Chapter Seven

THREE hours gone. Mac checked the cuckoo clock in Mildred’s dining room as she lugged the bag of litter through to the laundry room. Three more hours that she was going to have to spend in Jared’s company. For so long she’d tried to forget about the guy and now here he was, staring her in the face.

Testing her resolve.

Why’d there have to be kittens? Why’d she have to care that there were kittens? Why couldn’t Jared have broken the other leg instead so he could drive himself and the kittens to the vet without her?

Why’d he have to be so endearingly inept when it came to kittens?

Karma. The universe was paying her back for outplaying her brothers at poker.

She slid the heavy bag the last five feet, praying there wasn’t a loose floorboard or rogue splinter on the hardwood, but she just couldn’t carry this thing any farther.

She made it into the laundry room and propped the bag in the corner, then wiped her forehead and headed back out to get the litter box. Three litter boxes, actually. Dr. Bingham had suggested they get two full-sized ones for when the kittens got bigger, since they could be finicky about their toileting habits, and one low-rise one for them to use until they were big enough to climb into the others.

She put the litter-catch mat down, then set the boxes on it like a row of kitty townhouses. Sadly, there was very little room to do the laundry now. But since Jared was the only one staying here, how much laundry could he have?

Unless he has someone stay over.

She wasn’t going there. Jared’s love life was not something she wanted to think about.

“You need help in there?”

Why did he persist in asking if she needed help? Did he still see her as Liam’s kid sister who needed rescuing every time he was around?

If he only knew that he was the reason she’d been such a mess back then. She hadn’t been able to think straight when he showed up.

If she could tell Mac-Then what Mac-Now knew, this situation would be a lot different.

But hindsight didn’t do her one iota of good. Speaking of . . . “No, I’m good.” And she would be if she didn’t keep picturing the concentration on his face when Dr. Bingham had been teaching him what to do. Or if his gaze hadn’t darted to the kittens every couple of seconds. Or if he hadn’t snuck in some quick petting when he’d thought she wasn’t looking.

She’d been so used to Jared tormenting her that she’d rarely seen this tender side of him.

He was standing beside the sink when she walked back into the kitchen, exactly the spot she needed to go.

She was starting to get the warm-and-fuzzies for him. All on account of those darn kittens. Oldest trick in the book.

But Jared never played by the book. And he certainly wasn’t playing now. He’d made his disdain for her very clear on more than one occasion. Those warm-and-fuzzies were solely figments of her imagination.

Mac strode over, turned on the faucet, and squirted some soap onto her hands to wash the litter off. “What’d you do with them?”

Keep the conversation on the kittens. That was a safe subject.

Then again, she’d thought heading upstairs earlier would be safe, given that Jared was injured, so that showed what she knew. Kittens, kisses . . .

Great. Now she was thinking about that kiss again.

She caught herself looking at his lips.

Then she caught him catching her looking at his lips.

Those lips twisted into a smile. “What do you want me to do with them?”

He wasn’t talking about kittens.

And she didn’t like that he was laughing at her. Oh, not outright, but it was there. She knew because she’d been the recipient of his mocking laughter too many times not to know it when she saw it.

Well she was a big girl now and no longer love-struck. She could give as well as she got.

She leaned closer. Licked her lips. Let him think what he wanted about that. “What should you do with them?” She flicked her tongue over her lips again and lowered her voice almost to a purr. “Feed them.” She tilted her head up. “Cuddle them.” She nodded him closer. “Pet them.”

He sucked in a deep breath.

She was trying so hard not to smile as she leaned even closer and whispered, “Then put their butts in the litter box.”

She shook the water from her hands and refrained from tossing her ponytail over her shoulder, but she glanced at him as she walked out of the room. Let him see what it felt like to want. She knew all about it.

*   *   *

IT took Jared a couple of seconds to get his breathing back in gear. Teasing him like that . . .

He’d thought she was over her crush, but then he’d caught her looking at his lips and, well, he’d looked at hers.

And remembered what they’d tasted like.

He shouldn’t have kissed her. He should have kept his damn curiosity to himself and used the childhood memories of her as a shield.

