Kurt headed to the aged, yellow Formica countertop and held up a finger a few inches in front of the cat, allowing the undaunted animal a chance for a sniff.
Mr. Longtail smelled Kurt’s finger for several seconds, then rubbed his cheek hard against it, twitching his tail like a whip.
“Maybe he just needs someone to understand him,” Kurt said. He wasn’t a cat person, but this cat was different. He could stand up to a room full of strangers and remind them that this was his house and would still be once this rehab was over. At the very least, the animal was worthy of Kurt’s respect. And he had an odd feeling that, like the house, the cat had an intentional place in his life. For the time being, at least.
“What is it you think he wants us to understand?” Megan, the pregnant supervisor, asked. Her tone was without sarcasm. “Because we’ve certainly not gotten the message. Kelsey’s tried every way she can think of to befriend him, but it hasn’t worked. Sabrina Raven sure loved him though.”
“I can’t say,” Kurt replied. “Cats don’t communicate like dogs. They’re solitary hunters by nature. I suspect we’ll figure each other out soon enough, considering we’ll be roommates the next few months.”
“Well, if you figure it out, let us know. It’ll make caring for him easier, won’t it, Kels?”
If Kelsey heard her, she didn’t show it. She was suddenly looking right at Kurt for the first time since he’d gotten out of the car. Her head was cocked sideways. “You’re…you’re staying? It’s you who’s doing the retraining?”
So Rob hadn’t told her. Kurt actually felt her surprise, picking up on the insecurity and heat that rushed over her the same way he picked up on fear. He hadn’t counted on how her feelings might affect him when he’d made the decision to come here.
He could handle his own feelings; he’d become a master at that over the last eight years. But something told him hers wouldn’t be as easy to dismiss.
This knowledge unnerved him more than anything else had since leaving the jungles of Honduras.
“Yeah,” he said, cocooning himself in the sarcasm he could always call on. “Figured I couldn’t handle the guilt if the next report I saw on this story was about how half these dogs had gone missing and you were nowhere to be found. That wouldn’t get any of these guys new homes, would it?”
His comment had the effect he’d hoped for. Settled that wildly beating heart of hers and sent a flush of embarrassment to her cheeks. What he hadn’t counted on was how big of an ass he’d feel like for embarrassing her like that.
He swallowed back a sigh of regret as the rest of the group suddenly looked everywhere but at the two of them. One thing was for sure: it was going to be an unprecedented few months.
Chapter 6
Thank goodness for the entourage of crates piling into the mansion. The dogs took precedence over Kelsey’s newfound apprehension. Eventually, things would settle down and the fact that she’d be working intimately with Kurt would be catapulted into the forefront of her thoughts again, but for a few hours, she could focus on the dogs.
As crates began filling the old house, Kelsey started noticing little details about the place she’d not paid attention to before. Like the fact that the ceilings were nearly as tall as most of the rooms on the main floor were wide. The rooms led into one another through wide doorways and had always felt more spacious—uh, more like looming—than they actually were. The presence of the dogs warmed the rooms and melted away the coldness she’d felt here with only Mr. Longtail.
The handcrafted molding that lined the ceilings and doors suddenly stood out in comparison to the plastic crates in which the dogs had been transported. At one time, the house really had been a work of art.
Now that the dogs were in, thirty-seven brand-new wire cages were being assembled in various rooms. The cages were a generous donation from a local pet store in response to Kelsey’s interview, and something she was very touched by. They would be roomier than the plastic crates the dogs had been living in the last few days, and the manager of the store had even thrown in comfy bed liners for each dog. These cozy liners were something Kelsey suspected many of the dogs wouldn’t have had in their previous homes. To their owners, they’d been fighting dogs, not pets.
Now it was time to change that.
The crates and bed liners weren’t the only support the shelter had received for the rehab since the story aired. Megan told Kelsey that the shelter’s online PayPal account had received a record number of donations over a single night. People from all over were calling to see how they could help. There’d also been a handful of complaints and questions from concerned viewers, but from what Megan had shared, none of them had been too heated.
After the dogs were inside, it became apparent that only five or six dogs would fit in each room, allowing a bit of distance between cages. Deciding which dogs should be placed in rooms together was like putting together a complicated puzzle. This task was left to Rob and Kurt, while Kelsey and the others assembled the cages. The two men took the dogs out of their crates one at a time and walked them on leashes out to the backyard and then, when they were deemed sufficiently calm, past the other crated dogs. Kelsey was amazed at the way the dogs were immediately reactive to some but not others. Even while busy assembling the cages, she could tell that a handful of the dogs were strongly dominant, though most seemed amazingly relaxed for all they’d been through—in life and in the last few days of being pulled from their homes and everything familiar.
There was a showdown of sorts in the first hour,
