"Mommy's here now," Jennifer murmured to the animals. "Everything is going to be all right."
Rick wasn't too surprised when the yowling coming from the boxes actually calmed down a little. Jennifer had always had a way with the helpless. A way that cats and teen-aged boys responded to. The surprise was that part of him envied them that soothing, caring voice. He knew the trap that siren's call could be.
"Are they all right?"
Jennifer looked at him like she'd never seen him before. "They're hot and crammed into crates that are intended only to hold one cat each. Of course they're not all right."
"Um, how many cats do you have?"
"Eight." She paused and looked back at his truck. "Plus the two in the box."
"Ten cats?" Rick had wanted a dog when he'd been a kid. He'd never wanted an entire pack.
"I'll find a home for Annie and Nick. Then I'll be back to just my eight." She gave him the happiest smile he'd seen from her in ten years. "I get to keep them while I'm looking for someone who will love them, though. That will be nice."
"Let me guess. Sometimes that takes a while?"
Jennifer nodded. "I just don't understand why, either. Cats are incredibly easy to take care of and they can be very loving."
Rick held up a hand. "I'm not looking for a pet."
"We like to refer to them as animal companions."
Rick bit his tongue to hold back a snicker. This was important to Jennifer. "I guess I don't want one of those either."
"If you don't want an animal companion, we definitely don't want you taking one. That's half the problem in Dallas already."
"Right." Rick wasn't sure whether to be pleased or insulted that Jennifer didn't become more persuasive. "I can't imagine it's good for these animals to be out here in the sun. Why don't you see about getting them under the shade and I'll chat with the manager and find out why your stuff was dumped out on the curb."
"I paid my rent. It isn't due again for another four days," Jennifer told him.
"You worry about the cats. I'll worry about who tossed your furniture." He turned toward the manager's office.
"Uh, Rick--"
"Yeah?"
"Don't hurt anyone. I'm not sure I could afford to bail you out if you get arrested."
"Don't worry about me."
"But--"
Rick strode to the manager's office and hammered on the door.
After waiting a good minute, he raised his hand to pound again. The door opened with his fist in mid-swing.
He managed to pull back before he squashed an old lady of about seventy.
"Oh, my goodness," the woman blurted. Then she gave him the once-over. "I don't take any hoodlums here."
"Where's the manager?" he demanded.
"I'm the manager."
This wasn't going the way he'd intended. He couldn't see himself getting tough with an old woman. "You may be the manager, but you didn't haul Jennifer Hollman's things out of her apartment."
"Of course not. The owner sent some young men over."
"Then get them back. There's been a mistake."
"No mistake," the old lady stated, nodding firmly. "She's history."
Rick sighed. He minded his business and expected other people to mind theirs own. Still, he couldn't exactly leave Jennifer out in the yard with her possessions. He reached for his wallet. "All right, how much does she owe you?"
Chapter Two
"Why don't you let me take you and your stuff to your parents' house," Rick offered. He looked hot and angry. Ten minutes of arguing with Vera Dixler, Jennifer's seventy-year-old piranha of a manager, and half an hour of packing Jennifer's belongings into his truck would do that to a lot calmer man than Rick.
Jennifer shook her head strongly from her seat in the truck. Staying at her parents' place would violate campus rules. Besides, he'd probably mock the way her parents lived. Her parents had been hurt enough. She'd sleep on the street before she would let anyone hurt them further.
"I told you that's impossible," she said.
He sighed. "All right, where do you want to go?"
She couldn't really blame him for his impatience. He'd come into Schilling's to buy a new pair of work boots and he'd gotten caught up in this mess. She found herself amazed he hadn't run away. At least not yet.
Still, the mess wasn't her fault either. All she'd done was save the lives of a couple of adorable kittens.
She stroked Nick's soft fur. She'd made the right decision.
"You could just leave me here," she said. "Nobody made you pick up my stuff." The sooner he walked back out of her life, the sooner she could put a stop to irrational fantasies of rekindling the ashes of a high school romance.
