Accidentally Catty (16 page)

Please, please, please let it be her imagination. Katie stared down into the chocolate brown eyes of Delray and decided, against her better judgment, to test her sanity. “I promise to be gentle, Del. Just hold still, buddy.”

Her mouth fell open.

Oh, c’mon. Was there really any more crazy left to be had? Wasn’t it all used up with werewolves and vampires and demons?

Katie cleared her throat, rolling her neck from side to side. Was no one aware the dog . . . The. Dog. Was talking to her? Was she the only one who’d flown over this cuckoo’s nest?

Beck eyed her from his stance against the far wall with a look of question, but thankfully, Esmeralda was too wrapped up in her worry over Delray to notice the disbelief Katie was sure she was doing a bad job of disguising via her bulging eyes.

Ingrid nudged her while shuffling her feet. “You got it?”

“Yes! Sorry.” She aimed her apology at Esmeralda. “Long night last night. Okay, Del, here goes. Ingrid, if you’ll just hold him still.” She inserted the thermometer with care and frowned at the eventual reading. He had a temperature.

Katie leaned down to capture Delray’s big head in her hands. If this was really happening, if Delray was really communicating with her, it could work to her advantage. She’d deal with the crazy of it later. In her best baby-talk voice, knowing it would incite him, Katie asked, “So what have you been eating lately, sunshine?”

“Aha! I see guilt in those eyes, pookie. C’mon, tell Dr. Woods what you’ve been eating.” Katie almost snickered, but then she caught a shared look of Delray’s shame on Esmeralda’s face, too.

“Cheese! He loves cheese. I caught him stealing a whole hunk of it from my coffee table the other day. That binds, right? I can’t think of what else it could be.” Esmeralda’s admission wrought one from Delray.

Katie clucked her tongue, not entirely convinced. Her eyes held the dogs again. “How about foreign objects, Del? You know, like shoes, socks, tennis balls maybe?”

Esmeralda gasped. “Oh, Delray! I know what it was. It was my shoe. I’d bet my subscription to
Martha Stewart Living
he’s been chewing on it under my bed.” She gave Delray a frown of disapproval. “He knows I can’t bend down to chase after him because my knees trouble me so, so he takes everything and hides it under the bed. I’ve been looking for days for that espadrille, Delray, and you know it. Shame on you!”

Katie eyed the dog, now tucking his chin to his chest, his eyes unable to connect with hers. “Oh, Del. Is that true, sweetums? Did you eat a shoe, you silly-willy?”

Katie fought a chuckle. “As I suspected, and I have just the thing to take care of the blockage. It’s not as serious as it seems. I think Delray’s just very melodramatic because he enjoys the attention. However, aside from his discomfort, we really need to get his weight under control, Mrs. Hunt. Bulldogs are notorious for suffering from hip dysplasia. His hips will only pain him as he grows older, and you don’t want that, now do you?”

Katie gave Delray’s rotund belly a gentle squeeze in the hopes she could hush his interference in her head. She smiled at Esmeralda in understanding. “I know you love Delray, but I promise he’ll still love you back just as much whether you give him chicken salad with pickles or not—”

Katie forced herself to ignore Delray’s pleas. “So that means no more table scraps no matter how often he gives you his best sad face. No more cheese. No more hot dogs or chicken salad with pickles or not. I’m going to suggest a dietary dog food you can pick up locally and nothing else until his weight is under control. Also, walks. Two a day, thirty minutes each. Oh, and if you have a treadmill, it wouldn’t hurt to put him on that as well. As to his constipation, I have just the cure . . . Ingrid? Could you, please?” She pointed Ingrid in a direction her faithful receptionist knew well.

Walk?You mean like outside on the pavement?With other animals? Oh, the hell! What kind of sadistic witch are you?
Delray complained with a sharp yelp, his protest shooting around inside her head like Ping-Pong balls.

Leaning into his warm side, Katie whispered in his ear as Ingrid gave Esmeralda the directions for his care. “You know what this means, don’t you, Del? It means suppositories. Big ones, shoe lover. Now, no more shoes. Ever. Or the next time you could end up with an intestinal blockage and that means enema, buddy, maybe even surgery, sometimes death. No joke. Now you be a good boy for Esmeralda and do as I prescribed. Your path to the patch of green regularity in Esmeralda’s backyard will soon be blockage free.” She dropped a kiss on his head and tweaked his ear.

Esmeralda gave her a quick hug. “Thank you, Dr. Woods. I can’t tell you how afraid I was. I know they talk about me in town—they say awful, awful things, but I’ll never forget how kind you were to my Delray. Never,” she repeated, her eyes glittering her newfound loyalty.

Yeah, me, neither. Color me all shades of grateful you’ve just made my life a special kind of hell,
Delray muttered.

Katie gave Esmeralda a wink. “I won’t pay a lot of mind to what they say about you in town, Mrs. Hunt, if you won’t pay any mind to what they say about me. Deal?”

