answered in single syllables whenever possible. When the question absolutely required a longer answer, she gave him a whole sentence—and then went back to her meal.
She was finished ten minutes after she’d started. She pushed her plate away. “Thank you, Mack. That was excellent.”
“I’m so glad you enjoyed it,” he muttered, finishing off his glass of wine and reaching for the bottle again.
She granted him a sour smile. “You’ve hardly eaten.” He’d taken one mushroom and a single breadstick.
“For some reason, I feel rushed. It’s ruined my appetite.” He poured more wine, set the bottle down.
Jenna smoothed her napkin in at the side of her plate. “Well, then. If you don’t feel like eating, then maybe we can proceed to the main order of business here.”
He was staring at her engagement diamond. “Nice ring,” he muttered.
“Thank you. I like it, too—and can we talk about what you supposedly came here to talk about?”
He gestured with his wineglass. “By all means.”
She straightened her shoulders and inched her chin up a notch. “As I told you on the phone, I want to get married again.”
“Congratulations.” Mack took a minute to sip from his glass. Then he lowered the glass and looked at her straight on. “But don’t you think you ought to get rid of your first husband before you start talking about taking on another one?”
“I am rid of my first husband,” she replied in a carefully controlled tone. “Or I was supposed to be. Everything was settled.”
“For you, maybe.”
She glared at him. “It was settled, Mack.”
He grunted. “Whatever you say.”
“Well, all right. I say that everything was over—except that, for some reason, you never got around to signing the papers that my lawyer sent your lawyer.”
Mack studied the depths of his wineglass for a moment, then looked at her once more. “It was a busy time for me. I had a lot on my mind.”
She decided to let his lame excuses pass. “The point is, it’s over, Mack. Long over. And you know it. I don’t know why you’re here, after all these years. I don’t care why you’re here.”
He sat up a little straighter. “I don’t believe that.”
“Believe what you want. Just—” Give me those papers and get out of my life! she wanted to shout. But she didn’t. She paused. She gathered her composure, then asked quite civilly, “Do you have the papers?”
He brought his wineglass to his lips again and regarded her broodingly over the rim. “Not with me.”
Jenna could quite easily have picked up the crystal bowl of floating candles from the center of the table and heaved it at his head. To keep herself from doing that, she folded her hands in her lap and spoke with measured care. “You said you had the papers.”
“And I do. I just didn’t bring them with me tonight.”
“You lied.”
“I didn’t lie. You heard what you wanted to hear.”
Another lie, she thought, but held her tongue this time. She’d lived with Mack McGarrity long enough to recognize a verbal trap when he laid one. If she kept insisting that he’d lied, they’d only end up going around and around, her accusing and him denying, getting nowhere.
Let it go, she thought. Move on. She said, “You told me you wanted to talk to me. In private. Well, here we are. Just the way you wanted it. You’d better start talking, Mack. You’d better tell me what is going on.”
He set his glass on the table. “Jenna, I—” He cut himself off. Something across the room had caught his eye. She followed his glance to the black cat peeking around the edge of the arch that led to the formal dining room. “My God. Is that…?”
“Byron,” she provided reluctantly, at the same time as he whispered, “Bub?”
The cat’s lean body slid around the arch. Then, his long tail high, Byron strutted over, jumped lightly onto Mack’s lap, lay down and began to purr in obvious contentment. Mack petted the black fur in long, slow strokes. Jenna looked away, furious with him for this game he was playing—and moved in spite of her fury at the sight of him with Byron again after all these years.
She stared out the front window at the Boston fern hanging from the eaves of the porch as the sound of Byron’s happy purring rumbled in her ears. When she looked back, Mack was watching her. His eyes were soft now, full of memories, of dangerous tenderness. “He has some gray, around his neck.”
Jenna’s throat felt uncomfortably tight. “He’s not a young cat. He was full-grown when we found him.”
She thought of their first meeting again, though she shouldn’t have allowed herself such a foolish indulgence.
Nine years ago. It seemed like forever.
And also, like yesterday…
She’d been in her junior year, majoring in business administration at UCLA. And he’d been twenty-five, just finishing law school.
Once he’d led her into his apartment, he’d informed her that the cat had adopted him.
“No,” she had argued, “That cat adopted me, the first day I moved in, three weeks ago.”
They were in his living room, which had a shortage of furniture and an excess of books—they were everywhere, overflowing the board-and-block bookcases, in piles on the floor. He petted Byron and he looked at her, a look that made her feel warm and weak and absolutely wonderful. He introduced himself. And he said that he’d named the cat Bub.
She had demanded, “You named my cat Bub?”
“It’s my cat.”
“No, he’s mine. And Bub. What kind of a name is that?”
“A better name than Byron—which is just the kind of name a woman would give a black cat.”
“Byron fits my cat perfectly.”
“No. This cat is no Byron. This cat is a Bub.”
“No, his name is Byron. And he’s mine.”
“No, he’s mine.”
“I beg your pardon. He is mine.”
And about then, Mack suggested, “We could share….” He said the words quietly, looking deep in her eyes, stroking Byron’s silky fur and smiling a smile that made her want to find something sturdy to lean against.
“Share…?”
He nodded.
Further discussion had