Rick looked even better than he had in high school, Jennifer admitted to herself. The way he'd loaded her things into his truck gave her a new insight into the word ‘manhandle.’ With an emphasis on the ‘man.’ Still, she didn't want him hanging around. She couldn't tolerate a man who didn't like cats.
Rich chose that moment to confirm her suspicions about him. "I can't believe you had eight cats in your apartment. No wonder dear Mrs. Dixler kicked you out."
"And I can't believe anyone would just abandon them, let alone that Schilling would call and tattle on me, even if Mrs. Dixler is his aunt. People who don't like cats just don't understand." She peered at him from beneath her lashes, gauging his response.
Rick's reply was to start his engine and pull the truck out of the apartment parking lot. He said nothing about secretly loving cats. Darn.
"Pull over at the Krispy Chicken," Jennifer requested.
Rick gave her a suspicious look. She sensed that he wasn't used to taking orders from women, or maybe anyone.
"All right," he drawled. "But once you get your fat-gram fix, we still have to figure out what to do with you."
She barely restrained herself from hitting him for that. "We aren't going to figure anything out. I'm a grown-up, remember."
"As if I could just walk away and leave you standing there surrounded by your furniture."
Jennifer took a deep breath. Despite what she said, Rick seemed guilted into pushing himself into her life. She could use some help, but Rick wasn't the first person she'd turn to. He wasn't even on the list.
"If you're trying to make up for dumping me in high school, you're too late. I've gotten over it and moved on with my life."
Rick looked at Jennifer as if she'd grown horns. "Me dumping you? You've got things a little backwards."
She shook her head. "I'm pretty sure I remember your exact words. ‘You'd be better off with a rich boyfriend.’"
Rick rubbed his hand across his face. "That was after you started dating some rich kid. What was I supposed to do, tell you I'd settle for his leftovers?"
Jennifer felt sick to her stomach, like she'd been whirled around until she was dizzy. "I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about."
"I'm talking about Jim Dorfmann."
Now that was a laugh. Jim Dorfmann was a dolt, even if he was now a bank vice president. "I never dated Jim." Not that her parents hadn't pushed him on her.
Rick shook his head definitely. "I'm not taking the fall here. He took you to your, uh, presentation thing."
A faint lightbulb went off in Jennifer's head. "You mean my debutante ball?"
"That's what you called it."
She would have laughed if it hadn't been so pathetic. "That wasn't a date. He was just my escort."
"Funny, all of the other girls took their boyfriends."
Jennifer tried to remember that long-ago time. Why hadn't she taken Rick? "I think ..." Memories of fending Jim Dorfman's hands off her anatomy clawed their way back to her consciousness. "Now I remember. You wouldn't let me give you the money to rent a tux. A girl can't make her debut without an escort, and the escort has to wear a tux. I had no choice."
Rick stared at her. His face showed that he'd suppressed that memory. "I wasn't much good at taking charity," he adm
itted.
"Isn't that funny. You seem intent on dishing it out."
"Yeah." He spoke slowly. "I guess maybe I overreacted. One thing I knew for sure, though, I couldn't run in your circles."
Despite herself, Jennifer's heart went out to the boy he'd been. He'd never had anything new to wear, never got out of town on vacation, and lived in a trailer his mother parked wherever she had a temporary house-sitting job. She fought down the urge to pull him to her breast and comfort him. Now that was a bad idea.
"Just curious," she asked. "Is that supposed to be an apology?"
"I guess you have one coming." Rick nodded firmly.
"Oh. If you ever make another one, maybe you could send smoke signals. I'm afraid I wouldn't recognize it otherwise."
Rick glared at her.
Jennifer guessed the apology portion of the conversation was over. Against her better judgment, she forced herself to be fair. "I guess I owe you one too. Looking back, that whole coming-out cotillion seems incredibly small. At the time, though, it was terribly important. I knew you weren't happy about me going. I just didn't realize how unhappy you were."
