by Lori Foster
Madeleine still trembled just thinking about how relieved she had felt.
“You think she’s gonna keep us?” Dickens said.
Madeleine sighed. He talked a good story, but inside he was as scared as she was that this second adoption wouldn’t work out, just like the first one. Where they’d been before their people moved and had decided, “It’s too expensive to ship a couple of mutts.” Madeleine had heard that. She was always hearing stuff because, unlike Dickens, she listened and faced up to things.
“Do you?” Dickens pressed, sounding worried now.
“She’ll keep us if we’re what she wants,” Madeleine told him. “We gotta be good. We only gotta bark at strangers and then we gotta look terrifying if she needs us to. No whining, begging, scratching, chewing, or peeing and pooping where we’re not supposed to pee and poop. Got that?”
“Sheesh,” Dickens said. “Life’s hardly worth living.”
“Dickens.”
“Yeah, yeah, keep your hair on. We’ve been here a week and I haven’t messed up yet, have I?”
“Nope.”
“Do you think we’ll get to go in the house in winter?” Dickens asked.
Their new person, name of Rose Gibb, kept them in a big run at the side of her house. It got pretty warm since it was summer and even though the lot was on a hill, this part of Georgia was having a long, humid spell. Fortunately Rose had made sure there was a roof over part of the pen so it was easy to get out of the sun.
“If you don’t forget to go where you’re supposed to,” Madeleine said, looking at a corner of the pen where Rose Gibb scattered fresh shavings each night. “She’s got to trust us not to do what she doesn’t want us to do where we’re not supposed to do it. Then I think she might let us in.”
Dickens settled his mouth together in a wavy line all the way around. It was his grumpy look.
“What?” Madeleine said.
“I want her to like us. That’s dumb, but I do. She looks like she does sometimes but . . . it would be okay if she scratched my head.”
Madeleine blinked. “Me, too.” Bright sun could make her eyes sting. She perked up her ears. “Hush. Someone’s coming.”
Those two canines didn’t know it yet, but they were going to help Clawdia accomplish something important. She stood behind a big clump of orange flowers, put all four of her feet together and sat down.
With her beautiful, sleek tail curled around just so, she knew what a stunning picture of feline perfection she made.
From there she could see the ugly dogs through the flower stems. Dogs were not known for intelligence, so they wouldn’t notice her if she didn’t want them to.
At first she had been furious about the arrival of the two white, black, brown, whiskery, and who-knew-what-else creatures. This was her hill. Hers and Simon’s. Simon was her person and it was one thing to have Rose Gibb living up here—after all, she had been there first—but dogs?
Clawdia’s skin quivered over her well-toned muscles. Never mind, she was a pragmatist. Opportunity took many forms, even the form of dogs and she would use them.
She and Simon lived in a large, luxurious house trailer in the middle of a fine stand of trees across from Rose’s little house. Simon ought to be blissful and completely satisfied up here drawing his cartoons and looking after Clawdia, but humans could be contrary. Simon was pining. Imagine it. Pining after Rose Gibb.
Fiddlededee, she would have to suck it up and approach the beastly dogs.
Slowly, with exquisite grace, Clawdia stepped her way across grass that needed a good mowing. She undulated her spectacularly supple spine back and forth so that her rear and her head took a look at each other with every pace. And her tail stood tall like a ship’s mast, the very end tipping forward . . . like a tiny, fluffy flag.
The question was, could she dumb herself down enough to be understood by these lowlife creatures?
Look at that. They’re staring, the rude things. “Good afternoon,” she said. She would not turn her face away, she would not, would not. She needed their help.
All they did was wiggle their stubby whiskers and sniff.
“I said, good afternoon. You’re looking, mmm, somewhat better today.”
“What d’you want?” the bigger one said, although neither of them were an impressive size. “You didn’t have anything to say yesterday, or the day before, or on any day that I remember.”
She stretched. “One must have standards. Talking to you at once would have been forward.”
