immediately, she missed the warm strength of his body beside her.
“You lucked out on the flea situation, so far as my techs could tell,” said Dr. Taylor, setting each kitten gently onto the exam table. “We had a good look over with a comb, and gave them each a little bath back there in our sink. Good sports, these two.”
He scratched one of them gently under the chin with his index finger, and Nora cocked her head to the side. Dr. Taylor was pretty cute, actually, which she might’ve noticed earlier on any given day that she was not running an errand with her very attractive sworn adversary.
“They’re healthy?” Will said, which was a better thing to be focused on than Dr. Taylor’s handsomeness in comparative terms. Nora stood, smoothing the front of her denim shirt.
Dr. Taylor nodded, pulling a small tablet out of the pocket of his white coat and swiping his finger across it. “They both look good, though we’ll need a bit of time before we get results back on the tests we ran. Now in this apartment you two share, where do—”
“Oh,” Nora said quickly, “we don’t . . . we definitely don’t share it.”
Dr. Taylor looked up, moved his eyes back and forth between them, before settling his . . . interested? . . . gaze briefly back on Nora. Well! That was nice, to be noticed. Especially when she was covered in kitten hair. Possible presence of other kitten detritus, but best not to think of it at the moment.
“Will’s my neighbor,” she said pointedly. “He has a very sensitive sense of smell but not very good detective skills, I guess. So I helped him—”
“I’m sure he doesn’t need the full story,” said Will, tightly. She looked over at him and he was giving Dr. Taylor a pretty annoyed look! She recognized it, having been on the receiving end of many of Will’s annoyed looks.
“I don’t mind,” said Dr. Taylor, winking at Nora. A wink, that was a little much. Probably he would talk about himself a lot on a first date. “Now will you be keeping the kittens, or . . . ?”
“You know what, Dr. Taylor,” Nora said, leaning in, “Will and I were just talking about that! I suggested that he might want to keep them. On the way over here they kept wanting to crawl right out of that hamper to get to him.”
“They didn’t,” Will said, his voice clipped. “Listen, do you have ideas for a rescue organization? Rules say we can’t have them in the building.”
Nora pursed her lips, looked back at Dr. Taylor, who furrowed his brow and made a noise of concern. “Well, I have to say, that’s not the best news. Do you think your landlord could make an exception for a temporary period?”
“Probably not,” Will said. “She’s kind of a stickler.”
Nora rolled her eyes and nudged his side (muscles: still hard!) with her elbow. “Why a temporary period?” she asked.
“Kittens this young—I’d say the mother’s nearby, somewhere. Maybe they all got in when you were out one day, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she comes around looking for these little guys. We have a program here for spaying feral cats, so we might be able to help her if she does.”
“Oh,” Nora said, looking down to where the kittens playfully swatted at each other. Well, this was terrible. What if the mom cat had gone back to Donny’s, or what if she was nervously pacing outside somewhere, looking for her babies? The truth was, Nora didn’t even really like cats all that much, but this was sounding worse by the minute. She had a sudden, unbidden memory of the first morning she’d met Will, out on the balcony. She’d thought that loud, feline scream had come from a tomcat, but what if even then there’d been a mother cat in trouble? What if there was some kind of community cat crisis, all because of Donny’s sudden passing?
She didn’t want to be responsible for piling onto that.
“I’ll find a way to keep the kittens for a while,” she blurted. “Should I call here if I see the mom? Or—”
“I could give you my personal number,” said Dr. Taylor, and she really hoped he didn’t wink again. It felt like a wink was close. An imminent wink. “She probably comes around at night. If you see her, you can call me, anyti—”