Accidentally Catty (11 page)

“I can think of a coupla other stuffs he could do to me.”

Katie rolled her eyes, tucking her chin deeper into her lace ruffled shirt with the matching navy blue turtleneck with a shiver. “Aunt Teeny! He’s just a kid.”

She shrugged her small, hunched shoulders with a cackle and a toothless grin of depravity. “Don’t make no difference to me, Lady Jane. It all looks the same when you hit the sack. We all still got the same parts, just some of us come extra wrinkled. But I’d be willing to let him iron me.” She dropped down in the seat opposite Katie with her mug of steaming coffee. “What happened to your hand?”

She averted her eyes to stare at Yancey, sprawled on the back of the living room sofa, without a care and, quite possibly, her kin. Katie winced, pushing herself to focus. “Sprained. From lifting some of the cages in the office. No big deal.”

Teeny crinkled one eye at her niece’s hand, the cigarette hanging from her sunken lips.

Katie set her mug down and snatched the cigarette from her aunt’s lips. “Where do you keep getting these? I’ve scoured every inch of this house and come up dry. Yet every morning, you have another one. You’d better not have a stash, Aunt Teeny. No smoking. Dr. Gladwell told you you’re one cigarette away from your grave.”

Katie’s eyes widened, then she frowned when she scanned the kitchen. Did cougars hear imaginary voices in their heads?

Teeny poked her hand, bringing her attention back to the table. “You take my smokes, I’m gonna flirt with your hired hand, and I won’t wear a bra when I do it.”

Her aunt’s outrageous remarks weren’t just the bane of her existence but one of the reasons she got up in the morning. Teeny made it possible for her to survive in this small town where scorn was dished out by the shovelful. “You don’t wear a bra anyway. No smoking. No negotiation. No more back talk.”

Teeny propped her hand in her chin, using the other to adjust the sound on her hearing aid. “Yeah, yeah. I don’t see how it can make anything any worse. I’m seventy-two. I’m gonna die next week anyway. Why can’t I just do it with my Camels, for Christ’s sake?”

“Who’d protect me from Willard Brown if you up and die?”

“Willard’s just a blowhard with a big piehole.”

“And if not for you, his piehole would have kept Irma Rycroft from bringing Susie-Q in to see me. As I recall, he told her I was the devil and God would rain his thunder down on her in the way of famine and poverty if she brought that poor cat to me for treatment. He told her paying me for my services was like paying the devil to buy your soul.”

Katie’s head whipped around at the echo of words in her head. What the hell was going on?

“He’s a fruitcake, old Willard is,” Teeny, oblivious to Katie’s concern, said. “He’s been alone with his crazy thoughts for too long. Best he stays out in that cabin of his and keeps his trap shut. Don’t you worry about Willard or any of the other old cronies in this damn town. They’re a suspicious lot who’re too set in their ways, thinkin’ Piney Creek’s gonna go all citified if they let outsiders in. Not much’s changed here because they won’t let it. You breathed new life into the town. They just don’t know it yet.”

Oh, she’d breathed and that exhale had brought with it not just scorn upon her but her aunt, too. Add in her prior legal troubles and it made for a whole lot of unease among the people in town. Katie gave herself a mental shake—no more dwelling. She’d done nothing wrong back in New York. “Has Magda-May invited you back to the quilting circle yet?” The group of senior citizens and one diehard thirtysomething Nazi-feminist old maid had booted Teeny out the second they’d decided Katie had usurped Magda-May’s husband.

Dr. Cyrus Jules, DVM, the only veterinarian in Piney Creek until she’d arrived.

It had happened completely by accident. She’d known Piney Creek was small, but she hadn’t been prepared for the kind of shunning only a small town can give you until she’d “snatched the food right from their mouths” like the greedy, city heathen she was, as Magda and friends had described it.

Shortly after her arrival and quite by circumstance, she’d met Lizzie Johnson and her old hound dog Roderick, sitting in Lizzie’s parked truck just outside the feed store.

She’d stopped to pet Roderick and noticed he had a rather raspy cough. One that, according to Lizzie, wouldn’t clear up, no matter how many meds Dr. Jules gave her.

Katie’d suggested she bring Roderick by the clinic, free of charge, so she could run a simple test, and Lizzie had obliged. An X-ray revealed old Roderick had an enlarged heart, causing the coughing and gasping for breath.

