Stray Hearts (12 page)

“They have the best Italian food in town,” Jason said.

Kay shook her head. “No. I don’t think so.”

Jason’s smile dimmed. “You don’t like Italian?”

“I love Italian.”

“Too short notice, then. Maybe this weekend—”

“No. I’m sorry, Jason. I’m not interested in dating anyone right now.”

“Ah. I see.” He had a look on his face that said,
Girls line up around the block to go out with me, so what’s the matter with you?
He walked over to her desk, placed his palms against it and fixed his gaze on hers. “Did you know I’ve never lost a court case?”

“As I understand it, you’ve only tried two.”

Kay knew her barb hit home, but he recovered admirably. “That’s right. And both times I got what I wanted.” He gave her a calculating smile which was intended, she knew, to warn her of his considerable male prowess. “Keep that in mind.”

As Jason sauntered out the door, Kay shook her head and tossed the note card into the trash. Truthfully, Jason really wasn’t such a bad guy—yet. He was blessed with good looks, a privileged background and a knack for playing the game of law. But his complete inability to process the word
no
pretty much put him at the bottom of her list of men she wanted to date.

Actually, she’d told Jason the truth. She didn’t want to see any other men right now. What would be the point, when all she’d be thinking about was Matt?

With a regretful sigh, Kay loaded more legal-size paper into her printer, trying to put her mind where it belonged right now—on her job. She’d assumed that working six weeks at Breckenridge, Davis, Hill, Scott & Wooster would be sheer torture, and at first it had been. Mr. Breckenridge was stern and demanding, and though he never actually said it, Kay always felt as if he disapproved of everything she did. Still, once she learned to read his moods, to give him what he wanted instead of what he asked for, and to yield to his stone-age idea that it was her responsibility to insure he had his two cups of Colombian decaf every morning, things ran pretty smoothly.

Now, with her six-week assignment nearly up, she’d been surprised when he’d asked her to continue for two more weeks while his assistant took a longer maternity leave. She’d said yes immediately. The temporary pay was pretty good, and her savings were starting to mount up. In fact, it wouldn’t be long before she could start looking for an apartment.

An apartment. A permanent place to live. By herself.

She rested her chin on her hands, staring mindlessly at her pencil cup. She couldn’t stay with Matt forever. Once she was out of the shelter and out of his house, she’d be out of his life. And the thought of that was almost intolerable.

“Miss Ramsey?”

Kay spun around to find Mr. Breckenridge staring at her over the tops of his bifocals.

“I was told that you volunteer some of your free time at an animal shelter. Is that correct?”

“Uh—yes, sir. I do.”

“Perhaps you can help me. I’m considering getting a dog. My wife died a few months ago, and I was thinking perhaps a dog—” He stopped, looking a little flustered, then cleared his throat. “Do you find this shelter of yours to be a quality place to obtain a pet?”

“Oh, yes! Absolutely! We have at least a dozen dogs over there right now. Some puppies, too. Any one of them would make a great pet.” She held up her finger. “Just a moment.”

Kay reached in her lower desk drawer, pulled out her purse and found one of Matt’s business cards. She handed it to him. “Come by anytime. I’ll introduce you to Dr. Forester. He’s the one who started the shelter.”

Breckenridge eyed the card. “The Westwood Animal Shelter? I understand that it’s up for the Dorland Grant.”

Dorland Grant? Robert had something to do with that. She had no idea Matt had applied for it.

“The Dorland Grant? That’s a lot of money, isn’t it?”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars.”

Wow. Why hadn’t Matt told her?

“Well, I know Dr. Forester works hard to keep the doors open. He deserves all the help he can get.” She pointed to the card. “Be sure to come by sometime soon. I know you’ll be able to find a nice dog.”

“Yes. Well. I’ll give it some thought.” He tucked the card into his coat pocket. “Oh, and Miss Ramsey?”

Kay smiled. “Yes?”

“There were grounds in the last pot of coffee you made. See that it doesn’t happen again.”

Kay sighed. One of these days she was going to suggest he move into the 21
^st
century and get a single-serving coffee maker with those little coffee pod thingies. Problem solved.

