Heather had thought nothing could top Adrian’s expert skills in bed.
Until they finally wore each other out and he snuggled her close, spooning her from behind, with his arm draped over her waist, holding her breast lightly in his hand.
This, she decided sleepily, this blissed-out-in-the-afterglow cuddling, might be better than sex.
Adrian kissed the back of her neck. “If you wake up before me, check to be sure I’m still breathing, then make yourself at home.”
“Unlikely that I’ll wake up before you do.” She sighed. “I may sleep till noon.”
A second later, she heard his breathing slow and deepen. She smiled to herself and fell asleep, feeling protected and cared for and maybe even just a little bit loved.
She woke the next morning to the scents of coffee and clean laundry. “Coffee on the bedside table.” He dropped her clean folded clothes on the bed beside her.
He was already fully dressed in khaki-green cargo shorts and a black T-shirt with a fleur-de-lis logo from the Three-Legged Dog Bar & Grill. His hair was still damp from a shower. “We can hit Riccobono’s for breakfast on our way to pick up that dog, unless you’d prefer beignets at the Café Du Monde.”
All this food talk was making her hungry. “What if I want it all?”
He grinned. “Darlin’, if you want it all, I’ll make sure you get it all.”
“And yet,” she said with a pout, “you are standing there with all your clothes on.” She rocked forward onto her hands and knees and looked down. “Shoes too.”
He smacked her backside. “Get dressed. I will be waiting for you on the balcony.”
She showered and dressed in under ten minutes, then found Adrian leaning on the balcony, looking out over the river. She came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist.
He turned and gave her a coffee-flavored kiss. “Hey, you.” With his back against the railing, he spread his legs wide and brought her hips up to his, linking his hands at the small of her back. “Reva called while you were in the shower. All is well; the kids had a good night, and she just got back from dropping them off at school.”
“That’s good to hear. Thank you.”
“She also said that we can’t get that dog until noon.”
“Why?” It almost seemed like Reva was somehow colluding with that vet’s office to manufacture reasons for Heather and Adrian to spend more time together.
“They want to give him a bath first.”
“Does it feel to you like Reva might be…I don’t know…instigating something between us on purpose?”
A slow, sexy smile grew on his face. “I don’t know, but if she is, I’ll be the first to thank her for it.” He kissed her, and this kiss held a hint of goodbye, or maybe it was just sadness that their time together—at least this time together—was ending.
Though Adrian had committed to coming to ride Charlie a couple of times a week, Heather was about to start working full-time, so even then, he’d be at her house when she’d be at the shelter. She wouldn’t see him unless they made specific plans.
He pulled away slowly and stared down at her, his deep-blue eyes somber. “Let’s go make the most of our time in the Big Easy.”
Adrian locked up, and the two of them strolled hand in hand through Crescent Park on the way to Decatur Street, where they paused often to window-shop. Heather appreciated Adrian’s patience with her. She stopped to look in the window of an antique jewelry store and pointed to a poison ring in the display. “I’ve always wanted one of those.”
“Then you should have one.” He put a hand at her waist and leaned in for a closer look. “You never know when you might need to poison someone.”
“I like the fact that it has a hidden compartment for hiding secret potions.”
“Appeals to the witch within, huh?” He kissed the side of her neck.
“Something like that.” She enjoyed the idea of intrigue, the sense of history. “Can you imagine the potential schemes and conspiracies and machinations that might have caused someone to need a ring they could fill with poison?”
“I dread to think.”
She smirked at him. “I’m a little worried about your lack of imagination.” Clearly, he had never read a Gothic romance novel.
She turned to go, but he held her back. “Let’s go inside.”
“I wasn’t serious about wanting one of those rings.” She’d never had the time or the money for anything so frivolous and unnecessary, no matter how intriguing it might be. “I don’t need anything in there.”
“I think you do.” With both hands on her hips, he steered her through the store’s open doorway and waved to the store’s proprietors, a couple of gray-haired men sitting at the far end of the shop behind a counter. “She’d like to try on a ring we saw in the window.”
“I really don’t need a ring,” she protested.
One of the men came out from behind the counter. “Which one do y’all want to see?”
