Love's Nine Lives

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Only that wasn’t quite how it worked.

Because a week later she was no closer to getting Conan his cat door. After submitting her prospectus by fax or courier to over a dozen contractors, she had been laughed at, sworn at and hung up on.

Even when she reluctantly retired her SOW, no one had the time to do such a small job. The one quote she was given seemed outrageous, and it didn’t even include an automatic cat-door opener. She was reluctantly grateful that Justin had given her a guideline for the pricing of her project.

To make matters worse, Conan seemed to be getting fatter. How could he be gaining weight? She was only putting out a limited amount of the diet food, and he barely seemed to be touching that. She could see the poor cat was depressed. She now saw he needed to be outside.

“Oh, Conan,” she said, touching his head. “The hair will grow back where the bandages tore it off. And you lost a whole two ounces this week. I’m sure of it.”

The cat seemed to know she was lying, just as her inner self knew it was totally untrue that she had not found Justin West just about the most maddeningly attractive man she had ever met.

The house was in darkness and Conan lay sprawled on Miss Daisy’s favorite green Victorian armchair, relishing the amount of orange hair he was successfully grinding into the fabric. Some things were off-limits even to him—this chair and the countertops to name a few—but he considered his trespass a legitimate part of his ongoing protest campaign. As soon as he was certain she was asleep, he would make his nightly raid.

Meanwhile he contemplated how life had deteriorated from the dieting doldrums to just plain hell. Starving wasn’t good enough. Oh, no, now he had to be bald, too. The bandage removal from his head had taken huge patches of his head fur with it. It was an absolute assault on his dignity.

As if coping with the diet and hair loss were not bad enough, Conan could feel the most subtle shiver in the air since that nasty nail pounder had made his appearance to discuss the cat door. The man had been rather dirty, he’d been rude and he’d been unreasonable to poor Miss Daisy. Still, Justin Pest meant trouble, Conan sensed that as easily as he could sense the coming of a storm. Why else would his fifteen-minute collision with their lives still be creating ripples?

And creating ripples it was! Since that unfortunate incident, Miss Daisy had not been herself. She seemed constantly agitated, possibly because her attempts to “show him” had been largely unsuccessful. Conan had gotten to the point where he crept into the other room while she did her nightly relay of phone calls to yet more contractors. Her humiliation was painful.

Mostly since it meant she had forgotten on three and a half separate occasions to fill his food dish. Even if it was with diet gruel, the oversight was unnerving. So was the fact that she had been neglecting to scratch his belly on demand and wandering past him as if in a trance, her rumpled list of contractors clutched in one hand.

Judging by Miss Daisy’s volatile reaction to the barbaric cat-door contractor, most inexperienced cats would say that Justin Pest didn’t stand a chance of worming his way into her life. But cats were equipped with a sonar called instinct, and Conan had felt something powerful, perhaps even untamable, in the air between Miss Daisy and the nail pounder. The man did possess a certain powerful ease with himself that a cat had to admire.

History had an unfortunate way of repeating itself, and Conan had lived through this particular scenario before. In his past life, he’d lived satisfactorily with a female of the human species, too. Oh, she had been no Miss Daisy—rather a washout in both the affection and culinary departments, actually—but she had been adequate. She’d opened and closed the door of her trailer home pretty much on demand, kept the litter box reasonably clean and kept the food dish full. Bargain-basement cat food, but at least not diet.

Then some canine-reeking slob had begun to make appearances. And then he had moved in. Before Conan had really adjusted to that, along came that nasty, smelly, screaming baby. And out went the cat.

“Babies and cats don’t mix,” his previous owner had told him as she’d tossed him from the car into a dark, filthy alley. “Cats have a history of smothering babies, so you have to go.”

Of course, this statement was totally unfounded. Conan blamed that particular vicious rumor on those witch-hunting activists four hundred years ago. They had actually published a falsified drawing of a cat sucking the life out of a baby. Human history was rife with wackos! Not to mention barbarians.

Needless to say, although Miss Daisy’s reaction to Justin Pest had seemed void of potential for the type of relationship that created yucky, stinky little humans, there was something about her behavior Conan found disturbing.

Among a cat’s many, many strong points was superior intuition. And Conan’s intuition had gone on red alert when Justin Pest had entered the room. It was not like Miss Daisy to be so fidgety. And what had he glimpsed in her eyes every time her gaze had locked onto one of that man’s many bulging muscles? Hunger.

Ah, yes, and Conan had become an expert on hunger.

Still, he could sense a very dangerous energy between the two. Miss Daisy had not been alone in sneaking peeks. Unless he was very much mistaken, Conan suspected Justin had liked her kneecaps. And more!

They were just a little too aware of each other in that way. Of course, it manifested as sparks, words spoken with a little too much heat.

Defense mechanisms. Thankfully Miss Daisy’s defense mechanisms could rival those around Fort Knox. Hopefully they would protect a poor little cat who had already been abandoned once due to the inconveniences of human love.

