Page 42 of At the Heart of It
“You’re her hero.”
“Please,” he muttered. “I’m her butler.”
“Same thing to a cat.”
Jonah shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at her, probably wondering what the hell she was doing in his living room. “I’d offer you a beer, but the cat doesn’t seem to approve.”
“Your cat disapproves of beer?”
“Apparently the cat I acquired to break free from my ex-wife’s pet ban is now enforcing my ex’s beer ban,” he said. “Don’t think the irony is lost on me.”
Kate laughed, relieved he was still joking with her. That he wasn’t as pissed as she knew he had a right to be. “That’s okay,” Kate said. “I’m not really a beer fan anyway.”
“Not a beer fan?” Jonah shook his head in dismay. “What’s wrong with you?”
Kate grinned and scratched the cat under the chin. “Just because I happen to think Budweiser tastes like skunk that’s been run over?”
Jonah made a face. “It does taste like that. Budweiser? Are you serious?”
“That’s the only beer I know of.”
“Do you live in a cave? Haven’t you had real beer? Not Budweiser or Coors some other mass-produced, yellow, fizzy mess. I’m talking craft beer.”
“Isn’t all beer pretty much the same?”
Jonah shook his head a little sadly, and Kate wondered if this whole conversation was his way of distracting her from what she’d really come to discuss. Wasn’t it male habit to shut down any conversation that began with a woman saying, “We need to talk”?
“Don’t stereotype!”
Viv’s words bounced through her brain.
“Making generalizations about the person with whom you’re in a relationship is a one-way ticket to conflict.”
But since she wasn’t in a relationship with Jonah, and since she was standing here in his living room hearing echoes of his ex-wife’s voice in her head, maybe the whole point was moot.
Kate stroked her hand down the cat’s back again, soothed by the soft rumble emanating from Marilyn’s fluffy body. “Look, I’m sorry about just showing up like this,” she said. “I tried texting and calling, but there was no answer and I really wanted to talk with you privately.”
“I shut off my phone,” Jonah said. “I wasn’t in the mood to debrief with Viv about how today went.”
“You think she’d want to debrief?” Kate lifted an eyebrow. “Seems a little presumptuous. I’m guessing she’d be as eager as you were to put today behind her.”
Jonah didn’t answer. Instead, he picked up his phone off the counter and switched it on. As soon as it powered up, he held it out to her. Kate looked down at the screen, which was lit up with the opening lines of three different text messages.
Jonah, I’m concerned with how . . .
We really need to . . .
I think we should have a conversation about . . .
Jonah drew the phone back. “Just a hunch, but I think she wants to talk about how today went.”
Kate swallowed and nodded. “Probably a good guess.”
She thought about asking why he didn’t just have the conversation and get it over with, but the exhaustion on his face made her think twice about that. Could she really blame the guy for not wanting to follow up a day spent with his ex-wife with an evening spent talking to her on the phone?
“Jonah, I want to apologize,” Kate began. “I didn’t expect today’s session to be quite so?—”
“You know, you really should try a good beer,” he said “before you write off the whole beverage based on exposure to an inferior product.”
