He stuck out his hand. I took it and endured another curious once-over. “Nice to meet you.”
Inside the house, Lucky pointed at the stairs. “You can wait in his room if you want, or come through to the kitchen. My boyfriend gave me a cat. I’m trying to figure out if it wants to kill me.”
He wandered off. The lure of Cash’s bedroom was strong, but curiosity won out, and I followed him to the kitchen.
I don’t know what I’d expected to find, but despite my vague recollections from the last time I’d been here, Dominic Ramos and Sergio Maldano sitting at the counter wasn’t it. What the fuck were two premiership footballers doing in Cash’s kitchen?
If my surprise showed on my face, no one seemed to notice. Maldano grinned, Ramos nodded with the manner his reputation had led me to expect, and Lucky gestured to a tabby ball of tension huddled by the microwave.
“I don’t think she likes me,” he said.
I put my bag down and tried to block out the presence of two world famous sport stars. “How long have you had her?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“She hasn’t had enough time to like you, then. Where did she come from?”
“A building site,” Ramos said. “She was sleeping in a skip there, but it was taken away today, so I brought her home.”
I spared him a glance. His stern expression remained, but then he flicked his gaze at Lucky and the puzzle pieces clicked together. I didn’t follow football much, but I remembered now why Dominic Ramos’s name had stuck in my mind. He was gay, and coming out had pretty much ended his career.So he’s Lucky’s boyfriend? Jesus, Cash kept that quiet.
Of course he had. Secrecy was second nature in the life we shared, why wouldn’t he be equally discreet about this? Besides, none of it was my business. I offered Ramos my hand. “I’m Rae. Um, did you take her to a vet?”
“Dom. And yeah, I did. They said she wasn’t chipped and the shelters were full, so I could take her home or pay them to kill her.”
Lucky flinched, but I was too cynical to react to the hurt in my gut. “Are you going to keep her?”
Dom shrugged. “If she likes it here. Cash doesn’t know about her yet, though, and it’s his house.”
Lucky winked at me. “I’m pretty sure he won’t mind.”
A solidarity I couldn’t quite decipher flowed between us, but Maldano, who’d said nothing until this point, stood before I could figure it out.
“On that note, I’m off. Nice to meet you, Rae.”
“Um, sure. You too.”
The number of times I’d made a sound instead of uttering a word was becoming embarrassing. I tracked Maldano as he left the kitchen, then refocused on the disquieted feline. I pinched Dom’s seat—he’d followed Maldano out—and made a soft noise with my tongue. The cat looked at me the way only cats could, equal parts derisive and curious, and flicked her tail. “Have you fed her?”
“Not yet,” Lucky said. “I’ve put a tray down by the door for her to pee in, though. Do you think she’ll use it?”
“I’m not a cat expert, but I reckon so. They don’t like being dirty.”
Lucky took me at my word and sloped off to the fridge. He came back with a tin of cat food and handed it to me. “I still think she wants to kill me.”
He was cute. I couldn’t help grinning as I took the tin from him and tipped some rank-smelling meat into a nearby dish.
The cat perked up immediately, and padded across the counter, head-butting my hand to get me out of the way. I took advantage of her obvious hunger to run a hand over her. She was ragged and thin, but the markings on her fur were gorgeous. “Feed her little and often till she gets used to it. What’s her name?”
Lucky shrugged. “I don’t know. Dom said we should wait until Cash came home to name her, in case he didn’t want her to stay.”
“You know he’ll let her stay.”
“Yeah.” Lucky nodded. “I think I do.”
I left him to bond with his nameless cat and retreated to Cash’s bedroom, ignoring the urge to google Dom and his famous friend. Cash’s bed smelled like home, but I resisted taking a nap with my face in his pillows, and upended my bag. Having reliable electricity on tap was something I’d learned to make the most of when it was available. I plugged my phone into one power socket, and my laptop the other, and logged into my blogging site.
But my fingers froze on the keyboard. After a hunt, standard procedure was for me to document every moment as accurately as possible, but I couldn’t do that this time. Operation Jellyfish—as Fletch had coined it—had caused criminal damage to Goon’s property. To write about it in any way whatsoever was impossible. The best I could do was confirm the hunt had been called off and leave it at that, but was it enough? People read my blog to stay informed of the tragedies going unpunished in our countryside. I had a big following. Silence wasn’t an option.
