Heard It Through the Grapevine

“Matt, really. I’m fine. I was just sleeping, and I want to go back to bed.”

He pushed an impatient hand through his hair, then shoved the hand into the pocket of his slacks. Cathie Baldwin in a bed?

No, he would not go there.

“Cathie, I’ve been thinking this door really is too flimsy. I should replace it with something stronger.” He’d done all the locks when she’d moved in, but that didn’t seem like enough now. “So breaking down the door wouldn’t bother me at all.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Try me,” he shot back, unleashing every bit of worry he’d had over her safety in those two little words.

The door cracked open. Through the narrow opening, he peered into the darkness and saw nothing more than the outline of her face.

“It’s pitch-black in there,” he complained.

“I told you I was sleeping. And now you’ve seen me. You can go.”

“Me? Or your mother, Cath? Take your pick, but one of us is going to be inside that apartment, if not tonight, tomorrow.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“We’ve been through this already with the door. You know I would.”

She fumbled with the chain lock and finally stepped back to let him inside.

He looked her over from head to toe. She angled her face away from him, hiding behind a curtain of light brown hair sprinkled with blond sunshine. It was the beginning of December, but unseasonably warm. She had on a big sweatshirt in Carolina blue, the color of one of the local college sports teams, and a ragged pair of faded blue jean shorts. He couldn’t quite make himself stop staring at the lean expanse of skin, from her thighs all the way down to bare feet and dainty, pink-tinted toenails.

Damn. Matt tugged at his tie, then reached for the tiny lamp on the table in the corner and flicked it on.

Cathie winced at the flood of light and quickly turned away. “I suppose if you’re staying, I could at least offer you some coffee.”

She headed for the kitchen. She hadn’t made it far when he caught her by the arm and spun her around. Flicking on the overhead light, he saw that her eyes were puffy and red, her face pale, a trail of tears on her cheeks.

Irritation gave way to fury at anyone who dared hurt her. He’d always been protective of her. It had been there right from the beginning, when he was fifteen and she was eight, with pigtails, gaps in her teeth and skinned knees, an optimist to the core, forced to endure both the pampering and the supreme torture of being the youngest and the only daughter in a family of four boys.

So what the hell were her brothers doing, scattering themselves from one end of the earth to the other, when she needed someone? It was all too easy, staring at her poor, sad face, to imagine the myriad of ways in which a young woman alone in a strange town could be hurt.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s upset you,” he said in a tightly controlled voice.

She stood there trying in vain to hide her feelings. Give it up, Cath, he thought. She’d always been so easy to read.

“Come on. Tell me,” he said softly, for a minute finding and slipping into that old, easy manner between them from the days when she’d been his champion, the one who could always be counted on to take his side in anything and seemed absolutely determined to draw him into the world of her big, boisterous, affectionate, nosy family. Where he would never belong. He’d never belong anywhere. It had always been so clear to him. Why she didn’t see it, he’d never understand.

“Matt, please,” she pleaded, her eyes big and wide and blue, swimming in moisture, her lashes spiked together.

Even in the woman, there were the best qualities of the little girl. She could totally disarm him with nothing but a look in her eyes.

“Please what?” he said, caught, unable to walk away.

“Please leave it alone.”

“Can’t do it.” Matt suffered from an unfortunate, long-standing urge to touch her, even in the smallest, most inconsequential of ways. Though he certainly knew better, he reached for her. Her lashes fluttered down as the pad of his thumb brushed across one of her wet eyelids, and then the other.

It was so nice to touch her.

Matt dried her tears as best he could with the back of his hand. Pale and utterly still, Cathie stood there, not even breathing, her lips slightly parted, her cheeks pale and damp.

She looked like she had that long-ago night. Heartbroken and very, very sweet. Another memory he’d tried hard to forget rushed to the surface. The feel of her lips pressed to his, of sweet, impossibly shy kisses, innocence so pure it was hard to imagine in the world he knew. She’d gotten him into the back of a pickup in a secluded valley on her parents’ farm, taking him completely by surprise, absolutely convinced that she was in love with him and that they belonged together.

He’d had a hard time convincing her they didn’t and had gotten the hell away from her as fast as he could. Okay, almost as fast as he could. He was a man, after all, and she’d practically laid herself bare on a platter in front of him. She’d been embarrassed and hurt. He’d been gruff and insulting, because she’d scared him half to death because of the way she’d tasted, the way she’d felt beneath him and the way he’d wanted her.

Should have gone to jail fifteen years ago, he thought soberly.

“What’s gotten you so upset that you’re sitting in the dark crying your eyes out?” he asked.

“There…uh,” Cathie stumbled over the words. “There’s nothing you can do, Matt. Nothing anyone can do.”

He held his breath as he asked, “Are you sick?”

“No.”

He swore softly. For a minute, crazy things had gone through his head. That she was dying. That he might never see her smiling face again. Never hear her laugh.

Of course, she wasn’t dying. She was just making him crazy, as usual.

“Not sick? Okay. What else? Flunking out of school?”

“No.”

That was highly unlikely, given the fact that she’d worked so hard to get here. Her father had fallen ill with a heart condition during her senior year of high school. His heart transplant had nearly wiped out the family financially. All of her brothers had been either in college or committed to the military, and Matt knew they’d helped out monetarily, as much as they could. But Cathie had been the only one left at home. The years she’d normally have spent in college, she’d spent helping her mother care for her father, helping run the family bed-and-breakfast, taking courses at the local community college when she could.

He knew it was still a struggle financially and held out a brief hope that this could be about money. “Need me to loan you fifty bucks until payday?”

“No,” she insisted. “It’s nothing like that.”

“Okay. You want to play Twenty Questions? I’ll play.”

“Matt, please, just go,” she said, with that quality in her voice that always had him wanting to give her anything in this world. Except this.

“Sorry, but you’re a mess, Cath. You need somebody, and in case you haven’t noticed, I’m the only one here.”

“This isn’t your problem,” she argued.

“Your mother made it my problem, and you know the way she works. If she doesn’t hear from me soon, she’ll call and ask how you are, and I’m not going to lie to her. I’ll tell her you’re a wreck, that you wouldn’t tell me anything, and the next thing you know, she’ll be pounding on your door. Is that what you want?”

“No,” she insisted. “I just need some time to figure everything out. Could you just go away and give me some time?”

It was an entirely reasonable request, and hard as it was to believe, she was an adult. But he’d didn’t think he’d ever seen Cathie looking so fragile or so hurt. He doubted he could have walked away from her now if his life depended on it.