13. Chapter 13

By the time Georgia tells me Bear's offered, I don't need his help to take cats back to Harvey—who, I assume, must be Catman. I've already shooed them away to the empty fields behind the shop. After a little investigating about barn cats—thank you, Google—I know they're good at finding their way back to their outdoor shelters, aka barns, so I'm sure Harvey will understand why I didn't wait for him to come back. And the other two cat providers were fine with me letting them go.

But Harvey said he'd be back for his, which makes me nervous. I thought about delivering them, but aside from not knowing where Harvey lives, I had no way of getting the cats back to him unless I first caught them, and second, stuffed them all in my car and drove them back.

That prospect didn't tempt me anymore than having Bear help me do it.

Two days later, however, when Catman shows up at my door looking for his dozen cats, I reconsider my impulsive decision. Harvey's not too happy when I tell him his feline friends are out in the fields somewhere. His irritation only grows after his eyes drop to the empty box poking out of my trash.

"Did you feed them that?" He points an accusing finger at the box that held the cans of wet food I used to lure the cats out of the shop.

"Yeah, but just once. I haven't fed them for a couple of days. Is that a problem, Mister…?" I drag out the word, leaving him space to fill in his last name.

"Harvey." The name comes out sharp and clipped. "Just Harvey."

"Harvey. I'm Cassie. Thanks so much for loaning me your cats." I keep my voice measured and calm even as his chest rises and falls in anxious breaths. "I really appreciate it, but I couldn't keep them all in the shop. But they're around. They've been coming back, so if you'll leave your address—and maybe a cat carrier or two—I can try to bring them back to you."

All thirteen of them.

I probably should have been more specific in my Facebook post about how many cats I wanted. I just never imagined someone would have a spare dozen or so cats. Or that he'd expect me to either keep them contained for days or else package them all up to deliver back to him.

Small town life may not be as simple as I imagined.

Harvey shoves his hands into his overalls and shakes his head. "Even if you catch them, they'll keep coming back here. You've given them a taste of something different." He points to the shop door. "They're leaving you gifts to thank you."

A pile of guts and severed mouse heads are on the walkway in front of the door. I'd say ew, but at this point, I'm used to it. I've cleaned up four carcasses today already.

And even though I don't lose my cool over the new pile of guts, I come close to losing it over the thought I may have accidentally adopted a dozen semi-feral cats. Panic rises in my chest, and I curl my fingers into fists to keep from pulling out my phone to google cat exterminators.

The moment passes and my hostage-situation training kicks in, checking my emotions. Besides, I doubt cat exterminators exist—and if they do, I don't want to know. I'd never actually want Harvey's cats to be done away with, but I also don't want them to live here.

"I'm really sorry about all this, Harvey. What can I do to get the cats back to you?" I ask him as calmly as possible. It's not his fault I didn't communicate my expectations clearly.

At the same time, the cats can't stay. "Bear is here a couple of days a week, and he's super allergic." And I don't want any more gifts.

"Shoulda thoughta that before you fed them." Harvey raises an eyebrow, as if he's pointed out something every dummy knows.

But this dummy didn't.

Then something occurs to me. "How did you catch them all to bring them here? Did they walk into the carriers on their own?"

Harvey scoffs. "Of course I feed them. But only dry food and water. Never…" he points to a paper bowl with a thin layer of white liquid outside of my door. "Milk. Cats are genetically lactose intolerant."

My chest empties in defeat. "So, basically, I've done everything wrong?"

His face pinches into a wrinkled prune until, with great reluctance, he says, "I'll do what I can to get them all back to my place, but it's only a mile away. Between the mice and the wet food, they'll likely find their way back here."

"You don't keep them inside?" I ask. I want his answer to be yes, but I also don't want to think too hard about how a house with at least a dozen cats in it looks.

He lets out a long sigh and rolls his eyes. "You've got the wrong idea about cats if you believe people are the ones telling them what to do."

