Stray Hearts (11 page)

“It was nothing. Really. A couple of years ago I worked for Promos—uh, a public relations firm. I found out you can get a whole lot of stuff just by asking. They used to drum it into our heads—don’t ever pay for something if you can get it for nothing.”

Matt smiled. “Well, since zero dollars is about the only price tag I can live with right now, I guess it’s lucky for me you came along.”

Matt’s approval made Kay feel as if sunlight was warming her all the way down to her toes. When she’d initially concocted her plan, all she’d been interested in was finding a way to get rid of that awful, smelly old litter. But she wasn’t thinking of herself now. She was thinking of helping him. And it was the best she’d felt in a long time.

“Oh, and another thing.” Matt stepped quickly over to her, grabbed the burger sack from her hand and flung it into the trash.

“Matt! What the—”

“You cook the spaghetti noodles while I finish the sauce. They’re in the cabinet.”

Kay just stood there, staring at him.

“I don’t like having a roommate I never see. I want you to have dinner with me. Do you have any objection to that?”

Objection? To having dinner with Matt? “No. No objection.”

“Fine. Now move it on the noodles. The sauce is about done.”

Fifteen minutes later they sat down to a meal of spaghetti and garlic bread, and Kay decided it had been a long time since she’d had a dinner that tasted so good. Actually, the food was pretty average, but she felt so wonderful about what had happened with the cat litter that every bite she put into her mouth tasted like cuisine from a five-star restaurant.

“From now on let’s just split groceries and take turns cooking,” Matt said. “How does that sound?”

Kay winced. “Pretty good in theory. But I’m a lousy cook.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m a pretty rotten cook myself. But there isn’t much I won’t eat. And if either of us really goofs something up, we can always order a pizza.”

After dinner, Matt washed the dishes and Kay dried them. She was just putting the last dinner plate away, when all at once something big and white leaped onto the kitchen counter next to the sink.

Kay instinctively yelped and leaped backward, her hand fluttering against her chest. Marilyn sat down nonchalantly, giving Kay a look that said one of the humans in her midst had just lost her mind.

“Marilyn! Get down!” Matt scooped up the cat. He deposited her on the floor, then looked back at Kay. “Kay? Are you all right?”

As Marilyn strolled out of the kitchen, Kay took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m sorry, Matt. I didn’t see her coming...and then suddenly she was there...and...”

“It’s all right. Marilyn is harmless. I promise.”

“I know she is,” Kay said quickly. “Really. I’m sure she’s a very nice cat. I was just...you know. Surprised. That’s all.”

She tried to sound like it was no big deal—and it really wasn’t—but she still felt as if she was babbling, and Matt’s confused stare confirmed that fact.

He took the last plate from her hand and put it away. “Okay. Dinner’s over. Now it’s playtime.”

“Playtime?”

Matt grabbed a neon-green Frisbee from his office beside the kitchen. He led Kay out the front door and toward the park across the street, Buddy trotting at his heels. The park ran the length of the block, an idyllic, tree-clustered island in a sea of tum-of-the-century residential homes and small businesses.

When they reached a wide-open space, Matt handed Kay the Frisbee. “Throw it.”

“Huh?”

“I said throw it.” He pointed toward the clearing. “Out there. Hard as you can.”

“Excuse me, but isn’t someone supposed to be at the other end to catch it?”

“Just throw it.”

Something was up. “Is this a practical joke? You suggest something stupid just to see if I’ll do it and then you laugh your head off? Is that it? Because if it is—”

“Will you just
throw
the damned thing?”

She knew she was going to regret this, but she took a few steps forward and hurled the Frisbee as hard as she could. And she couldn’t believe what happened next.

The moment it left her hand, Buddy exploded from beside Matt and shot into the open field as if his tail had suddenly caught fire. She watched in awe as he raced beneath the spinning disk, then leaped off the ground with all four feet. As the Frisbee descended, he met it in midair and snapped his jaws around it. The moment his feet hit the ground he spun around and raced back to Kay. To her complete disbelief, he sat down, the Frisbee between his teeth, his eyes meeting hers with an expectant twinkle.

Kay looked at Matt, dumbfounded, then back to Buddy. “How did you teach him to do that?”