“Uh, Jared?” Mac called down from upstairs. “The kittens need you.”

He exhaled. The kittens were mewing.

“I hear them.” He shoved himself off the counter, stuck a crutch under each arm, and headed into the front room.

The kittens hadn’t waited for the litter box.

Man, what was in that formula?

He decided against picking up the hat box, worried that the now-wet bottom would fall out, and instead picked up each kitten, gathered the hem of his shirt, and stuck it in his mouth, using it as a basket. Unfortunately, it gave him a way-too-up-close-and-personal experience with the kittens’ messy paws as he headed back into the kitchen with a shirt that was now toast.

Back at the sink—a big farmhouse style one with sides as high as skyscrapers to these little guys—Jared set each one on paper towels he layered over the porcelain. It wasn’t the most hygienic place to put them, but then hygiene had pretty much flown out the window since Mac had found them.

He was going to have to wash these little things. He sure hoped kittens were bathe-able.

Then the gray one slugged his white brother over the head, leaving behind a very distinctive—and stinky—paw print on his brother’s pristine fur, so they were going to be bathe-able whether they liked it or not.

He hiked his own ruined shirt over his head and used it to line the sink.

The little curiosity-seekers were inspecting the walls of their temporary home, leaving tiny, not-so-nice paw prints all over the place. They weren’t very steady on their legs; the vet had said that’d come with age and she’d guessed these were about three to four weeks old. They’d been well fed, so the mother had probably had her accident last night at the latest. There was a plus in there somewhere for Jared; at least the kittens weren’t hovering on the edge of starvation for him to bring back to life, but the downside was that he still had to keep them alive.

The black one, however, was hovering on the edge of the sink.

Jared plucked him—her, actually—off the rim and set her back into the middle of the sink, then turned on the water to let the bathing commence—

Holy hell! Four kittens moved faster than he’d ever thought they could, each one scrambling to get out of the sink. The black one actually made it this time and was heading over the edge, right to the floor.

Jared scooped her up, then rounded up the others, hugging them to his chest as they clawed their way up under his chin, leaving little bloody claw marks the entire way.

“That’s a good look on you.”

Of course Mac would be standing in the doorway, witnessing him at his worst. He didn’t have a leg to stand on in that department—oops. Not a good cliché to use.

“What’d you do? Try to bathe them?”

“Considering I’m as wet as they are, I think that’s self-explanatory.” He jostled them in his arms to keep the calico from making its way over his shoulder.

“Don’t you know cats don’t like water?”

“No. I don’t. I never had any as pets before.”

The white one made it onto his other shoulder and the gray one had chosen now to decide to keep up with its brothers’ and sister’s bravery as it tried to jump back into the sink. Damn, their claws might be tiny, but those suckers could draw blood.

His crutches went clattering to the floor as he tried to keep all the kittens in one place.

That didn’t work and, of course, he lost his balance.

If Mac hadn’t caught him, he would have broken his tailbone in addition to his other injuries when he landed.

As it was, he slid down Mac’s body—something he was not going to think about—and those injuries got a reprieve before he hit the floor.

Who knew five-foot-two could be such a long way down?

“You want to get off me, please?” Mac sounded out of breath.

Hmmm, he liked having her under him. Preferably under other circumstances, but right now, just for a second, he allowed himself to feel Mac against him.

Liam’s little sister had definitely grown up.

Okay, time to get off her. For both their sakes.

He sucked in a big breath, set the kittens onto the floor, and managed to roll off of her and not onto them.

He sucked in another big breath to mitigate sore-rib pain. “Sorry about that. And thanks for the catch.”

Mac stood and brushed off her thighs. Thighs that were now eye level for him. “You’re welcome.” She held out a hand. “Need some help getting up?”

No. He didn’t. Not one bit.

Jesus.

Jared plunked a cat onto his lap to hide the evidence. Nothing like kitten claws to get the guy to go into hibernation. Which is where “he” needed to stay around Mac, for God’s sake.

“Not that I don’t appreciate the offer, but it’s probably a better idea if I get up on my own.”