You’d think she’d reinvented the wheel, if you listened to Lizzie tell the tale of Rod’s improvement with the proper medication. Unfortunately, what had been a simple act of concern for an aging dog that was suffering turned into a redneck version of the Sharks versus the Jets, if Magda-May had the chance to tell the story.

Katie had tread on Dr. Jules’s territory by
correctly
diagnosing Lizzie’s dog. Nobody remembered the correct part of the equation or that Roderick was breathing better for it. That she was right didn’t matter to the ladies in the Piney Creek quilting circle.

She’d taken business from Dr. Jules. Throw in her restraining order from the exotic animal park along with her checkered past, and she was a dirty bird from the city that’d come to milk Piney Creek residents dry with her highfalutin prices and fancy doctorin’.

Teeny snorted, smoothing the checkered tablecloth under her coffee mug with arthritic fingers. “Magda-May can bite my unwiped rear end. I don’t need her stupid circle or her ugly quilts. She always picks crappy colors for ’em anyway.”

Katie cringed and chuckled all at once. Her aunt’s reality television addiction had created a monster. “Aunt Teeny! Your language. Where do you get this stuff?”

Aunt Teeny snorted. “I’m just expressin’ myself, and I get it from watching all that reality TV. Never let it be said Teeny’s not in the know. As for Magda-May, she’ll be sorry I’m not in on that stupid quilt making. I was the only one with any damn taste.”

Remorse that it had taken her all of a week to leave her favorite aunt friendless and quiltless stung her gut. “I’m sorry, Aunt Teeny. I just couldn’t stand to see Roderick suffer. I didn’t mean to cause so much trouble.”

Teeny gave her a confused look by way of a wrinkled frown. “What bubble?”

Oh, God. There were voices in her head. With Brooklyn accents.

Katie fought a frightened whimper, jamming her finger into her mouth as Li’l Anthony scampered off up the stairs. Maybe she was just tired.

“Hey, girl, you listenin’? What bubble?”

Now she fought a sigh. Her aunt’s hearing, even with her hearing aids, was questionable. Today, as tired as she was, as worried as she was that not only did she have a paw but she wanted to thin the wildlife population by
eating
it, she struggled with her impatience. “Not a bubble, Aunt Teeny. Trou-ble,” she said with a purposeful inflection to the word. “I’m sorry I caused you so much trouble.”

“You? Cause trouble? I’d never believe it,” a gruff voice called from the mudroom off the kitchen.

“He has an accent.”

Finally a voice that belonged to someone who wasn’t disembodied.

Katie smirked in her aunt’s direction. “And look who’s suddenly acquired the ears of an eighteen-year-old.”

Spanky made his way into the big kitchen, extending a hand to Teeny, whose fingers immediately went to the pocket of her housecoat to pull out her pink bandanna with the skulls on it. She tugged it over her head, tying it in the back to hide her thinning hair.

Katie’s nostrils flared when Spanky entered the kitchen. He smelled of the outdoors, fresh and crisp with a hint of pine and clean, country air. Katie fought the quickening of her heart at the sexy picture he made, even in ill-fitting jeans and a flannel shirt that was too short in length, reminding herself he was gay. He nodded cordially in her direction and said, “Eh, what’s up, Doc?” in a sad, but distinguishable, Bugs Bunny voice.

“Ooooh-weee. Ain’t you finer ’n a plate of fried chicken and gravy? I could just sop you up with a biscuit. I’m Katie’s aunt, Bettina. Teeny for short.”

Spanky let his dark head sink low when he took Teeny’s hand. “A pleasure. I’m . . .”

Katie bit her lip, hoping Teeny’s hearing impairment would kick into high gear when he offered up the name Spanky.

“Hey,
Beckham
!” Ingrid greeted, from the entrance to the kitchen by way of the clinic, wildly waving her hands behind Teeny’s back and skidding in on white vinyl platform boots, screeching to a halt just short of Spanky.

“Beckham. I’m Beckham. Beck for short,” Spanky repeated dutifully, the unfamiliar name rolling off his tongue without a hint of unease. “Brilliant to meet you, Teeny.”

Beckham?
Katie mouthed in Ingrid’s direction, lifting an eyebrow.

