Cattitude (33 page)

He held her for another moment, searching his
mind for any other questions. None came and he uncurled his fingers
from her wrists.

“Don’t come back,” he said. “You won’t be
welcome.”

A sob erupted from her throat and red spots
blotted her face. “It’s all Sorcha’s fault. She ruined everything.”
She wrenched open the door and gave him a wild look, her lips
peeled back from her teeth. “I’ll get her back for this, I
will!”

Phil watched her storm out of the house,
leaving the door wide open. Cold air blew in, laden with moisture.
He stepped forward to shut the door, his mind working, his stomach
churning.

When he went back to the bedroom, he’d tell
the others about Caroline’s vow of revenge. But wouldn’t it be
ironic if Caroline killed Sorcha instead of him? Michaels had told
him that without more evidence they couldn’t prove anything against
Bob.

If Caroline killed Sorcha, it wouldn’t be
Phil’s fault. The FBI would arrest her. Bob would pay Phil. He’d
have plenty of money to pay for his dad and mom’s operations. And
he’d save the gym. Everything would turn out for him.

Instead of going down the hall, he ran to the
bathroom across from the kitchen and threw up.

***

The front door slammed, but Belle didn’t roll
off of Max. The second she did, Ted might take him away. And
Tory—the traitor—would help him. They both perched on the side of
the bed, watching her, waiting for her to get off Max so they could
grab him.

She glared at Tory, who shrugged and said, “I
don’t know what’s gotten into you.”

If she didn’t know, Belle wasn’t going to
tell her. A hospital. What was Tory thinking?

Max stirred, his arm angling around Belle’s
back. “Sorcha,” he said, his voice slurring.

Ted laughed.

Tory giggled.

Belle wanted to hit both of them, but she’d
have to get off Max, so she didn’t. What was wrong with them? She
answered her question: they were people.

“What’s taking your boyfriend?” Ted asked,
looking at Tory.

Her cheeks turned pink. “You think he likes
me?”

“Does Mickey like Minnie?” Ted asked.

As Tory laughed, a toilet flushed.

“C’mon,” Ted said, “you know the guy’s hot
for you. He looks at you like you’re a goddess. I’ll bet he even
listens when you talk. Enjoy it now, ‘cause it isn’t going to
last.”

“Course not, he’s a man. The Y chromosome
comes with a defective listening gene.”

“The double X chromosome comes with a talking
gene.”

Tory snorted and opened her mouth to say
something, but footsteps pounded in the hall. Her face changed, her
mouth softening. “He’s coming.”

“It’s not the Pope,” Ted said.

Tory kicked out, but he jumped back and
laughed. They were like kittens, Belle thought. Then Phil hurried
into the bedroom.

“What’d you find out?” Ted asked.

He shook his head. “She didn’t know much.
It’s a date rape drug that’s supposed to knock him out for a few
hours. She said he’ll be fine in the morning.”

“That bitch,” Tory said, her voice fierce. “I
can’t believe she did this.”

“Makes me wonder about Emery,” Ted said.
“He’d just lost his money when he fell off the trail. No one
questioned her when she said he slipped and fell.”

Tory gasped. “Wow! I never thought of
that.”

Belle bit her tongue to keep from blurting
out she’d thought of it long ago.

“Is there anything you can do to prove it?”
Tory looked at Phil as if he knew all the answers.

“Unless she confesses, I doubt it.”

“Ooh.” Tory shivered.

“But I think you’re on the right track,” Phil
said, emotions flickering across his face. Then he took a breath
and his mouth firmed, as if he’d come to a decision. “Before
Caroline left, she blamed Sorcha for ruining her plan. She vowed
revenge.”

“I’ll protect you, Sorcha.” Tory threw out
her hand to clasp Belle’s arm.

“Me too,” Ted said. “We won’t leave you
alone.”

“I’m not afraid of Caroline,” Belle said.
“She’s afraid of me. I don’t need anyone to be with me all the
time.” If they didn’t go away, how could she change bodies with
Sorcha?

The thought of changing bodies set off a war
inside her. She wanted to be a cat. She wanted to be a woman. But
she couldn’t be both at once.

And now this. It was getting too
complicated.

Or maybe it wasn’t complicated at all. She
loved Max. She’d always loved him.

But now she didn’t love him like a cat. She
loved him like a woman.