"That's the thing about being a kid," Rick offered. "You mess up a lot." He pulled off his hat and tangled his fingers through his hair. "I'm still messing up. Holding a grudge for ten years seems kinda dumb, now that I think about it." He paused for an instant. "You should see smoke signals now."
Jennifer clasped her hands in her lap, resisting the ridiculous urge to follow his lead and run her fingers through his long hair. "I know what you mean."
Nothing had really changed. Jennifer knew that. She and Rick still had nothing in common, except perhaps a lingering physical attraction. Still, she felt strangely comforted in knowing what had happened. If Rick hadn't vanished from school two days after her fateful debutante ball, they probably would have talked things out. Instead, though, he had and they hadn't.
"I guess I'd better get to work finding a roof over my head," she told him. She searched around at the bottom of her purse and eventually came up with a small handful of change. The pennies went back to the bottom. The silver would give her a start at the pay phone.
This time Jennifer waited until Rick had actually stopped the truck before disembarking. No wonder he thought she needed someone to make decisions for her. What kind of a fool jumps out of a moving truck?
"So why the Krispy Chicken?" Rick asked.
"That's where the pay phone is." She'd never actually used it, but the corner phone next to the restaurant was one of the hot spots in her Dallas neighborhood. For many neighbors, it was the only phone they had access to. Right now, that was Jennifer's situation as well.
"Who are you going to call?"
Could she really have heard jealous possessiveness in Rick's voice?
"I have lots of friends," she assured him. "Somebody will take me in and I'll be one furball less in your life." That was one of the nice things about the Cat Rescue League. Cat lovers stand up for each other. "You can just leave my stuff here if you want. Someone will pick me up, cats, furniture and all." It didn't hurt her ego any if Rick wanted to think she was calling a bunch of males.
Rick didn't look like he'd given the matter any thought. He just leaned against his truck. "I'll wait."
Ten calls and three dollars later, she wasn't so confident. She pumped in another thirty-five cents.
"Carla, it's me, Jennifer." Carla Siebolt was vice-president of the Cat Rescue League and her last best bet.
"Ohmygod, I can't believe you called. I was just thinking about you. Listen," Carla's husky voice got mysterious. "I found this great guy you've simply got to meet. He works with Harry and--"
"Carla, I've got a problem a lot more pressing than finding a man." Harry was a loser who'd latched onto Carla like a tick. Harry and his assorted and sordid friends were why Carla had been at the bottom of Jennifer's call list despite the fact they'd been college roommates.
"Nothing's more important than finding a man, honey."
"How about rescuing a friend."
Two minutes later the painful truth emerged. Harry had threatened to walk out if Carla brought home another cat.
Jennifer set the payphone receiver back in the cradle, put her hands on her hips and turned to face Rick, who'd apparently been listening to her latest exchange.
"That does it," he told her. "You'll spend the night with me."
***
Jennifer's face paled. "If you really think I'd go to bed with you just because I’m home--"
Rick held up a hand. "I didn't say that. I have an office with a couch. You can look for something more permanent tomorrow." He owed her at least that much.
"I have more friends. I'd rather call them."
A young man in a convertible Impala drove by, honked his horn, and shouted something obscene. Rick felt strangely protective, an emotion he tried to dismiss.
"It's hot and it's getting late," he reasoned. "You've been talking to your friends all afternoon without any luck. So give it a rest until tomorrow."
Jennifer shook her head. "I can't impose and just move in with you."
Rick felt her slipping away between his fingers. His curiosity nagged him with questions about who Jennifer had become. One thing for sure, she handled adversity a lot better than she had ten years before. That girl would cry for half an hour over a broken fingernail. This woman kept on fighting no matter what the world handed her.
He decided he'd fight too. Fight dirty. "This heat has to be rough on the cats."