Ingrid held up a ragmag with a picture of David and Victoria Beckham on it, giving her a wince and a shrug. She bumped shoulders with
Beckham
like they were old friends. As though last night hadn’t been like seeing the Second Coming and Friday the thirteenth all rolled into one hair-raising experience for her. “So how’s it going today,
Beck
?”

Katie rose, hoping to avoid any more explanations about Beckham. It wasn’t like she’d discussed hiring someone to help around the place with Teeny. As though anyone in town would come to chop the devil’s wood anyway—even if she offered to pay them.

He’d appeared out of nowhere; the less explanation about his circumstances, the better. “
Beck
was just chopping some wood, Ingrid. Something we sorely need for the wood-burning stove.” She waved a dismissive hand at him. “So . . . you go, er, chop and I’ll go see how our guests are doing.”

“Bah,” Teeny protested. “Where’s your manners, Katie-did? Let the boy sit and have coffee to warm up that big body of his. We don’t want somethin’ that finger-lickin’ good to get frostbit.” Teeny rose, shuffling to the coffeepot, ignoring Katie’s protest that it was only forty degrees out. Hardly frostbite weather.

“You like sugar in your coffee, Beck?” she asked over her shoulder with a wink.

He didn’t even know his name. It was unlikely he knew if he liked coffee. Teeny’s leering goodwill toward their new roommate ruffled Katie’s feathers—which was ridiculous, petty with a cap on the
P
, and uncalled for. “Yes, how do you like your coffee, Beck?” Katie inquired, syrupy sweet.

“With teeth,” he replied without hesitation, then stopped to ponder that admission by raising an eyebrow.

“Who’s Keith?” Teeny asked, carrying the mug to him and plunking it in front of him with a toothless smile.

Ingrid must have recognized how frazzled Katie was and gratefully intervened for her. “
Teeth
, Aunt Teeny. He likes his coffee with teeth. Which I think means bite. No sugar, no cream, really strong.”

Beck’s nod was slow but the more he nodded, it was clear the more he’d become convinced that was indeed how he liked his coffee. “Yes. I like it strong.”

Teeny snickered. “Me, too, big fella.” She settled into her chair and leaned over next to him. She had a habit of invading your personal space in order to hear your words, and that was as good excuse as any to splay herself over the gorgeousness of Beck. “So what brings you to Piney Creek?”

They all looked at each other.

What did bring him to Piney Creek?

Guilt hung in the air like a helium balloon.

“Me!” Marty yelped from the top of the stairs where the bedrooms were located. She skipped down the wooden staircase, Muffin and Petey following close behind. She hustled into the kitchen, smiling bright and cheery, her makeup and accessories picture perfect. “I brought him to Piney Creek. I’m Marty Flaherty. It’s just so lovely to
finally
meet you. I’ve heard so much about you, Aunt Teeny. Katie has nothing but complimentary things to say about you.”

Katie cocked her head in Marty’s direction, a bewildered question in her eyes. Marty shot her an “I got your back” look when Teeny leaned forward and tugged on her dress while scooping up a willing Muffin who was thankfully, blissfully, silent in Katie’s head. “Ain’t you the smart one in your fancy clothes?”

Marty beamed and gave her a wink of her blue eye; never once considering Teeny was criticizing her apparel. “Thank you. So I see you’ve met, uh . . .”

“Beckham,” Katie provided, letting the corner of her lips lift in a half smirk when Ingrid stuck her tongue out at her and Beck himself narrowed his blue eyes.

“Beckham! Right. Sorry. I’m groggy from all the clean, country air. Anyway, I can’t tell you how grateful I am that Katie offered my
cousin
this job. He’s from London. Poor thing would have been living in a cardboard box if not for Katie’s generosity. I mean, with the economy in the toilet, you can imagine there isn’t much call for Speedo designers these days—”

“Speedos?” Beck grumbled his displeasure.

“But thank goodness Katie mentioned she needed help around the house,” Wanda added, sailing into the kitchen, holding Paulie in her arms and looking like she’d never shed her clothes and left them in a rumpled pile on the floor at her four paws. “We knew just the man for the job. Beck’s so good at anything handy and DIY. Katie’s offer was a blessing from right out of the blue.” She turned her back to Teeny and the others briefly to drag her finger across her throat in a warning to Marty. She mouthed the word
Speedo
much in the way Katie had to Ingrid earlier, rolling her eyes at her friend in disgust.