Phil cleared his throat. His face was stiff,
his voice strangled. “I’ll contact the sheriff’s office. See if
they’ll send someone to watch over you.”

“Max would hate that.” Ted gestured, his
thumbs down. “And I can’t imagine Caroline coming here with a knife
or a gun.”

“Unless it would coordinate with her outfit,”
Tory said.

“I bet she has an outfit for every occasion.”
Ted smirked, then his expression turned sour. “At the bar, people
make threats all the time that they never keep.”

Belle nodded. People on
The Love
Chronicles
made lots of threats. “Yes, go away, all of you.
I’ll be fine. Max will be fine.”

“Maybe you’re right.” Tory’s hand slid off of
Belle’s arm.

“I’d better go.” Phil looked at Tory
yearningly, as if he wanted to go to her. But he shuffled his feet
instead, moving backward.

Tory jumped off the bed. “I’ll walk you to
the door.”

He held out his hand to ward her away and
backed into the hall. “Don’t bother. I’ll see myself out.” He gave
her a yearning look, then turned and rushed away, out of Belle’s
sight.

Tory’s mouth fell open. “What was
that
about?”

“A severe case of a guy running like hell
from temptation,” Ted said.

“
Moi?
” Tory smiled widely. Then her
smile slid away, her eyebrows pushing inward and up, her face one
big question mark. “But why? Is he afraid of commitment?”

“Beats the hell out of me.” Ted stood and
glanced around. “Do you remember where Max’s sleeping bag is? It’s
not going to be a comfortable night on the floor.”

Confident no one was taking Max to the hated
hospital, Belle rolled next to Max, his arm curling beneath her
shoulder, his hand on the side of her ribs. “You go away. I’ll stay
with him.”

“In case anything happens, I need to be
here,” Ted said.

The door downstairs shut. Belle glanced at
Tory. Tory’s eyes blinked fast like a hummingbird’s wings, and she
looked as if she was going to cry.

“I’m staying too.” Tory sniffed and stopped
blinking, her chin sticking forward in a way that said she was
going to do something and no one better try to stop her.

Belle had always thought Tory would make a
good cat.

Less than twenty minutes later, Ted lay on
the sleeping bag on the floor and Tory was curled next to Belle.
Brother and sister fell asleep within moments, their breathing slow
and even.

Not Belle. She lay with her eyes open, her
ears attuned to Max’s slower, deeper breaths. She had to stay awake
and make sure he was okay. Because she loved him.

He was her Max.

Max woke up puking.

The unmistakable sound of food hurling the
wrong way out aroused Belle from a light sleep. It took a moment
for her eyes to adjust to the darkness and see Max with his head
over the side of the bed. A figure jumped up from the sleeping bag
on the floor near the door and the overhead light went on.

In the sudden brightness, Belle watched Ted’s
face turn an ugly shade of green. Slapping his hand over his mouth,
he ran into the hall.

Belle looked over at her other side to see
Tory sleeping with a smile on her face. The next instant, she heard
puking sounds come from the bathroom.

Five minutes later, Ted was helping Max to
his old bedroom. Ted was telling Max he needed to go to the
emergency room, Max was insisting he was okay.

While Tory slept, Belle got on her hands and
knees and cleaned the mess in the bedroom. Silently she fumed. This
was so wrong. Humans cleaned up after her. She didn’t clean up
them.

She wished Caroline were there. Belle wanted
to push her face in the puke until she choked on it.

***

The ceiling creaked, waking Jewel. In an
instant, she switched from sleep to consciousness. She knew she was
in one of the guest bedrooms in her father’s richest clients’
house, and she knew their daughter was missing. She remembered
informing the nanny that she was staying until Gwen was found,
disregarding Katie’s lack of enthusiasm.

“You can’t stay,” Katie had said.

Jewel had raised her eyebrows. As a lawyer,
words were an important part of her profession, but sometimes
silence brought the best results.

“I mean...of course, you can stay. I’m sure
you’re concerned. If you don’t have anything to wear—”

“I have a bag in my trunk,” Jewel had
replied, her voice stern and her spine unbending. Bullies like
Katie pounced on any hint of weakness.