“The gold poison ring with the blue stone.”
The man unlocked the door to the window case and placed the ring in Heather’s palm. “This blue sapphire ring is from the early Victorian era, eighteen-karat gold.”
She slipped the ring on her finger. It fit perfectly. And she had to admit, it was pretty. But… She took it off and held it out to the shopkeeper. “Thank you for letting me try it on, but I don’t need a ring.”
The man took the ring back, his lips pursed with displeasure over being made to indulge a tourist who had nothing better to do than try on a ring she never intended to buy.
Adrian handed out a credit card. “We’ll take it.”
While the man toddled off to ring up the sale, Adrian wrapped his arms around Heather from behind and whispered in her ear. “It fits. Reva would say that’s a sign from God.”
“Somehow,” she whispered back, “I don’t think God interferes in jewelry purchases.” But when Adrian slipped the ring onto her finger right before they left the store, she had to admit she was glad he’d insisted on buying it for her. Now, no matter what happened between them going forward, she would have a lasting memento of their time together.
***
After café au lait and beignets at the Café Du Monde, Adrian and Heather walked around Jackson Square toward St. Louis Cathedral. He noticed her glance into a couple of shop windows, but she didn’t pause for a closer inspection. “Why aren’t you stopping to look? We have plenty of time.”
“I’d like to window-shop,” she said, “but now I’m afraid you might decide to buy something else for me.”
He put a hand over his heart. “I swear, I won’t buy anything else for you today.”
“Thank you.” She dragged him toward a toy shop on the square. “Because I really want to go in here.” The two window displays that flanked the old-fashioned wood-and-glass door were filled with the kind of dolls whose staring glass eyes had the power to keep people up at night.
“Those dolls are kind of creepy.”
“You can wait outside if you’re scared.”
Actually, he kind of was. “I’ll wait here.” He pointed to a bench outside the store.
She smirked at him. “Scaredy-cat.”
“I am pretty sure that at least half of those dolls come to life at night, and the other half probably bite without warning. But you go ahead and have fun.”
He released her hand and backed away, waving as if it might be the last time he saw her. “If you don’t come out in half an hour, I’ll come in after you. But I’ve gotta say, I won’t be holding out much hope of your survival.”
She stuck her tongue out at him. “I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”
He sat on the bench between the shops and the pop-up art displays outside the Cathedral Park’s fence. He checked his texts and sent replies, then waded through emails.
He’d been very bad at checking in on clients, especially considering it was the middle of the week. He hadn’t even looked at his phone or his laptop since yesterday morning, and now he was getting a few emails with subject lines that started with S.O.S.
He replied first to the one with the subject line of S.O.Fucking-S.
He was just hitting Send when Heather sat next to him. “I thought you said you’d come save me if I stayed longer than thirty minutes.”
“Damn.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m sorry. I got distracted.” He made a big show of checking her arms for bite marks. “Are you okay?”
She slung a fancy drawstring bag from the shop onto the bench between them. “My checking account has suffered.”
“Yeah?” He tugged at the drawstring. “If I look in there, will a zombie doll bite me?”
“I hope not because you’re my ride home. But anyway, you can’t see it. They gift-wrapped it already. It’s a ballerina fairy doll for Caroline. That means I have to find something special for Josh and Erin too.”
He stood and took her hand. “I know exactly where we need to go.”
He knew how—and where—to shop because he had two younger sisters who had moved away from New Orleans but loved to come back and stay at his loft whenever they could get away from their jobs, husbands, and kids. Hand in hand, Adrian and Heather noodled back toward his loft, zigzagging from one interesting shop to the next. She bought a stack of artisan-made bangle bracelets for Erin and an assortment of cool fossilized shells for Josh.
Just after noon, they made it to the vet’s office to pick up the three-legged dog, who had been named Bones by the vet staff. Heather paid the bill while Adrian took the dog outside for a pit stop. Bones—a handsome, mostly white Catahoula-and-American-bulldog mix with one blue eye and one brown eye—still hadn’t quite figured out the logistics of hiking to pee with only one back leg.
“Nawww,” Adrian said with a grimace. “Don’t do it that way.”
