Page 80 of The Love Interest
He hadn’t seen Catalina in two weeks. He took his time getting back to California after getting the call from her telling him not to come after her. “Don’t try to find me,” she’d said. “Save yourself.” Then she’d hung up. It was a seven-second phone call, and it had confused him more than every conversation he’d ever had with a woman. More than every conversation he’d ever had with women combined.
She had left Grand Central with her ex-husband. The man she’d been hiding from. The man who’d sent men to kidnap her. The men who’d tried to kill him in order to get to her. But she left with the red-haired man with the scar and then warned Jack to save himself.
He knew she was troubled. He knew she was trouble. But he couldn’t quite believe that she wanted to keep him out of trouble—even when he believed in a future with her.
It had been five days since anyone had tried to kill him. He still slept with one eye open, if he slept at all. It wasn’t just those men he’d been watching for. He would seek out Catalina without wanting to, for months or years. He would secretly hope, without wanting to, that she was seeking him.
There was a song in his head. It had been there ever since he’d met Catalina, mingling with her voice and the voice in his head that told him this was either too good or too crazy to last. It was the Bob Dylan song “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome.” More upbeat than the usual music he listened to, but for the first time since his wife, he wasn’t feeling the blues. It wasn’t easy or slow, what he’d had with Catalina. But he did know, on some level, that he would look for her in Honolulu, San Francisco, and Ashtabula.
He was lonesome.
But he would let her go.
Jack locked the front door behind himself. There were no signs of tampering. The kitchen looked exactly as it had when he’d left it. It was dark, and it was quiet. Too quiet.
He smelled her before he heard her.
He’d been unarmed ever since Buffalo, but that scent disarmed him like nothing else could…with the exception of her smile. And her brown eyes. And her laugh…
Instinctively, he grabbed an empty beer bottle from the sink, gripping the neck of it with one hand. The door to his bedroom was closed, and he knew, as he slowly approached, who he’d find on the other side of it. He knew she was alone. He knew she’d been waiting for him since long before the sun went down. But he didn’t know if he could trust her.
He raised the bottle in the air and burst through the door.
Before he even saw her, Catalina grabbed the wrist of his raised hand and sent the beer bottle flying. It shattered against one wall at the same time as she pressed him up against another. He felt the gun at his back. It only took him a split second to consider his options, but the tone of her voice told him his only option was to wait to see what she had to say.
“I’m not here to hurt you, Jack.” She sounded different. She wasn’t playful. She wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t vulnerable. But she was still Catalina, and she was here. She had a gun on him, but she was here. If she were going to kill him, she’d have done it by now. “When I first met you,” she said, continuing where she’d left off at the Whispering Gallery, “I was supposed to kill you.”
“And you decided to break my heart instead.”
She only acknowledged his words by pressing the muzzle of the gun against him even harder. “He said he’d let me go forever if I did this one last thing for him. I watched you for days. But I couldn’t do it. Do you understand? I liked you even before I met you.”
It was at that moment that he felt her grip on the gun loosen the slightest bit, so he knocked it out of her hand. He could tell from the way it fell to the floor that it wasn’t loaded. He got Catalina onto the bed. She struggled. They rolled around on the mattress. She was angry because she hadn’t finished telling her story, and he was angry because he was so eager to hear it. Finally, he let her pin him down and straddle him.
“Why killme?”
“Because you killed five of his men in Berlin. Men who my ex-husband relied on to move things from Russia to the States.”
“I didn’t even know who those guys were. They were in my way, so I got them out of my way.”
“Nasty habit of yours.”
He flipped her over and pinned her down under him. “Nasty habit oftheirs, getting in my way. Why didn’t you tell me the red-haired man was your ex-husband the first time we saw him?”
She flipped him over, pinning him down again, and he let her. She straddled him again, and he liked it. “Did it really matter? I wanted to get away from him. That’s all you needed to know. That’s all you wanted to know… I killed him, Jack. My ex-husband is dead. I killed every last one of his men before coming to find you here.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She raised her eyebrows. “No? Had any trouble in the past five days?”
“Only in the past few minutes.”
“I’ve got my fingers on your wrists, Jack. I can feel your pulse. You know you aren’t in trouble. You’re just excited to see me.”
“See, now that’s where you’re wrong, darlin’. I am excited to see you.AndI know I’m in trouble.”
She loosened her grip, and a single warm tear fell on Jack’s skin. She lowered herself to kiss him on the lips, just once, and he let her. She tugged at his shirt, pulling if off over his head, and he let her.
She traced the scars on his chest with her fingertip. She had done this ever since the first time he knelt before her, bare chested and aching for her. She carefully circled the bruise over his ribs. It had been five days, but it was still dark. She stood up and undressed from the waist down. They made love, and that song was in his head again, mingling with her voice and the voice in his head that told him she was gonna make him lonesome again. And he would let her.
