The Cat Sitter's Whiskers (12 page)

Well, at some point, standing there thinking all those soapy thoughts with a frothy mix of shampoo and tears streaming down my cheeks, I caught a glimpse of Ella watching me quietly from her spot on the mat and realized I must have looked like a blubbering idiot, so I turned off the water and dried off as quickly as possible.

With the corner of my towel, I wiped the steam away from the mirror and parted my hair to check out my injury. It had gone down a bit, which was good, except now it looked like an angry nipple on the top of my head, or maybe a bite from one of those giant mosquitoes they're always talking about on the Nature Channel.

Ella rolled over on her side next to my feet and stretched herself out full-length as she lapped gently at the water droplets on my toes.

I said, “You know, you're lucky you don't have to be a human and deal with all the crap that comes with it. If I were you I'd be the happiest girl in the world. All you have to do is lie around and be cute.”

She squinted her eyes and yawned, as if to suggest that it was, in fact, a pretty good life.

I padded naked into the bedroom and collapsed like a sack of grapefruit on the bed. There's a long high window along the back wall of my bedroom, and when the weather's warm, which is pretty much all year long, I keep it open so I can hear the ocean. Ella hopped up on the bed next to me and nuzzled her face against my cheek, and for the first time all day I felt safe and normal. I hugged her and gave her a kiss on the nose, a kind of thank-you for hanging out with me a while longer, and at that moment I made a decision.

I'd probably never know for certain what had happened to me at the Kellers' house, and furthermore, it probably didn't matter. I couldn't very well go back in time and change it, so the only thing I could do was forget about the whole thing.

But I couldn't forget about Levi.

Ella had scrunched herself up under my arm with her neck stretched across mine and her nose just under my chin. I lay there listening to the sound of her soft purrs mixed with the distant crash of the waves down below, and eventually I fell into a deep sleep.

I dreamed I was sitting on a beach chair in the middle of a tiny island, wearing a chocolate-brown full-length fur coat with my hair pulled back in a French braid. I knew I was dreaming right away because, one, I wouldn't wear a fur coat to save my life, and two, I was surrounded by about a hundred little hermit crabs, all sitting in their own tiny beach chairs and reading their own tiny newspapers.

I've been known to have some pretty wacky dreams, but I figured this was just my dream guide's way of making up for the lousy day I'd had so far. She probably thought I'd enjoy lounging around on a tropical island in a fur coat, and for now I didn't feel like arguing with her about the politics of fur, especially since the beach was pretty and the breeze felt so warm and relaxing. I leaned back in my chair and pressed my toes into the soft sand, waiting for whatever ridiculous gift she had in store for me next.

But then while I was waiting, the breeze picked up a bit and a couple of stray hairs dislodged themselves from my French braid. I reached up to smooth them back, and as my fingers played across the bump on my head, I felt a little jolt of pain.

Wait a minute,
I thought to myself.
If this is a dream, why the hell does my head still hurt?
I looked around the island for my dream guide as I whispered, “This
is
a dream, right?”

 

14

The next thing I knew, my clock radio was blaring at me from my bedside table, and the song it was playing transported me right back to high school and Mrs. White's history class. At the start of every week, she'd serenade us with her own enthusiastic rendition of “Manic Monday” by the Bangles as she handed out our assignments for the day. We'd all groan and cover our ears, but we loved it.

I rolled over and smacked the snooze button with the palm of my hand and collapsed back down in bed. I don't take weekends off, so Mondays don't usually feel much different from any other day, but
manic
was as good a word as any for how my day had gone so far.

Apparently my nap had been pretty manic, too, because I'd thrashed around so much the blankets were wrapped around me like a straitjacket. I hadn't woken up enough yet to summon the energy to wriggle out of them, so instead I felt around for Ella, but she wasn't there.

“Kitty cat?”

I raised my head off the pillow and froze.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the outline of a man standing in the open doorway of my bedroom.