The poor dog had sidled up to a shrub to hike but was facing the wrong way, so he ended up aiming the wrong way and peeing on his front legs instead of out to the side.
You’d have thunk that peeing out past the missing back leg would have been a natural choice, but the dog—two years old by the vet’s reckoning—must have been used to hiking the leg he now had no choice but to stand on. “Dude. That ain’t right.”
Adrian led the dog over to the truck and rummaged through the thoughtfully prepared bag Reva had packed for the trip. Under the dog toys, the paper towels, the poop bags, and a baggie of dog treats, he found a packet of wet wipes. “Come here, dude. Let’s get you cleaned up.” He knelt and cleaned the dog’s front legs, then he walked over to the cleanup station outside the office and discarded the used wipe.
The dog moved awkwardly to keep up, taking a step with each front leg, then hopping up with the back leg. The unnatural gait seemed to put a lot of strain on that back leg and hip but also on the dog’s spine because it had to arch out long to accommodate the front legs’ forward steps, then hunch over with every hop of the back leg to catch up. “You’re gonna love the pool, buddy.” Swimming would enable the dog to gain some fluidity of motion and build muscle without putting so much strain on his joints.
Heather came outside, carrying a bag of dog food and another, smaller bag with medicine and paperwork. She bent to pet the dog’s head. “Ready to go home, Bones?”
The dog smiled up at Heather, his eyes half-closed with joy over being touched. But he didn’t show any recognition of his name. Adrian took the bags from her and gave her the dog’s leash. “I want to try something. Y’all stay right there. Keep petting him.”
He walked toward the truck, then turned around and called the dog’s name. The dog didn’t take a blind bit of notice. “Now, stop petting him for a second.”
Heather took her hand off the dog’s head. “Bones,” he called. Then again, a little louder. The dog glanced over when Adrian raised his voice, but again, didn’t show any of the signs of name recognition he would have expected. “Did you see that? His ears didn’t go forward. He didn’t acknowledge that I was calling him.”
Heather nodded, then went back to petting. “Well, he was a stray. He hasn’t been named Bones for very long.”
“I don’t think Bones is the best name for him. I mean, he’s not skinny, and he’s not an orthopedic surgeon or a forensic pathologist, so the name doesn’t make sense. We ought to change it.”
“He was very skinny when someone brought him in after he’d been hit by a car.”
“Well, he’s not skinny now.” Adrian put the bags on the back floorboard, then picked up the dog and put him in the large crate on the back seat.
“I don’t mind changing his name. Reva says animals often want a different name to mark a new passage of life, and this qualifies.” Heather tossed in a stuffed toy and a chew antler from the bag Reva had provided, then latched the crate door. “We can discuss it on the drive home.”
But the dog wasn’t up for any sort of discussion. He was in output mode only. They’d hardly gotten out of the parking lot before he started scratching at the crate. He whined, then he howled, then he whined some more.
Heather gave treats to the dog, hummed to the dog, sang to the dog.
Adrian turned up the music, turned down the music, changed the music. He tried cool jazz, soft rock, mellow instrumental. Nothing helped.
“Maybe we should pull over and get him out of the crate,” Heather suggested. “He wants to sit up here with us.”
“I’m not gonna stop on the side of the highway and take the dog out of the car to get him into the front seat. It’s too risky. We’re almost at the generator place; we’ll handle it then.”
Meanwhile, the dog kept singing the songs of his people. He might be one leg shy of a full complement, but there was nothing wrong with his lungs. “Maybe we should name him Pavarotti,” Adrian suggested.
“I see your lips moving,” Heather yelled above the dog’s howls. “But all I can hear is this dog hollering.”
When they reached their next destination, Adrian and Heather worked together to leash the dog, then Adrian lifted him out of the back seat and set his three legs on the ground. “Did Reva pack a doggie seat belt so he can sit up front?”
Heather leaned into the back seat to riffle through the bag, and Adrian took the opportunity to admire her backside. Even though her jeans were baggy, there was no hiding her curves.
“Found it.” She came out holding a short strap with a leash-style clip on one end and a seat belt buckle on the other. Then she noticed that he’d been ogling her and gave his backside a playful swat with the strap. “You are bad.”
