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He chuckled and wagged his injured finger at her as if she’d been an errant child. She hissed and spat and yowled her frustration, but he merely smiled.
“You’re really going to make me work to get your affection, aren’t you?” He reached for the latch.
Catherine stilled. Finally. A chance to escape. She lowered her body, feigning acquiescence. He unlatched the door and reached inside, two broad warm hands at once encircling her and drawing her out of the cage. His grip was firm, secure.
Inescapable.
Catherine fought against him anyway, but he cradled her close, within the soft comfort of his sweater. A well-worn wool, washed so many times it felt rather like down. He ran a hand along her head, crooning again, saying nothing at all really, but sending a sense of calm rippling through her veins.
Against every instinct she’d honed in the last two centuries, Catherine relaxed, snuggling into that warmth, allowing herself to relax.
Such a long, lonely road I’ve traveled. How nice it would be to let someone else take care of me. For just one tiny, blissful minute.
And then, she’d go back to her life. To finding the kittens. To worrying about the curse, the deadline looming over her.
A low, quiet, strange rumbling started in her throat. Catherine jerked upright. The sound stopped. The man kept stroking her head and again, she relaxed. A second later, the curious sound started again, vibrating through her as gently as the wash of a tide.
Why was that sound coming from her throat? What did it mean? And why did it feel so good?
“There you are, little one,” he whispered, touching every nerve with what seemed such intimate knowledge of the best-feeling places, “I knew I could make you purr.”
She closed her eyes and forgot momentarily about escape. Absorbing simply this man, his touch, his kindness.
A few more seconds, that’s all. Then she’d—
There was a squeak. Catherine opened her eyes only to see a second, bigger cage. He’d betrayed her. She shrieked but couldn’t stop him from placing her inside and shutting the door.
“I’ll be back, don’t worry,” he said. “Sleep tight.”
Catherine hissed and swatted at his retreating form. A second later, the room was plunged into darkness.
She settled onto the newspaper-covered floor and let out a heavy sigh, ignoring the bowls of food and water beside her. Oh Lord, she was tired, more tired than she could remember feeling before. Maybe because the end was near. Six more days and her fate would be sealed. For better or worse, this half existence would be over.
She only had those few days to get a taste of what life might have been like—had she been able to go down a different lane. A life that could have included a husband, children. A home of her own. She’d missed out on all of that, thanks to Hezabeth’s rather warped sense of revenge. If only—
Enough self-pity. Catherine got to her feet and paced the length of the metal container, clean newspaper crunching beneath her paws. She was in a bit of a sticky wicket, to say the least.
First on the agenda was escape. She’d deal with figuring out how to get back to the kittens and the alley where she’d stashed her small reserve of cash for safekeeping later. She’d had two hundred years to ponder her fate and hadn’t reached any answers yet. Better to stay busy with the things she could change.
There had to be a way out. Finding a twenty-five-year-old blonde busting out of the locked two-by-three cage where he’d last seen a pale orange tabby would undoubtedly shock Humanitarian Harry into cardiac arrest. As appealing as that idea was, Catherine pushed it aside and went back to trying to figure out how she could pick a lock with four paws and a spattering of whiskers for tools.
The clock on the wall ticked along at a steady pace. Catherine had four hours to find a way out. Four hours until she changed from a cat…and became a woman again.
She had until sunrise to pull off a miracle.
Garrett couldn’t sleep. Charlie, his chocolate Labrador, snored loudly at the end of the bed. In a corner basket, Ferdinand and Isabel, a pair of muddled-blood cats, lay stretched out and quiet. Garrett, the only human in the room, lay on the bed, eyes open, arms crossed behind his head.
He’d come back to the house he shared with his Aunt Mabel at one in the morning. As always, he’d stopped to check on his elderly aunt, turning off the blaring TV and covering her with a blanket before heading to his own room. Up until a couple weeks ago, when Aunt Mabel had come down with a bout of pneumonia and temporarily needed more care, he’d lived in a cottage that sat on the back of her land.
When her home had been part of an estate, the little house had been the gardener’s home. Ten years ago, Uncle Leo had converted it into a rental property. But when Leo died, leaving a grieving and frail Mabel alone, Garrett had moved into the cottage. Just at the right time, too, given all that had gone wrong in his life then.
Garrett rolled over and punched his pillow into a new shape, but it didn’t make him any sleepier. His thoughts went back to the stray he’d found that night. She was such a tiny thing, all spit and fire. Despite her temper, she was a beautiful cat—short-haired and petite, with a pale orange coat, almost blond in color. He chuckled. Whoever took her home would need a lot of patience and cat treats to win over that grumpy girl.
Exhaustion weighed on him, but not enough to grant him sleep. His mind refused to quit, to give in and stop the reminders.
Garrett hadn’t slept for more than two hours at a stretch in three years. Every time he closed his eyes, the nightmares returned, tearing at him, making him relive that horrible night again and again.
To hell with it. He got to his feet. The Monday morning sun would be up in an hour or so and then sleep would be pointless. As he’d done a thousand times before, he decided to go to the office before the rest of the world woke up. There was always work.
