Old Enough To Know Better (10 page)

He had a packet of Kleenex in the inside pocket of his jacket for just such occasions, and gave her one immediately, then went back to patting and rocking until she leaned away from him just a bit, even though she was still sobbing slightly.  “I have to fix my makeup.”

Cat would have stood up, but Finn caught her hand, and looked into her eyes.  “Just a second.  You have something to say to me before you go.” 

She blanched, her eyes widening, then filling with tears again that overflowed down her cheeks in true rivers.  She knew what he meant.  It was what Clint required of her; that she express remorse at having been disobedient. 

Finn wasn’t at all sure he really should be pressing her at this point, but it felt right, and he usually went with his gut in most situations, and was proven right nine times out of ten.  He didn’t push or press, just waited for her to work things out in her mind and held her hand while she did it.  She didn’t have to be elaborate or thank him – that might come later, he hadn’t decided – but he did want her to say she was sorry, and he knew that she knew that that was what he was asking.

She hung her head for a moment, and he was seconds away from relenting.  He thought his heart would never stop aching from the sad, dejected picture she made.  But then she raised her head and looked him straight in the eye, saying softly and very quickly, “I’m sorry for not eating more.”

Finn nodded, and Cat reached down and removed her hose and panties more efficiently than he would have imagined that tangled mess could have been dealt with, and fairly ran to the relative safety of the bathroom.  He turned to sit in the corner of the too small for him, fussily flowered couch, looking out at the river below, silently thanking Clint for talking to him the way he had when he was younger and giving him the opportunity to love Catherine now.

When she reappeared, her face was flushed and her eyes were swollen, but she had never looked lovelier to him.  She made her way to the door, but he stopped short at what he presumed was the coat closet, making her pause at the door.  “Are you ready?”

Finn gave her a look that was hauntingly familiar.  “I am, but you’re not.  It’s barely the end of spring in Maine, and you need something, at least a light wrap, or you’re going to get cold.”

Cat was frowning more at the fact that he was right than the fact that he was dictating to her again.  That wasn’t good.  She stomped back to him, and he opened the door.  She took out a light dress coat, and he helped her into it, then gave her his arm and escorted her to his car, which she couldn’t help but admire.  Her parents weren’t poor, but they hadn’t had the kind of money that got her the sports cars of her dreams.

Apparently, though, Finn had that kind of money.  His car was a newer Porsche 911.  Not quite the latest hybrid she’d read about on the web but a gorgeous, catch me if you can, red machine, nonetheless.  She’d have to hide her Nissan in shame, rather than park it next to his.

The ride over to Bangor was about thirty minutes, and Cat had to admit she had been a little worried about what the heck they were going to talk about, but it seemed that Finn had no such concerns.  He kept up a steady flow of conversation the entire time, sometimes talking to other drivers, which she found amusing since she did it herself a lot – although she used much worse language – and other times asking her questions about what she liked and disliked, what her favorite movies and television programs were – the usual first date questions.

They found they liked a lot of the same movies – agreeing that Godfather I and II were the best movies ever made, and that III was some sort of atrocious aberration and should be forgotten altogether.  They were both involved in Lost and Heroes, but he watched Survivor and American Idol and she’d never seen either of them, whereas she watched Project Runway and Top Chef  religiously and he’d barely heard of them.

They settled on a classic rock station out of Bangor to listen to on the way – I95 – and Cat found herself automatically playing a game that she and Clint used to play where they challenged each other to name the song and the artist that played before the other person did.  They’d been pretty evenly matched, considering they were born less than a year apart and grew up listing to the same songs.

Chapter Seven

When the next song came on, and began with four snaps of someone’s fingers, she had it before the second snap, blurting out entirely without thinking, “Queen, Killer Queen,” and earning herself two points.

Finn gave her a questioning glance.  “Huh, what?”

Embarrassed, she explained the game, and, to her surprise, he was keen to try it, and was more than a worthy adversary.

Annoyed that she was losing, Cat said, “How come you know all these songs?  They’re well before your time!”

