Someone Like You (29 page)

She walked down the short hallway and stopped in front of the closed office door. She knocked twice and waited. No answer. She knocked again. Still no answer.

“William?” she called out softly, then pushed the door open a crack.

He wasn’t there.

It was a small house. There weren’t many places where he could be. The bathroom door was wide open. No sign of him there. She walked quickly past Cat’s bedroom, shutting her ears to the hushed sounds of laughter and conversation floating through the closed door. Shutting her heart to the sense of envy was harder. Michael Yanovsky was three thousand miles away, but the connection between Cat and the father of her child was strong and vibrant.

She found William in the guest room. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, Annabelle’s Tigger on his lap, looking down at his daughter. Annabelle slept on her side, curled around Trixie, her right hand curved beneath her chin.

“She looks like an angel,” she said softly.

William nodded, but he didn’t turn around.

“It goes so fast,” she continued, moving closer. “I feel like I blinked, and she went from toddler to little girl.”

Another nod, but he still didn’t turn around. A terrible sense of finality rose up between them and she knew the moment had come.

“William,” she said, “we need to talk.”

“You’re right.” He stood up and placed Tigger on the nightstand. “We do.”

He followed her down the hallway to the kitchen.

“Too bad we can’t sit on the porch,” she said. “Nothing’s better than a summer night in Maine.”

“You said you wanted to talk.” He claimed a chair at the table.

“I did.” She amended herself. “I do.”

He looked so tired, so deeply sad, that her heart twisted in sympathy. She had intended to limit the conversation to sleeping arrangements, but she couldn’t duck the truth any longer. More surprising, she didn’t want to.

“I’m going to take the job in Surrey,” she said without preamble. “I spent some time going over the costs for my mother’s care—”

He motioned for her to be quiet.

“William.” She hit the two syllables hard.

He covered her mouth with his hand. “There’s someone on the porch.” His lips brushed her ear. “Stay here. I’ll see what’s going on.”

His nearness disoriented her. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt the touch of his lips against her skin, caught his familiar scent. Normally she was a big fan of irony, but this time it left her feeling sad and empty.

She didn’t stay put the way he’d asked. She shadowed him all the way across the kitchen, ignoring the scowl he threw at her over his shoulder.

“Flip the switch,” she whispered. “Throw some light on the porch.”

Men hated to be given directions of any kind, but sometimes that couldn’t be helped.

“William,” she said, more loudly. “Don’t go out there. Just turn on the light.”

But he had the bit between his teeth, and nothing but direct confrontation with the intruder, whoever the intruder might be, would suffice. He was, however, a cautious Englishman at heart, and he took a quick peek through the back door curtains before committing himself to a
mano a mano
battle.

“You have raccoons.” He stepped away from the door, and the curtains shimmied back into place.

“What?”

“Raccoons,” he said. “That’s what I heard outside.”

“Okay then,” she said. “Mystery solved.”

He started unlocking the door.

“Where are you going? You said it’s raccoons.”

“They knocked over Catherine’s trash cans.”

“That’ll keep until tomorrow.”

“It’ll be worse tomorrow. I’ll right them now.”

“William, this is ridiculous.”

She might as well have been talking to a wall. He was going to go out there and battle rampaging raccoons, and no amount of reason would stop him.

“Fine,” she said. “Just close the kitchen door. I don’t want the raccoons sneaking inside while you’re playing in the trash.”

She headed for the living room to double-lock the front door against tabloid reporters and squirrels with disposable cameras. They didn’t need to talk. They didn’t need to do anything but work out sleeping arrangements for tonight and the few nights remaining to them, and they would do that with as much civility as humanly possible for Annabelle’s sake even more than for their own.

It shouldn’t hurt this much,
she thought as she fastened the chain. She had been expecting it for months. They both had. This whole thing was as inevitable as the changing seasons.