Ever since his last assistant had quit, he’d been running himself ragged, trying to keep up with the appointments, the shelter and the day-to-day of running his practice. Dottie, his receptionist, was a big help, but what he really needed was a second pair of hands to work with the animals. Problem was, he’d been through three assistants in the past six months.
Either he couldn’t hire good help or he didn’t have the personality to keep good help. He had a feeling it was the latter.
Standing around thinking about the problem wouldn’t get it solved. He needed to work on plans for expanding the shelter and hopefully come up with a strategy to convince the Lawford Community Foundation to finance his dream. Their support thus far had been barely tepid, which, admittedly, was partly his fault. He wasn’t exactly a great communicator. If he was going to make his dream happen, he needed a miracle before Saturday night.
Without looking in the mirror, Garrett showered, shaved and dressed. He avoided his reflection, slipping into jeans and a light blue button-down shirt, stepping into loafers and combing his hair into the same pattern as he had for almost twenty-eight years. Minutes later, he’d fed his cats and dropped them off at the cottage for the day, then set off for the office. Charlie panted in the seat beside him, eager for work.
First thing, he’d see how that cat was doing. After tangling with her last night, he’d put off an exam until today. No sense igniting her temper more than he already had. Once she was deemed healthy, he could find her a home.
He’d miss her, despite her cranky personality. He missed every animal that left his building. You can’t keep them all, his mother always told him, or you’ll be running a zoo instead of a veterinarian’s office.
He already had three pets, more than enough for the cottage and for his aunt’s home. And here, in the office, there was always a dozen or so waiting for his attention. Between the shelter and his veterinarian practice, hundreds of animals came into his care each year.
He loved them all. Well, except for Miss Tanner’s giant Doberman. What he wouldn’t give for a little help with Sweet Pea, whose name had nothing to do with her description or her personality. Even Dottie feared the dog, a nearly maniacal barker who ate almost everything in sight. Garrett had to admit he dreaded Miss Tanner and Sweet Pea’s annual appointment. Not to mention her continual “emergency” visits with the dog.
Where her Doberman was concerned, Miss Tanner was a canine hypochondriac.
But the rest of the animals had a piece of his heart. Maybe because they never looked at him with a touch of revulsion in their eyes, never stood there with a question they dared not ask on their lips. They responded only to his touch and his voice, as if they were blind to everything else the world judged about Garrett McAllister.
He pulled up in front of the small white building decorated with a simple sign: Garrett McAllister, DVM. The sky was beginning to turn from gray to light pink as the sun edged up the horizon.
Charlie settled onto a padded dog bed by the front door. Garrett made his way through the darkened office, knowing the path without the help of a light. He’d worked here most of his life, first with Doc West, then by himself when he bought the practice from Doc three years ago. There’d been a year when he’d lived—and worked—somewhere else, but his life had always been here. These rooms were more like home than his own. More familiar, more comforting. The place where he most belonged.
He unlocked the door to the exam room. Last night, the shelter had been full, so he’d kept the tabby here. What he’d do with her once patients started coming in and out at nine, he didn’t know, but he’d figure something out. A freezing rain was predicted for tonight and he had no intentions of letting the cat wander Lawford’s streets.
He flicked on the light. She was sitting on her haunches, every sense on alert. As if she’d been expecting him.
“Good morning,” he said. “Did you sleep?”
She glared at him in response.
He laughed. “Neither did I.” Her food bowl was untouched. “Didn’t like the selections on the menu? Let’s try some canned food then.” He pivoted, reached for a can on the shelf and opened it into a bowl. The first signs of morning orange sky peeked through the blinds. The tabby let out a howl that sounded almost panicked. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he said, turning back toward her.
She was frantic now, pawing and gnawing at the bars, shrieking in frustration.
“It’s okay, little one. It’s okay.”
She began to toss herself against the door of the cage. Was she in pain? Sick? Garrett rushed to unlatch the lock and thrust his free hand inside to catch her.
With a howl, she leapt past him, missing his grip by millimeters, dashing across the room and out the door he’d left ajar. She was gone in the space of a heartbeat.
“You won’t get far. Not unless you can open doors, too.” Garrett picked up the bowl of food and left the room, following the cat’s path. The office was small and most of the doors were shut. He’d find her soon enough.
One more second and it all would have been over. Her secret discovered—in one heck of a big way.
Nothing like making a grand entrance.
She darted out of the room, down the hall and through the first open door she saw. Just in time. She could feel it beginning to happen. The tingling, the stretching and expanding of her body from cat to woman.
She braced herself, hugged against the wall, knowing the pain was coming, yet jerking away in shock when it did. It was always like this when the change started. She’d never gotten used to it, even after two hundred years.
“Here kitty, kitty,” came the man’s voice. She heard him tap against the plastic food bowl. “Shrimp dinner. Come and get it.”
By day a woman, by night a cat. The curse can only be broken if you find a man who loves you as both a woman and a cat. Every day, Hezabeth the Witch’s screeching voice echoed in Catherine’s mind.
