Great. Now they were uncomfortable with each other. It wasn’t like they were living together or anything.
“It was just the wine, Cash. Wine and pain meds are a bad mix. We’re fine. Don’t even worry your fool head about it.” Rox touched his shoulder with just her fingertips. “You did make me laugh, though.”
A smile curved his lips, and his head bounced a little bit as he chuckled ruefully. “There is that.”
SEDUCTION
Two days later, Rox returned from a quick trip to the grocery store and the wine shop because they were killing at least a bottle every night, almost like they were daring each other to use drunkenness as an excuse, or maybe that was Rox’s wishful thinking. More bottles seemed to go missing. She suspected the cats.
She carried the bags into the living room and turned right for the kitchen, through the dining room, calling, “Cash? Where’d you go?”
No answer.
“Here, kitty-kitty-kitty!” she called.
Nothing.
Not a puff of breath in the house.
Visions assailed her: Cash slipping and falling somewhere, maybe still too sore to catch himself, maybe hitting his head, or maybe something internal had torn because they had actually botched the surgery and he had bled out internally, and he was dead and the cats were eating his dead body.
She had no illusions that her cats would stand guard over his corpse. Cats know when your soul has fled and there’s nothing left but the kind of barbecue that takes a secret sauce and pairs well with fried green tomatoes.
“Cash? Cats? Cats!” She walked into the kitchen.
The three cats were lined up like circus-performing lions on the barstools.
Cash was standing on the other side of the breakfast bar, a thin slice of turkey dangling from his fingers.
She asked, “Are you feeding them lunch meat?”
“Um,” Cash said, and he withdrew his hand. Pirate took a swat at the turkey but missed because he had no depth perception, with only one eye.
White paper sat on the counter, flopped open.
Rox set the clinking bag of wine bottles on the counter and craned her neck to look at it. “Are you feeding them Boar’s Head Maple Roasted Turkey?”
“No,” Cash said.
Midnight licked the black fur around his lips over and over, obviously sucking up the last of the turkey juice.
She said, “You totally are.”
Cash threw the piece that he was holding to Speedbump, who snagged it out of the air and ate it off his claws. “They looked hungry.”
“They each have their own bowl of kibble in my room. The scientifically formulated for optimal cat nutrition kind of kibble.”
“Cats eat birds.” He was starting to grin. “It’s their natural food in the wild. It’s even better for them than kibble.”
“Cats do not eat maple-roasted turkeys in the wild.”
“They would if they could catch them.”
“Sadly, the elusive maple-roasted turkey is endangered in this part of California. Gimme that.” She made a grab for the meat, but Cash plucked it out of her reach.
Pirate jumped down from the chair, sauntered around the counter, and walked right the hell past Rox without a glance to rub on Cash’s leg.
“Traitor,” she told him.
Cash’s grin was so big that the bandage on his cheek was in danger of peeling off.
“Great,” she said. “They love you now. You seduced my cats.”
He laughed and held out a turkey slice at her eye-level. “Want to see if it works on humans?”
“I am not so easily trained, Amsberg.”
“I’ll say. It took me months to train you at work. All that chocolate worked wonders.”
“You are incorrigible, and I’m not sharing my wine with you until you learn proper manners.”
Pirate wound between them, rubbing Cash’s leg and then hers, helplessly purring and trying to get more turkey.
Speedbump yowled, and Cash walked around the breakfast bar and picked him up, scratching him around the chin for a second before he set the cat on the ground.
It occurred to Rox that Speedbump had known just what to do when he wanted to get down, and there was no way that he could have jumped up on that barstool by himself, due to his bum leg from when the car had hit him.
The four of them had been doing this every day, every time that she left.
That heartbreaker had seduced her cats just like he seduced every woman who crossed his path.
Oh, she should never, ever, ever get involved with him.
ANOTHER TRY
They sat in the living room, watching a storm outside whip the sea into gray froth. The wind battered the scrubby trees and long grass on the hill, but the house remained perfectly sturdy, silently withstanding the gale.