She told herself it was better this way as she slid the dead bolt into place. Better they separated now, before Annabelle grew any older. Children were adaptable. They gave their hearts in response to kindness, and she knew William well enough to know he would never open his heart or Annabelle’s home to anyone who was unkind.

That should have made her feel better, but it didn’t. It made her feel like she could drink an entire bottle of single malt and not even make a dent in the sense of loss. Cat wasn’t much of a drinker, but she had to have a bottle of whiskey someplace. She turned to head back to the kitchen to hunt down something lethal and preferably well-aged when she heard a tap on the front door.

Too high for raccoons, she thought. William must have somehow managed to lock the kitchen door behind him and come around front.

“A second,” she said as she started unlatching the front door.

She swung open the door and found herself face-to-face with a medium-sized man in a business suit.

“Ms. Doyle?”

“Joely Doyle,” she said. “And you are—?”

“Robert Quigley. I’m looking for Catherine Doyle.”

“This isn’t a good time,” she said, beginning to ease the door shut. “I recommend you phone Catherine in the morning.”

“I’ve been out here for two hours,” Robert Quigley said, “but a Mr. Bishop wouldn’t let me speak to her.”

Where was Mr. Bishop when she needed him?

“Do you have a business card?” she asked, as the bottom of the door met his well-shod foot. “I’ll give it to Cat myself and ask her to phone you.”

“Five minutes,” Robert Quigley said. “It’s very important.”

She almost wept with relief when she heard footsteps behind her.

“William,” she said without taking her eyes off the man in the doorway, “would you please tell Mr. Quigley that Cat will phone him tomorrow morning?”

“I’ll tell him myself.”

She turned to see Cat, disheveled but awake, standing behind her.

Robert Quigley stepped forward. “Catherine Doyle?”

Cat nodded.

“Robert Quigley.” He extended his hand in greeting, but Cat ignored it. “I have some very important news for you.”

“We’re not interested in giving interviews,” Cat said. “We’re not going to open up our family albums to you, and we definitely won’t be writing a book.”

“That’s not why I’m here.”

William joined them, and Joely finally started breathing again. The whole thing was getting a little too intense for so late at night.

William looked at Cat, and she nodded.

“You have ten seconds,” William said, stepping forward. “This is private property, Mr. Quigley. If you don’t leave, we’re calling the police.”

“I can do better than that, Mr. Bishop,” Robert Quigley said. “I can call the media.”

“Are you threatening us?” Cat asked. “Because if you are—”

“I told you this wasn’t the way to do it, Quigley.”

They all stared as a tall old man with thinning gray hair appeared at Robert Quigley’s side. Joely wasn’t one for déjà vu moments. They always smacked of New Age mysticism and past life regressions to her. But this was something else entirely. She could almost feel the fine hairs on her arms lifting in response to the old man’s presence, and she didn’t know why.

“Get out,” Cat said in a tone of voice Joely had never heard her sister use before.

“Cat, I just want to—”

“Get out
now
!” Cat pushed past Joely and William.

“We need to talk, Kit-Cat. Please don’t—”

Cat shoved with all her might and sent the two men stumbling back onto the front porch. She slammed the door shut and locked the bolt.

“You might have opened yourself up to a lawsuit, Catherine,” William observed. He fastened the chain. Cat’s hands were shaking too hard for her to manage. “They might claim injury.”

“They can go to hell,” Cat said. “Both of them.”

Joely’s heart was beating so hard she could barely hear their words. The rush of adrenaline inside her head sounded louder than the ocean. “Do you know that man?” she asked as a ripple of awareness moved its way up her spine.

“I used to,” Cat said, her tone steely. “He’s our father.”

JOELY’S FACE WENT ashen, her eyes rolled back, and William sprang into action. He crossed the room in a flash and caught her just before she hit the ground.

“The couch,” Cat said, her tone still flint hard. “I’ll get her some water.”

She was so light in his arms. Familiar yet strange. He couldn’t remember the last time he had held her this way. It seemed wrong somehow to be aware of the slight frame, the delicate bones, but he registered her physical presence in every cell of his body. He couldn’t help himself.