I have no response to that. It's a truth universally acknowledged that a cat in want of a master must be a dog in disguise.

I could be tougher with Harvey if I had my badge or gun to back me up. Cops have authority, even when they're the ones who've messed up. But I don't have authority or even any history in Paradise to back me up. I'm the new girl in town. Harvey has a settled confidence about him that makes me sure he's as much a part of Paradise as the Thomsens are.

Which means I have two choices: provide food for a dozen cats and be thankful I will never have any kind of rodent or Bear in my bookstore or do my best to round them up and take them back to Harvey.

The first is obviously the easiest solution, but I'd spend a fortune on cat food. And maybe, if I'm completely honest, I'm curious to see what Georgia meant about Bear being my best customer. Especially now that I know he wanted to ask me out.

I let out a long sigh. "Let me help you get the carriers from your car. I promise to bring your cats back to you." Because I will catch them.

Cats can't be harder to capture than criminals, even if they are smarter than a lot of the people I've put behind bars.

Harvey lets out a low sound that's like a cat who is done being touched, then opens the back of his old station wagon and starts pulling out crates. I rush to help him, because I not only need to get the cats back to him, I also need to figure out how to apologize for what I did to Bear.

I spend half of the next day catching and returning cats in shifts. Catch a couple, take them to Harvey, come home, catch a few more. And I know I shouldn't use the wet cat food to trick them into getting in the crates, but it works.

Mostly.

I'm probably taking different cats back to Harvey, but honestly, five cats into my re-re-homing project, they all start to look the same. I can count, though. By dinnertime, I've taken twelve cats and crates back to Harvey. And I'm eighty-seven percent sure they were all different cats.

Okay, maybe sixty-eight percent sure.

Fine.

I'm not at all sure that I haven't taken the same four cats back to Harvey three times. But I haven't had any "gifts" yet today, so that's a good sign.

By late afternoon, one carrier remains, and I can't find a cat to put in it anywhere. I'm not one to leave a job unfinished, but when I hear gravel crunching outside, I open the door to see several cars parking in the alley, including Bear in a Jeep.

Something dashes past me into the studio. I quickly shut the door because here's my last cat. I'm not letting it escape before I get it back to Harvey.

But I also want to avoid Bear until I can sincerely apologize to him in private. I think a public apology would embarrass him. Whatever he's doing, he's obviously with friends, so now isn't the right time.

I face the gray cat with long, matted fur, sitting on its haunches staring up at me with googly eyes. Literally, googly eyes that could have come straight from a kindergartner's craft kit and glued to the cat's face. They point in opposite directions, and even before the cat lets out a loud, mournful, bark-like meow, I'm drawn to this oddball who's as much a cat misfit as I am a city girl in Paradise.

"Hello, kitty." I bend down slowly, expecting my new friend to run.

But he (she?) meow-barks again—a sound ear-splittingly similar to my ten-year-old neighbor girl's violin practice—and nudges my hand with the top of his head. I stroke his back, and he rubs his whole body against my leg.

I drag my hand over his back again, but he darts away to jump onto the kitchen table. Before I can get him off, he sticks his head into the glass of water I left there.

There's only an inch of water left at the bottom of the tall, plastic glass, so he can't reach it. But that doesn't keep him from trying.

This is how I determine he's a boy—likely a teenager. He has enough awareness to know his plan isn't a good one, but he keeps pressing forward anyway, until he gets his entire head and part of his neck inside the cup. He sticks out his tongue and tips up the glass so the bit of water drops into his mouth. Most of it, though, spills over his head.

He tries to pull his head out of the glass, but he's stuck. Not even shaking his head wildly gets him unstuck—the glass goes with him. His face and googly crossed eyes are mushed inside, and I'm doubled-over, laughing too hard to do anything but pull out my phone to take a picture.

I finally gain enough control to grab him and pull the glass off his head. "You're not very smart, are you, buddy?"

I'm still laughing, but I am deeply, madly, in love with this cat. He lets out a loud meow bark, somewhere in the A-chord range, followed by another a little closer to C that might be a thank you.