It's astonishing how fast the mind works. In less than a fraction of a second, all kinds of thoughts went zooming around inside my head, including a series of words that appeared like flash cards on a projection screen in front of me.

The first word was
STUPID
. Here I'd been wondering all morning if I'd been attacked or followed, and yet I hadn't bothered to lock the door when I got home.

The second word was
SCREAM
, which was funny because I'm not really a screamer. I'm more likely to deploy the rodent defense—completely still and quiet—but in this situation, alone in my apartment with a strange man not five feet from the foot of my bed, it didn't seem like such a bad idea.

The last word was
GUN.

When I retired from the sheriff's department, I also retired my department-issue firearm, which I left on Sergeant Owens's desk along with my five-point deputy's badge. But like most officers, I kept a backup, and I still have mine: a Smith & Wesson .38 Special revolver. I store it in a velvet-lined case next to Todd's 9mm Glock, which hasn't been touched since he was killed. That case was right now directly underneath me in the hidden side drawer built into my bed.

Without even turning to look at the man standing in the doorway, I tried to calculate the odds of getting to my gun before he could get to me. Luckily, it would have been impossible.

The man whispered, “Dixie?”

My jaw dropped open.

He said, “Damn, babe. You must have been sound asleep.”

As calmly as possible, I said, “Ethan, are you freakin' kidding me?”

He clapped his hands together like a prayer boy. “Sorry! I knocked first and called out, too … didn't you hear me?”

I sat up in bed, grabbing the sheet around me. “You nearly scared me to death!”

He leaned his shoulder against the doorway and raised one eyebrow. “Oh, really? Well, I guess that makes us even.”

Ethan's ancestry is Seminole Indian. You can tell right away by his jet-black hair, which just barely brushes the top of his broad shoulders. He's in his early forties, tall, with eyes the color of dark brown coffee and eyelashes so thick you want to roll around in them. He was wearing dark pin-striped trousers, a crisp white button-down, amber cuff links, and a pale, rose-hued tie.

I don't know why, but the b-word is a little hard for me to wrap my mind around.
Partner
isn't good, either, it sounds like we're running a business together.
Beau
sounds too old-fashioned, and
life mate
just sounds ridiculous. Maybe it's because, in the grand scheme of things, Ethan and I haven't been “together” that long. And I say “together” in quotation marks because that somehow makes it easier.

You may have figured out by now that I have a few hang-ups about relationships, but anybody who knows me knows that the fact I'm even able to own up to it is a step in the right direction, especially considering my life with Todd … well, it was supposed to be forever.

Growing up, I completely bought into all the stuff we teach little girls about relationships and storybook love and romance. In fact, I swallowed the whole thing hook, line, and sinker—that every princess gets her prince, every beauty gets her beast, and every lady gets her tramp. And then, once you've got the date set, the dress picked, and the rings exchanged, it's all raindrops and roses and whiskers on kittens until the end of time. I guess I wasn't listening too good when the minister said “until death do you part.”

I know. I sound like a reclusive old cynic.

I'm actually not, at least not most of the time, but after Todd was taken from me, I wondered if love was real, if there truly was such a thing as “happily ever after,” and even if there was, I didn't think I'd ever find room enough in my heart for anyone else. It took me years to realize that love is eternal even if people aren't, and finding new love doesn't change that. There's always room for more love.

Whether he knows it or not, Ethan is one of the people who taught me that lesson, so I try to keep my reclusive tendencies under control when it comes to him. Although, judging by the look on his face now, I could tell I hadn't done a very good job today, so I did what any mature person in my situation would have done: I tried to change the subject.

“Ethan, ever hear of a thing called a telephone?”

He cocked his head to one side. “Oh, really? So you're saying I should have called you?”

I nodded, but already there was a tone in his voice I didn't like one bit.

“So you're saying we should maybe call every once in a while to let each other know where we are?”