She was surprised by his interest in the shelter. Unlike Robert, Mr. Breckenridge didn’t appear to want a dog as a status symbol. He wanted a pet. And he was actually considering coming to the Westwood Animal Shelter to find one.

Kay smiled. In spite of the fact that he was a slave-driving perfectionist with antiquated ideas about boss-employee relationships, all at once he didn’t seem like such a bad guy.

Matt sat at his kitchen table thumbing through a veterinary journal, hoping the aroma emanating from the bucket of chicken on the table beside him was enough to mask the smell of the hamburger-noodle casserole he’d just incinerated. He’d warned Kay what a lousy cook he was, and in the time she’d been living with him he’d demonstrated that fact more than once. She came through the back door a few moments later, crinkling her nose and glancing around anxiously as if searching for a fire extinguisher.

“How bad was it this time?” she asked.

“My casserole got a little singed around the edges.”

 “Did the smoke alarm go off?”

“They probably heard it in Cleveland.”

“Good. The wiring in this house looks like a plateful of spaghetti. At least now we know when it finally goes up in flames we have a shot at getting out alive.”

She pulled the lid off the bucket of chicken, fished out a wing and dropped it to one of the paper plates Matt had set out. “Just what I need—a few more clogged arteries.”

Matt dug around for a chicken leg. “Then it’s a good thing I asked for extra cholesterol.”

She put the cardboard top back on the bucket. “You didn’t tell me you’d applied for the Dorland Grant.”

Matt almost choked on his chicken leg. Where had
that
come from?

“Uh—yeah. About three months ago.” He gave her a shaky smile. “Who wouldn’t? It’s twenty-five thousand dollars. Have you looked around the shelter? I could
use
twenty-five thousand.”

“Mr. Breckenridge, my temporary boss, told me about it I guess his firm is part of the Dorland Group, too, like Robert’s.”

Matt’s throat tightened at the mention of Robert’s name. He was never going to get this chicken leg down. “It’s a long shot, Kay. Don’t get your hopes up.”

“Well, I’d offer to use my influence with Robert to help you get that grant, but as you well know, I don’t have any.”

Matt figured he had enough for both of them.

He breathed a little easier as they ate, realizing Kay knew he’d applied for the grant, but that was all. What would she say if she knew he’d made a deal with Robert behind her back so he could pocket that twenty-five thousand?

She hated Robert, and if she knew what he’d done, she’d hate him, too.

As the days passed, Kay’s evenings with Matt took on a deliciously warm, comfortable tone. She soon discovered his social life rivaled hers for sheer boredom. He didn’t seem the least bit averse to spending time with her, whether they were goofing around in the park or just lounging in front of the TV.

No matter what old movie she suggested they watch, he’d already seen it half a dozen times and didn’t mind seeing it again. If she cooked something barely identifiable for dinner, he told her he liked trying new things. If she flooded the basement with suds because she put too much detergent in the washer, he helped her clean it up and said the floor needed washing, anyway.

“This is it,” Matt said one evening, as they watched
Psycho
for the umpteenth time each. “She’s heading for the shower.”

Kay pulled a pillow against her chest and settled into the sofa, which was approximately the size of the
Titanic.
With Matt sitting on one end of it and her on the other, they were barely in the same zip code.

Matt nodded toward the television. Janet Leigh was turning on the shower. “She’s done this, what—about a million times? Surely this time she’ll see him coming.”

Kay smiled automatically, but her mind was elsewhere. She closed her eyes, not because she didn’t want to see Janet Leigh slashed to death one more time, but because the scene in her mind was so much more entertaining. She saw Matt wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close, whispering intimate words to her, looking at her with a desire that melted her heart. Then he was kissing her—deep, drugging kisses that left her breathless—and telling her how incredibly blind he’d been to have denied his feelings, to have ever thought the two of them didn’t belong together.

“Kay? Are you all right?”

She blinked her eyes open. Janet Leigh was history, and Matt was staring at Kay as if she’d grown an extra nose.

“Yeah. I’m fine. It’s just that...well, it’s the blood. I never did like the sight of blood.”

“It’s a black-and-white movie.”

“I have an overactive imagination.”

And it was a good thing she did, because it looked as if in her imagination was the only place she and Matt would ever share anything more than an old Hitchcock movie and a beat-up sofa, and she desperately wanted more.