“I think he was born knowing how.”

“Will he do it again?”

“He’ll drop dead doing it.”

She reached down gingerly, took the Frisbee from between his teeth and wiped the dog spit off on her jeans. She threw it again, and Buddy took off. Almost immediately a gust of wind caught the Frisbee and caused it to veer sharply to the left and hurtle toward earth.

“Oh no!” Kay said. “He can’t—”

“Watch.”

Buddy screeched to a halt and doubled back. He zeroed in on the falling Frisbee, and with a huge horizontal leap he plucked it out of the air before it hit the ground. He brought it back to her. She took it from his mouth and reared back to throw it again.

“Uh-oh,” Matt said.

“What?”

“You forgot to wipe off the dog spit.”

She waved the Frisbee at him in a gesture of feigned disgust, then wound up and threw it again. Later, Kay couldn’t have said whether she remembered to wipe off the dog spit every time or not. But as she threw the Frisbee again and again, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much fun.

When it looked as if Buddy was indeed going to drop dead, Matt motioned to a park bench. He and Kay sat down, while Buddy collapsed at Matt’s feet. The warm evening breeze swirled around them, containing only a hint of the oppressive heat they’d endured that day. A feeling of contentment settled over Kay like a warm, fuzzy blanket.

She glanced down at Matt’s hands, and for a long, unguarded moment she imagined lacing her fingers through his, then inching over to rest her head against his chest, feeling its rise and fall and listening to the beat of his heart. He looked so strong and solid and comfortable that the thought of lying in his arms went from passing fancy to near-compulsion, until finally she had to force her gaze away. If she stared at him one moment more she might forget that looking might be permitted, but touching wasn’t.

“Think you could do it again?” Matt asked.

“Do what?”

“Get some more donations.”

Kay hadn’t considered that, but how difficult could it be? She shrugged. “Sure. If one company would donate, why wouldn’t others?” She said it nonchalantly, but she felt a little shiver of delight at the thought of doing more to help him.

She glanced down at Buddy, who had rolled to his side and lay motionless, as if he’d gotten mowed down by an eighteen-wheeler. All in all, as dogs went, he wasn’t that bad to be around.

“Uh-oh. I think I killed him.”

Matt smiled. “Don’t worry. He’ll come back to life by tomorrow night.”

Tomorrow night.
The prospect of spending her evenings with Matt sent something warm and wonderful flowing through her. It was also probably the dumbest feeling she could possibly have. He’d spelled out quite clearly what the boundaries of their relationship were the day she moved in, but the concept of Matt as just a friend was growing harder for her to hold on to. And the more time she spent with him, the farther that concept was likely to slip from her grasp.

A few minutes later they got up to go home, walking side by side across the park as evening edged into night. Matt noticed that Buddy was trailing at Kay’s heels now, probably because she was the one holding the Frisbee. The little dog was a sucker for good time. It looked as if Kay was, too.

He thought back to how she’d reacted in the kitchen when Marilyn had jumped onto the counter, as if a monstrous spider had crawled up her leg or a snake had slithered across her shoe. That was when it dawned on him. Kay didn’t just dislike animals. She was afraid of them. For some reason, though, she seemed determined to hide that fact. So instead of confronting her with it, he’d decided to show her a side to pet ownership she might not have experienced before. A fun side. And judging from the smile on her face when Buddy brought that Frisbee back to her again and again, he’d succeeded.

Now he’d like to take Hollinger apart, limb by limb.

The guy had to know that Kay was actually afraid of animals, yet he’d gleefully sent her to her own personal hell so he could soak up a little revenge. How much lower could one man sink?

Then he remembered. He was doing a little sinking of his own.

He glanced at Kay, feeling a ripple of apprehension that somehow she was going to find out about the deal he’d made with Hollinger. And he was surprised at how desperately he wanted to keep that from happening.

All at once Buddy reached up and snatched the Frisbee from Kay’s hand. She swung around, her fists on her hips, glaring at him. She lunged for the Frisbee, but Buddy backed away.

“You goofy little dog! Give that back to me!”

