the cat over to her, their arms brushed together, hers covered by her long white coat, his bared and tanned and warm, and also sporting four long nasty scratches down one forearm. It’d been a tough morning, she’d guess.
With obvious relief, he slapped his hands together, ridding himself of the feline hair that was sticking to him. His own longish hair, brushing his collar, fell over his forehead as he lifted his head and smiled at her. “So, can you fix him up?”
His eyes were green, and full of an easy warmth and friendliness that she’d never mastered. Not with people, that is. Odd then, how her mouth actually quirked in a smile back. “Let’s see. Follow me.” She entered the first of three patient rooms and set the poor, shaking cat on the table, keeping firm but gentle hands on his body. “Shh,” she murmured, bending close. “I’ve got you. Name?” she asked.
“Oh.” Another quick flashing grin. “Terror.”
“What?”
He laughed. “That’s what he invokes in me, so I call him Terror. His real name is Bob.”
“Bob,” she said softly, and rubbed her cheek to the cat’s, saying the name again, just as quietly.
The caterwauling stopped at the sound of her crooning voice.
“Ah, blessed silence.” The man sighed with relief. He lifted his attention from the cat on the table and smiled at Melissa, another slow, easy one that she was quite certain had set more than a few hearts pounding. “From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Now I’ll just wait way over here.” He backed to the wall, propped it up with his shoulder. “You go ahead and work your magic.”
Mel stroked the cat’s chin, and a loud rumble filled the room.
The man straightened. “What in the hell?”
“Haven’t you ever heard a cat purr before?”
“Well, sure, but that sounds more like an engine gone bad than a purr.” He appeared to be one-hundred-percent rough-and-tumble country guy, and yet he stared at the cat with mistrust, from all the way back at the wall.
Given the nasty scratches on his arm, she supposed she couldn’t blame him. In the waiting room, she hadn’t been able to see him in a good light, but now, under the harsh fluorescent glare of the bulbs above, she could see that on his extremely handsome face ran a jagged scar, starting at his forehead, along his temple, and then down his jaw to his chin. It was still red and shiny, indicating it wasn’t very old. “Symptoms?” she asked.
He put his hand to where her gaze had remained, his long fingers managing to cover only part of the scar. “What?”
She nodded to the cat, who’d sprawled out on the table, belly up to be rubbed. “What’s the matter with Bob?”
“Oh…” Clearly feeling a little foolish, he dropped his hand from his face and returned to propping up the wall with his shoulder. “He’s doubled his food intake, for starters. And also he seems to have to go to the bathroom a lot.”
Mel felt the eight swollen nipples and the bulging tummy of the blissfully purring cat. “Well, for starters, he’s a she.”
He blinked once, then again, before slowly scratching his jaw. “Hmm. That would explain the PMS-y mood then. Bob’s been trying to bite a piece out of me ever since I first picked him… I mean, her up.”
What was the point of explaining that if a female got cranky around him, maybe it had something to do with his attitude rather than her gender? The man had probably been born and bred here in this place that apparently liked its women barefoot and pregnant.
And speaking of pregnant. “You should also know, she’s going to have kittens. In about two more weeks, I’d guess. Is this cat new to you? A stray perhaps?”
“Pregnant?” He stared at her for a moment, then shot her another of those slow, melting grins. In spite of herself, her pulse quickened.
“Isn’t that something,” he murmured. “Little kittens to play with.”
He was afraid of the cat but thrilled to know it was having kittens? Daft, she decided, and continued her examination of the perfectly healthy, perfectly happy cat. “You know, cats can tell when you don’t like them.”
He’d pushed away from the wall and now stood directly in front of her. So close, in fact, that she could see that his eyes weren’t just solid green, but had speckles of gold dancing in them. “If they sense you don’t like them, it’s all over for you.”
“Not so different from females