"Why don't you let me take you and your stuff to your parents' house," Rick offered. He looked hot and angry. Ten minutes of arguing with Vera Dixler, Jennifer's seventy-year-old piranha of a manager, and half an hour of packing Jennifer's belongings into his truck would do that to a lot calmer man than Rick.
Jennifer shook her head strongly from her seat in the truck. Staying at her parents' place would violate campus rules. Besides, he'd probably mock the way her parents lived. Her parents had been hurt enough. She'd sleep on the street before she would let anyone hurt them further.
"I told you that's impossible," she said.
He sighed. "All right, where do you want to go?"
She couldn't really blame him for his impatience. He'd come into Schilling's to buy a new pair of work boots and he'd gotten caught up in this mess. She found herself amazed he hadn't run away. At least not yet.
Still, the mess wasn't her fault either. All she'd done was save the lives of a couple of adorable kittens.
She stroked Nick's soft fur. She'd made the right decision.
"You could just leave me here," she said. "Nobody made you pick up my stuff." The sooner he walked back out of her life, the sooner she could put a stop to irrational fantasies of rekindling the ashes of a high school romance.
Rick looked even better than he had in high school, Jennifer admitted to herself. The way he'd loaded her things into his truck gave her a new insight into the word ‘manhandle.’ With an emphasis on the ‘man.’ Still, she didn't want him hanging around. She couldn't tolerate a man who didn't like cats.
Rich chose that moment to confirm her suspicions about him. "I can't believe you had eight cats in your apartment. No wonder dear Mrs. Dixler kicked you out."
"And I can't believe anyone would just abandon them, let alone that Schilling would call and tattle on me, even if Mrs. Dixler is his aunt. People who don't like cats just don't understand." She peered at him from beneath her lashes, gauging his response.
Rick's reply was to start his engine and pull the truck out of the apartment parking lot. He said nothing about secretly loving cats. Darn.
"Pull over at the Krispy Chicken," Jennifer requested.
Rick gave her a suspicious look. She sensed that he wasn't used to taking orders from women, or maybe anyone.
"All right," he drawled. "But once you get your fat-gram fix, we still have to figure out what to do with you."
She barely restrained herself from hitting him for that. "We aren't going to figure anything out. I'm a grown-up, remember."
"As if I could just walk away and leave you standing there surrounded by your furniture."
Jennifer took a deep breath. Despite what she said, Rick seemed guilted into pushing himself into her life. She could use some help, but Rick wasn't the first person she'd turn to. He wasn't even on the list.
"If you're trying to make up for dumping me in high school, you're too late. I've gotten over it and moved on with my life."
Rick looked at Jennifer as if she'd grown horns. "Me dumping you? You've got things a little backwards."
She shook her head. "I'm pretty sure I remember your exact words. ‘You'd be better off with a rich boyfriend.’"
Rick rubbed his hand across his face. "That was after you started dating some rich kid. What was I supposed to do, tell you I'd settle for his leftovers?"
Jennifer felt sick to her stomach, like she'd been whirled around until she was dizzy. "I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about."
"I'm talking about Jim Dorfmann."
Now that was a laugh. Jim Dorfmann was a dolt, even if he was now a bank vice president. "I never dated Jim." Not that her parents hadn't pushed him on her.
Rick shook his head definitely. "I'm not taking the fall here. He took you to your, uh, presentation thing."
A faint lightbulb went off in Jennifer's head. "You mean my debutante ball?"
"That's what you called it."
She would have laughed if it hadn't been so pathetic. "That wasn't a date. He was just my escort."
"Funny, all of the other girls took their boyfriends."
Jennifer tried to remember that long-ago time. Why hadn't she taken Rick? "I think ..." Memories of fending Jim Dorfman's hands off her anatomy clawed their way back to her consciousness. "Now I remember. You wouldn't let me give you the money to rent a tux. A girl can't make her debut without an escort, and the escort has to wear a tux. I had no choice."
Rick stared at her. His face showed that he'd suppressed that memory. "I wasn't much good at taking charity," he admitted.
"Isn't that funny. You seem intent on dishing it out."
"Yeah." He spoke slowly. "I guess maybe I overreacted. One thing I knew for sure, though, I couldn't run in your circles."
