Page 29
“I don’t see why I should have to. You let me sit here yesterday while you were baking, and I didn’t even have pants on then.”
Thanks for the reminder. “That’s because you were a cat. And I sanitize the crap out of the counter every time you jump off because Mr. Whiskers is cute and he’s worth it.”
Vincent grins down at me. “What about the man, pumpkin? Am I cute?”
My cheeks flame. Purposely avoiding his question, I point toward the floor. “Off. Now.”
He sighs dramatically, hops down, and immediately moves directly into my path the second I go and grab my bowl of pumpkin pie filling.
I nearly trip over him. Thank goodness that I don’t spill the bowl all over us, though I do shriek. “Vincent!”
“Yes, Kate?”
“You’re under my feet! I almost spilled this everywhere!”
He glances down at what he must think is a perfectly reasonable amount of space between us. “I’m standing right next you.”
“No, you’re standing exactly where I need to be. Shoo!”
Vincent chuckles. “You always say that.”
He’s not wrong. And that’s because, like any good cat, Mr. Whiskers is always exactly where I need to be.
And he’s Mr. Whiskers.
Damn it.
I point at the stairs. “You’re getting in my way. Go do something, okay?”
“But I’m already doing something.”
He is? “What? What are you doing?”
“I’m watching you.”
My belly gives a nervous little flutter, like butterflies flapping away. It’s one part what he said, one part how he said it, and the enamored look on his handsome face… my hands tremble slightly as I reach for a spatula so I can plop the pumpkin filling inside of the prepared pie crust.
“Please, go watch me from somewhere else.”
Thankfully, he does. Pausing only to brush his thumb along the back of my neck—causing me to shiver and grit my teeth so he can’t tell how good that feels—Vincent wanders away while I focus on smoothing out the top of the pumpkin pie with my spatula.
As it turns out, ‘somewhere else’ happens to be the patch of sunlight coming in through the front window of my shop. I find him there about twenty minutes later, stretched out in one of the chairs near the window with his face tipped toward the sun and his eyes closed.
I stop and marvel because that? That is absolutely something Mr. Whiskers would do.
And when Vincent cracks one eye open, catching me staring at him, I quickly turn away, but the certainty that this is all a dream… I haven’t had that once since I woke up. It’s as though I just needed a few hours’ sleep to accept the impossible because all I’m thinking now is that this… that Vincent… is real.
And I have about sixteen hours before this man in front of me is once again the cat that I rescued six weeks ago… and, suddenly, I’m not sure what to think about that.
SEVEN
PERFECT
Luckily for me, I have more than enough distractions to keep me from dwelling too much on what the day after Halloween will bring because, well, it is Halloween.
The Pie Chart is busier than usual thanks to both the holiday and it being the last day of the Fall Festival. I’ve got pumpkin hand pies shaped like jack-o’-lanterns, mini chocolate cream pies decorated with candy eyeballs, caramel apple pie slices, and enough full-sized pies boxed and waiting for pickup that I’m swamped. Having an assistant would come in handy, and while I’m still a staff of one, I’m not exactly alone today.
Vincent is there, following me throughout all of it.
