LITMIR.BIZ

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Huxtable and Bascombe, her two cats fast asleep in the backseat, were there to hear her. They both slept right through her exhortation.

      “You’ll be fine,” Cat went on as if her grandmother was listening. She infused her voice with all the enthusiasm she could muster. The cats ignored that, too. They ignored pretty much everything she did or said that didn’t have to do with cans of cat food.

      “It’s no big deal, Gran,” she went on firmly. But her voice wobbled and she knew she wouldn’t convince anyone—especially no-nonsense Maggie Newell.

      But she said them again. Practiced them all the way to Southern California because if she sounded convincing, then they would both eventually come to believe it. That was how it worked.

      “You can make it happen,” Gran had told her long years ago, “if you sound convincing.”

      And Cat knew for a fact it was true. She remembered those months after her parents had been killed and she had come to live with Gran and Walter. She’d been devastated, angry, a ball of seven-year-old misery. She’d hated everyone and she was sure she’d never be happy again.

      Gran had sympathized, but had insisted that she try to look on the bright side.

      “What bright side?” Cat had wanted to know.

      “You have a grandmother and grandfather who love you more than anything in the world,” Gran had told her with absolute conviction.

      Cat hadn’t been all that sure. It might be true, but it hadn’t seemed like much compared to the love she’d lost at her parents’ death. Still, she knew Gran had to be hurting, too. If Cat had lost her parents, Gran had lost her only daughter and her son-in-law. Plus she’d suddenly been saddled with an opinionated, argumentative child just when she and Walter were getting ready to retire and do what they wanted to do.

      Still, Cat had wrapped her arms around her chest and huddled into a small tight cocoon of misery, resisting when Gran had slid her arms around her skinny shoulders and said, “Let’s sing.”

      “Sing?” Cat had been appalled.

      Gran had nodded, still smiling and wiping away the tear streaks on her own cheeks. “There’s a great deal to be learned from musical comedies,” she said firmly.

      Cat hadn’t known what a musical comedy was. She’d sat, resisting, stiff as a board. But Gran had persisted. She didn’t have a good voice, but she had all the enthusiasm in the world.

      She sang “Whistle a happy tune,” and then she sang “Put on a Happy Face.” She had smiled into Cat’s unhappy one and kissed her nose. Then she’d sung “Belly Up to the Bar, Boys.”

      It was so absurd that even feeling miserable, Cat had giggled. And Gran had hugged her tighter, and then the dam inside her broke, and she remembered how she had by turns sobbed and laughed in her grandmother’s arms. They’d sobbed and laughed together. And Cat could still feel the solid comforting warmth of her grandmother’s arms around her that day. She longed to put her own arms around her grandmother now.

      “It will be fine,” she had told her grandmother on the phone that afternoon, refusing to let her voice crack. “We won’t only sing. We’ll dance,” she vowed. “You’ll be dancing in no time.”

      In her mind’s eye she could see Gran dancing now. It made her smile—and blink away unshed tears. There. That was better.

      Gran was right: you had to sound convincing to be believed—especially by yourself.

      It did work. Cat knew it worked. At least in cases of misery—and in cases where the outcome was up to her.

      If theme songs weren’t one hundred percent foolproof it was because one time she’d been a fool and dared to believe in something she had no control over. Warbling “Whistle a Happy Tune” had got her through making new friends at her new school and in the Girl Scout troop. “Climb every Mountain” had helped her through swimming lessons and eighth grade speech. “Put on a Happy Face” had forced her to smile through teenage angst.

      And if “Some Enchanted Evening” had failed her, it wasn’t because there was something wrong with the song. There had been something wrong with the man.

      She’d loved. But her love had not been returned. So she’d learned her lesson.

      That was all behind her now. Now she had Adam who really did want to marry her, who smiled indulgently and shook his head and called her “Little Mary Sunshine,” though sometimes she wasn’t entirely sure he thought her sunshiny attitude was a good thing.

      Adam was a banker, a very serious banker. Cat didn’t mind serious. She didn’t mind that he was a banker. It meant he was trustworthy. Dependable. The right sort of man to start a family with.

      And more than anything Cat wanted a family.

      She flexed her shoulders and tried to ease the kinks out of them. Bascombe mewed and poked his head between the two front seats. She wondered if he sensed that they were coming home. He’d been born on Balboa Island, had spent the first two years of his life there. They were south of Los Angeles at last, heading toward Newport and the beach. It was past one in the morning now and she was tired. Her only stop had been for gas in King City. Now she yawned so widely that she heard her jaw crack.

      “Almost home,” she told Baz. But the moment she said the words her stomach clenched, because once again the memories came flooding back, reminding her of the days she’d thought that Gran’s old house would become her home again, that she’d marry and raise a family there.

      And now—now it wasn’t. She wasn’t.

      “Don’t go there,” Cat warned herself.

      Because every time she did, she thought about Yiannis Savas and she grew hot and flustered and mortified all over again. Everything in her wanted to turn around and head straight back to San Francisco. For more than two years, she’d done exactly that—stayed well away from him.

      But this time she couldn’t because Gran was counting on her. She had to suck it up and act like the grown-up woman she was, and forget all about the airy-fairy fool who’d had her head in the clouds—or in the song lyrics—that had only brought her pain.

      Determinedly she turned on the radio and tuned in the heaviest metal she could find. Baz hissed in protest.

      “Sorry,” she said, but he couldn’t have heard her over the noise.

      No matter. She needed it. Usually when she came down to visit Gran she tried to time it for when he was out of the city or, better yet, out of the country.

      But this time she feared her luck wasn’t that good.

      When Gran had called she’d said Yiannis had brought her to the hospital. He was wonderful to her, of course. As always Gran couldn’t say enough good things. Yiannis was “so thoughtful. So helpful. Taking care of everything until you get here.”

      What “everything” meant had not been specified.

      “But I know you’ll help him when you get here,” Gran had said confidently.

      The words had made the skin on the nape of Cat’s neck prickle. Help Yiannis? Not likely.

      Whatever needed doing, she would do it herself. She would step in, take over, and that would be the last she would have to see of him. Fine with her. And she suspected it would be fine with him, too. Yiannis wouldn’t want her around “getting ideas” the way she had the last time, would he?

      Her cheeks started to burn again.

      “I told him you’d help,” Gran had said firmly when she hadn’t replied.

      Cat wasn’t going to say what she was thinking. It wasn’t the sort of thing you said to an eighty-five-year-old woman on her way to surgery the next morning. So Cat had made noncommital noises that could be construed as agreement.

      “Couldn’t be bothered to stay and see

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