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She looked like the kind of woman who never got flustered. Her story had more holes than a cheap pair of socks. And yet, he sensed a vulnerability about her, as if she wasn’t used to asking for help or relying on others. Much like himself, he realized. And for some odd reason, that made him want to help her.
He needed more sleep. Clearly, he wasn’t thinking straight.
“I didn’t see you when I came back late last night,” he said.
“I fell asleep in your chair. When I’m asleep, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade could come by and I’d never hear a thing.”
“Must be nice to sleep that deeply,” he said quietly, then drew himself up. He wasn’t here to confess his insomnia problems to a stranger, especially one without any clothes on.
The way the coat drifted over her and peaked above her breasts, he suspected she was nude. Completely nude.
Oh boy, was he going to have a lot of fantasies running through his head over this one. He’d never look at that coat the same way again. “Do you, ah, always dress like this for a job interview?”
“I…I spilled some coffee on my clothes last night and washed them out in the sink. I slipped on this to wear until they dried. I didn’t expect you to be here so early. I hope you don’t mind.” She crossed one leg over the other, which only served to hitch the coat up farther.
He gulped. “Uh…no.”
She smiled again. “Good.”
“Did it hit your shoes, too?”
“Shoes?”
He looked pointedly at her bare feet.
“Oh, ah, yeah. Coffee all over them.”
“Must have been a hell of a big mug.”
She nodded quickly. Too quickly. “Huge.”
He should send her packing. Mentally, Garrett started ticking through the inconsistencies in her tale. “Why—”
“Well, let’s get to work,” she said, interrupting him with an enthusiastic clap. “I bet the animals are starving.”
“I don’t need an assistant.”
“I find that hard to believe. There are lots of animals here. You definitely need help.”
“I can’t afford an assistant. I can barely afford me.”
“I’ll work for peanuts.”
She had an argument for his every reason not to hire her. “But—” he tried one last time, sputtering like an engine that couldn’t quite quit.
“Give me a trial run this morning and if I don’t work out, I’ll take off your lab coat and leave you alone. Sound fair?”
A mental image of her stripping off his jacket popped unbidden into Garrett’s mind. For a second, he considered firing her just to see her remove it and walk out the door.
She would never do. For one, she was too distracting. For another, she was much too pleasant to be working with him. He’d have to be nice, and that was something Garrett rarely succeeded at.
“I don’t work well with other people hovering around me,” he said.
“You won’t even know I’m here. I’ll be quiet as a cat.” She winked.
He thought of the dozens of patients that would be in and out today. The paperwork still sitting on his desk that he hadn’t gotten to in weeks. The stack of unreturned phone messages. The supplies list he needed to go over. The records he needed to finish updating. Not to mention the three dozen animals currently residing in the shelter.
And today was Miss Tanner’s annual visit with Sweet Pea. That alone was enough reason to bring in reinforcements.
He wasn’t about it to admit it, but the stranger in his office had impeccable timing.
“Okay, I’ll try you out today. But,” he held up a finger before she could say anything, “just today.”
She beamed. “Great! I love working with animals.”
“You might want to—” he gestured at her, not knowing what words to use.
“Want to what?”
“Ah, put something on beneath the coat.”
“Oh.” She blushed, and the red extended down her chest, flushing bright against the white fabric. “My clothes probably won’t be dry for hours. Any chance you have something in a size eight here?”
He thought of telling her to just go buy something, but the thought of her parading down the street in nothing more than his lab coat stopped him. “Try the storage room. Tiffany probably left a few things there.”
“Tiffany?”
“Assistant number three. She had a backup closet of clothes here in case she wanted to change.” Garrett scowled. “When she quit, she left pretty fast. And left behind part of her wardrobe.”
“Why’d she quit?”
“We had a disagreement over which kind of mammals Tiffany should be tending to.”
The woman raised her eyes.
“Tiffany had more interest in creatures with two legs than the ones with four.”
“Oh.” She paused, then her mouth opened. “Oh.”
Garrett shifted on his feet. The room seemed awfully warm. Furnace must be on the blink again.
Yeah, that was it.
“I have to get to work,” he said. He went to reach for the hook that normally held his lab coat, realized where it was, and jerked his hand back. Without a second glance at the woman or his jacket, Garrett turned on his heel and left the room.
He headed down the hall, looking for the cat that had escaped his grasp that morning but he didn’t see her anywhere. Odd how she had disappeared like that. Usually, Charlie would have tracked down any strays running around the office, but there was no sign of the sassy feline from last night.
Garrett entered the shelter and went first to the animals that needed him most. They were the abandoned and unwanted pets society forgot. Garrett found most people never gave a second thought to strays—unless they were messing up the front lawn.
That attitude was what he was fighting against in his quest to get funding for a bigger shelter. So far, he’d had no success. If things didn’t work out on Saturday, he wasn’t sure what he was going to do. His building was too small to house more than a few dogs and cats. And there were so many, more than one office could hold.
With more money, he could hire help, expand the space, make a difference. And maybe, just maybe, find a little peace. He’d spent the last three years working himself to death and that hadn’t brought him one inch of serenity. Maybe if the shelter were a success and he could save just a few more animals, Garrett could regain a little of what he’d lost in that fire.
He turned on the light, dimmed the switch to gently light the room. “Hey, Rags,” he crooned to a motley-colored dog in the first kennel. The mutt leapt to his feet, tail wagging furiously. He let out a few yips and pressed his nose to the kennel’s bars. Garrett chuckled and rubbed Rags’s nose with two fingers. “I’ll feed you in a second. Let me check on the others.”
