As for Violet Anderson … well, unless the story somehow related to her, he couldn’t imagine he’d be seeing her again.
Chapter Two
“Hello, porch,” Violet greeted when she gothome later that evening. “Hello, front door.” She inserted her key in the lock and turned it. “Hello, house.”
She walked inside and flipped on the lights. A full-fledged grin split her face. God, it was good to be home.
Better than that, it was good tohavea home.
She had her Uncle Curtis to thank for that. Back when he’d been giving away Walker land to the town, he’d had the forethought to provide for future Walkers. It was why she and many of her cousins had their own houses when real estate was in such short supply.
The small, eighteen hundred square foot house wasn’t anything spectacular, but it was sturdy and clean and hers. The best part was that her mother wasn’t living in it.
Not that Violet didn’t love her mother. She most certainly did. However, Daphne was likely the nuttiest, kookiest, mostillogical woman in existence. And being that Daphne thought it wise to entertain brief affairs with her husband—a.k.a. Violet’s dad—now that he had a girlfriend … well, that was just plain creepy.
And her Dad. Jeez. Don’t get her started on that man.
“Hello, Harry and Hermione,” Violet crooned, walking over to pet her favorite felines.
As they always did, Harry and Hermione gracefully walked the length of the couch along the back before hopping onto the arm when she approached.
“Harry, did you get bigger while I was gone?” She scratched behind his ears, then did the same for Hermione. “And Miss Priss, did you keep him in line today?” Her tail swayed back and forth, and Violet was positive her eyes glittered with mischief.
She’d adopted the two Maine Coons when they were only five months old. They’d been living with a lady her sister Amanda worked with. Evidently, the woman had started acquiring cats after her divorce and mistakenly believed that more was better. Turned out the woman’s elderly male Persian hadn’t been keen on the idea of having babies in the house and had started acting out, so she’d had no choice but to re-home them. Amanda suggested Violet get a pet to keep her company. Although reluctant at first, it hadn’t taken all that much to talk her into it.
Best decision she’d ever made.
“You guys hungry?” she asked. “Although I’m thinkin’ we might need to switch to diet food soon.”
Before she brought them home, Violet had read up on Maine Coons. From her research on the internet, they were one of thelargest breeds. Relatively speaking, that hadn’t sounded bad. How big could a house cat get?
Then she saw pictures on the internet. She’d thought those images were photoshopped. Turned out they weren’t. Not all of them, anyway. Thankfully, Harry and Hermione weren’t breaking any records, but that didn’t mean they were small. Harry clocked in at a whopping twenty pounds and thirty-two inches from nose to tail. Hermione was smaller, but not by much. At fourteen pounds and thirty inches long, she could hold her own when they wrestled.
They were so big Violet had resorted to getting the vet to come to her because carrying them around was impossible. Even the thought of putting them in a carrier and trying to lug that thing into the vet’s office made her arms hurt. Thankfully, Kennedy, the vet, happened to be her cousin Sawyer’s wife.
“I met a guy today,” Violet told them as she prepared their dinner. “Simon Jennings.”
Harry meowed.
“No, no. It’s not like that. He’s just a guy. Totally not my type. Nice, you know. Probablytoonice. But he is smart. Has to be to do what he does.”
Hermione brushed up against her leg.
“Exactly. We’re not interested in smart or nice, are we? No need to worry about him hanging around. He isn’t attracted to me. You know that. The curse ensures it. If he’s not an asshole, he won’t venture into my orbit.”
Unfortunately.
While she wished she had a fine-tuned radar to warn her of men to avoid, her track record was atrocious. From the firstboyfriend she had in sixth grade to the guy she dated three months ago, Violet had consistently zeroed in on the losers. Thirty-one in total. Oddly, it was one for every year she’d been on the earth. A coincidence, of course. It wasn’t like she’d set out to date that many men.
Fortunately, she’d been far more discerning in choosing which ones to have sex with. Only three had made it onto that list, which sadly equaled about one every five years—give or take—since she gave up her virginity when she was seventeen.
Statistically speaking, she was once again due for some extracurricular fun. However, she opted to stick with her battery-operated boyfriend for the time being. It only seemed logical after she found her last boyfriend hitting on another woman while waiting for Violet to arrive at the bar.
It had been their third date.
Turned out that B.O.B. was far more reliable when it came to finding satisfaction.
As for the curse … well, that had been passed down from her mother. Daphne had married the biggest loser in town, and for the past forty years, she’d let him walk all over her like a cheap rug. Violet could say that about her own father because that was what he was. A loser. A crappy father, an even worse husband. She loved him, sure. That wasalsoa curse.