"You want some food?" I walk to the kitchen and he follows.

That has to be a sign he wants to be here. He's claimed me as much as I've claimed him.

I pull out the one can of wet cat food left in my cabinet. "Let's call you Willy Wonkat. What do you think?"

He lets out something that could be a purr or a curse, and I'm confident we're going to be very happy together. I open the food and dump it in a paper bowl. Willy Wonkat nearly climbs my leg to get to it before I can set it in front of him. I watch him eat for a few seconds as the voices outside grow louder.

They move inside the shop where I can hear them even clearer through the door separating the studio from the shop. Bear's voice is the loudest, but the others belong to men too, and I can't help wondering what they're doing.

I'm about to press my ear to the shop door when there's a knock at it, which makes me jump.

I open it a crack in case Willy Wonkat decides to make a break for it. Georgia and Evie are on the other side.

"Hey! The guys are playing hockey at the pond." Georgia points her thumb at the men behind her who are in different states of dress, but the one who catches my eye is Bear.

He peels off his flannel shirt, giving me a view of his back muscles from his shoulders all the way down to where they taper into the hockey pants he's wearing.

"Who's playing?" I ask Georgia, trying to be casual.

The one thing that is playing—in my head—is the memory of Bear on drums, rocking to the beat, sweat dripping over every inch of his arms and chest. I thought he looked good that night, but now that I've got a full view of what lay beneath the tank he wore then, I can't look away. His trap muscles have me trapped.

"Cassie?" Georgia's voice brings me back to myself. "Did you hear me?"

"No, sorry. It's a little loud in here." My eyes dart back to her, but almost immediately, they're drawn back over her shoulder to Bear.

As if my mouth weren't already watering, he turns slightly so I get a glimpse of his abs. I quickly count. If his other half matches—and why wouldn't it?—he's got a solid eight pack. To make matters worse, Bear—still shirtless—stretches his arms high before tucking his hands behind his head. He pulls his shoulders back, opening his chest, and giving me a new, better view of his biceps and triceps.

Evie coughs loudly, and I tear my eyes away from Bear's gun show. "If you enjoy watching him now, you're going to love watching him play hockey."

"Who? I don't know what you're talking about." Heat travels to my face before I can cover my cheeks.

Evie and Georgia laugh at me, but I throw up a lame defense, anyway. "I wasn't looking at anyone!"

Georgia glances over her shoulder, but I don't move my gaze, even though out of the corner of my eye I can see Bear swipe the back of his hand across his brow. And I don't know how that's sexy, but it is.

Georgia turns back to me with a smirk. "Remember last summer? When you called Bear Zach's baby brother and thought he was way too young for you?"

My eyes shoot to Bear, who catches me and glares back. Or maybe his eyes were already that squinty from the after-effects of a major allergic reaction to cats. Caused by yours truly.

I look back to Georgia. "I stand by that. He is too young… but watching a hockey game sounds … fun."

Especially since this may be my one and only chance to see what the big deal is about pond hockey. Pond hockey's days in Paradise may be numbered—also thanks to yours truly. But my loan papers are in, and Georgia and I have been working on renovation plans together.

"Bear won't mind?" I ask them both.

As much as I'd enjoy watching, if this is one of his last games, I'm worried I might mess it up for him. The least I can do after the whole cat debacle is let him have his hockey game.

Georgia and Evie both direct their gaze at Bear, then return their attention to me, making it clear that we're discussing him.

"Probably not. He's in a good mood." Georgia smiles. "I think he's over your attempt to kill him."

"I didn't try to kill him! At least not on purpose." My eyes dart to Bear, who stares back at us. "And I'm planning to apologize when the time is right."

He pulls on a tight-fitting undershirt, then dips his chin to me, but not in a friendly way. More like how one adversary might acknowledge another before a fight.

I nod back, then look away, determined not to meet his eyes again.