Her arms and legs began to lengthen, the cat’s furry hide transforming into pale skin. Catherine closed her eyes and envisioned a quiet meadow, songbirds, blooming flowers, anything but the hideous half-animal, half-human creature she was for the next few seconds.
There was another momentary protest of pain from her body and then, finally, it was over.
Before she opened her eyes, Catherine ran a hand over her face and skin. As the end of the curse drew nearer, she worried one day it would all go horribly wrong, leaving her stuck between the two worlds and looking like some fifty-cent sideshow in the carnival.
Not today, thank God. Everything felt as it should. Human. Womanly. And then, she realized—
Naked.
“Here kitty, kitty.” His voice again, closer. A few feet away.
Catherine scrambled to her feet, her eyes still unseeing—the last part of her body to adjust to the switch. In a second, she’d have her vision, but right now she was essentially blind.
How could she be so unprepared? The first time she’d transformed, she’d been caught naked in a marketplace in London during the bustle before the holidays, with vendors scrambling to set out their wares in the early morning.
When an unclothed woman had suddenly sprung up in the middle of the square, the fishmonger had dropped his mackerel, the butcher nearly chopped off his index finger, and the ladies readying the dress shop for the day had swooned, silly bats fainting as if they’d never seen a woman without clothes before.
Ever since, Catherine had made sure she was ready for the change, whether it meant stealing clothes from a washerwoman’s line or diving into a charity donation bin.
But this time, she hadn’t had a second to grab anything. She stood naked and cold against the wall, her vision now a blur of colors. How would she get past him? How could she explain being here at six in the morning?
Not to mention the nudity thing.
“Kitty?” The door across the hall clicked open, then shut. “Kitty?” Closer, on the other side of the pine door. This pine door. And then, the knob turned.
A miracle would take more time than Catherine had.
Chapter Two
Garrett flicked the switch for the overhead light in his office, bending over as he did so he wouldn’t miss the cat zipping by. His gaze swept the space in front of him, to the left, then the right. Beige carpet, the leg of a cherry desk, several crumbs from yesterday’s cookies baked as a thank-you by Mrs. Crane and…one woman’s naked foot.
He stood there for a second, blinking. One woman’s naked foot.
His gaze traveled up. A naked foot, attached to a naked leg. Garrett jerked upright and found himself looking at a twenty-ish blonde who filled out a lab coat—his lab coat—in ways that should be illegal.
His jaw dropped open. Not a word came out.
She, however, didn’t seem so surprised to see him. She smiled, a soft look that took over her face and reached into her gray-green eyes. A strange feeling of connection zipped through Garrett, which was odd, because he knew he’d never met her before. And yet, he felt as if he should know her.
“I’m so pleased to meet you, Dr.—” her gaze flicked to his desk, then back. She sounded slightly out of breath, which caused a weird hitch in Garrett’s own breathing. “Dr. McAllister. I’ve been anxious to talk to you.”
“What are you doing in my office? Wearing my lab coat?”
“I told you. I wanted to talk to you.”
He could barely get his mind around any of this. “What? Why?”
If she had on any clothes at all, they were very short and hidden by the knee-length white jacket. Either way, he couldn’t focus on anything but the creamy length of her legs and the way the oversized jacket dipped in front, giving him a too-brief peek at the rounded pale curves of her breasts.
“I, umm…I wanted to talk to you about ah…a…job.” She gave a quick, firm nod.
He quirked an eyebrow. “A job?”
“As your…assistant. You know, helping with the animals.” The smile again, secure, confident.
Had he been in some kind of fugue state yesterday and forgotten he’d hired her?
No, impossible. He’d never forget hiring a woman like her. Besides, people didn’t exactly clamor to work for him. His last two assistants had said he lacked any kind of people skills before they’d slammed the door and left for good. Not to mention that most of his annual budget was poured into keeping the shelter up and running.
Although he needed the help, he preferred to work alone. Dealing with people was a hell of a lot harder than dealing with animals. People asked questions. People stared. People, he’d found, could disappoint you and let you down when you needed them most.
He’d already been down that road one painful time too many.
“I don’t have an opening for an assistant right now.” Another glimpse of her legs, then his gaze traveled up to her lean, heart-shaped face and deep gray-green eyes. “At least, I don’t think I do.”
A slow smile spread across her face like peanut butter on toast. Her gaze locked on his, and she took a step forward. “A busy vet can always use more help, I’m sure.”
He gestured at her, a hundred questions in the movement of his hands. “How did you get in here?”
“That’s rather a long story,” she said.
He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorjamb. “I have time.”
“Well…” Her voice trailed off. She bit her lip and took a step back, settling on the corner of his desk. When she sat, the lab coat rode up, exposing more of her thighs.
His heart rate leapt to five times the normal rate. Garrett swallowed and forced his jaw to stay in place this time. Maybe this was one of those reality show pranks where someone had set him up with a gorgeous woman pretending she wanted a job.
“I…” she glanced around the room again, then back at him. “I was here late yesterday to talk to you about a job, but you’d already left. Your receptionist said I could find you here early in the morning. I got ah, turned around when I went to leave and accidentally got locked in.”
“It’s a small building. Not exactly full of halls and wrong turns.”
“I was nervous.”
