Mike winced, remembering her last pointed remark to him. “Why do you keep trying to put it all on me?” he complained to his friend—who should be on his side, damn it.
“Just trying to understand what happened. I hate to see you moping around the way you have been the past few days. Maybe we can figure out what went wrong so you can fix it.”
“Give it up, Bob. It’s over. I think she’s seeing someone else, anyway. A doctor. A cardiologist. Way more in her league than I ever was.” Picturing Catherine with Bill James had been like acid in his gut ever since Thanksgiving, keeping him awake at night and interfering with his concentration during the days.
At least he had been spared actually seeing them together. If Bill had been to Catherine’s apartment, Mike hadn’t seen him. Of course, he’d been assiduously avoiding going anywhere near her apartment except when absolutely necessary for his work. And maybe she had been avoiding him just as determinedly, because he hadn’t even caught a glimpse of her in the past couple of weeks.
He missed her. He even missed her cat, darn it. How incredibly stupid had he been to allow himself to fall in love with a woman who had been destined from the beginning to break his heart?
“Oh, man, I’m sorry to hear that. I thought the two of you made a great couple. I didn’t think she really cared about the job thing.”
“She said she didn’t. But when it came to spending Thanksgiving with me or with the doctor, she chose him,” Mike confided bitterly, still stinging over her rejection.
“No kidding? You didn’t tell me that before. You mean she canceled your Thanksgiving plans to go out with him? I can’t believe it.”
“Well, no, that isn’t exactly what happened. I mean, I asked her, but she had already accepted an invitation from another friend who had also invited the doctor to dinner. An obvious fix-up, and Catherine had to know it.”
“Oh. So, when did you ask her?”
Mike cleared his throat. “The Sunday before Thanksgiving.”
After a heavy pause, Bob said slowly, “You waited until four days before Thanksgiving to ask her and then you were pissed off because she already had other plans?”
Scowling, Mike crossed his arms over his chest. “It wasn’t exactly like that,” he said, even though something inside him insisted it was exactly like that. “I didn’t know if I should ask her. I mean, spending holidays with a guy’s family is a big deal. Some women get real nervous about that sort of thing. I wasn’t sure Catherine and I had reached that point, and I didn’t want to scare her off. But we’d had a great weekend, and it seemed like the right time, so…”
Wincing at the inadequacy of his own argument, he let his words trail off.
Bob’s silence said a great deal.
“Okay, so it was probably all my fault,” Mike erupted angrily, throwing his hands in the air in frustration. “I didn’t deserve her. She was too good for me. What else do you want me to say?”
“Sounds like you’re the only one who believed all that garbage,” Bob observed with uncharacteristic perception. “Maybe you sabotaged it because you wanted to be the one to get out first, before she dumped you.”
“I did not—” Mike stopped to draw a deep breath. “I’m not going to fight with you about this. This conversation is closed.”
Bob shrugged. “Whatever, dude. Got any more chips?”
Even as he stalked into the kitchen to retrieve another bag of chips, Mike knew he would be nagged by the echo of Bob’s comments for hours to come.
Chapter Sixteen
“Norman, come down from there now!” Catherine had tried pleading, cajoling and reasoning, and she was finally resorting to demanding.
She had no more luck with that tactic. Norman remained exactly where he had been for the past twenty minutes. On top of the roof of her apartment building.
Standing on the tiny balcony outside her living room, she craned her neck to gaze up at him with a mixture of fear and exasperation. She was stunned that he was up there, and still not exactly sure how it had happened. She didn’t have a clue how she was going to get him down if he refused to cooperate.
A cold December wind blew around her, and she shivered in her thin sweater. She wasn’t wearing her coat, but she didn’t want to take her eyes off Norman long enough to go inside for it. It was going to be dark soon— it was already dusk—and she wanted him safely back inside her apartment. The problem was, he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get there.
“Norman, please,” she said, holding up her arms. “Come inside. I have salmon treats. Yum.”
Staring inscrutably back down at her, he tucked his tail around his feet and sat without moving.
She pushed her hands through her hair, growing desperate. Should she call the fire department? The rental office? Who was she supposed to turn to in a situation like this?
“Catherine? Is everything okay up there?”
She looked over the balcony railing with a surge of relief. “Mike?”