Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

“Are we on the same planet?”

“Maybe not. What are you doing here?”

“Making sure you’re safe.”

“Why shouldn’t I be?““I don’t know. I was worried.” Temple was worried too. About her composure.

If Matt wanted to ensure she was safe, telling him she’d found a dead body would hardly ease his mind. Something held her back from mentioning Beth Blanchard’s death, maybe just shock.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“Who wants to know?”

Matt stopped her. Stopped them. Stopped their progress into the Circle Ritz. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I don’t know. Not at this time. It could be a deranged fan stalking Amelia Wong. Something rotten in the retail furniture business. Something criminal on the fringes.”

Matt’s hand on her arm stopped her. “Not that. Not that Maylords stuff. I meant, with you. What’s going on with you?”

“Oh. That. I I… bought a new car.”

He glanced at the Miata. “So did I. Notice something?”

“Huh?”

“Both of our new cars are built for two.”

“So?”

“So where does Max fit in all this?”

Temple stared at Matt. “You’ve never called him that before.”

“Called him what?”

“By his first name.” She resumed walking into the building. “You both always use last names, like you were, I don’t know,

grade-school teachers calling out the roll.”

“It’s a form of depersonalization, Temple. We use last names to distance ourselves from people we can’t deal with.” “Mr. Midnight. Mr. Late-Night Shrink. Is that true?”

He nodded as he pressed the elevator button for her floor. “Yup. The only thing Kinsella and I have ever had in common

has been our mutual distrust. Born of our rivalry for you.”

“Rivalry? I’m Max’s … significant other. Always have been.”

“Always?”

Oh, what a night. She had recently heard those words blasting off the oldie radio station in her car. In this case, what the song brought to mind hadn’t been a night. It had been an afternoon. And it hadn’t been Max with her. It had been Matt. Oh, what a

night … not!

“Well, not before Minnesota,” she admitted about Max and her, about when they had met. Matt followed her down the short hallway to her unit door. “But I thought, you know, with your special background, you have to get it all right the first time. Get married. Have sex. Have children. That’s way too intimidating for a modern girl. We believe in free samples.”

There! That ought to scare him back into his uncomplicating, unavailable self.

Instead, Matt leaned against the wall, smiling slightly.

“It sounds like you’ve become overly dependent on my hang-ups.”

Temple turned the key in her door and the wide mahogany expanse swung slightly ajar. It was like Alice’s rabbit hole. Should she fall down it and get away from the real world, or should she take somebody with her? Besides a kitten or a white rabbit.

“Is that a free drive-time assessment?” she asked, sounding a little brittle even to herself.

“My radio show isn’t on during drive-time. It’s on during middle-of-the-night wonder time. I wonder if you ever listen?’

“Sometimes.” What a liar. As often as she could manage it. On the air, he was good. He was very good. Don’t tell her that now applied to personal appearances. Not on her doorstep, anyway.

Matt kept smiling at her like a man who knew what she wanted. She wasn’t used to feeling nervous with him. The shoe should be on the other foot.

She backed up almost imperceptively, before she could stop herself.

He put out a hand to steady her, not that she was shaky externally. The back of his fingers smoothed down her cheek and then his hand curved around the nape of her neck and shivers ran down her spine, arms, legs, and anyplace else shivers had a hankering to take off for.

“Matt!”

“I lost my freedom and maybe almost lost my life, Temple. It’s made me think about what everyone else has been saying, one way or another.”

It was great that Matt was having an epiphany or whatever, but did he have to have it on her doorstep? In the hall? Alone? Well, with her?

Like Hamlet, he seemed inclined to soliloquize, which was fine because she was too shocked to say a word anyway. “Who am Ito be so perfect?” he asked.

She nodded. Perfection was a bad idea. Her neck seemed to be rubbing against his hand like a purring cat’s. “Aren’t I setting myself up to judge others without knowing anything about what they face?”

Well, yeah…

“The Catholic Church does have the sacrament of what used to be called confession. Why can’t I err and confess it later,

like everybody else? Why can’t I be human?”

Temple found her voice. It was either that or losing her composure completely.

“I don’t know. You’ve got a point. I’m very happy for you. Except that I personally wouldn’t want to be confessed by

anybody as part of an ‘err.’ “

“And I don’t think I could ever honestly regret anything that happened between us.”

Wow.

“Actually,” he said, explaining it to her as if she were a student in the class of Religious Guilt 101, “not doing anything confessable is a sin of hubris, when you think about it. Pride. One of the Seven Deadly Sins.” “Isn’t … ah, lust one of them too?”

“But love isn’t.”

Temple shut her eyes. Do not go there. I can’t handle it. Matt kept on talking. His voice sounded a lot closer. “I’ve tried,

Temple. I’ve tried to see other women. Tried to see them as more suitable, more available than you. You know what?”

She shook her head, like she did in the dark when his radio show was on. He gave great voice.

“I’ve even discovered that each one has her own beauty, her own attraction. I’m honest enough with myself now to feel it,

that elemental pull.”

Temple kept her eyes shut. Do not go there.

“But they’re not you. It’s as simple as that. It’s you. That’s all.”

And of course he kissed her, deep and long.

“Will you go away now?” she asked, as soon as she could speak, which was way, way too late.

Silence.

She kept her eyes closed.

“No,” he said.

Oh, my God.

Her blood was pounding so hard her ears were ringing.

When she opened her eyes, he was gone. She was alone.

But of course he hadn’t gone away, really, and she wasn’t alone, really. Her life with Max had just become way more complicated than even a master magician could handle. If he really wanted to.

The thought rankled. Maybe Max no longer wanted to enough. There was no maybe about Matt. He finally wanted to enough.

So what was she doing, standing alone on her doorstep, all revved up with no place to go?

Argghh! Down with men!

She’d probably think about it tomorrow. And no doubt fantasize about it tonight.

Chapter 47

Anticlimax

Temple’s bedside clock read eleven-forty.

She could read the red LED figures even without her contact lenses in.

So. Was she going to play the good little saga heroine like Scarlett and wait until tomorrow?

Was she going to just lie here? Was she going to turn on the radio, which was tuned to WCOO like any pathetic Mr.

Midnight fan, and soak up the voice that had been practically inside her ear long-distance for two whole hours?

No.

Hell, no!

After tossing and turning for exactly one hour and thirty-eight minutes … and driving Midnight Louie away from the bed to a sulking position in the living room, Temple got up.

Great. It wasn’t just human males she apparently was good at driving away. Now it was cats. Well, cat singular in this instance. Louie was a very singular cat and would not like being lumped in with his whole species.