She took off after him, but he managed to stay one step ahead of her, his little doggy smile curling around the Frisbee. Thinking Kay might be getting a little angry at Buddy’s antics, Matt started to intervene. Then he heard the most beautiful sound.

Kay’s laughter.

It filled the twilight like a soft, lilting melody, chasing away every memory he had of the wary, confrontational woman who’d first shown up at the shelter. And he had a feeling that from now on, whenever he thought of Kay, this was what he would remember.

“You got a dozen
what?”

Matt had caught the last few seconds of the phone conversation Kay had been carrying on at the reception desk at the shelter, the umpteenth one she’d made in the past few weeks, and he wasn’t sure he liked what he had heard. She spun around from the phone with a big smile.

‘‘Kitty- Tees.”

Matt grimaced. “What in the world is a Kitty-Tee?”

Kay rolled her eyes. “Don’t you keep up? They’re what the well-dressed cat is wearing this season, of course. They’re from Pet Palace. They come in long-sleeved, short-sleeved, small, medium and large, and they’re fifty- fifty poly-cotton so they won’t shrink up to nothing in the dryer. They’re sending over three lime green, three electric blue—”

“Wait a minute! You seem to be telling me you’re going to dress the cats up in T-shirts. Is that right?”

Kay smiled dreamily. “Won’t they just be the cutest things?”

Good God, he’d created a monster. For the past couple of weeks Kay had been like a human vacuum cleaner run amok, sucking up all the pet-related items she could get her hands on. Up to now he’d approved wholeheartedly. But cats wearing T-shirts?

“The Super Scoop was great,” he told her. “And the Tasty Cat. And the grooming brushes and the Kitty Yum-Yams—”

“And the Port-a-Pets. Don’t forget those.”

“They’re great, Kay. Really. I’m glad you found them. I’m glad you found them for
free.
But just because something’s free doesn’t mean we ought to take it. Cats in T-shirts—”

“Oh, will you hush a minute? I swear your sense of humor is melting away before my very eyes.” Kay pointed toward the Cat Room. “Look. You’ve got two cats back there who’ve had part of their coats clipped— one because of a skin problem and the other because of mats. Nobody will look at them right now, even though their hair will eventually grow back in and they’ll be good as new. But don’t you think if I put them in cute little T-shirts it’ll cover up the problem until someone can get to know them a little? They might find out there’s a potential pet under those bad haircuts.”

Matt was astonished, and not just because of the irony of a dog shaver catering to cats with raggedy coats. This seemed to be a step above basic necessities. After spending forty hours at the shelter, had her feelings changed? Was Kay actually going out of her way to help a few unfortunate animals find a decent home?

“After all,” Kay added, “that’s the point, isn’t it? Moving some of these creatures out of here before the next ones show up?”

Matt felt a flush of disappointment. Kay saw the shelter as a conveyor belt moving a product through a warehouse. He realized now that just because she’d grown less fearful of the animals didn’t mean she’d suddenly started loving them. She was scrounging donations only because it beat cleaning cat boxes. It was nothing more than a game to her, a fun little exercise in negotiation to see just how much free stuff she could come up with and how many deals she could make. Still, he’d liked thinking, if only for a moment, that maybe she’d done it for the animals.

And for him.

Chapter 8

Kay The next morning, Kay raced toward the elevator in the lobby of the Cauthron Building, wedging her hand between the closing doors until they popped open again. She wiggled her way onto the elevator, breathing heavily, then punched the button for the fourteenth floor. When the doors opened, she ran through the elevator lobby, flung open the glass doors of Breckenridge, Davis, Hill, Scott & Wooster, then sprinted to her desk.

She checked her watch and breathed a sigh of relief. It was eight o’clock straight up. If there was one thing Mr. Breckenridge insisted on, it was punctuality.

That’s when she saw the red rose.

Kay’s heart fluttered a little as she sat down, eased the rose aside and opened the card that accompanied it. She saw only two words written there: Dinner tonight?

She turned the card over. Nothing else.

“I made reservations at Rodolpho’s.”

At the sound of the deep male voice, she looked up to see Jason Bradley, a high-flying junior associate in the firm, leaning against the doorway. Disappointment oozed through her. For a fleeting moment she’d hoped that somehow Matt had found his way into her office, come to her desk—