Despite herself, Jennifer's heart went out to the boy he'd been. He'd never had anything new to wear, never got out of town on vacation, and lived in a trailer his mother parked wherever she had a temporary house-sitting job. She fought down the urge to pull him to her breast and comfort him. Now that was a bad idea.
"Just curious," she asked. "Is that supposed to be an apology?"
"I guess you have one coming." Rick nodded firmly.
"Oh. If you ever make another one, maybe you could send smoke signals. I'm afraid I wouldn't recognize it otherwise."
Rick glared at her.
Jennifer guessed the apology portion of the conversation was over. Against her better judgment, she forced herself to be fair. "I guess I owe you one too. Looking back, that whole coming-out cotillion seems incredibly small. At the time, though, it was terribly important. I knew you weren't happy about me going. I just didn't realize how unhappy you were."
"That's the thing about being a kid," Rick offered. "You mess up a lot." He pulled off his hat and tangled his fingers through his hair. "I'm still messing up. Holding a grudge for ten years seems kinda dumb, now that I think about it." He paused for an instant. "You should see smoke signals now."
Jennifer clasped her hands in her lap, resisting the ridiculous urge to follow his lead and run her fingers through his long hair. "I know what you mean."
Nothing had really changed. Jennifer knew that. She and Rick still had nothing in common, except perhaps a lingering physical attraction. Still, she felt strangely comforted in knowing what had happened. If Rick hadn't vanished from school two days after her fateful debutante ball, they probably would have talked things out. Instead, though, he had and they hadn't.
"I guess I'd better get to work finding a roof over my head," she told him. She searched around at the bottom of her purse and eventually came up with a small handful of change. The pennies went back to the bottom. The silver would give her a start at the pay phone.
This time Jennifer waited until Rick had actually stopped the truck before disembarking. No wonder he thought she needed someone to make decisions for her. What kind of a fool jumps out of a moving truck?
"So why the Krispy Chicken?" Rick asked.
"That's where the pay phone is." She'd never actually used it, but the corner phone next to the restaurant was one of the hot spots in her Dallas neighborhood. For many neighbors, it was the only phone they had access to. Right now, that was Jennifer's situation as well.
"Who are you going to call?"
Could she really have heard jealous possessiveness in Rick's voice?
"I have lots of friends," she assured him. "Somebody will take me in and I'll be one furball less in your life." That was one of the nice things about the Cat Rescue League. Cat lovers stand up for each other. "You can just leave my stuff here if you want. Someone will pick me up, cats, furniture and all." It didn't hurt her ego any if Rick wanted to think she was calling a bunch of males.
Rick didn't look like he'd given the matter any thought. He just leaned against his truck. "I'll wait."
Ten calls and three dollars later, she wasn't so confident. She pumped in another thirty-five cents.
"Carla, it's me, Jennifer." Carla Siebolt was vice-president of the Cat Rescue League and her last best bet.
"Ohmygod, I can't believe you called. I was just thinking about you. Listen," Carla's husky voice got mysterious. "I found this great guy you've simply got to meet. He works with Harry and--"
"Carla, I've got a problem a lot more pressing than finding a man." Harry was a loser who'd latched onto Carla like a tick. Harry and his assorted and sordid friends were why Carla had been at the bottom of Jennifer's call list despite the fact they'd been college roommates.
"Nothing's more important than finding a man, honey."
"How about rescuing a friend."
Two minutes later the painful truth emerged. Harry had threatened to walk out if Carla brought home another cat.
Jennifer set the payphone receiver back in the cradle, put her hands on her hips and turned to face Rick, who'd apparently been listening to her latest exchange.
"That does it," he told her. "You'll spend the night with me."
***
Jennifer's face paled. "If you really think I'd go to bed with you just because I’m home--"
Rick held up a hand. "I didn't say that. I have an office with a couch. You can look for something more permanent tomorrow." He owed her at least that much.
"I have more friends. I'd rather call them."
A young man in a convertible Impala drove by, honked his horn, and shouted something obscene. Rick felt strangely protective, an emotion he tried to dismiss.
"It's hot and it's getting late," he reasoned. "You've been talking to your friends all afternoon without any luck. So give it a rest until tomorrow."
Jennifer shook her head. "I can't impose and just move in with you."
Rick felt her slipping away between his fingers. His curiosity nagged him with questions about who Jennifer had become. One thing for sure, she handled adversity a lot better than she had ten years before. That girl would cry for half an hour over a broken fingernail. This woman kept on fighting no matter what the world handed her.