He grinned, unrepentant. “Is that a bad thing?”
She took the dog’s leash and nodded toward a grassy patch by the fence. “I’ll see if he needs a potty break while you check in with the office and hitch up the trailer.”
The rest of the drive to Magnolia Bay was much more peaceful. The dog slept with his head on Heather’s lap and his one back leg sprawled out across Adrian’s thigh. While the dog snored, the two humans discussed likely dog names but didn’t come up with any winners. They talked about shelter business, with Heather telling Adrian about all the vendors she’d secured for the grand opening fund-raiser on Labor Day.
“Was I supposed to have done something?” He had a sneaking memory that they’d tried to rope him into something during that last meeting, but he’d been surreptitiously texting with clients on his phone and only halfway paying attention.
“You were,” she said with a pretend scowl. “But I took care of it. You will, however, be in charge of doing all the accounting afterward.”
“I thought I told y’all to hire an accountant.” In fact, he was sure that he did remember that part of the meeting. “Once y’all are up and running in not-so-many days, I won’t be—”
He cut himself off too late. Though he and Heather had agreed to continue seeing each other, what he’d just said must have sounded to her like he was already backing out.
Heather sat a little more stiffly than before. “I am aware of that.” Her shift in posture disturbed the dog, who woke and gave a concerned look around, then raised his head to lick Heather’s chin. She petted his head, giving her entire attention to the dog and avoiding looking at Adrian altogether.
Why was she being so touchy? Not so long ago, he’d been the one asking her to consider taking their relationship further—or at least being open to the possibility. Now she seemed pissed that he wasn’t planning to live in her back pocket. “You know that after Monday, y’all won’t need me so much at the shelter.”
She nodded, still without looking at him.
“But that doesn’t mean I won’t be coming to see you, Heather. And Charlie. I’ll still ride him a couple times a week, like I promised.”
“I’m sure you will.” She crossed her legs and started swinging her foot. “And I’ll be working full-time as of Monday morning, so I probably won’t be there.”
“I’ll still come around to the shelter and check on y’all.”
“Yep.” She spit the word out. “Once a week for a month was the deal, I believe?”
He reached over the dog and took Heather’s hand. The dog licked his arm, spreading love and saliva with liberal abandon. “And we’ll still spend time together, yeah? Maybe you’ll invite me to stay for dinner sometimes when I come over to ride Charlie? And maybe you can arrange for babysitting every now and then so we can spend time together, just the two of us?”
She smiled, but it wasn’t the kind of smile that made her cheeks go plump. “Of course we can,” she said. But it didn’t sound like she really believed it. It didn’t sound like she thought either one of them would follow through.
***
“They’re here,” Reva sang out to Georgia and Jasper when she heard the rumble of the truck’s diesel engine in the shelter’s parking lot next door. “Let’s go see the new dog.”
Ready to play, they rushed up to the closed gate between Bayside Barn and the shelter. Reva knelt to get their attention. “Listen.”
Jasper sat; Georgia didn’t. Reva knew Georgia didn’t need to be told about the new dog, but Jasper did. She sent a mental image of the way she wanted Jasper to act around the new dog: calm, respectful, friendly. She knew he’d get the last two behaviors because that was the kind of dog he was. She wasn’t so sure about the first. “Can you do that, Jasper?”
Jasper leaned forward and licked her face. That was a yes.
“Okay then.” She opened the gate. “Let’s go meet the new dog.”
Georgia and Jasper both ran to meet their new friend. Heather held his leash, and he wagged his black-tipped tail, lunging toward the other dogs. Heather gave Reva a nervous look and pulled back on the leash.
“They’ll be fine,” Reva called out. “Let them sniff each other.” Even though she had only talked to two of the dogs about what to expect and how to act, she could tell by their demeanor that everyone would get along fine. She had also given Jasper a good talking-to about cat-chasing. Otherwise, he would be on a leash right now too.
“Where’s Adrian?” Reva asked Heather.
“Gone to find Quinn so they can unload those generators and shutters.”
“Quinn should be here any minute with the tractor. He put the front-end loader attachment on yesterday.” The words were no sooner out of her mouth than the tractor’s rumble could be heard from the direction of the drive-through gate. “Let’s go inside. The new dog doesn’t much like the sound of motors.”
