like getting its paws wet.
Or maybe it’s terrified that whatever happened to the unicorn will happen to it.
But when I wade closer in the four-foot-deep water in the middle of the D-shaped pool in the courtyard, it arches its back and hisses, its tail going fluffier than my sister’s Pomeranian at the height of summer humidity.
“All right, all right, I’ll just pull you over to the side and you can climb off with your prissy little self.”
Another three minutes, and it’ll be swimming for it, but this one seems to have enough demon in it that it could probably levitate to shore. I should leave it to its own devices, but if it can’t swim, I’ll be the asshole who let a cat fall off a deflating unicorn and drown.
“Pussy problems?” a familiar voice calls.
My shoulders bunch, and I order them to relax. Me being an ass to her won’t make any part of the next few weeks to months any easier.
“Where’s the baby?” I try to keep my voice casual, but I don’t know if I hit it.
“Steve’s babysitting him.”
I twist around, not sure I heard her right. “Steve—the alligator?”
She laughs, and dammit.
She’s incapable of uttering a single true sentence, and here I am, wanting to actually laugh at both her audacity and the fact that I’m sixty percent tempted to believe her.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
“Relax, hammer man. Remy’s napping. You should try it sometime. Does wonders for the grumpies. Aww, Elvira’s unicorn popped. That’s really sad.”
Daisy plops down at the edge of the pool and dangles her feet in, watching me and the cat. While she was wearing the baby backpack backwards, all I could see was face and bare legs and tiger-striped toenails.
Now I get the full view of her in a tight pink tank top and short white shorts.
Her skin’s still blotchy from yesterday’s reaction, but her personality is back in order—not that it was missing long—so I’m not worried over residual side effects.
“You know how to catch a cat?” I ask her.
“I caught Twinkle Toes. The vet’s coming over to check her out.”
“You caught the cat?”
“I draped myself with a dead tuna fish and walked down the hall until she couldn’t resist me anymore. Left it in your bed, by the way. Nothing better than waking up to tuna bed.”
She grins and winks. It bothers me how much I feel at home right now, because my sisters and Tyler would say the same. And how much I’m not actually surprised that Daisy’s taking care of the sick cat that I couldn’t find.
My nuts start singing some Barry Manilow, because they’re hopelessly falling for Daisy’s breasts.
I remind my nuts that women like Barry White better, and they tell me I should pay better attention to who I’m flirting with. Or trying not to flirt with.
They might have a point.
I’ve nearly gotten the deflating unicorn to the opposite side of the pool with Demon Cat—aka Elvira, apparently—hissing and occasionally swatting at me from a distance. She’s hissing and swatting at the water filling the floatie too.
“No reaction to having fish in your bed?” Daisy says.
“Only fair, since I put shrimp shells in your bed.”
She sucks in half a breath before she leans back and laughs. “Westley Jaeger, you have a sense of humor.”
I don’t answer, because this seems like dangerous territory.
Where I’m comfortable to Becca, I’m apparently passing some kind of test with Daisy, who’s simultaneously unreliable and dependable at the same time.
Which means she’s faking one, and I don’t like fake.
I like real.
I like rules.
I like order.
Therefore, I will not like Daisy Carter-Kincaid. I can be civil, but I don’t have to like her.
Do what you want, but we like her, my balls inform me.
Traitors.
I get the floatie lined up with the edge of the patio, but the cat keeps creeping further back, trying to climb the unicorn head, which is the only part not actively under an inch of water.
“Go on, leap.” I point to the fancy concrete surrounding the pool.
The cat hisses and swipes again, but it miscalculates, because it’s a fucking cat, and gets its claw stuck in the unicorn’s horn.
“Are you kidding me?” I mutter while it jerks its paw and tries to yank it out of the vinyl. But the bopping unicorn won’t give it up, so now the cat appears to be boxing a deflating unicorn head.
Daisy tips her head back and laughs while whipping out a phone and pointing it at me.
“What do you people do