What’s New Pussycat(6)
So maybe the person who’d dumped her in the cat carrier thought she could help them? Maybe her kidnapper thought she could break this curse they were fretting over?
Hah.
Fat lot of good she’d do them.
“Buuut…” JC said, looking like she was going to attempt to inject sunshine into a very dismal story. “The story has a happy ending. Max’s grandparents saved the day, and now everyone who was shunned lives here in Cedar Glen. Okay, there are some kinks in that happy ending, if I’m being fair, but so far, everyone’s been pretty great.”
Aha. Kinks. That was likely the key word here.
As everyone grew silent, Martine’s stomach began to roll. She hadn’t eaten in hours and there was so much to digest she felt dizzy from it. Curses and kinks and dogs and humans and death-sex.
Derrick finally rose, giving her a brief glance with those hard eyes before he said, “So where do we go from here? Maybe we should call Aunt Eva for advice?”
Max reached for his cellphone on the coffee table and held it up. “Nat just texted me. She’s gone again. You know her, she rolls on in here on chicken noodle soup night, whips up her crazy, and then she’s out until the next mate call.”
JC looked at Martine again and winked. “Nat is Derrick and Max’s younger sister. They have two. And a mother who’s an amazing cook. You’ll like them.”
The mention of food was her tipping point. Martine couldn’t stop the turning roll of her stomach. She heaved a long moment and then coughed, opening her mouth wide.
Martine gagged and finally relieved her throat of the ball lodged in it since some lunatic had stuffed her into that cage.
A round hairball lay at her feet.
Ick.
But phew, that was better.
Chapter Three
Derrick deposited her, cat carrier and all, on his kitchen counter, popping the grate door open with a lean finger. “So here’s the deal. I’m thinking you might be stuck in shift due to nerves. I don’t want you to be upset or feel pressured in any way. Take your time to adjust, and then we’ll start figuring this out. While you catch your breath, I’ll find you some water and maybe once your stomach’s settled, you’ll feel better.”
If nothing else, at least he was trying to work this out. After his explanation, and if what he said were true, he was in as much of a jam as she was.
Poking her head out of the cage, she sniffed the air and assessed the lay of Derrick’s land. It wasn’t an apartment in Manhattan; there were no sirens blaring, no horns squawking. In fact, it was pretty damn quiet.
Too quiet.
But in Derrick’s favor, the house was really tastefully decorated--for a man. Lots of big, overstuffed furniture in sedate beige hues with touches of lemon and green for accents. The walls were taupe and gray with splashes of color in the way of framed art; the appliances shiny; the kitchen cabinets whitewashed and clean, with a wire basket of fake lemons and green pears in the middle of the large island.
An entire wall was devoted to what she suspected were family pictures framed in black. Derrick laughing with his arm around another man holding a rabbit. Derrick with his arms around two beautiful girls who vaguely resembled him. Derrick and Max, their shirts off, throwing a football.
To his credit, there were no deer heads hanging from the walls or crushed beer cans strewn across the floor in a puddle of chew, and not one dead squirrel freeze-dried in its “natural” repose, nibbling on an acorn and mounted to a slab of wood.
As Derrick filled a bowl full of water for her, Martine decided to explore. Hopping from the cage, she stretched from neck to toe before jumping off the counter and onto the hardwood floor. The sunlight streaming in from all corners of the breakfast nook was divine. She made a mental note to nap there as soon as possible.
She liked the smell here in Derrick’s house. It smelled of pine and the outdoors, brawny man and the woods. Making her way down a long hall, she found several bedrooms, all as well decorated as his living room and kitchen.
She stopped at what she decided was his bedroom, filled with an enormous bed big enough to fit a man of his size, covered in a dark green comforter with plump red pillows and a window with a view of the pine trees surrounding his house.
Slipping inside Derrick’s bedroom felt a little intimate at this point, but if he was talking mercy mating, surely he wouldn’t mind if she took a peek at where the death-sex was supposed to happen.
His bathroom was what dreams were made of, an enormous white tub with jets and a big-screen TV, a mocha and gray tiled shower with two showerheads, and a bench seat where you could sit under the spray fo the water.
She’d missed taking showers—long, hot showers full of sweetly scented shower gel to wash away a long hard day.