Page 48 of Sit, Stay, Love
She sighed. ‘Okay. But early. Like, five?’
‘Five it is. But don’t drive, huh? I have a nice bottle of red I’ve been waiting for a special occasion to crack.’
‘Honestly, you should have seen her,’ Sera ranted to Toby. ‘She couldn’t get away from those kittens quick enough. And the man! He left the mother cat on the doorstep. The doorstep! What if I was late or had an emergency or something? She would have been sitting there for who knows how long. People like that shouldn’t be allowed to have pets.’
Toby nodded as Sera raged, the mother cat and kittens in a crate in his arms. When she stopped for a breath, he placed the crate on the examination table. ‘It’s not like this is your first experience with irresponsible owners.’
‘I know. But for some reason, this one really got under my skin. Maybe because she woke me.’
‘Well, you are pretty cranky in the morning.’ He eased each kitten from the crate one by one. ‘Two boys and three girls.’ He held up a tiny ginger tom. ‘This one is a little smaller than the rest, so keep an eye on him. Make sure he’s getting enough food.’
Sera squinted into the tiny cat’s face. ‘He’ll probably end up being the biggest of the lot. Can you check out the mum too? She must have been beside herself, having her babies ripped away from her.’
‘She looks okay. Obviously has milk.’ The tiny kittens had each attached to a teat when Toby put them against the mother’s belly.
Sera let out a wistful sigh. ‘Aw. What an adorable little family.’ She felt Toby’s gaze on her and glanced up. ‘What?’
He smiled. ‘Nothing. I just love how passionate you are about your animals.’
She gave him a shove with her shoulder. ‘Shut up.’
He laughed. ‘Listen. About last night. I was—’
‘We’ve been over this,’ she said, quickly cutting him off. ‘You were upset. You’d just seen an old lady say goodbye to her best friend. A best friend you took care of. Of course you would be affected by that.’
‘Yeah. I was actually talking about… Later.’ He caught the corner of his lip between his teeth.
Oh no. I’m not doing this.She wasn’t going to talk about…later. She wasn’t going to talk about how he might have been getting a hard-on while he felt up her leg. Or the heat that just rushed down her spine at the thought of that. And she wasn’t going to keep staring at the way he was currently chewing his lip.
Stop it. Stop it. Stop it!
She turned and looked intently at the cats. ‘Later? Do you mean when you were so drunk you decided you wanted an arse-off with Ethan James?’
He let out a grunt. ‘I did not want to have an arse-off with James.’ He lifted the crate off the table. ‘Though if we did have an arse-off, I’d win.’
‘Yeah, well,’ she said, pushing past him. ‘Just give me a warning if that’s going to happen so I can leave the country or something.’
He laughed as he followed her out to her van.
‘I guess you know what his arse looks like now,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately, we both do.’
She laughed. ‘He thought that was pretty funny.’
Toby’s brows snapped together. ‘You told him? When?’
She winced. She wished she could reach into the air, grab the words and swallow them back down. ‘He rang me,’ she said brightly. ‘After I spoke to you. To organise next week’s schedule.’
‘And you told him I wanted an arse-off? Did you laugh at me?’
She stared at him. ‘No! I didn’t say anything about anyone’s arse!’
‘Oh. Okay.’ He nodded. ‘So, when are you seeing him next?’
‘Uh.’ She took the crate from Toby’s arms and slid it into the back of her van, busying herself with strapping it in as she said, ‘Later this afternoon.’
An incredibly loud silence boomed from the man behind her.
‘So, you’re too busy to see me,’ he said after a pause, ‘but not the movie star. Right. Good to know.’