I don't want to second-guess my intended apology, and I will if he keeps scowling at me, even though I know it's the right thing to do. His scowl, though, makes me less worried about messing up his hockey game.

"He looks pretty good for someone who cheated death a couple of days ago." I say to Georgia and Evie, then open the door wider. "You want to come in for a second while I put on something warmer?"

They walk into the studio, but closing the door behind them doesn't shut out the image of Bear from my mind. The vision of him shirtless is engraved into my brain, akin to an ancient cave drawing. It's not going away anytime soon.

When I face Georgia, she's sprawled out on my bed/couch with Evie next to her. "You've fixed this place up so cute. How do you like it?"

"Now that the mice are gone, it's great." I open the top drawer of the dresser that doubles as a TV stand and pull out my warmest sweater.

I'm tugging the red wool sweater over my head when a loud meowing comes from somewhere.

"What is that?" Evie asks while I follow the sound to the kitchen sink.

I open the curtain that covers the space under the sink, and Willy Wonkat runs out. "It's him."

I point in Willy's general direction. He runs to the other side of the studio, U-turns, comes back to me, then jumps on the kitchen table.

"What is him?" Georgia asks, sitting up straight.

"Willy Wonkat," I answer as I rush to the table before he can stick his head in my plastic cup again.

I'm too late. He's stuck again.

"Willy Wonkat?" Georgia and Evie say together.

I shrug, pick him up, and yank the cup off his head. Willy Wonkat is the only way I can describe this cat. He defies explanation.

"It's okay if I keep him, right?" I scratch the top of his head, and Willy lets out a loud purr reminiscent of the rumbling burp of a drunk frat boy.

Georgia and Evie both stare at me as if I'm insane, which is fair, before Georgia remarks, "The place is practically yours, so I suppose so."

"Yeah, I got the email about the loan paperwork being with the bank." I pull on my coat, trying to keep my excitement in check.

She stands and pulls Evie up. "It will get approved. Larry, Zach's loan guy, is the best in the business."

I set Willy down and follow them into the cold where Bear and his team are already on the ice. Their shouts ring through the air, accompanied by the sounds of skate blades cutting through ice and hockey sticks banging against each other.

And if I thought it was hard to keep my eyes off Bear while he was getting dressed for hockey, it's impossible not to watch him play hockey. All his gentle shyness is gone. He's not a teddy bear everyone describes him as.

Bear is a grizzly.

Anyone who tries to block him from the goal gets a shoulder check that nearly knocks the other guy off his feet. Doesn't matter who the other guy is. Bear hits his older brothers especially hard, which elicits winces and oofs from both Georgia and Evie, but a high five from Britta and their cousin Seb, who are on his team.

"He's not holding back today," Georgia mutters after Bear flattens Zach.

"He doesn't usually play this rough?" I ask, unzipping my parka. "Is it warm out here, or is it just me?"

Evie and Georgia, both shivering and huddled in their coats, look at me.

"It is not warm—that's why Hope and Charly aren't here." Evie's chin is tucked so far down into her coat that all I can see is the eyebrow she lifts.

"His showing off is working," Georgia snorts.

"What's that supposed to mean?" My voice gets lost in the shouting between Bear and another player who are on the verge of coming to blows.

I loosen my scarf.

This is a side of Bear I didn't know existed. He's proved he'll fight me to get the shop, but not like this. What I'm seeing now is a man who's willing to fight for whatever he wants. But when he has the chance to throw a punch, he stops himself, then skates away, proving he's also a man who knows how to stay in control of his emotions.

Watching him on the ice heats me up even faster than watching him play drums or get dressed did. For the first time, I'm seeing Bear not as the kid I accused him of being, but for the man he is.

The very large man with the name BEAR in all caps on the back of his jersey. A jersey I'm suddenly picturing myself wearing.

That image takes up residence in my brain cave right next to the picture of Bear shirtless. It's not going away any time soon, no matter how much I tell myself I hate Bear Thomsen.