“Sneaky.”
“Anyway, scheduling.”
Olivia had already explained when she expected the vets in her clinic to work—including at least one overnight per week, because this was the only animal clinic in Brooklyn that kept emergency hours. A whiteboard on the wall showed which vets were scheduled on which days. Then she took him on a chatty tour through the exam rooms.
“Remind me where you worked before this?” she asked, sounding like she was trying to make conversation but probably gauging whether she could leave him alone with patients or if she needed to keep an eye on him until he adapted to her preferred procedures.
“The Animal Care Clinic on 110th Street in Morningside Heights. It closed a few weeks ago.” Well, it closed because Kara had divorced Caleb, shut down the clinic, and moved to LA with her new boyfriend, but this was not information Olivia needed.
“Let’s do the first patient together,” Olivia said. She grabbed a chart from the plastic holder on the door to Exam Room 1, then popped her head into the waiting room and said, “Jingles?”
The woman, who’d been holding the cat in her lap when Caleb had walked in, kicked a cat carrier under the seat and carried her surprisingly placid-looking gray cat into the exam room.
All right, that was how this would play out. Caleb plastered his best animal-loving smile on his face and prepared to examine this cat under Olivia’s watchful eye.
Chapter 2
Lauren and her events manager Paige sat at a table in the main part of the café, hammering out ideas for an adoption event. Lauren hoped all this extra business they’d been getting in the wake of the Star Café closing meant some of the cats would be adopted by the affluent animal lovers in this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood near downtown Brooklyn.
Lauren had gone for kind of a mod look when she’d decorated the main sitting area: bright colors, mid-century modern design, a Shag-esque retro mural on one wall that depicted cats drinking coffee. She loved this space. At first, she worried she’d grow to hate the bright colors, but there was so much visual interest in the room that she never tired of looking at it. There were, of course, structures for the cats to lounge on all over the space. She’d built some of them herself, with particleboard and some lime-green carpeting she’d gotten for a steep discount. There were also bins full of cat toys—Lauren was forever picking up little fur mice and balls with attached feathers from places where people might trip over them.
Diane breezed in with her customary cup of tea in her hand. She wore a pink caftan that flowed over her body and, without asking permission, sat at the table with Lauren and Paige.
Lauren didn’t shoo her away. Diane owned the building and the Cat Café, after all.
“Good afternoon, Diane,” Lauren said.
“Hello, dear. This place is hopping today.”
“I know. I might have to start imposing limits on how many people can sit in here at a time. Too many people stress out the cats.”
One of those cats, a tortie kitten named Chloe, hopped up on the table right then and began to investigate the half-eaten muffin on Lauren’s plate. Lauren scooped her up and put her in her lap.
“Have you met the new vet yet?” Diane asked.
“New vet?”
“The clinic hired a new vet who started there a few days ago. He’s a cutie.”
Lauren laughed. Diane was pushing seventy and retired from some corporate job she didn’t like to talk about. She had used her savings and the money her late partner had left her to buy this five-story apartment building with two storefronts on the first floor: the Cat Café and the Veterinary Clinic. Olivia Ling owned and operated the vet clinic, but the Cat Café had been Diane’s idea, and she technically owned the business as well as the space. She was a hands-off owner, though, and she let Lauren run the café however she liked, as long as she ran financial decisions by her, and Diane could come in for a cup of tea and some time with the cats free of charge whenever it struck her fancy. Diane reminded Lauren a lot of her own mother, although Diane was far more eccentric. Today, her short bleached blond hair had been styled into soft waves around her face, and she’d completed the look with a full face of makeup and purple cat-eye glasses.
And she loved gossip.
“I haven’t met the new vet,” Lauren said.
“You should go introduce yourself! He’s working today.”
Lauren caught Paige rolling her eyes just outside of Diane’s peripheral vision. Lauren had detected a bit of matchmaking fervor in Diane’s tone but chose to ignore it. “If we ever have a slow moment again, I’ll pop over and say hi.”
Diane sipped her tea and looked at Lauren over the top of the cup, her eyes sparkling. “See that you do. I’ve got a feeling about this one.”
Paige snorted. “The same way you had a feeling about that kid who works at the bookstore?”
Lauren sighed. Diane was hit-or-miss with the matchmaking.
“You don’t have to marry him,” Diane said. “Just go say hello. It’s in the best interest of your business anyway, since you will very likely be working together.”
Lauren raised an eyebrow. She could still detect a bit of mischief in Diane’s enigmatic smile, but she said, “I will.” She thought of the handsome guy who got coffee the other morning. Caleb. He was really cute, and Lauren wouldn’t have minded flirting a little—no harm in that, after all—but he hadn’t been back since, at least not while Lauren had been in the café.
“Is Mitch doing another one of those rescue events?” asked Diane as she leaned forward and peered at Lauren’s notes.
Lauren glanced at her notes and then back at Diane. Mitch was an old friend of Lauren’s, and he ran an organization that trapped feral cats and brought them to the Whitman Street Veterinary Clinic to be
