Old Enough To Know Better (8 page)

And he just sat there, grinning like an idiot.

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” she asked rudely.

“Not quite.”  Finn rose and went to her fridge.  “What would you like to have for lunch?”

“Lunch?  I just had breakfast.  Don’t you remember?  You were here for it.  You’re too young for senility.  That’s my excuse.”

He was disgustingly affable, to a point, still peering into her fridge and assessing the food situation.  “Okay, then what would you like to have as a second helping of breakfast?  Or a mid morning snack?  You have more casserole, hot dogs, some unidentifiable deli meat . . .”

Cat crossed her arms over her chest.  “I’m not hungry, thank you.  You can leave now.”

He’d already graduated to rifling through her cupboards.  “Spicy chicken Ramen, Oodles of Noodles, Spaghetti O’s –” he held the can up and looked back at her, “Spaghetti O’s?  Really?  I wouldn’t have guessed.”  Then he started listing things again,  “Peanut butter, Fluff, raspberry jelly . . .”

“You’re too young to be deaf, Finn, but I just said I’m not hungry.”

“PB and J it is,” he pronounced, looking in her breadbox but finding it empty and turning back to her with a curious look.

“It’s in the freezer.”

“It’s in the freezer,” he repeated, finding it while mumbling, “of course it is, Finn.  She has a perfectly good breadbox, but she keeps the bread in the freezer, of course, you idiot.  Doesn’t everyone?”  Setting the ingredients in front of him, he said conversationally, as he constructed a sandwich, “You should really put a note in there saying something like, ‘See Freezer’, so that people don’t get confused . . .”

“People don’t, since I’m the only one living here,” she growled.

He put the sandwich on the plate, and added chips from a bag on top of the fridge, and offered it to her, then snatched the plate back from her, not that she was reaching for it anyway.  “Do you like your chips with your sandwich, or in your sandwich?”

“It’s not my sandwich, so make it whatever way you like.” Cat shrugged her shoulders.

Finn placed it on the snack bar and said quietly, “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Catherine, as many times as I need to.  It’s your choice whether you eat with a sore bottom or not.”

He was glad that glares couldn’t hurt him, or he’d be stone cold dead, but then he actually watched her stubborn set in, and her jaw clench.

“I am not hungry, so I am not eating that sandwich.  Make of that what you will.”

What he made was her butt very sore, and her eat the sandwich, and he barely moved a muscle doing so, because she hadn’t noticed – being years out of practice and all - that he’d already moved his food onto the rung of the bar stool he’d pulled out in front of him when he put the sandwich down, in anticipation of her defiant answer.  Clint had told him she could be stubborn sometimes, that occasionally she got something in her craw and just decided that she needed to prove her point to him that she was an independent woman, when there was never any doubt in his mind – ever – that she was a very independent woman.  He’d never considered that the fact that he spanked her diminished her in any way, least of all, her independence.

But, as he’d said, she sometimes couldn’t get her head around something he really wanted her to do, almost always something that truly was for her own good – go see a doctor for a test, or take a particularly disgusting medicine, or some such thing, and she would flat out refuse to do it.  It went against her usual affable nature, but then, everybody had their quirks.  It was up to him – the man that loved her – to make sure that his woman didn’t cling to quirks that could get her into trouble, and if she did, then she needed to be corrected, in no uncertain terms.

He had her over his raised knee, baggy knit pants around her ankles where she definitely didn’t want to encounter them, followed alarmingly by her pretty and delicately purple flowered panties.  “Are you out of your mind?” she yelled and wiggled and tried to hit him, but he’d already maneuvered the chair well out into the kitchen, and himself well out of the way, so there was nothing for her to hit, and nothing for her to latch onto to assist herself in any way, either.

“Bastard!” she yelled.

“Ah ah ah-hh,” he chided, giving her a very hard swat and she embarrassed herself completely by fairly bellowing because of it.  “Watch your language, Catherine.  You’ll find I’m a good deal less lenient about that kind of thing than Clint was.  You always had much more of a potty mouth than I would have let you get away with.”  He leaned down a little towards her, but not enough to do her any good, damn him.  “Than I will let you get away with,” he corrected.