She started to rouse as he laid her down on the soft cushions. He held her gently still as her eyes fluttered open and she looked at him.

“Oh God!” Her voice broke on a sob. “Was that really Mark?”

“Shh,” he said, pushing her hair gently back from her face. It was the only thing he could think of to do for her. There was nothing in his experience or in their life together to prepare him for this. “Lie still.”

“No.” She struggled upright. “Cat!” she called out. “Cat! Was that really Mark?”

“She’s in the kitchen,” he said. “She went to get you some water.”

“We can’t leave him out there,” Joely said. “We have to let him in, see what he wants.”

“Over my dead body.” Cat appeared in the archway between the living room and the kitchen. She held a tall glass of water in her right hand.

“That’s our
father
!” Joely said. “After all these years, Cat! He’s back!”

“No, he’s not,” Cat said. “He can go to hell.”

Joely stood up, swayed, then straightened up. “We can’t lose him again.”

“Lose him?” Cat’s laugh went right through William. “We should be so lucky. Why do you think the son of a bitch is here, Joely? After all these years, we finally have something he wants.”

“Fame,” William said quietly as the pieces began to fit together.

Cat turned to face him, a look of triumph on her pale face. “Give the man a prize.”

“I think she’s right, Joely,” he said, aware that he was treading out onto paper-thin ice above a very deep pond. “Quigley works for one of the tabloids. He called a few times tonight, but I put him off.”

The look Joely gave him marked paid to any hope he might still have for a future together.

“You don’t know anything about this,” she said to him. “You have no idea how I’m feeling.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I don’t.” He looked at Cat. “If you need me, I’ll be checking in on Annabelle.”

And booking a flight back home.

 

JOELY WAS MAKING every mistake in the book, and there was nothing Cat could do to stop her.

William was a good man, the kind of man a woman prayed for, and her sister was pushing him away with both hands.

All because of a man who had walked out of her life before she was old enough to walk.

“Don’t do it,” Cat said as Joely ran for the front door. “Mark has no business showing up here after all this time.”

But Joely was beyond reason. Cat wasn’t even sure her sister heard her. She flung open the door and stepped out onto the front porch. “Mark!” her voice rang out. “Mark, please come back!”

Cat could barely contain her derision. He and that sleazy Quigley were probably crouching behind the bushes, ready to pounce on the next opportunity to promote their self-serving agenda.

The pain hurt so much she could barely breathe. She would rather have gone her entire life believing her father was dead than to have him show up on her front porch twenty-seven years later, acting like he was dropping by for a cup of coffee with his darling daughters.

Joely stepped back into the house. “He won’t come in unless you say that it’s okay, Cat.”

“No, it’s not okay,” she said. “It’s not okay at all. In fact, you can tell him to go fuck himself.”

Joely’s face reddened. “Please, Cat.” The yearning in her sister’s voice awakened memories of Joely as a little girl on those nights when the world seemed a very big and very dangerous place, and only Cat could keep her safe. “You had ten years with him. Let me have five minutes.”

Cat’s hands trembled with rage, and she shoved them behind her back. The depth of her anger shocked Cat. Joely had always been the angry one, the daughter who left town first chance she got. Cat was the mellow daughter, the easygoing one, the daughter who knew how to forgive.

“Please, Cat,” Joely said again. “Five minutes. That’s all I’m asking for.”

“If he’s not out in five minutes, so help me God I’m going to hurl him through a window.”

“I promise.”

Who were they kidding? That was their father out there on the front porch, their
father
. The man who had called her Kit-Cat, the man who used to sit next to her bed and hold her hand when she had a bad dream, the man who had looked her right in the eye and said he was stepping out to buy a new guitar string and walked right out of her life like he was exiting stage left.

“I can’t do this,” she said. “Talk to him if you want to, Joely, but don’t ask me to be part of it, because I just can’t.”