The Marrying Man (5 page)

"I don't own any more than I can carry."

She leaned back against the seat and stared at him. "I've heard of people like you but I never thought I'd actually meet one."

"Life doesn't have to be complicated," he said, meeting her eyes. "I travel light."

She glanced at the huge leather tote bag on her lap. "I can't even travel light to the mini-mart."

"It's not for everyone."

She nodded, thinking of her kids, her house, her pets, and of how empty her life would be without them. The last things on earth she ever thought she'd have and they meant everything to her. "Of course you really do have a home," she said, trying to make sense of the whole thing, "even if you don't live there now. Your family...where you grew up--"

"No."

"No?"

The sportscar surged forward. McKendrick's attention was focused on the road. He'd made it perfectly obvious the conversation had come to an end but Cat couldn't let it alone.

She was certain he was exaggerating. There had to be someone out there. An ex-wife. Children. A second cousin twice removed who sent him a Christmas card every year and birthday presents that made him wince. It was bad enough that he lived out of his suitcase, but at least that was his choice. Nobody chose to be alone in the world, to be without people who loved you. People you loved in return.
 
Not even men as tough as Riley McKendrick.

David hadn't been tough at all. When she met her late husband he'd been a widower with four small kids, a regular kind of guy you wouldn't look at twice on the street. She'd been sitting at a crowded lunch counter, nursing a diet soda and a tuna sandwich, when David walked in and sat down next to her. He'd asked her to pass the salt. She'd asked him for the pepper. They'd talked, then laughed, and made a date for dinner later that night.

She'd been a reporter at
Newsweek
, committed to her career, determined to rise to the top. Marriage wasn't on her horizon. Children were creatures who belonged to other people. She knew what she wanted and how to get it and all of her plans went flying out the window when she fell in love with a man who only had a year to live. There'd been something about him, some indefinable quality that had touched Cat's heart, and changed her life forever. And it had nothing to do with pity and everything to do with love.

It still hurt to think that David hadn't lived to meet Sarah, the daughter who was born six months after his death.

It seemed like yesterday. "You don't have to do this," the attorney had said after the reading of the will. "You're having your own baby. We'll find foster homes for the rest of them."

"We're a family," she'd stated in no uncertain terms, even though she was scared to death. "We're going to stay a family." She hadn't fallen in love only with David; she'd fallen in love with his children, as well.

And she'd never once regretted her decision. Raising those kids was the toughest thing she'd ever done--and the most rewarding--and every night she offered up a prayer of thanks that unexpected blessings often turned out to be the finest blessings of all.

Something she knew in her heart Riley McKendrick could never understand.

Chapter Three

Get out
,
a voice warned him again as he watched Cat sprint toward the door of the mini-mart. Get out while you still can.

He knew how to handle sexual chemistry. You acted on attraction or you didn't, but either way it wasn't a life-altering force that moved through your world like a tornado across the plains.

This was different. All she had to do was turn those big blue eyes on him and he was lost. Done for. No wonder she wrote murder mysteries for a living. The woman must have left a trail of dead men behind her a mile long.

He watched as she disappeared inside the store. Max didn't think she was beautiful and he supposed that technically Max was right. Her mouth was too wide and mobile for classic beauty, her jawline too strong and stubborn.
 
Still in combination with her fierce intelligence, the effect was stunning.

He had known women who were more beautiful. He'd also known women who knew how to flatter a man, how to make him feel like he was better than he was. Cat Zaslow didn't flatter, she didn't fawn, she sure as hell didn't flirt but he was drawn to her by a force more powerful than anything he'd ever encountered.

"Five kids," he muttered, tapping his finger against the steering wheel. A score of dogs and cats underfoot. Hell, the woman had a housekeeper and between the two of them they couldn't remember the cranberries for Thanksgiving dinner. Not that she'd admitted forgetting them but he wasn't born yesterday.

She didn't look happy when she climbed back into the car. There was a furrow between her brows and a murderous glint in her blue eyes. And as far as he could tell, she didn't have cranberries.

"So did you leave the wallet for your housekeeper?" he asked, all mock innocence.

She favored him with a fierce look. "Don't say a word," she said through gritted teeth. "Not one single word."

"We could check out the supermarket," he said, shifting into first. "Maybe your housekeeper's there."

"I'm warning you, McKendrick--"

"There's always a farm stand."

"Why would I look for Jenny at a farm stand?"

"Admit it, Zaslow. You forgot the cranberries."

"I did not."

"We'll go to a supermarket and get the cranberries."

"The supermarkets are closed," she muttered.

"What was that?" He couldn't wipe the smile off his face.

"Damn it! So I forgot the cranberries. Is it a crime against the nation?" She stared, grim-faced, out the window at the passing scenery. "Besides, what's it to you? You'll be in Boston where I'm sure there'll be a surfeit of cranberries and you can stuff your fat face to your heart's content."