Inside the shelter, Heather unhooked the leash, and all three dogs began ripping and snorting. “Chill out, y’all,” Reva said. She also sent a mental image of what “chill out” might look like.
Of course, they did no such thing. A dog’s ability to hear and understand human words and thoughts didn’t necessarily create a willingness to obey. In this moment, their need to play and let off steam dominated.
“You and Adrian had fun in New Orleans?”
Heather rolled up the leash and smiled, a pretty blush staining her cheeks. “We did.”
“Good. I’m glad.” Reva let a beat or two go by. “I’m not gonna ask what y’all did, but your kids might.”
“We ate a lot of good food and did some shopping.” Heather’s blush intensified. “The usual things people do in New Orleans.”
Reva patted her friend’s shoulder. “Might want to rethink your plan not to tell anyone about you and Adrian. Your blush gives you away.”
Heather fanned her cheeks. “I’ll have it under control by the time the kids get off school.”
Reva noticed the flash of new bling on Heather’s finger. “Hmmm… Nice ring you’ve got there.” She took Heather’s hand for a closer inspection. “So y’all aren’t keeping it a secret after all?”
“Um…” Heather’s wide green eyes met hers. “I hadn’t thought anyone would wonder about that.”
Adrian walked in the door, filling the room with his aura of charming self-assurance. “Wonder about what?”
“Where Heather got this ring,” Reva supplied.
Adrian and Heather exchanged shocked glances. “Um…” they both said at once, each looking at the other to come up with a plausible story.
Reva grinned, wondering if this whole keeping-secrets thing would shake Adrian’s unshakable confidence. She made a big show of examining the ring, a beautiful antique gold-filigree design with a blue sapphire surrounded by tiny diamonds…with a small, almost invisible hinge and latch on either side of the gemstone-covered cap. “A poison ring?”
“You never know when you might need to poison someone,” Heather said with a pained expression on her face.
“How romantic,” Reva said with a puzzled glance at Adrian.
He shrugged, an easy grin lighting his almost-too-handsome face. “A fun memento of the day,” he said. “That’s all.”
“Um-hmmm.” Reva decided to drop the subject. A little light teasing was fun, but she didn’t want to make either of them feel defensive.
“Where are the dogs?” Adrian asked, about the same time the trio came skidding into the room, their nails scrabbling on the hardwood floors. He knelt down to the new dog, who came up to him and licked his face. He scratched the dog’s ears. “Hey, bud, how you liking it here so far?”
In answer, the dog pulled away and initiated another round of chase-the-leader through the shelter’s main building.
“I see you can’t bring yourself to call him Bones either,” Reva commented to Adrian.
“Nope,” he agreed, putting a casual arm around Heather before remembering their secrecy agreement and dropping it—just not quite as casually.
Reva took pity on them both. “I know y’all probably have a gazillion things to do before our meeting this afternoon…” She noted a semi-panicked look on Heather’s face and a slight dimming of Adrian’s congenial expression. “You hadn’t forgotten, had you? We’ve got a lot to do to get ready for Monday’s grand opening. I won’t keep y’all long; just want to go over our next few days’ calendar and to-do lists.”
Heather grabbed Adrian’s wrist and looked at his watch. “I’ve gotta go get the kids. I’m gonna drop them off at the house, but can I leave Jasper here? He’s having so much fun, I hate to make him leave.”
“Sure,” Reva said. “I’ll toss the ball to these three in the pool. Might as well get started with this dog’s rehab program right away.”
Heather and Adrian made an unconscious move toward each other, then stopped themselves. Their obvious desire to touch, to kiss goodbye before Heather left, fairly sizzled between them. It was going to be fun to see how long those two lovebirds managed to keep their relationship a secret.
***
During the entire shelter meeting—in which the new dog lay under the table with his head on Adrian’s foot—Adrian could feel his phone silently pinging in his pocket. He knew it was a slew of neglected clients blowing up his phone. He hadn’t realized how much time he spent interacting with clients until he’d stopped doing it for a couple of days.
No wonder they paid him so much. He was always on call.
