What was the most unique encounter you had today? An older man asked some very sensitive and specific questions about his odds for prostate cancer, to which Cali confessed she didn’t know the answers. He huffed and patronizinglyasked, “Didn’t you have to read all the books to get hired at this library?” She recommended he speak with his doctor.
The hacking and sawing finally ceased at 5 p.m.. Relieved, Cali trekked back to her office to grab her blue trench coat and her wallet.
She only ever had time for a quick trip to Minka’s café across the street before she needed to set up for the Nine Lives Club. Good thing Minka was also a member of the Nine Lives Club and would have her usual already waiting to get her through the night: a chicken salad sandwich in a buttery croissant, a warm coffee, and a treat for later. That’s why she needed to run over to the café, to pick her treat. Since the weather chilled ever so slightly this morning, her mouth ached for pumpkin cream cheese muffins or those apple cider donuts the café carried around this time last year.
Then out of the corner of her eye she saw a swift, darting motion. Between the front steps of the library and the courthouse construction was the marbled gray fluffball the club had been texting about. Velvetyblack paws with faint tabby markings. It spotted her, too, and crouched down, frozen. Its eyes were a light gray, and its ears were big. Much too big for its tiny striped head and body—with pointed black tufts just above the soft pink inner ear.
She froze, too, but lowered to a crouch and raised her palms to signal harmlessness. “Here, kitty,” she whispered in her slow-paced, high-pitched cat voice. “It’s okay, baby. Psst psst psst. Aww. You’re so cute.”
It tilted its head but stayed vigilant. She suddenly wished she had a can of pate with her. Even something from the café might be enough to persuade it to come closer. It looked a little thin beneath all that long fur. Her heart leapt into her throat.
Then she noticed another thing that made her heart do tricks. One of the construction workers appeared from the parking lot between the library and City Hall. A man, shirtless and muscular, with a dark tattoo sleeve wrapped around one of his thick forearms. He paused when he spotted her, his cheeks flushed from working all day. From underneath his construction hat peered two steely gray eyes. Freckles peppered the bridge of his nose and cheekbones and faded toward a wide jaw that framed his plump, ruddy lips.
She watched the Adam’s apple bob in his throat, his jaw clenched and his eyes flicked back toward the stray.
Cali knew exactly what he wanted.
“Psst,” she hissed. “Back off. I don’t need any help. You’re going to scare it away.”
He wiped sweat off his brow with his gloves and inched closer to the kitten. Big hands, she noticed. But his eyes steeled against her instructions. He stepped closer. There couldn’t have been more than 10 feet between each of them and the kitten. Cali could feel the tension surge between them.
“I wasn’t trying to help. Butyou’regoing to scare him away ifyoumake that silly noise one more time.” His voice was low and rumbling. It made Cali’s belly warm.
“Shh.” She crept closer, keeping her movements small. The construction worker mirrored her on his side of the cat. She wanted to throw something at him but knew how careful they’d need to be to pull this off. She didn’t trust him. “And just what makes you think it’s a boy?”
“Just look at it. It’s clearly a boy.” He let out a sigh. “And I see what you’re doing over there. Stop. It’s going to bolt off.”
The Maine Coon adjusted its stance so it could eye them both. Its whiskers wiggled.
Good, kitty. Don’t run now,her mind pleaded. If she could just get close enough to reach.
“We’ll just see who it chooses, okay?” Cali whispered, practically on her knees. Construction dude be damned. She ran track in high school. So she could outrun Mr. Muscles if that cat would just let her get another foot closer.
She reached out until she had one hand above its back and another near its stomach. She could hear the nervous purr growing loud as her hands closed around it. Then it bolted out of her arms and across the street. When she glanced down at her wrist, she saw blood. The sting was intense. Both Cali and the construction worker watched in dismay as the kitten’s fluffy tail disappeared behind the café.
“Dammit,” they said in unison.
Cali stood and crossed her arms over her chest. The scratch on her wrist stung like hell. When the construction worker approached, tall and flexing, she thought she caught a sympathetic glint in his eyes. Impossible. She wasn’t going to let some brute intimidate her. The Eastmoor girl in her rallied.
“What you do that for?” she seethed.
“Me? I warned you not to creep up on him. He ran away, just like I said he would.” The tendons in his jawline flexed. “Someone here clearly doesn’t know anything about cats.”
Now that was crossing a line. “I’ve had cats—well, a cat, singular—most of my life, I’ll have you know!”
“Well it didn’t look or sound like it, the way you approach him.”
“Ugh, stop calling it a him. You can’t tell just by looking at it! And cats are drawn to soft, high-pitched sounds, especially the ‘psst psst psst’ one that apparently pissed you off. If someone here doesn’t know anything about cats, that someone is you.”
She pressed an index finger into his pecs and immediately regretted it. His flesh didn’t give against her touch. But she caught a whiff of sweat and his cologne and something woodsyall around them that made her lightheaded and tingly. She licked her lips.
He glanced down the street in the direction of the cat then back at her. “Wow,” he said, exhaling through his nose, long and slow. “You’re unbelievable. You know that?”
“Well, you’re … you’re …”Stop drowning in those eyes and speak, Cali.“Arrogant,” she muttered back. It was all she could think to say.
One corner of his mouth curled up. She lowered her hand, and he turned and strutted away to City Hall. Cali felt blood creeping up her neck and into her ears as she watched his jeans, hung just right. The deep V of muscles that made his long torso. On his right shoulder was another tattoo—or half of one. It was hard to see this far away, but Cali thought she could make out the black curve of a cat’s tail, enveloping his wing bone.