She had to stop this. He didn’t see her like that. He saw her as a friend, or a roommate or—

Or maybe it was the animal thing.

Kay sighed. The way she felt about animals wasn’t something she could hide that easily. She had to admit that she no longer regarded cats and dogs with the same distaste as alligators and tarantulas, but if she tried to tell Matt she loved them as much as he did, he’d know she was lying.

A few days later, Matt closed up the clinic at five-thirty and headed over to the shelter as he usually did, only this time he found himself surveying the huge backyard that sprawled behind the big prairie-style house. He stopped and stared at it a long time, imagining how he might be able to use that space to build some outdoor dog runs, or maybe even add onto the shelter itself. He could accommodate a lot more animals with just a little bit of expansion. A lot of the work he could do himself and save money, but still it would take money, and—

And it all came around to Robert Hollinger.

Disgusted, Matt yanked his thoughts out of the clouds and back down to planet Earth. He had no business spending that money before he even had it, or for that matter even counting on getting it in the first place.

As he came through the back door of the shelter, the first sound he heard was the soft mechanical screeching of the air-conditioning unit. Forget expansion. He couldn’t even maintain what he already had.

As he came into the reception area, he started to say a quick hello to Hazel, but before he could speak she put her finger to her lips, then nodded toward the Cat Room.

Intrigued, he tiptoed toward the Cat Room and peered around the doorway. Clyde’s cage door was open. Kay stood beside it, a box of Kitty Yum-Yums in her hand. She placed one of the cat treats at the very edge of the cage. Clyde’s ears flicked forward with interest

“Look here, Clyde,” Kay said, a musical singsong to her voice. “A Yum-Yum. Liver and egg flavor. You like Yum-Yums, don’t you? They’re yummy, yummy, yummy...”

As Kay sang that ridiculous commercial jingle, she scooted the Yum-Yum further into the cage with the tip of her finger. Matt watched in awe as Clyde took one step forward, then another, finally stretching his neck out and snagging the Yum-Yum between his teeth. He backed away as he chewed it, one watchful green eye on Kay at all times.

“Good stuff, huh?” Kay said. “Do you want another one?” She pulled another treat from the box and placed it at the edge of the cage. As Clyde stretched toward it, she reached out her forefinger to stroke his head. Startled, Clyde yanked his head back and raised a forepaw into the air.

“Kay! Be careful!”

Clyde spun around at the sound of Matt’s voice, then flattened his ears against his head and hissed. Matt took three quick steps into the room, clanged the cage door shut and latched it. Clyde slapped his paw against the cage and spit wildly.

Kay spun furiously on Matt. “What did you do that for?”

“Do you want to lose a finger?”

“He wouldn’t have bitten me!”

“Don’t bet on that.”

“We were getting along just fine! I give him Yum-Yums every day and he hasn’t bitten me yet!”

“Then you’re even crazier than I thought. There’s nothing meaner on this planet than an angry tomcat!”

“He’s not a tomcat anymore. You fixed that, remember? And he wasn’t angry—at least not until you showed up!”

“Hey! Don’t you think I know what a cat who’s getting ready to lose it looks like?” Matt pointed to his right cheek, to the faded scar that had once been bright red claw marks. “See that? Where do you think I got that? From your friend, Clyde. That’s where!”

“So he doesn’t like you. He’s just a dumb cat, so whose fault is that?”

Kay stared up at him hotly, her fists planted against her hips, standing resolutely between him and that godforsaken creature who would turn into a lap cat about the day hell froze over. And all at once it struck Matt what a fool he was. Kay was defending Clyde,
defending
him, and he was arguing with her.

He looked over at Clyde, who sat glaring at him as if he were the most vile human who’d ever drawn breath. Then he turned to Kay, whose expression bore a striking resemblance to Clyde’s. Matt gave her a tiny shrug. “I just thought you were going to get hurt. That’s all.”

The rough edges of Kay’s anger melted away. “Well, I wasn’t. I know what I’m doing.”

“Yes. I can see that.”

“He may be here a while,” Kay said. “He’s just a stupid cat, but do you see any reason he has to be miserable?”