He moved down the line, greeting each animal in turn. He’d given them all names, humanizing each a little bit. Most were as excited to see him as children at Christmas.
Except one. In the last cage, a thin white cat sat on her haunches, nose in the air, seeming to ignore him even though she was looking straight ahead. “Hi, Queenie,” he said. “You gonna look at me today?”
She raised her nose more, stood, turned three quarters of the way around, and gave him her back.
“You’re one tough cookie.” He reached forward, testing the waters. He’d never gotten very far with Queenie, a stray he’d found a week ago. She had the personality of a wolverine and clearly didn’t appreciate his gestures of kindness or his presence.
Someone must have been very cruel to her at one time. It would probably be a while before she stopped hating everything human.
When his hand was three inches from the cage, Queenie whirled around, hissing and batting at the bars.
A long while, he amended.
“Okay, we’ll try again later.” Garrett frowned. Her food bowl was still untouched. “That’s three days, Missy. You can’t go on a hunger strike.” She hissed some more. He shook his head. He couldn’t save them all.
But, Lord, how he wanted to.
He walked back to the dog kennels and started collecting food bowls, avoiding more than one eager puppy tackle as he made his way in and out of the cages.
He knew she was there without even turning around. He sensed her standing behind him, silent and watching. He stumbled with one of the bowls, spilling kibble on the floor outside a spaniel’s kennel.
She was beside him in an instant, dustpan in hand. Still wearing just the damned lab coat, too. “Let me get that for you.”
“I can do it,” he grumbled. He yanked the dustpan out of her grip and scooped up the dry dog food, dumping it into a bin.
“I’m supposed to be your assistant. Let me assist.”
He busied himself with measuring food into the other bowls, avoiding her gaze. “You could have at least gotten dressed, for God’s sake.”
“I am dressed. Besides, you didn’t tell me where the storage room was. I didn’t think you’d want me wandering around your building, poking in all the rooms.” She took the dustpan and hung it back on its hook. “The animals are probably starving. I’ll change after we feed them.”
He whirled around, careful to keep his face out of the direct light. “Why do you keep insisting on taking this job?”
“I like peanuts.” She smiled. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. “Mostly, because I love animals. I like working with them. I’ve always wanted to work in a vet’s office, but—” She shrugged, as if the ending of the sentence wasn’t important, but he got the feeling that it was quite the opposite.
Over the years, Garrett had gotten very good at telling which camp most people were in: animal lover, hater or indifferent. She was clearly in the first group. He respected that, very much. Even so, he wasn’t sure he could afford to hire her, nor did he really want someone underfoot all day.
“Face it. I’m a perfect fit for you,” she said.
“There are thousands of other veterinarians. Why do you keep bothering me?”
“Because I’m already here. And because you need an assistant more than anyone else I know.” She put her hands on her hips and the jacket rose, exposing more of her thighs.
Garrett held tight to the bowl before he scattered kibble at her feet like some pathetic gift to the goddess.
“Listen,” she began. “I’ll work for free today. Then you don’t lose anything. If it works out, great. Keep me here. If it doesn’t, I’ll be on my way. No loss, no hard feelings.”
A twinge of disappointment ran through him at the thought of her walking out the door. That was crazy. He barely knew the woman. And besides, she annoyed the heck out of him. She’d shown up at the worst possible time, disrupting his day, his schedule and making him act like a clumsy five-year-old.
He had a hundred reasons why it wouldn’t work out. Another dozen why her leaving would be best. For both of them.
But all his excuses seemed to get stuck in the back of his brain. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Catherine Wyndham.” She thrust out a hand.
He took her hand. Long fingers, skin as soft as satin, a touch as delicate as cashmere.
She hadn’t flinched when her palm met his scarred one. He’d never met anyone who could touch him without even a flicker of attention toward the marks on his skin. It was as if he were himself again, before—
He quickly let go. “Garrett McAllister.”
“Pleased to meet you, Doctor Mc—”
“If you insist on staying here, make yourself useful.” He waved at the white cat’s cage. Start the woman off with a tough assignment first and maybe she’d give up. “Try to get Queenie to eat something.” Garrett grabbed a bag of moist cat food off the shelf. “This one has extra vitamins. She’s a little thin.” He thrust the bag at her, but she was already gone, her hands inside Queenie’s cage.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. She’s…testy.”
“This cat?” Catherine smiled. “She’s sweet.” She cradled Queenie close to her chest and whispered something into the cat’s ear. Queenie shot Garrett a look of disdain, then settled into Catherine’s arms.
And started to purr.
“How the hell did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Get her to play nice.”
Catherine shrugged. “I have a way with cats.”
“A touch of magic is more like it,” he muttered. “That cat hates me.”
“You just have to know how to talk to her.” Catherine scratched behind Queenie’s ear. The cat practically moaned.
“I know how to treat animals. I’m a vet, remember?”
“You’re also a human. That puts you in a different category from her right from the start.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Are you saying you’re not human?”
She looked away. “Can you, ah, pour the cat food for me?” Catherine hoisted the cat in her arms. “It’s a little hard to juggle both.”
“Oh yeah. Sure.” Only one of his brain cells seemed to be firing. He’d already forgotten the cat in her arms. All he’d seen for the past couple minutes were Catherine’s gray-green eyes, so wide, so observant. He’d seen eyes that color once before, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember where.
