Chapter 4

Brett finally gave up on sleep and rolled off the bed, intent on heading for the shower. One peek under the bed showed that the kitty from hell was having no problem snoozing. “Good thing you look like you do,” he muttered, looking over the snagged and balled-up cashmere sweater the little fuzz ball was now calling home. “Couldn’t take my T-shirt or old sweats.” He’d packed light when he’d left Vegas, putting everything else into storage until he decided what he was going to do with the rest of his life. Which meant that, short one sweater, he basically had nothing decent to wear down to dinner.

He dragged his bag across the bed and rooted around until he found the one T-shirt with long sleeves, and dug that out. He shook it out, shook his head, and took it into the bathroom with him. It was doubtful any amount of steam was going to make it look much better, but at least he’d make an effort to look halfway decent.

The hot, steamy shower felt like heaven on earth as it pounded his back and neck. He should have done this earlier. It was almost better than sleep. Almost. He’d realized after Kirby had left that he’d probably only grabbed a few hours after arriving, and he’d fully expected to be out the instant his head hit the pillow again. But that hadn’t been the case. This time it hadn’t been because he was worried about Dan, or Vanetta, or anyone else back home, or even wondering what in the hell he thought he was doing this far from the desert. In New England, for God’s sake. During the winter. Although it didn’t appear to be much of one out here.

No, that blame lay right on the lovely, slender shoulders of Kirby Farrell, innkeeper, and rescuer of trapped kittens. Granted, after the adrenaline rush of finding her hanging more than twenty feet off the ground by her fingertips, it shouldn’t be surprising that sleep eluded him, but that wasn’t entirely the cause. Maybe he’d simply spent too long around women who were generally over-processed, over-enhanced, and overly made up, so that meeting a regular, everyday ordinary woman seemed to stand out more.

It was a safe theory, anyway.

And yet, after only a few hours under her roof, he’d already become a foster dad to a wild kitten and had spent far more time thinking about said kitten’s savior than he had his own host of problems.

Maybe it was simply easier to think about someone else’s situation. Which would explain why he was wondering about things like whether or not Kirby was making a go of things with her new enterprise here, what with the complete lack of winter weather they were having. And what her story was before opening the inn. Was this place a lifelong dream? For all he knew, she was some New England trust fund baby just playing at running her own place. Except that didn’t jibe with what he’d seen of her so far.

He’d been so lost in his thoughts while enjoying the rejuvenation of the hot shower, that he clearly hadn’t heard his foster child’s entrance into the bathroom. Which was why he almost had a heart attack when he turned around to find the little demon hanging from the outside of the clear shower curtain by its tiny, sharp nails, eyes wide in panic.

After his heart resumed a steady pace, he bent down to look at her, eye-to-wild-eye. “You keep climbing things you shouldn’t and one day there will be no one to rescue you.”

He was sure the responding hiss was meant to be ferocious and intimidating, but given the pink-nosed, tiny, whiskered face it came out of, not so much. She hissed again when he just grinned, and started grappling with the curtain when he outright laughed, mangling it in the process.

He swore under his breath. “So, I’m already down one sweater, a shower curtain, and God knows what else you’ve dragged under the bed. I should just let you hang there all tangled up. At least I know where you are.”

However, given that the tiny thing had already had one pretty big fright that day, he sighed, shut off the hot, life-giving spray, and very carefully reached out for a towel. After a quick rubdown, he wrapped the towel around his hips, eased out from the other end of the shower, and grabbed a hand towel. “We’ll probably be adding this to my tab, as well.” He doubted Kirby’s guests would appreciate a bath towel that had doubled as a kitty straightjacket.

“Come on,” he said, doing pretty much the same thing he’d done when the kitten had been attached to the front of Kirby. “I know you’re not happy about it,” he told the now squalling cat. “I’m not all that amped up, either.” He looked at the shredded curtain once he’d de-pronged the demon from the front of it and shuddered to think of just how much damage it had done to the front of Kirby.

“Question is…what do I do with you now?”

Just then a light tap came on the door. “Mr. Hennessey?”

“Brett,” he called back.

“I…Brett. Right. I called. But there was no answer, so-”

“Oh, shower. Sorry.” He walked over to the door, juggled the kitty bundle, and cracked the door open.

Her gaze fixed on his chest and then scooted down to the squirming towel bundle, right back up to his chest, briefly to his face, then away all together. “I’m-sorry. I just, you said…and dinner is-anyway-” She frowned. “You didn’t take the cat, you know, into-” She nodded toward the room behind him. “Did something happen?”

“What? Oh. I was in the shower. Shredder here decided to climb the curtain because apparently she’s not happy unless she’s trying to find new ways to terrify people.”

He glanced from the kitten to Kirby’s face in time to see her almost laugh and then compose herself. “I’m sorry, really. I shouldn’t have let you keep her in the first place. I mean, not that you can’t, but you obviously didn’t come here to rescue a kitten. I should-we should-just leave you alone.” She reached out to take the squirmy bundle from him.

“Does that mean I don’t get dinner?”

“What?” She looked up, got caught somewhere about chest height, then finally looked at his face. “I mean, no, no, not at all. I just-I hope you didn’t have your heart set on pot roast. There were a few…kitchen issues. Minor, really, but-”

“I’m not picky,” he reassured her. What he was, he realized, was starving. And not just for dinner. If she kept looking at him like that…well, it was making him want to feed an entirely different kind of appetite. In fact…He shut that mental path down. His life, such as it was, didn’t have room for further complications. And she’d be one. Hell, she already was. “I shouldn’t have gotten you to cook anyway. You’ve had quite a day, and given what The Claw here did to your-my-shower curtain-I’ll pay for a new one-I can only imagine that you must need more medical attention than I realized.”

“Don’t worry about that, I’m fine. Here,” she said, reaching out for the wriggling towel bundle. “Why don’t I go ahead and take her off your hands. I can put her out on the back porch for a bit, let you get, uh, dressed.”

Really, she had to stop looking at him like that. Like he was a…a pot roast or something. With gravy. And potatoes. Damn he was really hungry. Voraciously so. Did she have any idea how long he’d been on the road? With only himself and the sound of the wind for company? Actually, it had been far longer than that, but he really didn’t need to acknowledge that right about now.

Then she was reaching for him, and he was right at that point where he was going to say the hell with it and drag her into the room and the hell with dinner, too…only she wasn’t reaching for him. She was reaching for the damn kitten. He sort of shoved it into her hands, then shifted so a little more of the door was between them…and a little less of a view of the front of his towel. Which was in a rather revealing situation at the moment.

“Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate it. I’ll go down-be down-in just a few minutes.” He really needed to shut this door. Before he made her nervous. Or worse. I mean, sure, she was looking at him like he was her last supper, but that didn’t mean she was open to being ogled in return by a paying guest. Especially when he was the only paying guest in residence. Even if that did mean they had the house to themselves. And privacy. Lots and lots of privacy. “Five minutes,” he blurted, and all but slammed the door in her face.