At least, he had been until now, and many of his clients were low-key freaking out at his unaccustomed unavailability. He was sitting too close to Reva to take his phone out and text under the table, but he promised himself that he would catch up on texts and emails once he got home tonight, no matter how late that turned out to be.
“Adrian?” Abby leaned across the conference table and waved a hand in his face. “Hello?”
He sat up straighter. “Sorry. What?”
“How many people are you inviting to come on Sunday?”
“Sunday?” The grand opening was on Monday. “What’s happening on Sunday?”
Reva let out a hoot of laughter. “I told y’all he was daydreaming.”
Quinn shook his head and sent Adrian a look of commiseration. “I wonder why.”
Abby, reading from her notebook, kindly filled him in. “As a way of apologizing for being mostly absent from all of the planning activities due to his obligations as the only veterinarian in town…”
Abby emphasized the last part of her statement by rubbing her index finger and thumb together in a gesture the gang all recognized as This is the world’s tiniest violin playing “My Heart Bleeds for You.”
“Mack is hosting a pre-grand-opening celebration for the team and any hangers-on we might like to invite, including kids and dogs. He has organized a party on the bay for us this Sunday. He is also renting motel rooms for anyone coming from out of town. He just needs a head count.”
Adrian relaxed. “I wasn’t planning to invite my folks to the grand opening, so—”
“Hold up,” Quinn interrupted. “Abby already invited them.” He made an I told you so face at her and grimaced at Adrian. “Sorry.”
“Yeah, but my parents are homebodies most of the time, though, so—”
“They said they’d come,” Abby piped up. “And since Quinn’s folks—and even mine, God help us—are coming, yours have to come too. The only real question is whether your sisters and your brother are also coming.”
“No,” Adrian was quick to say. “They are not.”
“So just your parents, then?” Abby asked with saccharine sweetness.
Adrian thought about putting his head in his hands but managed to sit still and adopt a genial and unconcerned poker face. “It’ll just be my parents. Thank you for asking.”
“Okay,” Abby chirped. “Well, that’s it then. See most of y’all tomorrow. Adrian, see you and your parents on Sunday. Mack has made reservations for y’all at the Bayside Motel from Sunday at 10:00 a.m. through Monday at…” She shuffled through her papers and then gave up with a shrug. “Monday whenever. We’ll meet y’all at the dock next to the motel Sunday morning at eleven.”
Adrian pushed his chair back, startling the dog who’d been snoozing at his feet.
“No, wait,” Reva said. “We have to come up with a name for this new dog. We can’t keep calling him New Dog forever.”
Adrian sat back down and glanced at his watch. It wasn’t but half past four, but jeez, he still had to ride Charlie before he headed home.
“He wants a real name, like a human name,” Reva said. “So not Bones or Buddy or Tripod, but a real name like James or Duke or Jake. He wants a name that embodies his personality, so first we need to think about that.”
They brainstormed traits like sweet, happy, resilient, friendly. Meanwhile, Adrian’s phone kept buzzing in his pocket. “Let’s talk about names. How about Pavarotti?”
Reva closed her eyes, then opened them and shook her head. “He says no.”
“Alan, Abel, Averil?” He paused and looked up at the ceiling. “Ben, Benny, Bevis?”
Reva crossed her arms and shot him a mean look. “Thank you for your input, Adrian. I know you’re ready to get out of here, but going through the alphabet is counterproductive.”
Abby ignored them both. “I think he does want a name that shows his resilience, so let’s choose something that gives a nod to his past but then puts a stamp on the dog he means to become: friendly, smart, uncomplicated, and…” She paused to look at the dog, then smiled. “Debonair.”
“Jack Reacher,” Quinn said. “Jack is a good guy’s name, short, uncomplicated, friendly-sounding. Reacher because he’s reaching toward his future.”
Adrian looked down at the dog, whose head had popped up at the name Jack but plopped down again. “Jack…”
The dog looked up, even sat up.
“Reacher?”
The dog looked away.
“Jack…”
The dog cocked his head, his ears perked forward.
“Skellington!” Heather yelled. The dog started jumping around, doing the Snoopy dance on his one back leg.