“Consider the source:  you know how many albums my mom has.  Guess what I grew up listening to.”

“Oh.  That’s an unfair advantage.  You’re younger and you have a better memory.”  As she recalled, Jane did have a prodigious album collection, since she’d gone to work as soon – sooner, really than was technically legally allowed by law – as she could, both to help support her family and to earn some spending money for herself.

Princess Cat, on the other hand, hadn’t started working until she absolutely had to.  Mommy and daddy had supplied her every want and need.  It was nice to be a princess, she thought, until she shifted in her seat and felt the soreness of her bottom, remembering that some of those who were princesses in their early life ended up paying for it – in one way or another – when they were older.

She’d chosen a small, out of the way restaurant that she and Clint had never been to, but that she’d read good things about online.  It wasn’t actually in Bangor, it was north of there, in Orono.  It was well known for its steaks, but it offered a variety of classic homemade foods in a beautifully restored mansion that lent an intimate atmosphere to the dining experience.  At least chowhound.com said so, anyway, so she was going to trust Hungreeinme’s opinion of the place, and give him or her a piece of her mind later if it stunk.

It did turn out to be a gorgeous house, and Cat loved old houses that had been refurbished to their former beauty.  She would have preferred if it had remained a house, rather than being transformed into a business – or worse, apartments – but at least it hadn’t been torn down.  They were given a seat by the bow window in the room that had probably been the front parlor at one point, and their waitress was wonderfully attentive, not that they were paying attention to much of anyone but each other.

He’d pulled out her chair to seat her, whispering in her ear as he did so that he could request a pillow for her if she liked, enjoying the way she flushed so beautifully at his wicked comment.

Finn offered to get them a bottle of wine, but wine wasn’t much to Cat’s taste so she wrinkled her nose but encouraged him to get one if he wanted.  When they’d ordered – prime rib for him and a filet for her, after she’d tried to get away with just a bowl of seafood chowder that got her a look that had her bottom tingling uncomfortably in the straight backed chair – he moved the place setting out of his way and put his elbows on the table to lean towards her, gazing directly into her eyes.  She did the same, mirroring him, if only on a whim.

Then he asked something that stopped her in her tracks, because it seemed he was reading her mind, yet again.  “So, is this the time when you try again to convince me that we can’t possibly date and try to kiss me off as if this is going to be our only dinner together?”

Cat choked, and reached for her water, although it wasn’t much help.

“That’s what I thought.”

“But –” she wanted to explain.  She hated arguments and confrontations, but had had all her reasons lined up, not the least of which was her friendship with his mother.  And he’d gone and taken all the wind out of her sails, the bastard.

He leaned back, palms on his thighs, awaiting the challenge with relish.  “C’mon.  Out with it.  Let’s get it over with.  I don’t want it hanging over us forever.”  Finn’s eyes narrowed, and she felt the weight of all of that considerable focus on her.  “Because I’m not going to let anything stand in the way of us, Catherine.  Nothing and no one.”

She leaned on her arms again and played her trump card.  Might’s well get it right on out there.  “Not even your mother?”

There was absolutely no hesitation in his response whatsoever, and Finn was extremely close to his mother.  “No.  Not even my mother, although I have to tell you that I have no worries in that area, either.”  He reached across the table and took her small, cold hand in his, slipping it between both of his to warm it.  “Catherine, I’m not fifteen, and you’re not some predatory school teacher or something like that.  I’m thirty four –”

“Almost,” she corrected.

He smiled.  “Almost.  And you make me very happy.  What more has my mother ever wanted?  Why should she care who I marry – she just wants me to get married to someone.”

“Thanks,” Cat deadpanned.  “That makes me feel so much better.”

He grinned.  “You know what I mean.”

“She wants you to have children.  She wants grandbabies out of your marriage, and I’m really too old and frankly not very inclined to have children at this stage in my life, Finn.  Have you thought of that?”

Their waitress arrived with their salads and left as unobtrusively as possible.  The food went untouched.  “Yes, I have.  I don’t want children, either.  And if we decided to later on, we could adopt.”