He decided he'd fight too. Fight dirty. "This heat has to be rough on the cats."
The cats, like him, were in the shade. Besides, in his experience, cats actually liked heat. People were a different matter. After all that time standing at the payphone in the sun, he rationalized, Jennifer had to be miserable. Her blond hair stuck to her forehead and her thin dress clung to her body like shrink-wrap. Whether she knew it or not, he was helping her. If only he could feel a little more noble about it.
"One more call."
She started to dig through her battered purple purse again, as if she was going to find any more change there after three searches.
"I've got a phone at my place," he told her.
"But--" she swayed a little.
That was enough for him. Rick pulled off his hat, plopped it down on Jennifer's head, then steered her toward his truck.
"What do you think you're doing?" she demanded.
He had no idea, but he enjoyed the sensation of his hand on her back. He decided to wing it. "I'm doing what any friend would do--helping out."
"I didn't ask for your help. After you dumped me, I stopped counting on men."
She hadn't asked him for anything, he realized. She'd just stood there looking beautiful and helpless and his male protective instincts had shifted into high gear. He admired independent women, but the notion that he might have been responsible for Jennifer's loss of innocence bugged him.
"You're right," he told her. "You didn't ask for my help. But that's the bitch about friends. Sometimes they help without being asked." He opened the passenger side door for her, all but pushed her in, then reached over to fasten her seatbelt.
Bad idea. His arm brushed against her breast as he bent forward to hook the belt and a sensation of pure desire surged through his veins. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been quite so, um, stimulated.
Torn between following up on his mistake and jumping away like a kid who'd touched a hot stove, he inhaled sharply and caught a good nose-full of Jennifer's scent. Vanilla, something like orange blossoms, and underneath the purchased scents, he breathed some essence of Jennifer.
Rick's body tingled almost as if someone had run a sharp fingernail down his back.
"I can fasten my own seat belt."
"Yeah. Good idea." He stumbled around the back of the truck, climbed awkwardly into the cab, and jammed down the clutch. This wasn't going to be easy.
Fortunately his place was only a couple of miles from the Krispy Chicken. He only ran one stop sign and avoided a kamikaze squirrel that slithered across the road in front of his truck. Hitting that rodent would have finished him with Jennifer before he'd really started.
He forced himself to confront that thought. Despite himself, he wanted to start something with Jennifer. Whether that something led to closure of their teen crush or a more adult relationship, he wasn't sure. One thing he knew. Their high school relationship had never really healed itself. He needed that healing.
He opened his mouth to say something really dumb and mushy. "I've been--"
"What the heck is this?" she interrupted, pointing at his place.
He looked, but didn't see anything out of the ordinary. "What?"
"I thought we were going to your apartment."
"This is it." He pulled his truck into a space under a huge elm tree.
"It looks like a low-rent car dump. Don't tell me you live in your truck."
All mushy thoughts vanished. Rick was proud of his garage. It had been an abandoned and boarded up fire station when he'd found it. Now the building shined with clean glass and fresh murals painted by neighborhood teens. His garage had become a place where a guy with a worn timing chain could rent a bay, cheap, by the hour or week, and do the work himself. He saved his neighbors some money, and he improved the look of the neighborhood by cutting down on the number of cars on blocks in people's front yards and driveways. It made him feel good.
"This low-rent car dump, as you call it, happens to be where I live. So why don't you cut me some slack?"
"Oh." Jennifer paused and looked out the windshield. "You said you had an office. I assumed it was in a house or apartment, not in a garage. I'm sorry--"
"My apartment is upstairs. I wouldn't have invited you to spend the night in a garage." Nor would he leave her at the mercy of the weekend mechanics who rented bays from him. Definitely not them.
He turned off the engine and slid out of the truck.
Jennifer stepped out of the truck, her dress clinging to the seat and riding up her thighs. A wolf whistle pierced the sudden silence.
Rick pointed up a narrow spiral staircase, indicating Jennifer should climb it. She grabbed one of the cat carriers from the truck bed and followed where he pointed.
Rick glared down Luis Rodriguez, the source of the wolf whistle. "No smoking in here," he growled, enforcing a rule that most of the guys ignored.
