and Rory laughed in agreement.
When she left, Willa’s smile faded. Each of her four employees were between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, and they all had one thing in common.
The foster system had churned them up and spit them out, leaving them alone in the world.
Since Willa had been one of those lost girls herself, she collected them. She gave them jobs and advice that they only listened to about half the time.
She figured fifty percent was better than zero percent.
Rory had been with her the longest. The girl put up a good front of being wry and stoic, but she was struggling. She still had the faded markings of a bruise on the right side of her jaw where her ex-boyfriend had knocked her into a doorjamb.
Willa clenched her fists. Sometimes at night she dreamed about what she’d like to do to the guy. Castrating him was high on the list. She had a deal with one of the local vets so she could afford it too.
In any case, Rory deserved better. The girl was tough as nails on the outside but a tender marshmallow on the inside, and she’d do anything for Willa.
It was sweet but also a huge responsibility because Rory looked to Willa for her normal.
A daunting prospect on the best of days.
She checked on Six and found him asleep sprawled on his back, feet spread wide to show the world his most prized possessions.
Just like a man for you.
Next she checked on his siblings and found them asleep as well. Feeling like the mother of sextuplets, she tiptoed back out to the front and opened her laptop, planning to inventory the new boxes of supplies she’d received late the night before.
She was knee-deep in four different twenty-five-pound sacks of bird feed—she still couldn’t believe how many people in San Francisco had birds—when someone knocked on the front glass door.
Damn. She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was only a quarter after eight but it went against the grain to turn away a paying customer so she straightened, swiped her hands on her thighs, and turned to the front.
A guy stood on her doorstep, mouth grim, expression dialed to Tall, Dark, and ’Tude-ridden, and unbelievably, her nipples stood up and took notice. This annoyed the crap out of her because her brain and body weren’t in agreement on the no-man thing.
But damn, he was something, all gorgeous and broody and . . . she paused. There was something familiar about him. She headed to the door and froze as she got a closer look, her heart just about skidding to a stop as she realized . . . she did know him. “Keane Winters,” she murmured. The only man on the planet who could make her feel good about her decision to give up men.
And in fact, if she’d only given them up sooner, say back on the day of the Sadie Hawkins dance in her sophomore year of high school when he’d stood her up, she’d have saved herself a lot of heartache in the years since.
On the other side of the door, Keane shoved his dark sunglasses to the top of his head, revealing dark chocolate eyes that she knew could melt when he was amused or aroused, or turn to ice when he was so inclined.
They were ice now. Catching her gaze, he lifted a cat carrier. A bright pink bedazzled carrier.
He had a cat. Her body wanted to soften at this knowledge because that meant on some level at least he had to be a good guy, right?
Luckily her brain clicked on, remembering everything, every little detail of that long-ago night. Like how she’d had to borrow a dress for the dance from a neighbor girl in her class who’d gleefully lorded it over her, how she’d had to beg her foster mother to let her go, how she’d stolen a Top Ramen from the locked pantry and eaten it dry in the bathroom so she wouldn’t have to buy both her dinner and his, as was custom for the “backwards” dance.
“We’re closed,” she said through the glass, knowing he’d be able to hear her just fine.
Not a word escaped his lips. He simply raised the cat carrier another inch, like he was God’s gift.
And he had been. At least in high school.
Wishing she’d gotten some caffeine before dealing with this, she blew out a breath and stepped closer, her eyes apparently caught in some sort of spinning vortex