His voice.
Deep, but soft. Soothing.
His eyes. Kind, and when he smiled he’d had the most pleasant laugh lines at the corners. No beard, no mustache, but he’d needed to shave. Not the bad kind of needing to shave. The good kind.
How tall had he been? She hadn’t noticed that, so probably average. His sleeves had been folded up two turns to reveal nice forearms. Strong. Lean. But even as she struggled to remember, it wasn’t really the way he looked that captured her attention in recall, it was him. The feeling of who he was that intrigued her.
Replacing the lid on the cupcake container, she laughed softly to herself, thinking about how he’d held the treat, how foreign it had seemed to him. As she laughed, she felt Max brush up against her bare leg. He stepped on her fuzzy pink slippers, trying to get her attention.
“I’m mad at you.”
But she wasn’t. Not really.
“How could you run off like that? What were you thinking?” Was he lonely? Melody wondered. “Maybe I’ll start bringing you to work with me. How would you like that?”
He meowed.
“The kids would love you.”
He meowed again.
Chapter 4
The day after returning Max the cat to his cupcake-baking owner, Joe heard suspicious scratching. He opened the shelter door a crack, and Max the cat shot inside and immediately began rubbing against Joe’s leg.
The noon rush was over, and Jerry was the only other person left in the room. “Looks like you got a friend,” he said, hunched over his soup, arms on the table. “Are you sure you aren’t taking a shower in pheromones? That cat’s in love with you, dude.”
As soon as Jerry spoke the words, the cat calmed down and settled on his haunches.
It was odd, Joe had to admit.
“If I’d know he was going to turn into such a pain in the ass, I wouldn’t have invited him here,” Jerry said.
“That’s okay.” Joe searched for a piece of chicken and dropped it in a bowl just as he had the day before.
“Is the owner some kind of slacker who doesn’t take care of his pets?”
“Quite the opposite. I think Max is spoiled to the extreme. And the owner is a woman, not a guy.”
“Cat lady?”
“No. Well, maybe a cat lady in training.”
“Young?”
“Maybe late twenties.”
“Ah.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Just, ah. Be kinda tough to get involved with anybody right now, if you know what I mean.” With no audience or witnesses, Jerry had dropped the homeless alcoholic act and was the old Jerry that Joe had worked with for the past several years.
“Why not?”
“Your job.” Jerry looked around the empty room. “This job.”
Joe sighed and tested the temperature of the chicken with one finger. “You’re right.” The job took a toll on relationships.
“Wouldn’t be fair.”
“Wouldn’t be right.”
“So what are you going to do with the cat?”
“Take him back home, I guess.”
“What’s she like? The owner?”
Joe thought about her. He didn’t even know her name, and he had no idea of her real hair color. But he recalled her pale skin, her blue eyes. “She was dressed weird… Now that I think of it, she was dressed almost like some storybook character with red braids and fake freckles on her nose. And she had cat stuff all over the place.”
“Okay, that does not sound like somebody you should get mixed up with.”
“I’m not going to get mixed up with her. I wouldn’t have expected to see her again if this guy hadn’t come back.” He bent and placed the bowl on the floor. “Here, kitty-kitty-kitty.”
Jerry pointed his spoon at Joe. “You know who the cat lady sounds like?”
“She’s not a cat lady.”
“Pippi Longstocking.” At Joe’s blank look, he continued. “From the books. She’s this obnoxious brat who has no parents and does whatever she wants.”
Max swiped at Joe with one paw, and Joe jumped back. “Guess he didn’t like my generic cat call,” Joe said.
“Maybe you’re supposed to bow and say: ‘Dinner is served, your grace’.”
“Did Pippi Longstocking have a cat?” Joe asked.
“How the hell should I know? Wait. I think she did have a cat. No, a monkey. She had a monkey. And a horse.”
Melody answered the door to find the man from yesterday standing on her front step, Max in his arms. Relief washed over her, and she took the cat from him. “I just got home from work and found him gone again.”
“You might want to check for an escape tunnel.”
“Did you eat the cupcake?”
“Er…”
“That’s okay.”
“Not that I didn’t want to.” He followed her inside. “It was just such a work of art that I hated to destroy it.”
“I’ll bet you threw it away.”
“It’s in a place of honor. Really.”
“Where?”
“The dashboard of my car, but soon, very soon, it will be in my house on a bookshelf.”
“You do know it won’t keep.”
“If the weather stays dry, maybe it’ll dehydrate and harden.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Where do you work?”
“Library.”
“They let you dress like that at a library?”
Today she was wearing her Alice in Wonderland costume. “I’m a children’s librarian.”
“Ah, okay. That makes sense. Kind of.”
“It’s for story hour.”
He looked relieved. “But all kidding aside, how is Max escaping?”
“Tiny doggy door. I’m going to have to seal it. I hate to do that, because he loves his outside time.” It pained her to think of depriving him of such happiness, but it had to be done.
Max jumped to the floor.
“I don’t even know your name.”
“Joe.”
“I’m Melody.”
He nodded as if to say the name suited her, while Max rubbed against Joe’s legs, purring madly. Did he miss