He slid the kitten to the floor as he turned onto his side, the little thing’s claws pretty much finishing the job of sending his dick back into hiding, and struggled to schlep himself onto a chair.

Mac scooped the kittens off the floor, catching the calico before it crawled through the gap in the kickboard. “So, I guess you need some help with the bathing process.”

It took him a second to realize she was referring to the kittens’ bathing process, but that one second was enough to get the full-on image of Mac in the shower. With him. And soap. And water. And steam—the water variety and other kinds.

Hell. “Uh, yeah. Not sure how I can corral four kittens with two hands.” Though at least it’d keep his hands busy so they wouldn’t be tempted to stray toward her.

Except . . . they already were tempted.

Jesus. He’d never been this hyper-aware around Camille. Why was he around Mac of all people?

“Okay, so you get the water lukewarm while I keep them busy over here. Probably best to put only a little water in the sink and let them get used to it.” She held the kittens as if they were a pack of stuffed toy animals—all sitting in her arms as if they hadn’t just knocked him off his feet. The little heathens.

They did flinch when he turned the water on, but he quickly turned the stream down to almost a trickle. “This is going to take a while to fill.”

Mac shrugged. “So we wait. I’m already three hours behind; what’s another?”

“Got a hot date you have to get to?”

She raised her eyebrow. “It’s Tuesday. Middle of the day. How many hot dates have you been on at that time? Wait.” She held up her hand. “I don’t want to know. You and Bryan don’t have normal lives like the rest of us, and I’ve heard his stories too many times to want to hear them from you, too. Let’s just go with, if I have a hot date, it’s usually on a Saturday night after I’ve recovered from the week.”

“So do you have a hot date this Saturday?”

“Why do you care?”

Yeah, why did he? “I don’t. I mean, it was just conversation.”

“So is ‘what did you have for breakfast today,’ but that wasn’t what you picked to go with.”

“Geez, Mac, give it a rest, will ya? Don’t you ever get tired of carrying all that armor around all the time?” He plucked a kitten from her arms—the one in the crook because he wasn’t going for either of the two in the middle that were right over her breasts.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jared.” She handed him the gray kitten when the white one started to mew. “Here. They don’t like to be separated.”

He jostled the little thing that was practically hopping out of his hand to get to his brother. Her brother. Sister. Whatever. At some point he should probably come up with names for these things so he’d know which one was what gender. There was one female in the bunch—and that was just fine with him. One female was all he could handle these days. And given that Mac was bristling at his question, one was more than enough.

“Your armor. Or maybe you prefer the chip on your shoulder? Don’t you ever get tired of carrying it around? Why not let it go? Even for a little while?”

She almost dropped the last kitten. Luckily, her sense of kitty-preservation kicked in and she was able to catch the little thing before it splattered on the floor. “Chip? I do not have a chip on my shoulder.”

“Oh, right. It’s normal for everyone to go around snarling at an old family friend.”

“An old family friend, huh?” She set the last kitten in the sink. Their mewling stopped the minute they were all together. “Funny you call yourself that, Jared, when you weren’t friends with the whole family.”

He leaned a hip against the sink and braced a hand on the edge. “Mac, we were kids. At some point you have to move on.”

“Move on—” She tossed the dishtowel she’d just taken from the drawer in his face. “Don’t flatter yourself, Jared. I’ve moved on from that stupid crush I had on you. A long time ago.”

Which she proved by storming through the doorway and leaving him with a cache of now-crying kittens.

Now crying wet kittens.

Who were trying to claw their way out of the sink via his forearm.

He took a deep breath and redirected his anger. It wasn’t the kittens’ fault that she’d left them at his mercy. And it wasn’t their fault he didn’t know what to do with them. It was whoever’d been driving the car that’d killed their mother, that’s whose fault it was.

And, like with Camille and Burke, assigning blame didn’t make him feel any better or make the situation any different. So he sucked it up and put the discussion with Mac on the back burner for after the kittens were washed.

And dried.

And fed.

And litter-boxed.

God, he hoped they’d sleep through the night.

Because with Mac’s anger still lingering in the air—and the sight of her backside in those figure-hugging pants as she walked out—he wasn’t sure he was going to.