Page 44 of Her Property

Cat reached for her wine as well as if remembering it was there. “Okay,” she said, after savoring her own sip with her eyes closed and head tipped back. “This is pretty damned good, too.”

Jake’s heart ached for a moment. He wasn’t going to keep her. He wasn’t going to be able to watch her do this again.

He took a swig of the good wine.

They spent the next few minutes talking about wine, how she’d used to not know her Bordeaux from her Burgundies but how Alfred had insisted on giving everyone a wine lesson every time they went out for a work dinner.

“Not in a pompous way,” she said. “He just thinks everyone should know about the wonders of fine wine. If you get the lesson at his house, you usually walk away with a couple of bottles, too.”

Jake hated that the more Cat told him about Alfred, the more he begrudgingly felt like he’d like the guy, if he weren’t getting fuckingsuedby him.

“The more I learn, the more I feel like I know even less,” she said. “The sommelier at Alfred’s favourite bistro told me he studied foreleven years. Eleven years! That puts my law degree to shame!”

Cat must have seen his face because she looked a little sheepish. “Sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t talk about Alfred so much.”

Jake shrugged. It didn’t matter now. “He’s your boss. As for the wine, I don’t know much, I just know what I like.” He couldn’t help but look straight into Cat’s eyes as he said that. Her cheeks flushed pink and she went back to her steak.

As she ate, Jake’s efforts at good humor waned. As much as he didn’t want to talk about Alfred, and worse, the property issue, he wanted her to be able to talk about what she wanted to. He didn’t want her to feel like he was brushing off whatever it was she came here to talk about. Jake took a last bracing sip of wine and set his glass down.

“So why did you venture out in a storm to come see me, Catherine Jones? Surely it wasn’t just to jump my bones?”

Cat nearly spit out her wine. “That was only part of it,” she said, laughing.

He smiled. “Okay, fine, I didn’t think you’d planned to come over here for that. Though I can’t say I didn’t hope when I saw you out there.”

Outside, it was dark, but it appeared the storm that had brought her here had finally died down. The windows had stopped rattling and he couldn’t hear the ping of rain on the glass anymore. He felt the magic of the night slipping, as if they had been wrapped up in his house only while the world outside was consumed. As if for a little while, this place, and them, together, were the only things that existed.

“It was stupid of me to come,” she said, putting her fork down. Jake didn’t know if she meant because of the weather, or because she had made some kind of personal agreement with herself to stay away from him. “What if I’d missed you?” she said. “I’d have been stuck out there, I’d have had to walk all the way back—”

“You’re a risk taker now. That’s what you do.”

“I’m a fool,” she said.

He looked in her eyes. “Do you really believe that?”

She swallowed. “Sometimes.”

“How about if I told you I was coming to see you? That’s why I was in the road.”

Something passed her eyes; a shadow in the irises. But he couldn’t tell what it was. He realized he actually knew so little about her, what her deepest desires were. What her big hurts were. What made her eyes flicker just then.

She was looking all around his kitchen: the dark windowpanes at the side of the room. The open shelves he’d made last year lined with the heavy stoneware he’d been eating out of since he was a kid. At the photos of his grandparents on the wall. Anywhere but at him. Again, his stomach twisted. Everywhere but at him.

“Cat?”

When her eyes landed on his they were cool; businesslike. Like she was detaching herself from the conversation. “Tell me about your grandparents,” she said.

Jake’s eyebrows went up. That was the last thing he’d expected her to say.

“What do you want to know?”

“What were their names?”

“Colin and Anne.”

Something flickered in her eyes again. He felt the first tinges of confusion. What was she getting at?

“You said they raised you after your mom left?”

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