Each swat made her wish – more than the one before - that she had just eaten the blasted sandwich.  Why couldn’t she just have eaten the friggin’ sandwich?  She always ended up regretting it when she got stubborn like this.  Always.  It never ended well for her – or her backside - and yet she always let herself get her back up about something stupid, not that she’d ever admit that any of her various causes were stupid.  On the contrary, she would defend them to the death.

But she ate the blasted sandwich.

Standing up.

While glaring daggers at him.

As he stood there, smiling beatifically back at her, and making her several more sandwiches for later.

And it didn’t help that he was so darned pleasant about it all.  He did a good job blistering her bottom, at least as well as Clint would have in the same situation, she hated to admit, and then he’d helped her up very carefully, pulled up her pants and panties, although she’d brushed his hands away, whereas she wouldn’t have with Clint since he would never have let her get away with that, but then, he was her husband.  Finn poured her a glass of milk and was disgustingly solicitous of her the entire time.

He was awful, and she hated him.

Well, she wanted to hate him, anyway.  That counted for something, as far as she was concerned.

“Finish the milk, too,” he prodded gently, poking the cup towards her.

If she didn’t stop frowning, her face was going to set into that expression permanently.  She had half a mind to take the big mouthful of it she had in her mouth right now and squirt it back out at him, but then she caught him looking at her as if he knew exactly what she was thinking, with his eyebrow all raised expectantly, and then she remembered how that right hand of his, that was right now cradling a can of soda, had felt against her bare rear, and thought better of it and swallowed it all down.

It sucked to realize there were consequences to her actions, again.  It sucked big time.

“Thank you.  You’ll feel better for having something in your stomach.  I’ve left you with mom’s stuff and two more sandwiches.  When I come back tomorrow, I expect it all to be eaten.”

Who did he think he was, laying down the rules for her, telling her what to do?  He was just the neighbor’s kid –

She was hauled up against him in an instant, her feet dangling well above the floor, her body plastered against his, and he was only using one arm to hold her at her waist and seemed entirely unfazed by the added weight, as if she weighed no more than a housefly.  Cat could feel the entire length of him against her - both of them - and knew he was fully capable, and probably had been from the moment he’d stepped in the door.  Come to think of it, she knew he had been.  It had been hard to miss when he’d come into the house, and then he’d put her on his lap where it had been extremely blatant, and now, here he was again, in all his turgid glory.

His mouth sought hers, and, to her shame, she didn’t even try to avoid it but rather joined his kiss eagerly, so much so that he leaned back a little and looked at her, as if verifying that it was still her, then bent to her again, deciding he didn’t want to consider his luck too closely.  Finn’s free hand claimed her everywhere he wanted; he gave it free rein.  He clenched what he knew had to be a tender bottom cheek that fit his hand just perfectly at its rounded peak, then let it travel up the curve of her back, under her shirt, reveling in the soft skin of her back, then diving into that sweet smelling hair of hers to hold her head still for his plundering tongue.

Finally, he had to set her aside or he’d take her right then and there, on the floor of the kitchen, and that wasn’t where he wanted to make love to her the first time, so he set her down and stepped away from her, panting and unable to stop feasting his eyes on her.  “Dinner tomorrow in Bangor.  Think of an out of the way restaurant that none of your friends are likely to go to.  I’ll be here at six.”  He gave her that look, along with his card, on the back of which he’d sprawled his cell phone number.  “I’m not kidding about wanting you to eat that food,” he restated in a tone that made her butt tingle.

Then, with one last long, luxurious kiss that had him biting at her lips near the end that had him barely able to pry himself away from her, he was gone.

The phone rang while she was just standing there in the middle of her kitchen like some dazed schoolgirl who’d just had her first French kiss.  She’d forgotten what a Grand Central Station this place used to be. 

Of course, it was Jane.  “Is my son still there?”

“No,” Cat cleared her throat, hoping Jane wouldn’t notice the hoarseness of her voice.  “He left.”

“Good.  We’re going over to see Meme.”

“Oh, that’ll be good.  Listen, thank you for the chicken dish.   It’s my favorite.”