"Sure. Forgot about that." Luis grinned, stuck the cigarette between his teeth, and headed for the door. As he stepped past the staircase he glanced up and made a curvy shape with his hands. "Looking good, Rick."
"Outside."
"I'm going."
Jennifer obviously hadn't missed Luis's comment. She stopped about six feet up the iron staircase and snickered.
If she was trying to hold her mirth back, she failed miserably. Her chuckles deepened to a solid laughter. "I think maybe you're right," she gasped. "This is a classy place." She reached for another step but misjudged and tottered.
Without thinking, Rick reacted, leaping up four steps at once. He scooped Jennifer up before she could either fall or catch her balance.
She felt small and helpless to him as he cradled her in his arms. She hardly weighed anything and he felt as if he could carry her for hours. Hell, if he thought he could get away with it, he probably would have. He couldn't remember the last time he'd wanted a woman this badly.
"I'm all right." Jennifer continued giggling. "I just lost my balance for a second."
So much for gratitude. Not that he was due any. His motives had been purely ulterior.
"The stairs are pretty steep and one of them is loose. Besides, this isn't any trouble." He was only partially lying. It wasn't particularly difficult to carry her up the stairs. Putting her down once he got to the top, now that would be hard.
***
In teenage dreams, Jennifer had imagined Rick carrying her across the threshold into his house. In those dreams, the house had been a mansion and the threshold act had been the logical conclusion to a beautiful wedding. This wasn't a mansion, of course, but her fantasy was flexible.
She let her eyes flutter closed. It was only a harmless fantasy, one that was in no danger of coming true. Rick couldn't afford to spend his time taking care of her even if she wanted that. Based on what she'd seen of his truck and where he lived, Rick should be at work right now, not carting her around like someone who had nothing else in the world to do.
Still, she savored the sensation of Rick's strong arms around her and let herself press her face against his hard chest.
He didn't even seem to notice her weight as he climbed the steep circular staircase, unlocked a door at the top of the stairs, and carried her inside.
Rick also didn't seem to notice the symbolic significance of his actions. "We're here," he announced.
She opened her eyes. "Oh. It's sort of nice." She didn't know what she'd imagined. Maybe black velvet paintings, bean-bag chairs, and a couple of cases worth of empty beer bottles scattered over the floor. Instead, she saw a perfectly functional and basically neat living room. And it was cool! The only thing that made it even a little tacky was a pair of tattoo.com posters on one wall.
What was his deal with tattoos? She wondered. He didn't even have one, not that she could see. She couldn't suppress the naughty notion of undressing him and making sure he didn't have a tattoo hidden somewhere behind the T-shirt, under the work boots, or maybe...
"Thanks for the backhanded compliment."
"I've just read about men's houses. About how--" she broke off. She'd assumed Rick was alone. What were the odds of that in man-hungry Dallas?
She looked around, wanting to explore, to learn what made this new Rick tick, and see if she could quash her sudden fear that any minute now, the little woman would appear around a corner.
At least there were no obvious female markings on Rick's home.
As far as she could tell, his apartment consisted of the entire upper half of the old fire station. He'd put some sort of a cover or trap door over the hole in the floor where a brass slide-pole led downstairs. The fantasy of sliding down that pole caught her mind and she tried to suppress it. She had a pretty good idea what her college psychology professor would make of that idea.
When it had been a fire house, a whole crew of firemen had spent their lives here. Why did it seem so crowded with just her and Rick?
Rick set her down on a couch and she sank into it savoring the butter-soft texture of the brown leather while missing the even warmer sensation of his arms around her. She set down her cat carrier. The two cats inside were asleep, seeming to sense they were safe.
"Do you want a soda or anything?" he asked.
"Once I get the rest of the cats, I've got to use the phone and figure out what to do next." She had to stay focused.
"Coming up. If you don't want soda, I'll get you some water. You might have gotten dehydrated out there in the sun."
She started struggling back to her feet but Rick stopped her. "Sit. I'll bring it to you."
That did it. He was treating her like she was a helpless invalid just because she'd lost her balance laughing at him. She got up, got her own drink of water, then snagged his phone from a small table in the dining room.
"You said I could use your phone, right?"
He waved her question away. "What's mine is yours."
"Thanks." She'd run out of likely places for both her and the cats, but if she could just find someone to watch over the animals for a few days, she could easily find a place for herself.