Esmeralda chuckled, sweet and bubbly. Her knowing eyes gave Katie a look of understanding. “Deal.”

“Beck? Would you gather Delray up for Mrs. Hunt and put him in her car?”

Beck’s silence drew her attention to where he stood, staring up at the locked medicine cabinet. His eyes were far away, fixated on something inside the cabinet she couldn’t pinpoint.

“Beck?” she called. “You okay?”

He cleared his throat and turned, putting a vague smile on his face that didn’t quite mask his disorientation. “Sorry. Say again?”

“Would you help Mrs. Hunt getting Delray to the car? Will you be okay getting him into the house alone, Mrs. Hunt?” Katie asked. “He’s a heavy load of bulldog.”

Esmeralda assured her she’d be fine as Beck, strong, kind, and gentle, carried Delray out of Katie’s office, but not before Del gave one last parting shot.

Smack? From the animals in the park? “Wait . . .” Katie stopped herself short. Damn. Somehow, having a full-blown conversation with her patient—a—
dog
—probably wasn’t beneficial to not only repeat visits from Esmeralda but one’s ability to suspend disbelief. But what could Delray possibly know?

“So, Dr. Woods, you wanna tell me what that was all about?” Ingrid asked while they watched Beck open Esmeralda’s car door from the window in the reception area.

“What was what about? Do you mean taking Delray as a patient because Dr. Jules wouldn’t?”

“No. I mean all that sweet talk with Delray. Usually, you talk to the pet owner to get the information you need, but it was almost like you were having an actual conversation with the dog. I can’t remember the last time I heard you call any dog
sweetums
. Plus, it was the fastest diagnosis I’ve ever seen.”

“I concur,” Beck said, striding in the front door of the office to shoot her a handsome smile, his cheeks reddened from the chilly afternoon.

Katie shrugged, needing a moment to process what had just happened and Delray’s warning. “Then that makes both of you just this shy of crazy.” Deflect, deflect, deflect. At least until she had a chance to see if this was a one-time deal or a new, magical, mystical affliction due to her cougarlicious state.

“I’m going to go check on Mrs. Krupkowski’s Chi. Ingrid, would you be sure Nina and Marty are comfortable?”

Ingrid nodded her multicolored head. “They stayin’ awhile?” Her wide eyes held a distinct glimmer of hesitance.

“They are. I’ll explain why later. For now, just make sure they have everything they need, okay?” Ingrid sidled off with a reluctant drag to her vinyl boots.

She turned to face Beck, keeping the memory of his tender hands and sweet demeanor with Delray at arm’s length. “What was that about?”

His face unsuccessfully attempted to hide the reaction he’d had when he was caught up staring at the medicine cabinet. “What was what about?”

Okay, so he didn’t want to embellish. At this point, as tired as she was, she would respect that. “Never mind. So, I hear a bottle of Tide calling you.”

“Tide?”

Whether he was playing stupid or genuinely didn’t know the name brand laundry detergent, Katie couldn’t decipher. “Yeah, you know, the laundry?”

“Right. Heaven forbid the bloodsucker should sleep on sheets that smell of anything other than spring meadows.”

“They’re here to help,” she reminded him, moving around him to head to the small guesthouse she used to board clients at the back of her aunt’s property. His chest brushed hers when she scooted past him, sending a zing of awareness to her traitorous nipples, making her crankier.

If he just didn’t make her girly bits sha-wing, everything would be so much easier. Even talking dogs.

He grinned, playful and full of his special brand of mischief. “You won’t hear me say otherwise. In fact, I’ve decided that each day when I wake, I shall berate myself for creating the kind of drama typically only seen on television. Then I’ll skip downstairs to prepare breakfasts fit only for the likes of the queen mother in order to remind myself of my place, and I’ll do it with a smile on my face and a song in my heart.”

Katie couldn’t help the giggle threatening to spill from her lips. Hearing words like that, coming from a man so gruffly handsome had to mean he was gay. “Washing some sheets will do for now. I’ll let you know about songs and smiles later.”

Beck’s chuckle, melodic and low, followed her out the door.

STUFFING
the pink set of sheets into the washer, Beck poured the allotted amount suggested on the back of the laundry soap bottle into the water and slammed the top of the washer shut.

From where he stood at the laundry room window, he was able to allow his eyes to follow Katie as she ran the tiny Chi back and forth over the lawn, throwing a ball and encouraging the dog to fetch it and bring it back. He’d like to focus more on her backside. In fact, he’d like to focus on all of her, but there was a much more important question that needed to be asked.

Did this dog talk, too?

From the moment he’d scooped up Delray, he’d complained about his stomachache loud and proud in Beck’s head.

At first, he considered the notion he was actually going crazy. After all, he couldn’t remember his name, had no idea how he’d landed here, had been accused of being a predatory cat, and he was housed with women who could do things he assumed he’d only seen in movies.