Dickens’s eyes closed to slits, and he started to purr as Jeff settled in to scratch him liberally behind his ears. When Jeff took his hand away, the cat moved forward and leaned his forehead against Jeff’s knee.
He picked Dickens up and settled him in his arms. Then he turned toward Melissa. “See, I told you I would make friends with your cat.”
Melissa’s eyes had grown wide behind her glasses. “I’m seeing it, but I don’t believe it,” she said. “What are you, some kind of cat whisperer?”
Chapter Four
When Dickens came down from his tree and allowed Jeff to pick him up, Melissa had no choice, really, but to let Jeff stay and volunteer.
She relented for Dickens’s sake. Since Grammy’s death, Dickens had occupied the cat tree in the window almost twenty-four-seven, allowing no one to touch him, hardly eating, and leaving his perch only for litter-box calls.
She told herself that letting Jeff volunteer was about the cat, but having Jeff shelve the books that Grammy had purchased before she died gave Melissa a big dose of hope in a situation that was utterly hopeless. Having someone else around the store eased the loneliness that had settled into the deepest recesses of her heart.
Still, it was a fantasy, this idea of fixing up the store. She needed to end the charade. Tomorrow she would make an appointment with Walter Braden, the Realtor in town who handled commercial real estate sales. He’d already called a few times to let her know that the Lyndons were anxious to make an offer on the building Grammy had owned for sixty years.
But Melissa’s resolve disappeared on Wednesday morning, when Jeff showed up on her doorstep bright and early bearing gifts: a new, expensive-looking coffeemaker for the back room, a bag of cat treats for Hugo, and a catnip mouse for Dickens, who came down from his tree and played with it for a solid hour.
“So what’s on today’s agenda?” Jeff asked after he’d set up the coffeemaker and brewed the first pot of the day. Why the man didn’t just get his coffee across the street was a mystery. But once she took her first sip of coffee from his new machine, she had to admit that the guy knew how to brew a good cup of coffee. Obviously Jeff was a master at winning lonely cat ladies over.
Plus she had a weakness for guys who wore tweed jackets…and formfitting white T-shirts and jeans, which was Wednesday’s outfit.
Yup, he was as yummy as the coffee.
“Let’s get the boxes behind the counter cleaned up and shelved,” she said, casting aside her resolution about calling Walter Braden.
They went to work hauling books around the store while she attempted to give him the third degree. But he was slippery. Their conversations always left something to be desired.
“Where are you staying?” she asked.
“Up on the ridge.” No specific address. And the Blue Ridge ran right through the middle of the state. Saying you were living in the Blue Ridge Mountains wasn’t very informative.
“Where are you from?” she asked as they tidied up the history section.
“New York.” Of course he was from New York. She could hear it in his accent.
“State? City?”
“Both.” He was a master of the one-syllable response.
“Where did you learn to handle cats?” she asked as they reorganized the fiction department.
“My grandmother. She was a cat lady.”
Two sentences. She was on a roll. “Mine too.”
“I figured.”
And that was the end of that conversation, unless she wanted to tell him all about Grammy, and at the moment conversations about Grammy tended to become overly emotional. She wasn’t ready for Jeff to see her cry. And besides, she really ought to be calling Walter about selling the place. Tomorrow.
But on Thursday she forgot all about calling Walter. She’d had trouble sleeping that night, and she was all prepared with a bunch of book-related questions. Jeff seemed to know his literature.
So as they started dusting every inch of the store, she asked him if he’d ever read any Jack Kerouac. It was just the first question on her list of sneaky ones designed to see if he was a literature snob, like Chris.
He gave her a look from the measureless dark of his eyes. “Is that a trick question?”
Damn, he was onto her. “How could a simple question about a book be a trick question? Have you read On the Road?”