Mrs. Edison was coming down the steps as he started up.
“There you are, sir. I’ve settled the young lady in as best I could and…” Her voice trailed away as she saw the cat. “Oh, the sweet little…”
Her eyes flew to Grant’s, and he frowned.
“The damned thing will probably destroy the laundry room, left to its own devices,” he growled.
“Yes, sir.”
“Find a box somewhere and line it with an old towel. And I suppose you’d better fill a saucer with milk.”
“With tuna fish, sir. Milk’s not really…” Mrs. Edison looked at Grant, swallowed, and nodded her head. “Of course, Mr. Grant. I’ll take care of everything.”
Still glowering, he strode down the hall and pounded his fist against the door to the guest suite. It swung open immediately.
“Mrs. Edison? I wonder if you could just remember to give my cat a dish of—”
Crista stared in disbelief. She had expected the housekeeper to be standing there, but it was Grant instead. His face was dark as a thundercloud—and he was holding Sweetness by the scruff of his neck.
“Here,” he said, thrusting the cat at her. “Take the damned thing and be done with it!”
Crista snatched the cat into her arms. She buried her face in its fur. When she looked up, her eyes were shining.
“You mean—” she swallowed “—you mean, I can have him with me tonight?”
“I mean,” Grant said coldly, “that you can keep him. Just make sure he stays in your rooms.”
She nodded.
“I’m not doing this for you,” Grant said brusquely. “I’m doing it because I can’t afford any more disruptions in my life. I know you may find this difficult to believe, Crista, but I have a law practice to attend to. You are not my only legal responsibility, and—”
“Grant?”
Her voice was soft, yet it cut through him sharply enough to cause a curious pain in his chest. She was wearing those silver earrings again, the ones with the little bells; they were swaying ever so slightly, their soft, tinkling sound almost like a sigh.
“I—I want to thank you. For understanding about the cat, I mean.” She swallowed; his gaze flew to the long, tender column of her throat, then returned to her face. There was a hint of dampness on her cheeks and a faint tremor in her lips.
Was she going to cry?
“He means a great deal to me. I—I found him, you see, in the street. He’d been hurt, and…”
Her voice droned on, as soft as the cat’s fur had been under his hand. Grant jammed his hands into his pockets; it was ridiculous, but he wanted to reach out, take her in his arms, and tell her everything would be fine…
He felt his heart harden.
Oh, but she was good at this, at making a man see her as he wished she were. But why wouldn’t she be? She’d had lots and lots of practice.
“…and you won’t have to worry,” she said. “I promise. I’ll see to it he stays in my room and doesn’t—”
“Make sure that you do. If I so much as glimpse him where he shouldn’t be, all the pleading in the world won’t help you. The cat will be out of here so fast it’ll make your head spin.”
He turned sharply and walked away. No, Crista thought, as she stared after him, no, he didn’t walk. He marched.
Her lips tightened. She bumped the door with her hip, slamming it shut, then leaned back against it.
How stupid could she have been? For just a moment, she’d almost thought he might be human.
But he wasn’t, and she would not make the same mistake again.
“Three months, Sweetness,” she whispered. The cat purred and tapped a gentle paw against Crista’s chin. “That’s right, little one. So long as we have each other, we can certainly manage to get through twelve weeks.”
And that was all it was. Twelve short weeks.
Then why did it seem like a lifetime?
* * *
By morning, she had figured out the way to make the time pass instead of drag.
She had a life, and she would go on living it. Oh, she’d give up her job, though it was tempting to keep Gus’s leather outfit, wear it as often as she could manage just to see Grant’s mouth narrow with distaste, but only a masochist would want to go on tending tables at the restaurant when she didn’t have to.
As for the rest—her volunteer work at the community center and animal shelter, her sketching and her jewelry design—Crista’s mouth firmed. She wasn’t about to give up any of it. Not for a million Grant Landons!
She dressed quickly, pulling on a pair of ribbed black tights, a black turtlenecked sweater, and black ballet flats. She draped a necklace of her own making around her neck—a long length of brightly colored trade beads interspersed with silver squash blossoms—put on the silver-bell earrings, and brushed out her hair.
It was almost nine according to her watch. Grant would certainly be gone by now.
Crista plucked the hated leather skirt, boots, and T-shirt from the chair where she’d left them the night before and stuffed them into a canvas carryall bag. Then she patted Sweetness, stepped out into the corridor, and closed the door carefully after her.
The apartment was silent, the dense white carpet muffling her footsteps as she made her way down the steps.
Mrs. Edison was cleaning the living room, although what dust would dare settle in such sterile surroundings was beyond Crista to imagine.
“Oh, my,” she said with a little laugh, “you startled me, Miss Adams. Did you want something? You had only to ring, and I—”
“I’m going out for a while, Mrs. Edison. If you want something, I’d be glad to pick it up for you.”
The housekeeper stared at her. “Me?”
“Something from the market, perhaps. Milk, or bread…whatever.”
“No. No, thank you very much. But, ah, Mr. Landon didn’t—he didn’t mention that you’d bethat you—”
Crista’s smile faded. “I don’t have to clear my comings and goings with anyone, Mrs. Edison.”
“Well, no. I suppose not. But if he should phone and ask after you…”
“Just tell him I’m out.”
“Yes, but—”
“Goodbye, Mrs. Edison.”
It was sunny out, and warm, and Crista’s sense of well-being grew with every step she took. Even the subway ride down to the Village was exhilarating.
Freedom, she thought with a little smile, was a wonderful thing!
Gus’s Tavern was quiet at that hour. Crista made her way straight to his office and knocked on the door.
“Come,” Gus barked.
He looked up from his racing form as she stepped inside and listened with disinterest as she began explaining that sh
e was quitting.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, leaning back in his chair and scratching his chest. “So?”
“I just wanted to thank you, for taking me on in the first place, and—”
“Hey, don’t bother with the bull, girl. You’re quitting. That means I ain’t gonna give you no references.” He chuckled at his own joke, then frowned as she piled the skirt, boots, and pink shirt on his desk. “What’s that for?”
“For the next girl who needs them.” Crista smiled slightly. “Give the stuff to her and wish her luck for me.”
Out on the street again, she found it was all she could do to keep from flinging out her arms and whirling in a circle. Danny had tried making her see how terrific it was, inheriting all this money, but she’d been so angry at Grant that she hadn’t really been listening.
Now, for the first time, reality was sinking in. She was done with surly customers, greasy food, and the stink of stale beer. And if that meant putting up with Grant Landon for a couple of months, well, so what? She had put up with worse when she’d lived with Uncle Simon.
Try as he might, Grant would not manage to spoil her happiness!
She strolled the streets in contentment, glad to be back where she’d spent not just the past six months of her life but her childhood. Her parents had had little money—dancers and painters were rarely rich—but her life had been full and happy.
And it would be again, she thought with determination, once her time in purgatory had ended.
She stopped off at both the animal shelter and the community center to pledge more volunteer hours, and then, since it was such a lovely afternoon, she bought herself lunch from a vending cart and sat munching her hot dog and sipping her Coke on a bench near the Washington Arch, listening as a long-haired young man with a battered guitar sang mournfully of love won and lost.
Finally, as the afternoon wore to a close, she paid a visit to her apartment. Danny was out, but it was still good to be back in the familiar, shabby rooms. Crista stuffed her sketch pad and some unfinished jewelry into her canvas bag, hesitated over her tools and a small reel of silver wire, then tucked them in, too.