“The Pumpkin King,” Heather explained, when Reva looked confused. “The skeleton character from The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
The dog seemed to approve; he started hop-running around the room, while Georgia and Jasper looked on sleepily from their spots under the table.
“It’s perfect,” Heather said. “The vet tech said the dog was almost a skeleton when he got hit by that car and someone brought him to the vet. And now, for the rest of his life, he’s going to be a king. We’ll find him the perfect home, where he can be a friendly, kind, benevolent king.”
The dog stopped running and put his head in Adrian’s lap. Adrian rubbed the dog’s ears. “Jack Skellington. What do you think of that name?”
The dog barked, a happy “Yip!” of approval.
“Okay, y’all,” Abby said. “Meeting adjourned. Let’s all head home.” She and Quinn scooted out of there so fast it looked like they’d hyper-spaced.
“Hang on, Adrian.” Reva stood and gathered her notebook and pen. “I need to talk to you before you leave.”
Adrian sighed.
“Yes, I know,” Reva said, doing the tiny violin gesture. “It won’t take but a minute or two.”
Heather made kissy noises to Jasper and patted her leg. “We’re heading out. Will…um… Will you be riding Charlie today, Adrian? I know it’s later than you planned.”
“I’ll be there. Tell Erin not to feed him; I’ll do it after I’ve ridden.”
Heather nodded, and she and Jasper left.
Reva patted Adrian’s shoulder. “Come on.” She led the way down the hall. “I want you to see something.”
On the way, he remembered the semi-feral cat he’d caught. “How’s that cat doing, by the way?”
“I picked him up from the vet this morning. The neuter surgery went well, but he is not a happy camper.” She opened the door to one of the playrooms. “Here he is.”
The cat was crouched in a shoebox at the back of a medium-sized plastic crate. “He’s being pitiful. Sitting in the litter box.”
“Awww. Why haven’t you let him out into the cat room so he can go outside?”
“He’s too wild for us to set him loose in the cat room. Also, he has a scratched cornea that will require medicine and ointment twice a day for two weeks. We would have to catch him to give him the medicine, and that would make taming him harder.”
Reva approached the crate. The cat put his ears back and narrowed his eyes—one of which was already squinted shut, the fur around it smeared with a greasy-looking ointment. “He needs to be fostered by someone he trusts so that he can be allowed out of the crate and begin to be habituated to life with humans. With his current attitude, he isn’t adoptable. And if someone doesn’t work with him, he never will be.”
Adrian dropped his chin to his chest. “Someone like me, I’m guessing.”
“Yes.” Reva picked up the cat’s crate and put it in his arms. “Someone exactly like you.”
***
Cat crouched in the tiny pebble-filled box at the very back of his prison, watching. Adrian had set the carrier on a high shelf, where Cat could see everything in the large, dusty building but also be safe from that dog who had chased him before. The funny-looking strange-eyed dog couldn’t get to Cat now. Adrian had made sure of that. But Cat growled a warning, just in case.
“Jasper won’t hurt you,” Adrian soothed.
Jasper. That bad dog had a name; why didn’t Cat have one? Adrian had called him Stinky Cat at first, but not anymore. Reva had told Adrian that he would have to come up with a better name for Cat. Something with dignity, she said. Whatever that meant.
Cat didn’t care what his name turned out to be. He only cared that someone thought enough of him to name him something, anything.
Other people came to see Cat. They were making a lot of words and calling each other by their names. Josh, Caroline, Erin, and Mom. Mom was also called Awww Mommmm and Mama.
Other words were said, words like barn, stall, clean, and water. But those were just words, not names. Cat could tell the difference because names were always said differently than those other words. The way names were said made Cat feel happy and safe. The way those other words were said didn’t make Cat feel anything at all.
Adrian led a big animal into the building by a leash. Adrian talked softly to the big animal, whose name was Charlie. Adrian said Charlie’s name with a great deal of affection. He took something off the shelf near Cat’s crate and whisked it all over Charlie’s brown coat. Charlie closed his eyes and made sounds that indicated pleasure.