Cat shook her head.  “You’re my best friend’s son.  You’re too young for me.  Your mother would kill me.  When Title IX was passed, she wanted to play on the boys’ football team, and they would have let her if it weren’t for your Nana.”

His face went completely blank; Title IX became a law well before he was born.

Cat sighed.  “I rest my case, but needless to say, if we ever got involved, your mom would kill me dead.”  Jeez, did that sound as adolescent as she thought it did?  “Besides that fact, she’s my oldest and dearest friend.  She’s like the sister I never had.  I don’t want to lose that friendship.”  By the end of that sentence, her eyes were filled with tears, and she was looking anywhere but at Finn.

Finn’s low voice melted relentlessly into her ears.  “Think of your bottom, Catherine.  We’re already involved, and there’s no way I’m going to walk away from you now.  I’ve waited too long for you.  I’ll handle my mother and make sure that nothing affects your relationship with her.”

She raised her head and looked into his eyes with tears trailing down her cheeks.  “But how can you do that?  You don’t know how she’ll react to this.”

“I think I have a pretty good idea.  But first things first – I want you to agree to date me for a little while before I talk to mom about it.”  He motioned towards her salad plate and took up his own fork.

Cat sniffed and bit her lip, tapping her fork against the side of the plate.  “And what if I say no?” she asked tentatively.

Finn calmly finished his mouthful of salad and leaned closer to her and said quietly, “The same thing that happens when you don’t eat your sandwiches and casserole, Catherine Angelique.”  He watched her shift uncomfortably in her seat.

‘I don’t have much of a choice in the matter, then, do I?”

He cleared his throat.  “No, you don’t.”  Finn didn’t much like where this conversation was going.  “Look, Catherine.  If I felt you honestly objected to me as a man, to intimacies with me, then I wouldn’t be pushing so hard.  You would have screamed bloody murder from the moment I introduced the idea of spanking you.  But you’ve already been extremely intimate with me, in a manner that is peripherally sexual.  You’re not the type of woman to put up with that if it’s really not something that you want.”  He put his utensils down and asked her a question point blank that had been niggling at the back of his mind for some time.  “Have you dated anyone else since Clint died?”

She was playing with her food, moving it around the plate rather than eating it, and he would deal with that in a moment.  “No,” she whispered, staring at the swirls her fork was making in the raspberry vinaigrette.

“So, no one else has . . . “

Cat’s eyes shot to his and she blushed that beautiful, vibrant pink of hers.  “No, of course not!”

“But you’ve let me do it.  Several times.  With barely a squawk of protestation.  Doesn’t that tell you something?”

She wasn’t sure if it did or it didn’t.  She wasn’t sure of anything anymore, except that she was very unhappy at the thought of losing a friend she’d had almost forever, in favor of a man she was just barely starting to get to know, no matter how gorgeous and how potentially compatible in an unusual area he might be.

Finn reached across the table and put his hand on her arm.  “I want you to stop thinking about this right now and let me handle it for you.  I’ll take care of it.  I want you to just let go of it, and date me for a while.  We’ll skirt around here for a very short time, I promise, long enough for you to decide whether this is going anywhere.”  It killed him to say that, because he knew that she was the love of his life, but she didn’t have the same feelings for him yet, which was understandable because she hadn’t spent her whole life waiting for him.

But he knew she would, and he knew that, regardless, he had to give her the choice, or it wouldn’t be right.  He couldn’t force himself on her; she had to accept him, especially considering the deeper elements of what would be their relationship.

He kept the rest of the meal towards a much lighter tone, although he did maintain a very watchful eye over her eating habits, encouraging her to eat rather than play with her food.  He went so far as to tell her that he wanted her to clean her plate when it arrived with a petite filet, garlic smashed potatoes with a touch of sour cream, and fresh green beans.

Cat glared up at him and swore there was no way she could put away that huge amount of food, but he kept her laughing and talking throughout a dinner that lasted twice as long as she was used to, and by the time the waitress came around to collect their plates, hers was completely clean.