“Nothing. I had just forgotten I ever had a kitten until now.”
“A kitten? Not a cat?” she asked, studying him. “Kam?” she prodded gently when he didn’t reply. It suddenly struck him that she looked worried, and he wished he had censored himself better. Still, he’d said it now.
“Aurore is in the country,” he said thickly after a moment. “There are a lot of outbuildings . . . barns, and gardening sheds. Several cats used to live in them, and the gardener allowed it because they helped control the rodents. One of them had a litter one spring, and I kept one of them for my own. A shiny little brown one. I called her Chocolat. My mother wouldn’t let me keep her in our quarters at first, saying we didn’t have the money to feed her, but then Chocolat worked her wiles on her, and my mother grew fond of her as well. She was very warm hearted by nature, and she loved animals.”
“You get that from her,” Lin murmured.
He nodded before resuming. “During that summer, that kitten went everywhere with me . . . except for inside the big house,” he added darkly. He fell into silence, his fingers still running through Lin’s hair.
“Gaines didn’t like cats?” she whispered.
“It wasn’t just that. I never showed him that I cared about anything,” Kam said. “As a kid, I learned that lesson fast enough. Don’t show your weak spots. He’ll use them against you. Even my mother . . .” he trailed off, thick regret flooding him. “I never let him know how much she meant to me. I was afraid he’d terminate her employment as a maid and laundress and send her away when he was in one of his tempers over some imagined error he believed I’d made in my work. I led him to believe that I didn’t care that much for her, that I looked down on her . . . that I considered her a simple commoner. I never told her I did that,” Kam admitted, the truth burning his throat. He’d never told anyone about the ugly fiction he’d enacted.
“Your mother knew you loved her. You let Gaines believe that for a reason, a good one. Of course you would learn early on how to keep things that mattered to you off his radar. He was a sick, twisted man. You were smart and resourceful for protecting your mother that way, especially when you were so young with no one to guide you. Never think otherwise,” Lin stated fiercely.
He believed her, but guilt was often not a rational emotion. “Your father did something to the kitten. Didn’t he?” Lin asked in a hushed voice after a pause.
“That fall was the first time I went to attend school in the town. Gaines allowed it, but he didn’t like it. It was inconvenient for him, to have to do some of the manual labor I usually did for him, assisting him in his workshop. On the first day of school, he grew restless when I didn’t immediately report to work in the big house and went looking for me. I’d rushed home so that I had time to see Chocolat. I’d left her that morning with her brothers and sisters and her mother in the barn. She visited them often enough, and her mother continued to treat her as one of her own. Gaines found me there with the kitten. He ordered me to the workshop. After I left, he asked the gardener to round up the stray cats in the barn and drown them. He said they were infected with disease.”
He felt Lin shudder next to him. He blinked away the toxic memory and focused on Lin’s face. The sadness he saw her in her dark eyes pierced him. He brushed her cheek with his thumb.
“It was a long, long time ago,” he said.
“I’m sorry I made you remember.”
“I’m not,” he said steadfastly before he pulled her higher in his arms and laid her back on the mattress. He came down over her, seeking the sweet benediction of her mouth.
• • •
They spent the entire day in bed, talking and touching and making love. The acute fury of the storm abated, but clouds remained hovering over the city. Rain occasionally pattered on the windowpanes, adding to the sense of delightful relaxation and intimacy.
“You better watch out,” Lin told him as she trailed kisses down the side of his rib cage later that afternoon. “This playing hooky business could definitely become my new addiction.”
“Then my plan is working,” he assured her, cradling the side of her head and praising her gently in French when her mouth lowered still.
Kam got up as dusk fell to take out Angus. Lin rose to call to have food delivered. When the Thai carryout arrived, however, they returned to bed, feasting naked amongst the rumpled bedclothes. Afterward, they roused from lazing about to luxuriate in the large bathtub.
“Where are you going tomorrow?” Kam asked her later when they returned to bed after their sensual soak, Lin’s muscles rubbery with the relaxation that came from repeated lovemaking and hot water.
“I have a series of meetings on Tuesday in San Francisco,” she said, cuddling closer to him. She really hated the idea of leaving Chicago at that moment . . . of putting distance between her and Kam.
“Do you travel a lot for work?”
She hummed an affirmative, stroking his muscular upper arm. “Usually three or four times a month.”
“Do you like it? Traveling?”
“Not as much as I did when I was younger, but I’m used to it. It’s not too bad,” she said, her eyelids drooping under the weight of drowsiness. Still, she’d begun to wonder about something all afternoon and couldn’t resist voicing it now. “Kam?”
“Hmmm?”
“I know that I said I didn’t want Ian or anyone to know about this . . . us. But if I hadn’t said that, would you have been okay with him and Lucien and everyone knowing?”