It was really too depressing to think about, so Conan lifted his head off his paws and listened. Silence. The house was at rest.

He slithered from the chair and made his way on silent feet to the kitchen. Miss Daisy was in such a state of mind, she was not aware of the enormous butter consumption her household was suddenly suffering.

She had carefully weighted the fridge door with sauce bottles and such so that Conan could no longer open it himself. She had also hidden his nondiet treats and food. Even the diet ration was stored in an inaccessible cupboard above the fridge.

Well, if she was determined to make him resemble a POW rather than a beloved pet, he was called to action. It was not enough to just sulk angrily, especially since she seemed somewhat oblivious to his moods this week.

With all her cat-food-hiding precautions, Miss Daisy had somehow overlooked the fact that she kept the butter on the counter.

Each night Conan delightedly helped himself, making sure to keep the half-pound portions in a reasonably square shape. However, in Miss Daisy’s recent state of mind, he doubted that she would have noticed if the butter looked like Swiss cheese in the morning. But the risk of losing his source of saturates produced caution.

He had just had his first lick when he heard a sound. He catapulted from the counter just as the kitchen light was flipped on.

She padded out in her housecoat and slippers. He looked at her, all wide-eyed innocence, not that she seemed to notice.

“It’s too late to phone,” she mumbled to herself.

Not for pizza, it isn’t. Conan rubbed himself against her legs. She reached down absently and petted him and then retrieved a package of graham wafers from the cupboard.

“Not that he looked like the type that would go to bed early. Did he?”

Oh, God. Conan did not even have to ask who.

“Naturally I wouldn’t hire him after how he behaved—”

Good.

“—but Fred says he’s the best in town. Very fast. His work is apparently impeccable.” She sank down on a chair and buttered a cracker. She popped the whole thing in her mouth and swallowed. Conan had the ugly feeling she hadn’t even tasted it.

“I said I wouldn’t hire him if he were the last man on earth,” she reminded herself.

Exactly, Conan thought, and a better decision you have never made.

“He is the last man on earth,” she wailed, unfolding her list of contractors and studying the crossed-out names bleakly. She picked up the phone.

Drastic measures were called for! Conan leaped on the counter and buried his face in the butter.

“Conaann!”

He hadn’t heard such genuine distress since he had launched himself at the window. His face covered in butter, he leaped from the counter and raced down the hall.

After a full second he realized she was not following. He crept back down to the kitchen and peered around the corner at her.

The butter would be stored now, under lock and key, just like everything else. He had gambled with his last card in hopes of distracting her and he had failed utterly. Because she had the phone in her hand and a look of fierce determination on her face.

“My cat is acting bizarre,” she muttered, obviously working up her courage and her conviction.

Bizarre? Excuse me? Who was forgetting to fill the food dishes?

“Conan needs a cat door.” She drummed her fingers on the tabletop, unaware that Conan had crept back and was watching her.

“Mr. West?” she said. “I’m sorry. Did I wake you? It’s Bridget Daisy here.” She tucked the phone under her ear and scraped the butter into the garbage. She closed the lid with a snap. “We need to talk about the cat door.”

But Conan was sadly aware that whatever transpired between Bridget and Justin Pest next, the cat door was only an excuse.

Still, he had lost the battle—and the butter—but not the war. Surely he was a crafty enough cat that he could get rid of this new threat to his and Miss Daisy’s world? That world was topsy-turvy enough with the whole diet thing, never mind adding the complication of a barbarian.

If he played his cards right, Conan thought there was a possibility he might get his cat door first before dispatching the barbarian.

Who needed butter when the world was full of purple finches?

It had been a bad week. Conan had been starved, he was bald and now he had been unfairly labeled bizarre. Still, all cats had been blessed with a gift that the great philosophers and spiritual leaders of the ages tried, largely unsuccessfully, to emulate.

No one could detach from their difficulties and immerse themselves in the pure joy of the moment quite like a cat. Conan lifted his paw to his face and removed some of the lovely pale yellow substance that clung there. He licked it delicately and sighed with bliss.

Ah, Foothills. His favorite creamery.

Chapter Three

Justin folded his arms behind his head and stared up at his bedroom ceiling. He’d called Bridget Daisy “trouble” right to her face, and she’d still come begging, which probably meant she was double trouble.

Not, he decided, that you could call what had just transpired between them “begging.” No, dear Miss Daisy had told him how it was going to be, right down to the price she was going to pay—two thousand one hundred and fifty dollars for a custom cat door and a new cedar fence, including materials and labor—and when she expected work to commence.

First thing tomorrow morning, as if he didn’t have a house nearly at lockup and three other homeowners breathing down his neck.

A saner man would have just said no. But he already knew every other contractor in town had said just that. Except for Duncan Miller, who’d said he’d do the job for nine grand.

“I bet I’d earn every penny of it, too,” Duncan had told the other contractors who generally gathered for early-morning breakfast at the Roundup Grill and Flap-jack House on Main Street.

