I snort. I can’t help it. Beef Wellington is almost twenty-five pounds and three and a half feet long. Sometimes I think he’s half bobcat, especially when he chooses to sleep on my chest in the middle of the night and makes it nearly impossible to breathe. “There is nothinglittleabout my cat, Dr. Auxier.”
“Moxie.” He glances at me, a hint of a smile on his lips. “At this point, the formality is getting painful.”
I huff out an exhale and fold my arms. “It feels weird to call you by a nickname.”
Reaching his other hand into the carrier, Dr. Auxier—Moxie—slowly slides both blanket and cat out until they’re stretched on the counter, taking up the whole surface. Beef blinks up at him, as still as ever, then closes his eyes. “You could always call me Malcolm,” Moxie says, a frown on his face as he starts working his hands along Beef Wellington’s body. “But my teammates started calling me Moxie a few years ago, and it feels more like me.”
“Teammates?” Again my thoughts go to the guy in the lobby—his teammate, apparently. Both men are of a similar build (AKA pure muscle), but I clearly know next to nothing about my vet other than the fact that he’s one of the few people Beef will let within a yard of him. Moxie is as calming with animals as he is with people, and it’s only now that I realize he’s talking to me to keep me distracted from the animal suffering between us. “Do you play, like, community sports or something?”
He chuckles. “Or something.”
Whatever that means. At this point, I should know more about the guy than I do, but my focus has always been on Beef. “He didn’t like it when I touched his hip,” I say when Moxie gets down to Beef’s lower half.
Nodding, Moxie does a more thorough examination, pushing and prodding and moving the cat’s legs. Beef doesn’t react or open his eyes, and fear squeezes my heart. “Nothing seems broken, but we could do an x-ray to make sure.”
I flinch. “How…” I swallow my pride, I finish the question. “How much will that cost?”
Moxie’s expression turns to something akin to pity but leans more toward compassion, for which I’m grateful. “It probably isn’t necessary, but he’s certainly not acting like himself.”
That’s an understatement. Usually when we’re here, Beef does his very best to terrorize the vet techs and make an escape. The fact that he’s just lying there is twisting my stomach into a tight knot.
“Beef, how could you do this to yourself?” I ask mournfully and run my hand through his thick, reddish-brown fur. I linger on his belly, in between his arms, and scratch his favorite place. Could this be the last time I get to pet my cat? I’ve barely had him for a month, and…
I pause at the same time Moxie’s eyebrows pull low. “Did I just hear a purr?” he asks, bending closer to the cat.
I scratch the cat’s armpits again, breathing a little easier when the rumbles in his chest grow louder. More like his usual diesel-engine purrs.
Then Beef stretches his legs out the way he always does when I rub his favorite spot, and he opens his eyes. But as soon as we make eye contact, he flops back into stillness and lets out a low yowl, his purring stopping.
“Hmm,” Moxie says.
“Hmm? What does that mean?”
Instead of answering, he moves to the side of the room, opening a cupboard next to the stainless steel sink. He pulls out a squeeze pouch cat treat, a thoughtful look on his face as he tears it open.
I gasp when Beef hops to his feet in an instant and leaps the six feet from the counter to the sink, landing with a heavy thud as he makes his way to the treat Moxie has waiting for him. Within seconds, he practically melts into the basin of the sink like he always does at home, a look of pure bliss on his face as he accepts the paste Moxie squeezes out for him.
“That’s what I thought,” Moxie murmurs, rubbing his fingers between the cat’s ears.
What is happening? “He’s okay?” I ask breathlessly. I mean, he certainly looked okay when he crossed half the room in a single bound. “But why was he so…?”
He shrugs. “This is entirely a guess, and it would be smart to keep a close eye on him for the next few days. But I think he was embarrassed.”
I blink. Blink again. Then I turn to the ball of fluff curled up so happily in the sink and give him my best glare. One he seems to find amusing, based on the way he licks his lips and rolls over, showing Moxie his belly.
“Embarrassed,” I repeat in a whisper as the reality of what Moxie’s saying hits me. Of the hour I’ve lost by coming here, not to mention all the books I’m going to have to clean up and reorganize. Of the pounds of poultry sitting forgotten on my counter, way outside a food-safe temperature by this point, which means there’s no way I’ll be able to make my delivery tomorrow.
And then all of my emotion from the night comes spilling out in pure, unadulterated anger. “I’m going tokillyou!” I snarl and lunge for the cat, ready to stuff him back into his carrier and keep him there until I’ve figured out a way to save myself from ruin.
Beef Wellington must know my plans because he leaps from the sink before I reach him.
And then there’s chaos.
Chapter 3
Logan
Itwasbadenoughthat Moxie forced me to go out with him, but then he went and took a work call. He promised it would only take a few minutes, but as soon as we got to the vet clinic where he works, I settled in for the long haul. I know how people can be with their pets. My parents got a Staffy a few years ago, and that dog is their whole world. They call him my little brother, claiming that because we were both adopted, it isn’t a weird thing to say.