You're sunk, McKendrick. It's too late now...

"About Boston," he said, "there's been a change of plans..."

***

"There's nothing sadder than a ravaged turkey." Cat shook her head hours later as she surveyed the remains of the feast. "Thirty pounds and I don't think we'll get two sandwiches out of those leftovers."

"And that's if we're lucky," said Jenny, housekeeper and friend. "That's what you get for asking twenty-one people to Thanksgiving dinner."

"What can I tell you? Everyone in town knows I'm a sucker for the holidays." She gestured toward the front of the house. "Did the kids clear the small tables in the foyer?"

"Done," said Jenny. "Kevin griped that it was girl's work but he did it."

"Kevin and I are going to have another talk about division of labor tonight. He's becoming a twelve year old sexist."

"Hormones," said Jenny sagely. "He'll get over it."

"He's male," Cat said. "He'll never get over it. It's only going to get worse. Before you know it, he'll be shaving and channel-surfing with the remote control." With three other sons and a little daughter marching inexorably toward puberty, Cat sometimes wondered if she'd make it to thirty-five with her sanity. "Where are they now?"

"Where else? Tossing around a football in the front yard."

 
Cat opened the freezer door and removed a gallon of vanilla ice cream. "I think we pulled it off. Nobody seemed to notice we forgot the cranberry sauce."

"They were too busy arguing politics with your new cowboy friend."

She'd wondered how long it would take Jenny to zero in on him. "He's not my friend."

Jenny leaned against the sink and shot Cat a quizzical look. "Why'd you invite him to dinner?"

Cat hacked at the rock-solid ice cream with a plastic scoop. "He looked lonely."

"You could see lonely through all of that gorgeousness?"

"I don't know what I saw. As soon as I heard he had nowhere to go today, I found myself asking him to dinner."

"Way to go, girl. He's the best stray you've brought home in ages."

"Don't let those outdoorsy looks of his fool you, Jenny. McKendrick's one of those clock-watching pencil-pushing types who lives to organize." She shuddered. "Max wants to hire him to put me on the straight and narrow."

"The cowboy could put me on the straight and narrow any time."

Cat took a vicious swipe at the ice cream. "I thought you went for the intellectual type." She looked up at Jenny. "Like Max."

Jenny's cheeks reddened. "Max Bernstein is a jerk. He hasn't an ounce of romance in his soul." Jenny and Max had dated a few times last summer but their attraction of opposites hadn't made for an easy alliance. "Besides, after meeting the Marlboro Man out there, I've decided to go for brawn instead of brain."

"Enjoy," said Cat, scooping ice cream onto a slice of pumpkin pie. "If you ask me, muscles are highly overrated."

"I'll let you know when I've had a chance to investigate."

Cat tossed a wadded up paper napkin at her friend. "You're incorrigible."

"No," said Jenny. "I'm hopeful. You never know when good fortune is going to smile down on you."

Apparently Jenny had a peculiar notion of what constitutes good fortune. Sharing the dinner table with Riley McKendrick had been about as relaxing as sharing a bathtub with a rattlesnake. Every time she'd looked up, he'd been watching her with that damnable twinkle that made his green eyes sparkle.

The cranberries! That was why he'd decided to stay for dinner after all. He was biding his time, waiting for the right moment to pounce. He hadn't said anything outright but it was just a matter of time. Sooner or later the right moment would arrive and he could announce her idiocy to the world. She knew the wait must be driving his clockwatching little cowboy heart crazy.

"Cowboy," she muttered, opening the container of ice cream. "A likely story." He had the looks and the drawl and the boots but she refused to believe he had the attitude that went with them.

She could just imagine McKendrick trying to foist his time-management nonsense on an unsuspecting bunch of real cowboys. They'd have him riding his calculator out of town before he knew what hit him.

The idea tickled her fancy and she grinned as she topped three pieces of apple pie with three scoops of vanilla ice cream. Cranberries notwithstanding, parts of the afternoon had been surprisingly pleasant.

Jenny and the kids were home when she and McKendrick returned and the cowboy had joined in a makeshift basketball game that had left her sons open-mouthed with admiration. Sometimes she felt sorry for them that they had no male role model to look up to, someone who understood the mystery of sports and testosterone, but short of teaching them how to shave, she felt she was doing a good job.

Still there was something oddly poignant about watching them in the yard, her precious sons and the cowboy, and that warm feeling had lingered right up until McKendrick came back into the house and started criticizing the traffic pattern.

But she'd got her own back. She'd seated McKendrick at the far end of the main table between Mary McGregor, who never shut up, and Cindy Hughes, who'd never met a man she didn't like.

If the cowboy had been entertaining any schemes to get his grubby hands on her house, Mary and Cindy had seen to it that he never had the chance. In fact, Cindy had been making it crystal clear all afternoon that she wouldn't have minded skipping the pumpkin pie and having McKendrick a la mode for dessert.