I nodded again, this time a little less emphatically. Ethan's an attorney. He runs his own firm, Crane and Sons, which he inherited from his grandfather. He's good at his job, and he handles a lot of big clients around here, not to mention a lot of the Key's most wealthy residents. He knows how to argue a case, so I could already tell I was done for. There was another problem, too: Ethan is drop-dead, holy smokes, seratonin-inducing gorgeous, so I tend to get a little dumb in his presence.

I muttered halfheartedly, “Yes. Yes, I am.”

“Uh-huh. So, you think if something happens that isn't on the regular schedule, something out of the ordinary, we should give each other a heads-up? Something like that?”

I sighed. “Okay, who told you?”

He folded his arms over his chest. “Told me what?”

“You know damn well. Who was it?”

He smirked. “I'm not revealing my sources—let's just say it's a good thing I stopped by the diner.”

I stood up and wrapped the sheet around me. I was still thinking I might be able to get away with changing the subject. “That Judy! Can you believe what a blabbermouth she is? She can spread gossip faster than … faster than a…”

I looked at Ethan but the smile on his face had fallen away.

I knew he was right.

When a girl has a
b
-word and something unusual happens, it's normal behavior for that girl to call her
b
-word right away. Like, say for instance, that girl faints and hits her head so hard she sees things, or maybe she even gets bonked on top of the head by a masked intruder and has to call the police. Or maybe she discovers a dead body. Or maybe she's accused of murder. These are all things that might make a normal girl think,
Hey, you know what? I'll give my
b
-word a call. I'll bet he'd be interested in all this
.

I knew I should have called him the moment I woke up in the Kellers' laundry room, but I didn't … and I can't really explain why. I don't mean to shut him out. It's not something I do intentionally. It's just that having a partner in life still feels relatively new, not to mention relatively surreal and bizarre and ridiculous and I don't know what else.

But none of that mattered, because right this very minute Ethan was boring a hole into my soul with his dreamy, heart-stopping, hurt-puppy eyes.

I melted.

“Ethan, I swear I meant to call you as soon as it happened, but then the day got away from me and I had to talk to the police and then I was running late for the rest of the day … and I just didn't want you to worry about me.”

As I was talking, I followed his gaze to the top of my head, and when he saw the bump there he shuddered. “Oh, no.”

Before I could say a word he had wrapped his arms around me and I fell into his body. We just stood there for a full minute at least, saying nothing. I could feel his chest rising and falling against mine, and with every breath it felt like my batteries were recharging. Finally, after I felt more or less like myself again, I said, “How are you?”

He chuckled. “I'm good, thanks. You?”

I sighed and hugged him a little tighter. “I'm good … now.”

“Huh. You could have felt like this hours ago if you'd called me sooner.”

I pulled back and looked him in the eyes. “I'm sorry. I'm not a very good
g
-word, am I?”

“Not really, but I'll manage.” He reached up and carefully parted my hair to the side. “How bad does it hurt?”

“Not much.”

“It looks pretty gnarly.”

“It's actually gone down a little. You should have seen it before.”

“I'm glad I didn't.”

Just then, Ella came curling around my ankles and squeezed herself between us, pausing with one paw on my foot and another on Ethan's, and then looked up at us with a high-pitched,
“Mrrrrap!”

Ethan kissed me on the forehead. “I guess it's pointless to suggest you see a doctor.”

“I already made the appointment.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Just pretend.”

He whispered, “Come here.”

Our lips touched, and I felt a flood of warmth spread through my entire body. In fact, I felt downright woozy. I was thinking I could stand there kissing him for the rest of the day if not for all eternity, and then it hit me.

My cell phone!

Ethan looked a little woozy himself. “What?”

“I just remembered—Mrs. Keller called this morning.”

He frowned. “So?”

I pulled away and glanced around for my cell phone. “So I should listen to her message. It's been such a crazy day I forgot all about it.”