“Sir!” I cried. I scooped him up and clutched him close. I kissed his head, which made him meow in protest, and he batted my nose. “I wondered where you’d gone.”
“He arrived around suppertime, looking quite put out,” Nick said.
“I had to work late,” I explained, although I wasn’t sure if it was to Sir or Nick. “Poor guy. He must be hungry.”
“I doubt it,” Nick said. “Lupita fed him a hearty meal of roast chicken, and then he decided he needed to nap on my lap.”
I grinned. “And you let him.” He looked disgruntled but didn’t deny it.
“I was going to bring him by earlier, but I fell asleep, too. When I woke up, he was still in my lap and I saw your lights were on so I thought I’d bring him over as you might be worried.”
“Thank you, I was.” I nuzzled Sir’s soft fur, relieved to have him home.
“No pets,” he said. But there was a gentleness in his eyes that I knew meant Sir had worked his charm on him and Nick was reconsidering.
“He’s not a pet, he’s a guest,” I said. “A visitor. Surely we can grant him a temporary visa.”
“Until a suitable home is found?”
I shrugged, which was my nonverbal answer of maybe.
“Even if he’s visiting, he needs a better name,” Nick said. “At the very least, he needs to be Sir Somebody or Other.”
“Sir Somebody works,” I said.
“Ack, no!” he cried in mock horror. “That’s worse than plain old Sir.”
I pressed my face into Sir’s fur to hide my smile. We stood there for a while, enjoying the bond of affection we felt for this whiskered little ball of fluff, who chose that moment to leap from my arms and stroll into the house as if Nick were his driver and I was his butler and he was now done with us.
“Well, I can see we’re no longer needed,” Nick said.
I glanced at him, taking in his ridiculous good looks. Truly, one person should not be this blessed in the hotness department; it simply wasn’t fair. And I said, “Thanks for bringing him by. I would have fretted all night.”
Nick nodded and glanced up at the night sky. “Sir Lancelot, no, that’s not it. It’s too old-world and he’s clearly a hip cat. I’ll keep thinking on it.”
“How about Sir Mick,” I said. Nick raised one eyebrow in question. “You know, as in Mick Jagger.”
“He does have an air of rock and roll royalty about him,” Nick conceded. “We can consider it.”
“Oh, we can?” I asked. He seemed awfully invested in naming the cat all of a sudden.
“If he’s going to be visiting my house, too, then, yes, I think I should have some say,” he said. His gaze met mine and then slid away, only to come right back as he continued, “Anyway, he was just an excuse for me to stop by. I wanted to apologize for the other morning. I wasn’t prepared for you to see me like this.” He held his hands out to indicate the chair. “But I guess that cat is out of the bag or the hoodie, as it were.” He met and held my gaze. “I acted like an asshole. I yelled at you and you did nothing to deserve that. I’m very sorry.”
Well, I’ll be. Despite his off-putting control freak nature, Nick Daire was a good man. And truthfully, now that I knew he depended upon a wheelchair, it made the control freak thing easier to understand. He likely had to think things through, because of the logistics of using a wheelchair, much more than other people did. Simple things like going to the store, how to navigate bringing the chair, getting items off the top shelves, pushing a cart, and a million other tasks. It made sense that he had the Guzmans and Jackson to help him.
“Apology accepted,” I said. “And I’m sorry—”
“Please don’t,” he interrupted. His startlingly pretty eyes held mine. “That’s twice you’ve apologized when you don’t have anything to apologize for.”
The urge to apologize again, for apologizing no less, was right there on the tip of my tongue. As if he knew it, he slowly shook his head from side to side. Saying “I’m sorry” was my default setting. I wasn’t sure of what to say without leading with an apology.
We stared at each other for a few long moments, and feeling incredibly self-conscious and fully aware that I have no sense of personal boundaries and was being peak rude, I asked, “What happened to you?” I wanted to hear the story from him.
He looked as if he was going to ignore the question or redirect, both of which I would have expected. Instead, he shocked me. “I had what they call a cerebrovascular accident.”
“A stroke?” I asked.
He nodded, looking surprised that I knew the term. I didn’t feel the need to enlighten him that I hadn’t until now. Instead, I studied him. How could he have had a stroke? He was only a few years older than me. A stroke or a cerebrovascular accident was an old man’s condition. It simply didn’t compute.
“Yes, a stroke,” he said. He glanced down at the chair with chagrin. “I got lucky. I didn’t lose my powers of speech, my brain was unharmed, and the side of me that went slack came back, mostly.”
“Is that what’s wrong with your leg?” I asked. I still hadn’t been able to figure out how he’d rescued me from the falling weights. “Did it not recover?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “The truth is I’m a medical anomaly. There’s a residual weakness in my left leg and my left arm. It comes and goes with no warning. One minute I’m fine and the next thing I know, my left side gives out and I crumple into a heap. It’s . . . very frustrating.”
“I can imagine,” I said.
“Other people have it much, much worse.” His smile was wry. “At least that’s what I keep telling myself.”
“When did it happen?” I asked.
“A little over nine months ago,” he said.
“I’m sor—” I bit off the words I was certain he didn’t want to hear. His mouth tipped up in the corner. He was clearly amused by my propensity for apology.
“That sucks,” I said. His smile grew deeper as he no doubt remembered saying the same thing to me about my mother’s death. “Is that why you retired?”
“Partly,” he said. “I was already getting the itch to do something else, but I’m a builder. That’s who I am, that’s what I do. I was considering my options when the stroke happened and changed everything.”
My curiosity flared, but I felt like it would be bad form to grill him for more details about such a personal event. Sort of like when someone tells you they’re getting divorced. I don’t know about you, but I want all the intel, which was why, given my own past, I usually offered up the reasons for my divorces right at the start. Nick did not offer up the who, what, when, where, and why, however, so I kept my lips zipped, although it about killed me.