"How about if I--"
"Do you really want to help me?" Jennifer interrupted whatever he'd been about to offer next.
Rick looked at her like she'd broken out in green polka-dots. "Well, yeah."
"Help me bring up the rest of the cat crates. Even in the shade, it's too hot out there for them, and they've been cooped up long enough."
"You just make your calls. I'll get the cats." He gave her a funny look.
For an instant, she couldn't figure out why. Then she realized. "You don't like cats very much, do you? They're really easy to have around, they don't smell, and they take care of themselves."
Rick raised one eyebrow. "If they're so good at taking care of themselves, how come there's a Cat Rescue League?"
Before Jennifer could answer that question, he'd vanished down the stairs.
Jennifer found a boarding house with an empty room on her first call. Unfortunately, they didn’t accept animals. Finding a friend that would take even one or two more cats wasn't so easy. She was feeling increasingly nervous when Rick stomped up the iron stairway carrying three wiggling boxes full of cat.
She almost squealed when she saw him lugging all of those heavy plastic carrying cases at once. Annie and Nick, having crawled out of cardboard box, clung to the front of his T-shirt. "Be careful. Cats are so easily traumatized."
Rick gave her a skeptical look, then set down the crates and opened the latches to give her cats the freedom they craved.
"I need a beer." He strode to the kitchen. When he returned, he pulled a comfortable looking chair toward the couch and sat.
He stared across the distance separating them, then took a long pull on his beer.
"Are you done with your calls? Do you want me to order a pizza?" he asked.
Jennifer's stomach gurgled just as she started to tell Rick that she wasn't hungry. She glanced at her watch only to discover that the day had gotten away. It was already evening.
"Pizza sounds nice. Oh, and by the way, do you have a newspaper?"
"You want to leave it out for your cats? That big yellow one is giving my cactus an evil look."
"I'm out of friends. I'm looking for cat sitters."
"What about the Internet?"
"The Internet?" she repeated. "Do you know how many con-men troll for victims on the web? I'm not leaving my babies with some guy who wants to eat them for dinner." She hated the Internet after what it had done to her father, and she couldn't keep the bitterness out of her voice.
Rick gave her a strange look. "Can I order the pizza first?"
Her stomach gurgled again. "Maybe you'd better. Do you still like--"
"Sausage and mushroom," he interrupted. "Deep dish. That okay with you?"
Her mouth watered, and she nodded.
An hour, eight calls, and three slices of pizza later, she decided to take another tack on her problems.
"There's a place near Schilling's where I could rent by the week," she told Rick.
"Hey, great. That's less than a mile from here--"
"Wait." She didn't want him to go on about how great it was before he heard the catch. "They don't allow pets."
Rick looked at her like she had gone insane. "No."
Hecate, her black Persian, strolled over and sniffed at Rick's boot-clad feet. Hecate had been abused before coming to Jennifer and had never willingly shared a room with a human other than Jennifer herself. Now she actually seemed to like Rick. Could this be a sign? Maybe Jennifer could help Rick learn how wonderful kitties can be. His apartment would make a perfect home for cats.
"It'll only be until I find someplace more permanent."
"No."
"I'll come over every day and take care of them."
Rick took another deep swallow from his beer bottle, then set it down on the coffee table. Hera, a gray tabby, rubbed up against his leg, then sharpened her claws on his jeans.
"Hera, stop that," Jennifer ordered.
The cat just glanced at her, then continued her business.
Rick shook his leg gingerly, trying to loosen the animal without hurting her.
Jennifer had to give him credit. She knew guys who would have kicked away the cat without worrying about what happened to it. Guys that should be put away for life.
"I know I'm asking a big favor," she started over.
Rick reached down and peeled claws out of his leg. "Can I say something without you laughing at me?"
Jennifer couldn't imagine laughing at Rick. "Of course."
"I learned how to swim when my mother shoved me off a boat and pointed me to the shore. I hated it. I don't think I want my first, uh, animal companion experience to be taking care of ten cats."
"But--"
"I already told you, I've got room. So stay here until you find a place for you and your cats? We might even have a little fun." He winked.
Was he serious? Or just trying to rattle her cage? If Jennifer hadn't been so desperate, she would have gathered up her cats and walked out. But she didn't want to spend the night on the street--and that was her only other choice.
"One night," she said succinctly. "And no fun."