Now she slid her feet over the side of the
bed. She had thought the noise that woke her came from the ceiling
but it must have come from the first floor. If she remembered
correctly—and she normally did—the kitchen was below her room.
Perhaps the non-svelte nanny’s guilty conscience was sending her on
a search for comfort food.

Barefoot, she padded out of the bedroom and
along the long hallway that led to the curving staircase, which
would take her to the first floor where, eventually, she’d pass go
and find the kitchen.

Walking toward the recessed light at the end
of the hall, she assessed her feelings. She’d enjoyed the weekly
e-mails the girl had sent her and wondered why she hadn’t detected
the desperation. She’d known the facts, after all. Gwen’s parents
were selfish hedonists who didn’t want to bother raising their own
daughter. She’d guessed the nanny was cold—although she hadn’t
known the half of it.

She was angry as hell at herself. Even though
the firm’s instructions from Gwen’s parents were to be the contact
in case of emergencies only, she should’ve checked on the girl
physically, not just with e-mails.

Turning into the kitchen, she switched on the
light. She hadn’t passed Katie, so the creak or whatever woke her
wasn’t from the nanny. Just as well. Jewel felt bitchy enough to do
or say something unprofessional. She might even be tempted to smash
her fist into Katie’s nose. And then she might get sued.

The fantasy she’d built in her mind
evaporated. She turned toward the refrigerator. She’d drunk a glass
of milk before bed. Maybe another glass would lull her to
sleep.

She opened the refrigerator, cool air
spilling out, and grabbed the half gallon container of milk.
Funny... She frowned, and looked at the level of milk through the
plastic.

When she put the milk away earlier, she’d
noticed it was more than half full. Now it was less than half. And
hadn’t the nanny mentioned being lactose intolerant?

She gazed up at the ceiling, remembering the
creak that woke her.

Slowly, her frown changed to a smile.

***

As Max’s eyes squinted open to bright
sunlight, he heard Ted say, “You’re finally up. How’re you
feeling?”

Max glanced around him and saw he was in his
bedroom, not the guest room. What was he doing here? Where was
Sorcha?

“What happened?” His voice came out in a
croak, his mouth tasted like puke and he felt like a tractor had
rolled over him, and then another and another. “What the hell
happened?”

“You don’t remember anything from last
night?”

Max sat up. His stomach churned. As he
clutched his abdomen, he realized he wasn’t wearing his T-shirt and
boxers.

Ted grabbed the wastebasket by the dresser
and hurried to the bed.

“Get that away, I don’t need it.”

Ted set down the wastebasket. “You’re as bad
as Sorcha.”

“What’s wrong with Sorcha?” Max swung his
legs over the side of the bed. Did something happen to Sorcha? He
had to make sure she was okay.

“She’s fine. Chill down, keep cool. Slow your
roll.”

Max glared at him. “When you make up your
mind what decade you’re in, maybe you’ll tell me what the hell
happened.”

“Don’t get pissed at me because you’re a
control freak. I’m not the one who gave you a knockout drug.”

“What?” He pushed off the mattress, onto his
feet. “Are you insane?”

“Sometimes, but not last night. I know, beats
the hell out of me. Caroline did it.”

“Caroline? That’s...crazy. Why would she do
something like that?”

“You’re rich and she likes nice things. I
told you she was after you. Maybe you know stocks and bonds, but I
know women.”

Max sank back on the edge of the bed and
wiped the heels of his palms over his burning eyes. “I don’t
believe this.”

“Me neither, not at first.” Ted perched on
the chair by the dresser. “Tory and I were outside when we heard
Caroline screaming. We raced up to the guest room you’ve been using
and found Caroline naked and fighting with Sorcha.”

Max’s head lifted. “She didn’t hurt
Sorcha?”

Ted laughed. “You kidding? Sorcha was beating
the shit out of her. Caroline was bleeding like a pig. She told us
Sorcha was the one who gave you the knock-out pill. But Tory
noticed Caroline was the naked one, not Sorcha.”

“It’s still crazy. You’re sure?”

“Phil followed Caroline and talked to her.
She admitted it to him and left. She promised to get even with
Sorcha for catching her.”

The muscles in Max’s body jerked. “Where is
Sorcha? I want to see her. Now.”

Ted gave Max an evil grin. “Not everything is
under your control. Especially not Sorcha. I think you should’ve
noticed by now, Sorcha comes when Sorcha wants to come.”