Free How Cat Got a Life by Tatiana March Page B

she asked.
    “Nine o’clock.” He finished strapping the holstered handgun to his ankle before leaning down to give her a quick kiss. “I’m sorry. It’s a family gathering, arranged weeks ago. I have to drive up to Maryland. I won’t be back until late. I’ll see you in the office tomorrow morning.”
    “I see.” She lifted a brow.
    “Cat. It’s not like that.” He caught her chin with the edge of his hand. “I’m not running away because I spent last night in bed with you and have scored you off some mental to-do list. I have a prior engagement, and you have to admit, it makes sense to stand back a little, get some perspective.”
    She pursed her mouth and nodded, unwilling to argue.
    “Good girl,” he said, and leaned down for another kiss, longer this time.
    When the door closed after him, Cat sank against the mattress and sighed. The words she’d longed to hear were nothing to do with love. Far more casual, they would have meant just as much to her, but he’d never said them.
    Would you like to join me ?
    Was it really too much to expect that he would include her in his day?
    ****
    Cat prowled about the hotel. She had coffee in the lobby and settled by the pool to leaf through a magazine. A few minutes later, she bounced to her feet again and returned to her room to flick through the television channels.
    Images of Brock bombarded her brain. She saw him lying naked in the bath, dark whorls of hair covering his powerful chest—arching in the water as he shouted out a hoarse cry of release—bent over her on the bed, droplets from his hair falling on the inside of her thighs.
    The sensations he’d wrought from her made her body flush with heat. She had asked for mindless abandon, and he had certainly given it to her. Even now, the memory sent a tingle of awareness along her skin.
    All at once, Cat couldn’t face the loneliness a second longer. Dalton had gone on his daytrip to the shore, and it tore her up that Brock remained distant, too aloof to allow her to lay claim to his Sunday. She ached to belong to someone, to be his first and last priority.
    I come by on Saturdays, to practice in case one day I have kids of my own.
    The memory of his words pierced the wall of anxiety around her. She’d go and help out at the children’s home. She’d never had much to do with small children, and they made her nervous, all blunt questions and bold eyes that saw hidden truths. The experience would do her good.
    As she drove down Main Street, a woman was busy hauling a display board outside a drugstore. Cat hadn’t expected the shops to be open on a Sunday. On impulse, she pulled over and went inside. If Brock gave her another night, she wanted to feel him inside her. The thought of that power rippling through her as they came together made a hot flush flare all over her.
    Idly, she loitered around the rows of display racks until she found the condoms. She cruised by twice more and chose by color, a dark purple. She snatched up a box. Holding it hidden in her palm, Cat waited until no other customers stood in line by the cash register.
    The stout woman with brassy blond hair piled up on her head took the box and ran it past the scanner. “The barcode’s not working.” She shrugged her shoulders and shouted out to the thin old man stacking the shelves. “Jack, can you bring another box of condoms? The purple ones?”
    As luck would have it, a group of women walked in through the door just as the words rang in the air. Cat recognized one of them from the Thursday concert.
    The gaunt man returned with the condoms and handed them to the woman behind the cash register.
    “So, you are the lady working in the sheriff’s office,” the woman said to Cat.
    “Yes.”
    “And you don’t know anyone else in town?”
    The newcomers clustered by the counter, waiting for their turn, listening in to the conversation. As they watched her, their eyes turned cold and their expressions accusing, like the inquisition