Oh, yeah, Miss Bridget Daisy had been the talk of the morning-contractor crowd for a week now. They poked fun at her mercilessly. Several copies of her SOW and COW were in circulation.

Justin didn’t join in the fun. For one thing, he was at a disadvantage. He was the only one who had actually seen her. The rest of her contacts had been by phone or fax or courier. So all those guys poking fun at the eccentric old-maid librarian really didn’t have a clue.

And Justin didn’t enlighten them. He didn’t tell them she wasn’t old and she wasn’t ugly. He didn’t correct them when they guessed that her panty hose bagged around her ankles and that she bought her dresses in extra-large at Wilson Brothers Tent and Awning.

When the guys painted imaginary pictures of her with granny glasses, pinched face and pursed lips, Justin didn’t say one word about eyes a shade of green that haunted him every night before he slept. Or about copper-colored hair that looked as if it needed to be freed from that bun, needed to have a man’s hands hauled through it.

Justin told himself his failure to join in the funfest being provided by the circulating cat-door contract and prospectus was only out of loyalty to Fred. Who wasn’t actually speaking to him and who had not spoken to him since he had mentioned that his meeting with Bridget Daisy had not gone well.

“Yeer tellin’ me,” Fred had said sourly, “that a big fella like you was sceered of her waving a few pieces of paper at yar? Poor girl. She must have been taken advantage of afore to be workin’ so hard at protectin’ herself.”

Justin had not wanted to think about it in that light. But he had anyway. He’d thought of that every time another contractor sat down at the Roundup and entertained anyone who would listen with a tale of her call about her cat door. They made fun of what they called her “snooty New England accent.” The sow and cow jokes were flying hard and heavy, with new ones created all the time. They conjectured about her looks and put warts on her nose. They wondered about the exact nature of her relationship with the cat, figuring she was probably casting spells at midnight.

Justin alone knew that with those eyes she didn’t have to wait until midnight to cast a spell—or need the cat either.

Justin told himself he hadn’t joined in because he had better things to do than poke fun at the town librarian. It bothered him that he saw men he had worked with and joked with and eaten breakfast with and drunk beer with in a new light—as if they were small and mean-spirited and didn’t have nearly enough to keep them busy.

He felt he could probably attribute this high road of thinking to Fred, but he knew that wasn’t the whole truth.

The whole truth was he hardly knew the woman and already their acquaintance was forcing him to be a better man. Justin hated them laughing at a woman who was misguided but not mean or vicious. She wasn’t even that strange. She just didn’t know anything about their world and how it worked. Was that a crime?

The whole truth was that Justin wished she wasn’t scared of being vulnerable, and after seeing the lunk-heads having such fun at her expense, he understood perfectly well why she was.

And now, staring at his ceiling, he told himself he was going to do the job because of Fred, but he knew in his heart of hearts that wasn’t the entire truth either.

There was just something about Miss Daisy that was driving him crazy.

In that moment of vulnerability, shaken by sleep as he had been by the husky loveliness of her voice, he admitted what it was.

He wanted to see her again.

Ached for it.

“Trouble,” he said out loud. “Justin West, she means trouble.”

He was the wrong kind of man to deal with a woman like her. He was all rough edges, and she was all polished refinement. He had learned almost everything he knew about life—and he figured that was plenty—from the school of hard knocks. She came from an ivory tower. What she knew about the real world he could probably put into a thimble. And what he knew about her world—of books and culture and all that crap—could fit in the same size container.

“Hey, West,” he told himself sternly. “You’re going to build her a cat door. You’re not proposing marriage.”

Oh, yeah, she’d be that kind of woman. The kind who liked commitment and rings and church bells and everything done just so. He could tell by the way she kept her house and treated her cat. She was just dying to get her hands on something worth caring about.

At least he knew for sure that was not him.

He liked putting his feet on the coffee table and eating supper right from the can. He liked fishing and hunting and a game of pool with the guys. He liked satellite TV because he could watch football and baseball and hockey until the cows came home. And he liked women who wore tank tops and low-slung jeans, who drank too much beer and sang rowdy songs in the parking lot after the bar closed.

But if that was true, how come not one of those women’s eyes had ever haunted him long after he’d said goodbye?

He looked at the clock. He should call Bridget back and tell her he’d changed his mind. He’d checked his schedule, he couldn’t do it.

This was already way more complicated than he liked his life, and he hadn’t even started the job yet.

Of course, if he did tell her the deal was off, then he’d have to explain it to Fred.

And the truth was, he missed Fred. They had talked on a more or less daily basis for a whole lot of years. Fred was what he had left of family. The old guy was solid as a rock, loyal and wise.

And Fred liked Bridget Daisy.

“Okay,” Justin bargained with the ceiling. “I’m doing the job. I’ll do most of it while she’s at work. It will be like my good deed for the year. There won’t be any more thoughts of her eyes or her lips or hands in her hair. Not a single one. I will be a perfect gentleman.”

There was only one problem. He wasn’t quite sure how to be a perfect gentleman.