“I know.  Did you have some?”

“Yes.  Finn can be . . .”  she searched for the right words, “very persuasive.”

Jane chuckled.  “Yeah, he can be, when he wants something.”

Cat bit her lip and shut the hell up on that one.

“He’s worried about you, and so am I.  He said he thought you’d lost some weight and were depressed again, are you?”

She cleared her throat again.  “No, just sad.”

“You’re clearing your throat.”

Damnit.  That was a clear tell that she was hiding something, but she never realized it until after she’d done it a couple of times.  Bloody hell.

“Okay, really sad.”

“Oh, Cat, I’m really sorry but you’ve just gotta snap out of it.  Get out and do something.  You’re spending entirely too much time at that house.  Are you taking your antidepressants?”

“Yes, mom.”

“Good.  Well, then we need to get you out some.  Lemme see whose turn it is to have the girls over.”

“Okay.”

“And lemme ask you something, since you’ve spent some time with Finn.”

Uh-oh.

“Do you think my son is gay, but is just scared to tell me?  I mean, he hasn’t had a girlfriend in so long I don’t remember the last one’s name.  And he’s never even brought a girl home for me to meet . . . ”

Dear God.  The absurdity of the question, and who she was asking it of, made her want to snort in Jane’s ear, but she managed not to.  “I don’t think so, Jane. Maybe he’s just not comfortable with being sexual around you at all – hetero or not.  And you’ve told me yourself that he’s been flat out, building his business.  He doesn’t have time for a girlfriend.  You know how those nerdy computer types are.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t want him to be alone, you know, especially since I’ve found my Ted.”  Jane had the “happy couple syndrome” that made her want everyone with whom she was close to have the happiness that she and Ted had found.

“I understand.  But I don’t think you have anything to worry about with Finn.  He was out in California to make his way, make his mark in the business world.  Probably, since he’s back here, he’ll settle down, find a girl and have a family.”

That was exactly what Jane, who was dying to become a grandmother, wanted to hear.  “Oh, from your lips to God’s ears!”

They made plans to have lunch in a few days, then hung up.

Chapter Six

Cat decided that the two of them, for what it was worth, were right.  She needed to get out of the house.  So she took a ride to the top of Cadillac Mountain and walked around up there a bit, heartily enjoying the fact that the mountain kept trying to blow her back off.  Then she walked along the Acadia National Park Loop Road a bit, although most of it was closed off since it was still early yet and not quite tourist season, but it was still gorgeous.

Then she headed home, her mind full of thoughts about Clint and Finn and what she was going to do about the two of them.  Or rather, the one of them that was still alive and trying to date and/or spank her.

“Yeeee-owww!”  Okay, mental note:  her next boyfriend was definitely going to be older than she was.  And decrepit.  Emphasis on the decrepit.  Like not able to raise whichever hand he favored to spank her.  That sounded like a very good idea to Cat right now, especially since the man who was currently indulging in that activity was disgustingly young and even more disgustingly muscular and fit.

It had been a while since she’d been really spanked.  Clint had been actively sick for quite some time, and that part of their relationship had had to take a back seat for the last four or five years they had together.  They had both mourned the loss, but that was the way it had to be.  She’d forgotten how absolutely horrid it was, but someone was in the process of helping her remember it.  Someone who had told her to eat all of what he’d left for her in the fridge – the two pb and j sandwiches and what had turned out to be enough chicken casserole to feed the Third Army.

She’d managed to eat some of the chicken and one of the sandwiches, and was learning very quickly that that was far from acceptable, as far as he was concerned.  Imagine that – a dominant man who wanted her to do precisely as he’d said.  How noble.  She’d forgotten – happily, it seemed, how they could be such sticklers some times, and it was even worse if they thought what they wanted was for your own damned good.

What was she doing here?  Her panties and hose around her ankles yet again and she was over his lap on her own blasted sofa, which she was happy hadn’t seen much action from herself and Clint since they’d bought it after he’d become sick.  At least there were no comparisons going on in her mind from old memories flooding her brain.  That was something to be very thankful for.  She’d cancelled this date, for crying out loud.  Or rather, she’d tried to.