The cats, like him, were in the shade. Besides, in his experience, cats actually liked heat. People were a different matter. After all that time standing at the payphone in the sun, he rationalized, Jennifer had to be miserable. Her blond hair stuck to her forehead and her thin dress clung to her body like shrink-wrap. Whether she knew it or not, he was helping her. If only he could feel a little more noble about it.
"One more call."
She started to dig through her battered purple purse again, as if she was going to find any more change there after three searches.
"I've got a phone at my place," he told her.
"But--" she swayed a little.
That was enough for him. Rick pulled off his hat, plopped it down on Jennifer's head, then steered her toward his truck.
"What do you think you're doing?" she demanded.
He had no idea, but he enjoyed the sensation of his hand on her back. He decided to wing it. "I'm doing what any friend would do--helping out."
"I didn't ask for your help. After you dumped me, I stopped counting on men."
She hadn't asked him for anything, he realized. She'd just stood there looking beautiful and helpless and his male protective instincts had shifted into high gear. He admired independent women, but the notion that he might have been responsible for Jennifer's loss of innocence bugged him.
"You're right," he told her. "You didn't ask for my help. But that's the bitch about friends. Sometimes they help without being asked." He opened the passenger side door for her, all but pushed her in, then reached over to fasten her seatbelt.
Bad idea. His arm brushed against her breast as he bent forward to hook the belt and a sensation of pure desire surged through his veins. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been quite so, um, stimulated.
Torn between following up on his mistake and jumping away like a kid who'd touched a hot stove, he inhaled sharply and caught a good nose-full of Jennifer's scent. Vanilla, something like orange blossoms, and underneath the purchased scents, he breathed some essence of Jennifer.
Rick's body tingled almost as if someone had run a sharp fingernail down his back.
"I can fasten my own seat belt."
"Yeah. Good idea." He stumbled around the back of the truck, climbed awkwardly into the cab, and jammed down the clutch. This wasn't going to be easy.
Fortunately his place was only a couple of miles from the Krispy Chicken. He only ran one stop sign and avoided a kamikaze squirrel that s
lithered across the road in front of his truck. Hitting that rodent would have finished him with Jennifer before he'd really started.
He forced himself to confront that thought. Despite himself, he wanted to start something with Jennifer. Whether that something led to closure of their teen crush or a more adult relationship, he wasn't sure. One thing he knew. Their high school relationship had never really healed itself. He needed that healing.
He opened his mouth to say something really dumb and mushy. "I've been--"
"What the heck is this?" she interrupted, pointing at his place.
He looked, but didn't see anything out of the ordinary. "What?"
"I thought we were going to your apartment."
"This is it." He pulled his truck into a space under a huge elm tree.
"It looks like a low-rent car dump. Don't tell me you live in your truck."
All mushy thoughts vanished. Rick was proud of his garage. It had been an abandoned and boarded up fire station when he'd found it. Now the building shined with clean glass and fresh murals painted by neighborhood teens. His garage had become a place where a guy with a worn timing chain could rent a bay, cheap, by the hour or week, and do the work himself. He saved his neighbors some money, and he improved the look of the neighborhood by cutting down on the number of cars on blocks in people's front yards and driveways. It made him feel good.
"This low-rent car dump, as you call it, happens to be where I live. So why don't you cut me some slack?"
"Oh." Jennifer paused and looked out the windshield. "You said you had an office. I assumed it was in a house or apartment, not in a garage. I'm sorry--"
"My apartment is upstairs. I wouldn't have invited you to spend the night in a garage." Nor would he leave her at the mercy of the weekend mechanics who rented bays from him. Definitely not them.
He turned off the engine and slid out of the truck.
Jennifer stepped out of the truck, her dress clinging to the seat and riding up her thighs. A wolf whistle pierced the sudden silence.
Rick pointed up a narrow spiral staircase, indicating Jennifer should climb it. She grabbed one of the cat carriers from the truck bed and followed where he pointed.
Truth about Cats Page 2
