back and shook his head. “No.”

Her disappointment was so acute she couldn’t speak. Even her tears had evaporated.

Bedivere was moving away from her. The spell was broken, the opportunity was slipping away from her.

“You should get back to work. Devlin is probably waiting for you out there,” Bedivere said. His voice was rough.

Catherine made herself breathe. “Tell me…please tell me that this is some sort of long range plan you have, Bedivere. Like Kemp and the Cartel—tell me you have an agenda you just can’t share with me.”

Bedivere turned and put his hand on the door handle, yet didn’t open it. He looked at her over his shoulder. “There’s no agenda, Cat. Standing next to Devlin is exactly where you should be. He needs you and his need is greater than anything or anyone else in the known worlds right now.”

“He needs good lieutenants, that’s all.”

“Tell me you haven’t loved what you’re doing for the Varkan,” Bedivere said flatly. “Tell me you haven’t enjoyed making the galaxy a better place for everyone, that you don’t like being able to make changes on such a large scale. Tell me you don’t like helping people the way you have been. Tell me that.”

She opened her mouth to say…something. The words wouldn’t come. Because Bedivere had put his finger on exactly what had made her stay with Devlin all this time. Even if Bedivere hadn’t been by her side, she had lived many more years without him than the years when he had been in her life and she knew how to find her own way in the world. She could have pushed off, found another ship and another crew and rebuilt her life. Yet she hadn’t.

Bedivere had pushed her at Devlin and he had been right. She liked what she did each day to improve life for humans and Varkan both. It was the ultimate payoff to be able to see the difference she and Devlin made. That was why she was still on the
Hana Stareach
.

She liked it. She liked Devlin, for his morals and his ethics and his relentlessness. She liked being needed and she liked being useful. It hadn’t happened in all her long, self-centered life, until now.