Talk This Way. Dakota Cassidy

fitting blue T-shirt she wore.

      In that moment, he realized how beautiful she was, with her creamy skin, full, peachy lips and bright, almond-shaped eyes. He’d never taken the time to really look at her. She was always excusing herself and rushing off somewhere when he came to visit Della.

      Cat Butler was like Mother Teresa at Oakdale. Everyone loved her. There wasn’t a patient in the connecting health-care facilities or senior in the nursing home who didn’t. She baked cupcakes when someone graduated from a wheelchair to a walker and turned it into a ceremony where she presented the lucky graduate with a certificate they could frame, and she encouraged everyone to join the party.

      She played board games and cards with all the seniors, and made sure everyone was always included. She’d brought costumes in for an impromptu costume party and organized a senior parade along the halls.

      In review, Cat was loveable, and he was an asshole. He’d overreacted to what his mother said.

      He wanted to go and apologize to her. Smooth this over; get her job back for her somehow.

      She dropped down on a bench under a tree, resting her face in her hands. It looked like her shoulders quivered while the sunlight slipped between the trees, casting shadows along her spine.

      Perfect, and you made her cry, jerk.

      He’d been a surly asshole with her from the moment he’d sat down at that table and realized she was the saintly angel from Oakdale. Since his mother’s stroke, if he listened to his sister, Adeline, he’d been an asshole period.

      It was the endless commute back and forth from his home in New York to Atlanta to see his mother each weekend and find she’d made little progress, as he tried to manage his internet-based company from two places at once, and also juggle her health care, that left him so cranky. At least he kept telling himself that.

      Not a good enough excuse, Flynn.

      He’d only egged on Cat because she’d managed to get his mother interested in something—finally. He was almost resentful. Nothing he’d bribed Della with, bartered with her for, had garnered the effect on her like Cat’s idea about those romance novels had.

      And in fairness, he’d been a little embarrassed, too. It was, after all, his mother garbling out the words, “Spank me harder!” in front of a roomful of people.

      Now he had to find a way to make this right. Cat was his mother’s favorite visitor. They’d forged this bond, this secret sort of means of communication that made Della’s face light up, even if her lips still couldn’t unite a smile with her emotional state.

      For the past three months, he’d made weekend trips to Atlanta to see his mother since she’d been admitted to Oakdale. He’d watched Cat and Della interact from afar when they were engrossed in a jigsaw puzzle, or watching a television show. He’d actually admired the ease with which Cat soothed Della when she was frustrated, by simply touching her hand, leaning in close and whispering something in her ear that settled her right down.

      Pretty Cat had all the qualifications to help heal Della that he apparently lacked.

      How was he supposed to know his mother read that kind of fiction? In fact, he’d never seen her with anything but a knitting book in her lap in all of his thirty-seven years.

      Damn, he wished Adeline were here. She’d know how to help, but she was on active duty in Afghanistan with only the occasional Skype session or phone call to ease his uncertainties.

      The last thing he wanted was for his mother to slip back into her deafening silence. If she found out he was part of the reason Cat had been fired, leaving all her Oakdale time eaten up to pound the pavement looking for work, Della would slay him with that sour look she’d perfected since her stroke.

      Flynn gripped the steering wheel while he stared at Cat’s back. Now what?

      Anything. He’d do anything to help get back his mother’s will to live. The doctors all said she was perfectly capable of becoming fully functional again. They said she had to want to fully function. Somewhere between Adeline leaving for Afghanistan and his father’s passing, Della had just lost interest in the business of living.

      When it had happened, he couldn’t pinpoint, but it was clearer each time he visited her, which made the decision to leave New York, at least temporarily, an easy one.

      The stroke had brought new focus; shed light on some underlying issues causing his mother to suffer. He’d been too blind to see them—too busy with work and his own life.

      But he was here now. He’d leased an apartment, he had wheels and he was going to make it right.

      With his mother and with Cat.

      Chapter Two

      “Cat?”

      Swiping the tears from her eyes with her thumb, Cat looked up to find one of her all-time favorite former patients at Oakdale’s Cancer Center, Landon Wells, staring down at her, his handsome face so elegant and understated, his eyes sharper than they’d been in a while.

      Landon was in his early-to-mid-thirties, she guessed. He wasn’t construction-worker hot with ripped abs, and miles of hard, tanned flesh. He was distinguished, the epitome of a Southern gentleman, with all the outward qualities the image evoked, and they’d struck up a friendship over the course of his recovery that she treasured.

      She loved his drawl, his upbeat personality, but mostly, she loved their conversations that often spanned hours as she waited for her mother to finish her therapy and he wiled away early mornings and afternoons in his recuperation from chemotherapy. He’d wheel himself along the long corridor connecting the cancer center to the nursing home specifically to find her.

      There was always something going on in his private wing as laughter spilled out into the hallways and Liberace’s music filtered softly between the chatter.

      Colorful people strolled in and out during visiting hours, and he never lacked for dozens and dozens of flower deliveries, which he always donated to the other patients’ rooms.

      When he’d found out she worked at the connecting coffee shop, he’d coaxed her—with his charming wit—into bringing him coffee every morning by telling her the coffee in-house tasted like piss-water.

      From that day on, Cat brought him his favorite cinnamon latte each morning before she stopped to see her mother and head off to work.

      Cat chuckled every time she recalled the exchange they’d had several months ago when he’d come to Oakdale and exactly five visits into their early morning, caffeine-laced affair.

      “I’m gay, just so you know.” He made mention of it like he was commenting on the weather, leaning over the edge of his wheelchair, his expensive silk pajamas pressed and crisp.

      She’d fought one of many grins he inspired. His honesty was refreshing, if not unnecessary. “I’m not. Just so you know.”

      He gave the newspaper he held a sharp snap before opening it and said, “Just keepin’ you informed. I didn’t want you to think our chats and my request to have you personally make my coffee had anything to do with unbridled lust or the desire to sweep you off your feet. I just like the way you make the swirls in my whipped cream look like puffy clouds of white perfection. There’ll be no nursing-home affair here. So don’t you go fallin’ in love with me, hear?”

      Cat had dramatically sighed, throwing a hand over her forehead while fighting a fit of laughter. “Thank goodness. I was gettin’ worried I’d have to lose a few pounds just so you could do the sweeping,” she’d joked as she rubbed her belly.

      Landon had cocked his sandy brown head full of hair, which gleamed under the bright lights of the rec room, and asked, “Are you disappointed?”

      “That I don’t have to lose a few pounds?”

      “That I’m gay.”

      “Are you disappointed