Speedbump and Midnight sprawled in the other beds, stretched to suck up the morning sunlight. Pirate sniffed and poked around before he settled.
Yep, three cats.
When you volunteer at an animal shelter, accidentally adopting cats is an occupational hazard.
It was a good thing that she volunteered at the no-kill shelter the next town over. They needed her help more than the local shelter, and if she had volunteered at the local shelter that euthanized a lot of their strays, Rox would have owned three hundred cats.
Hiding even these three beasts from the super could be a hassle.
Behind the cats, her living room was smothered in pearl pink velvet and lace, just how she liked it. Rose potpourri fumed flowery scent from every tabletop.
Rox might wear dark, tailored suits to work, but she went full-blown girlie-girl when it came to her own space. One of the guys she had dated last year, Robbie, had loved it, saying that it was like being invited into a lady’s bedchamber where no man had ever entered, only to ravish her.
Robbie had been fun, but it hadn’t quite worked out. They had drifted apart amicably after a few months.
She went back over to the little table by the entryway and called goodbye to her cats as she fished around her purse for her keys. They thumped their tails, ready for their fully booked day of eating and sleeping while she earned the money for the kibble and cat litter.
Just before Rox left, she slipped on the wedding ring set that had been lying in a blue bowl on the table beside a larger bowl of lemons and oranges. The cubic zirconia glittered in a stray sunlight shaft, and the thin gold plating shone.
She had bought the rings for herself during her lunch break on her first day of working at Arbeitman, Silverman, and Amsberg, after hearing that Cash Amsberg the Heartbreaking Superman was repelled not by kryptonite, but by diamonds.
Cash might be a maleslut, but he didn’t touch married women. He didn’t even flirt with them. It was like he shut it all down. His flirting with Rox was just friendly banter, like girls do with their gay guy friends. It’s just all in good fun.
He didn’t mean anything by it.
She didn’t want to have her heart broken like all the other women in the office. They had all assured her that Cash would come for her and that she would love every minute of it, until suddenly, he wasn’t there anymore.
Rox fell apart when people left her like that, like they didn’t give a crap about her and just walked into oblivion.
She wasn’t going to go through that again.
And so, since her husband “Grant Neil” had not existed, Rox had invented him.
She had assured Cash and anyone else who would listen, yes, she was married. Her husband was a stuntman for several of the television studios, but he wanted to get into screenwriting and directing. He did a little modeling on the side. And maybe his music would take off for him.
So, yeah, “Grant” was a ridiculous mashup of all the Hollywood wannabe clichés and thus utterly believable. No one had even questioned his existence for three whole years.
Despite the fact that no one had ever seen him.
A friend of hers, an agent, had found a suitable headshot of a hot model/stuntman for Rox to use.
Really hot.
You could see ripply abs under his tight, black tee shirt. She had folded under his real name, Lancaster Knox, and wedged it into a frame for her desk.
Rox liked to stare at pretend-Grant and imagine that he was, indeed, her lawfully wedded husband. Sometimes she drooled.
And for three years, Cash hadn’t turned that sexy glower on her.
Yeah, thank goodness. She certainly didn’t want the hot, ripped British lawyer coming on to her.
She slid the cheap rings onto her left hand, scratched her cats on the head one last time, and opened the front door to leave the apartment.
Three cats.
She was twenty-seven and unmarried, not even dating anyone, and enmeshed in a workaholic office so she couldn’t even meet any guys who might be prospects.
Yep, it was official.
At what point had Rox turned into a crazy cat lady?
She was pivoting on her heel away from her door as it was slamming toward her, when a piece of paper taped under the door’s knocker fluttered in the breeze.
The two words at the top, bold and in all-caps, read: EVICTION NOTICE.
Oh, shit.
A box was bolted over the doorknob.
If that door shut, she couldn’t get back in.
Her cats.
Rox kicked the crap out of the swinging door. It banged back against the wall, and she threw herself through the doorway.
The door bounced and punched her in the arm, but she shoved it and rolled inside before it could slam shut.
The door closed, but she was inside the apartment.
She sat up, panting.
Her three cats looked over at her from their beds, vaguely amused at her antics. Pirate yawned, showing three long fangs.