Carried Away - P. Dangelico Page 0,30

it all the time. It’s gross,” I glumly inform him. “Especially since he looks at me when he does it.

Turner makes a noise, and I turn to examine his profile. His expression is as serious as always, but I detect a subtle note of humor there, his lips pressed together to stifle a smile.

Well, well. What have we here…

“How did he get out?”

“I don’t know,” is my automatic reply. Which earns me a side-eye. “Okay, I may know something about it. Look, can we call a time-out on the Cold War? Tomorrow you can go back to hating my guts and stomping around as if I murdered your firstborn, but I need help right now. My grandmother will have a heart attack if she sees him up there.”

His dark blue eyes catch mine, searching for something. “I don’t hate your guts.”

Dare I say he looks puzzled. And he actually sounds genuine. That’s a two for two in the credibility department. For a moment, it knocks me off center, makes me doubt myself. What am I missing here?

“Agree to disagree,” I throw out, trying to get back on track. Because I have a cat to rescue. I can’t be standing here trying to solve the mysteries of what is going on in this guy’s head. “So…will you help me?”

He gives me a brief nod and walks over to the porch of the Hemingway, places the paintings against the door under the overhang. When he returns, he walks around the tree getting a measure of it.

He can’t be serious.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Turner. You can’t climb that thing. It’s too cold and slippery. And the ground is hard when you fall.” The ground is covered in snow and not the fresh kind. It’s days old with a thin layer of ice on it.

Turner takes a moment out of his busy schedule to scowl at me, then goes back to inspecting the tree.

“I don’t want to end up in the hospital when you hurt yourself,” I warn.

“Do you want my help or what?” Mr. Charm volleys back, giving me a look.

“Yes,” I mutter, biting back another comment.

Against my wise counsel, Turner takes a running jump up the trunk, grabs the lowest branch, and walks up the trunk. Once he gets horizontal, he vaults up on the branch and straddles it. All this while Elvis and I watch in rapt fascination. Dressed in black workout gear and sneakers, he looks like a hot ninja. And I’m suddenly feeling a lot warmer than I was ten minutes ago.

“You were saying?” he yells down, gloating.

“I was saying that that branch is not strong enough to hold your weight!” My heart is beating a mile a minute the way it does when danger is imminent but I can’t pinpoint where it is. Call it female intuition. Or that I have a pair of functioning eyes and a brain.

“You weigh too much––like two fifty or something,” I holler. “And that branch is thin! Get down. I can call the fire department. The freaking cat is a champion whatnot, a blue ribbon winner. They might come out for a celebrity.”

Ignoring me, Jake scoots further down the branch and reaches out for Elvis who glances down at his rescuer with the smug satisfaction of a Marvel super villain about to unleash mayhem.

“Turner get down!”

Jake starts making kissing sounds, and if I wasn’t so worried about him breaking his neck, I would say it’s darn cute.

Elvis gets up from his prone position and stretches, tail wiping arrogantly back and forth. Then he takes another look at Jake and turns tail. The devil’s hand puppet jumps down on a branch on the other side of the tree, leaps off the trunk, and executes a perfect landing.

I scoop him up quickly earns me a low growl. “I could kill you,” I push between gritted teeth.

Once the cat is secured, my attention pivots back to the stubborn man in the tree. “Do not move. I’ll be right back.”

I dump Elvis in the Austen and hurry back to find Jake looking unsure how to get himself out of this mess. “I’m getting the ladder!”

“Hang on. I think I got this,” he tells me, glancing left and right, his brow furrowed in deep thought.

“You do not got this!”

Does he listen? No. He swings down, hanging by his arms, then his hands, then fingers. But he’s still too far off the ground to be safe.

His shirt rides up to reveal a flexed six pack, and I’m stunned into