Kaci pushedinto her apartment with Tara at close to midnight. She had an emotional hangover battling with a raging case of hormones.
That man needed a warning label.
He was so—so?—
Sinfully delicious.
Ugh.
Irritating. He was irritating and pompous and a frickingflyer.
And surprisingly intellectually stimulating.
Probably because it had been too long since she’d had a good argument with anyone other than herself.
And she’d not only failed to apologize for calling him a cheater, she owed him an apology for killing his keg with a pumpkin.
She could’ve seriously hurt him or one of his friends too. And that, more than anything, had her heart in her throat still.
Tara paused outside her room. “It’ll be okay, Kaci. Don’t let him get to you. He’s just a man.”
Just a man.
Just a man with a voice she could still feel in her bones and a way of looking at her as though he could show her how to get to the moon.
Tara disappeared into her bedroom and shut the door with a click.
“Mmmrrraaaa?” Miss Higgs said. Kaci’s ancient white Persian cat blended in with the chenille lap blanket tossed all cockamamie over the couch.
She dumped her bag, then plopped down and gingerly pulled the elderly cat onto her lap. “Miss Higgs, I had a man try to convince me I killed his grandmomma tonight.And then he had the nerve to laugh at me. And he probably wouldn’t even believe me if Ididtell him I was sorry.”
The cat lolled her head back and peered up through milky blue eyes as though she knew the real issue was that the man was sexier than basic physics principles, and he probably wouldn’t be interested in kissing her again.
Which she shouldn’t have been interested in either, but her basic biological instincts were obviously working double time to betray her tonight.
“Don’t you give me that look,” she said to the cat. “He didn’t even have the decency to appreciate how far Ichabod must’ve flung that last pumpkin tonight. And I swear I was another mile down the road when we pulled over with that catapult.”
Miss Higgs flicked her tail, which at her age meant the tip moved a centimeter.
Probably the cat was right. Kaci had a horrible sense of direction. She shouldn’t be left unsupervised.
Or perhaps she needed to get back to concentrating on what was truly important—her job, her girls, and the conference in Germany.
She shivered. “I screw up everything I touch, Miss Higgs.”
Apparently her story was boring, because the cat struggled to her feet and gave her the pitiful look ofplease don’t make me jump. Kaci gingerly set her on the tan-and-white Pottery Barn rug Momma had sent. Miss Higgs paused on the rug before continuing her stiff-gaited walk to the bedroom.
She’d been a prissy, nose-in-the-air doubting Thomasina for nearly eighteen years, but she’d been there. Through high school and college, grad school, marriage, divorce. Across the country and back. Every night,she curled up next to Kaci’s head and purred herself to sleep, though Kaci had to lift her onto the bed these days, and she kept a towel on the pillow to compensate for Miss Higgs’s increasingly frequent accidents.
One day soon, probably too soon, she would miss that cat.
Miss Higgs flicked a look back at her, as if to sayyou coming?
“Go on, you pretty little hairball.” She stood and shooed the cat toward the bedroom. “I’m coming.”
She probably wouldn’t sleep—not when she couldn’t shake the sound of a certain captain’s voice out of her head—but she’d try.
4