The Josh human made whooping noises and ran around as if ants were biting him. Cat had been bitten by ants before too. He understood how that sort of itching, stinging pain would make anyone run and make noises like that. He wondered, though, why all the other humans seemed unconcerned. Maybe there was nothing they could do to help Josh.
Finally, Mom said something to Josh, and he ran out of the barn. Cat had figured out that the word barn meant the place they were all in right now.
Caroline climbed up on a big stack of hay and looked into Cat’s crate. She stuck her fingers through the wire and said words in a high-pitched voice that sounded sweet and soothing. Cat didn’t know what any of the words meant, but he kept listening and trying to learn. Maybe learning the words people said was the way animals earned their names.
“Don’t fall off that stack of hay,” Mom said. “Be careful.”
“I won’t fall, Mama,” Caroline answered.
“I stacked that hay myself, Heather.” Adrian stopped brushing Charlie and started strapping various objects onto the horse’s body. “Are you questioning my hay-stacking skills?” No one but Adrian called Mom that name: Heather. Her other names were said with love, but not with as much affection. Cat couldn’t decide which of the woman’s many names he liked best, but he thought that if he could talk the way humans did, he would call her Heather, the way Adrian did.
Cat watched with amazement as Adrian climbed on top of Charlie and sat there!
Adrian and Charlie seemed to understand each other so well that Charlie walked over to Caroline so Adrian could pluck her off the haystack and set her in front of him on top of Charlie.
Humans, Cat decided as he watched those two ride out of the barn on Charlie’s back, were very odd creatures. And he was beginning to think that animals who hung around humans were maybe even odder than that.
Heather and Erin talked while they used long sticks to move Charlie’s poop from one place to another. It hadn’t taken Cat very long to learn that particularly odd fact about humans: They were very interested in collecting poop.
Humans were an unfathomable bunch. The more Cat saw of them, the more he worried that he might have made a mistake in choosing to throw in his lot with them.
Adrian and Caroline and Charlie came back into the barn, and it seemed to Cat that they all looked very pleased with themselves and each other. Caroline was saying words so fast that it sounded like birds chattering in the trees.
Adrian said something to Heather in his deep voice, then she replied back in her light, soft tone. Then Adrian lifted Caroline up and over the horse, and Heather reached up to take the small human and set her on her feet. “Go find Josh and Erin,” Heather said to the little one. “Then y’all three go inside and wash up. I’ll be in to serve dinner in a few minutes.”
Adrian got down off Charlie, and Caroline wrapped her arms around his legs. He picked her up and squeezed her, and she giggled. They made words, then he put her down and she ran off. Josh came whooping into the barn—still being eaten by ants, Cat figured—and leaped about until Adrian picked him up.
“Your sister is looking for you,” Heather said, her voice not as soft as before. “Go wash up for dinner.”
Adrian undressed Charlie and brushed him again, then led him into a big wood-and-metal box, similar to the one Cat was in now, but horse-sized.
“Are you sure you can’t stay?” Heather asked Adrian.
“I wish I could.” Adrian wrapped his arms around Heather. “But I am so far behind on my work, and with this all-day Sunday thing thrown into my schedule…” He looked over at Cat. “Plus this cat to deal with. I’d better get home.”
Adrian and Heather started gently swaying together, similar to the way Adrian had rocked Cat to soothe him while walking to the shelter building. Then the two humans started doing things that looked a lot like cats fighting. While alarming, Cat had to admit that it didn’t seem nearly as violent. Cat didn’t feel that either of the humans was in any real danger. In fact, it seemed as if they both liked what they were doing, even when they started to eat each other’s mouths, which to Cat looked very painful.
Erin stomped into the barn, and she must have also thought the mouth-eating thing was painful because she made a surprised sound, similar to the way a rat or a rabbit sounds when it is about to become someone’s dinner.
“Mother,” Erin yelled in a loud, angry voice. This was an entirely new name for Heather, one that Cat didn’t like because of the way it was said, similar to when Cat had been called Stupid Damn Fucking Cat.
Cat had changed his mind about the name Stupid Damn Fucking Cat sounding important. As he spent more time near humans, Cat realized that names sounded better when said in a tone of love and acceptance. But Erin didn’t sound very loving or accepting when she let out a stream of words that ended with “What are you doing?”