“I’ll be damned,” Harrison said.
I laughed. “Apples and trees,” I said.
Peggy came back to top up our cups. I looked from her to Harrison. “So, how long has this relationship between you two been going on?” I asked, bouncing my crossed leg slowly in the air. Their guilty expressions told me I’d called it correctly.
“Are you going to tell on me?” Harrison asked. I noticed he’d covered Peggy Sue’s hand with his own.
“It’s not my story to tell.”
He narrowed his blue eyes at me. “How did you know?”
I reached for my coffee. “Peggy is the only other person in town who’s read every Mickey Spillane book we have. That and the fact that the two of you grinned at each other like a couple of sixteen-year-olds when she brought the coffee over.”
Harrison smiled. “I’ll remember that.”
Peggy set the carafe on the edge of the table. “Kathleen, my intentions toward Harrison are honorable, despite our age difference.”
“I don’t doubt that,” I said.
Harrison squeezed her hand and let it go. “I’m not stupid, Kathleen,” he said. “I know there’s a lot of water under the bridge when it comes to Peggy and me. We’re friends and we’re taking things real slow, but for the record, just because I’m old doesn’t mean I’m not still in working order.”
I shook my head and put my hands over my ears. “That’s way more information than I need to have.”
Harrison laughed. Peggy blushed and I was very glad he didn’t say anything more.
When I got home Marcus was in the kitchen making dinner with two furry assistants looking on.
“Everything all right?” he asked, looking up from the stove.
“Everything’s fine,” I said.
“How serious is this new relationship of Harrison’s?”
I laughed. “I don’t know and I’m not sure I really want to.”
The table was set with a blue tablecloth. There were candles and a small vase of daisies in the center.
“What’s all this?” I asked.
Marcus turned down the heat under a pot and stepped away from the stove. “I talked to Eddie. He isn’t giving up on Roma.”
“I’m glad,” I said.
Marcus put his hands on my shoulders. “I’m sorry that I almost ruined things between us last year,” he said. “If there was a chance to go back in time and relive just one moment, I would relive that moment down on the Riverwalk when I accused you of not trusting me.”
He was so serious.
“It’s okay,” I said. “We got to where we are in the end, and that’s what matters.”
“I trust you with my life, Kathleen. I trust you with more than my life. I trust you with my heart.” He hesitated, and I felt my own heart begin to hammer in my chest.
Both cats were looking up at him.
“Merow!” Hercules said loudly.
“Merow!” Owen echoed even more insistently.
Marcus glanced down at them. “Okay,” he said.
Then he put his arms around me and kissed me. “I love you,” he said.
If you love Sofie Kelly’s Magical Cats series, read on for a sample of the first book in Sofie Ryan’s New York Times bestselling Second Chance Cat Mystery series!
THE WHOLE CAT AND CABOODLE
is available from Obsidian wherever books are sold.
Elvis was sitting in the middle of my desk when I opened the door to my office. The cat, not the King of Rock and Roll, although the cat had an air of entitlement about him sometimes, as though he thought he was royalty. He had one jet-black paw on top of a small cardboard box—my new business cards, I was hoping.
“How did you get in here?” I asked.
His ears twitched but he didn’t look at me. His green eyes were fixed on the vintage Wonder Woman lunch box in my hand. I was having an early lunch, and Elvis seemed to want one as well.
“No,” I said firmly. I dropped onto the retro red womb chair I’d brought up from the shop downstairs, kicked off my sneakers, and propped my feet on the matching footstool. The chair was so comfortable. To me, the round shape was like being cupped in a soft, warm giant hand. I knew the chair had to go back down to the shop, but I was still trying to figure out a way to keep it for myself.
Before I could get my sandwich out of the yellow vinyl lunch box, the big black cat landed on my lap. He wiggled his back end, curled his tail around his feet and looked from the bag to me.
“No,” I said again. Like that was going to stop him.
He tipped his head to one side and gave me a pitiful look made all the sadder because he had a fairly awesome scar cutting across the bridge of his nose.
I took my sandwich out of the lunch can. It was roast beef on a hard roll with mustard, tomatoes and dill pickles. The cat’s whiskers quivered. “One bite,” I said sternly. “Cats eat cat food. People eat people food. Do you want to end up looking like the real Elvis in his chunky days?”
He shook his head, as if to say, “Don’t be ridiculous.”
I pulled a tiny bit of meat out of the roll and held it out. Elvis ate it from my hand, licked two of my fingers and then made a rumbly noise in his throat that sounded a lot like a sigh of satisfaction. He jumped over to the footstool, settled himself next to my feet and began to wash his face. After a couple of passes over his fur with one paw he paused and looked at me, eyes narrowed—his way of saying, “Are you going to eat that or what?”
I ate.
By the time I’d finished my sandwich Elvis had finished his meticulous grooming of his face, paws and chest. I patted my legs. “C’mon over,” I said.
He swiped a paw at my jeans. There was no way he was going to hop onto my lap if he thought he might get a crumb on his inky black fur. I made an elaborate show of brushing off both legs. “Better?” I asked.
Elvis meowed his approval and walked his way up my legs, poking my thighs with his front paws—no claws, thankfully—and wiggling his back end until he was comfortable.
I reached for the box on my desk, keeping one hand on the cat. I’d guessed correctly. My new business cards were inside. I pulled one out and Elvis leaned sideways for a look. The cards were thick brown recycled card stock, with SECOND CHANCE, THE REPURPOSE SHOP, angled across the top in heavy red letters, and SARAH GRAYSON and my contact information, all in black, in the bottom right corner.
Second Chance was a cross between an antiques store and a thrift shop. We sold furniture and housewares—many things repurposed from their original use, like the tub chair that in its previous life had actually been a tub. As for the name, the business was sort of a second chance—for the cat and for me. We’d been open only a few months and I was amazed at how busy we already were.
The shop was in a redbrick building from the late 1800s on Mill Street, in downtown North Harbor, Maine, just where the street curved and began to climb uphill. We were about a twenty-minute walk from the harbor front and easily accessed from the highway—the best of both worlds. My grandmother held the mortgage on the property and I wanted to pay her back as quickly as I could.
“What do you think?” I said, scratching behind Elvis’s right ear. He made a murping sound, cat-speak for “good,” and lifted his chin. I switched to stroking the fur on his chest.
He started to purr, eyes closed. It sounded a lot like there was a gas-powered generator running in the room.
“Mac and I went to look at the Harrington house,” I said to him. “I have to put together an offer, but there are some pieces I want to buy, and you’re definitely going with me next time.” Eighty-year-old Mabel Harrington was on a cruise with her new beau, a ninety – one-year-old retired doctor with a bad toupee and lots of money. They were moving to Florida when the cruise was over.