“I’m Dickens. This is my sister, Madeleine. What d’you want?”
Typical lack of grace. “My name is Clawdia. I live over there.” She indicated the lot on the other side of Rose Gibb’s fence. “I’m with Simon Falzone, a superior sort of person.”
“Good for you,” the other one, Madeleine, said. “We’re with Rose Gibb and we think she’s nice.”
“You haven’t been here long enough to know,” Clawdia said. “But, as a matter of fact, I think she’s nice, too, and so does Simon. Unfortunately, she’s a bit graceless and shy, and he, being a male, is naturally obtuse.”
“Ob—”
“Obtuse,” Clawdia repeated, curling her lip. “I expect you’d understand better if I said he’s thick sometimes. She’s shy and bumbles about, so he thinks she doesn’t like him. But of course she does. What woman wouldn’t?”
“We haven’t met him,” Madeleine said. “So we don’t know about that, do we?”
Clawdia sashayed closer, raised her nose and did her best to look down on Dickens and Madeleine. “Do you think you’ll be staying long?” She had almost said “long enough for my purposes,” but thought better of it.
The smaller dog, who had rather nice dark eyes if one made oneself look, said, “This is our home now,” sounding, Clawdia thought, a bit defensive for some reason.
“It’s my opinion, and I’m never wrong, that Simon and Rose want to be friends.” She flipped her tail. “You’re going to help me arrange for that to happen.”
The bigger dog muttered what sounded like, “Uppity alley cat,” but Clawdia must have misheard.
“How would we do that?” Madeleine asked.
“Don’t bother your heads with all the details. I’ll let you know when you’re needed.”
She could have sworn Dickens said, “Tabby menace,” under his breath. She stared at him really hard and curled her lips when he looked away.
“I hear Rose’s car,” Clawdia said, twitching her ears back. “Do as I tell you. I’m going to sacrifice myself and you will, too. We’re going to pretend we like each other.”
Rose drove from the dead-end lane into her driveway and parked.
Today she didn’t feel as nervous about coming home to the dogs she had impulsively adopted. A doctor at the hospital where she worked as a pediatric nurse had suggested that since she lived up here on her own she ought to get a guard dog. She hadn’t liked to suggest that she wasn’t really alone since Simon Falzone was across the lane.
The moment she opened her door, heat hit her face. She gathered her purse and a bag of groceries from the back seat and took them inside.
Dickens and Madeleine were the first pets she had ever had. She shouldn’t have allowed herself to be talked into taking two dogs, but once she saw the way they sat there, side-by-side, looking at her with such hope, she hadn’t had the heart to walk away from them.
If she could look after sick children, she could certainly take care of two little dogs who needed her. Be honest, Rose, you need them, too.
She needed something or someone. Self-sufficient she might be, but she could get lonely.
Come on, buck up, girl. Get on with it.
Nothing she had bought needed to be put away at once. She must keep on track and do exactly what she had promised herself. Exercise was what she needed, and so did the dogs.
When she had changed from her uniform into a new black cotton jogging suit and sneakers, she went through the kitchen door to the side of
the house. Her responsibility for making sure Dickens and Madeleine got long walks would help change her own life. She couldn’t turn herself into a raving beauty, but she could work on the “pleasantly plump” bit.
Her neighbor, Simon Falzone, popped into her mind as he did far too often. With her arms crossed, she stared across to where his trailer, if you could call something that big a trailer, was parked. He would be over there drawing, and brooding. Simon brooded a lot. She sighed. Brooding suited him, added to his mystery, and she was certain he was hiding a sense of humor and a heart of gold.
Tall, slim in a muscular way and with the bluest eyes she’d ever seen, she did wonder why he didn’t have a wife, or at least a woman in his life. Oh, he probably did. The idea that he didn’t was wishful thinking on her part.
Fanciful thing that she was!
Rose snapped to and clapped her hands when she approached the dog run. “Hello, there,” she said, opening the heavy wire door. The run had already been there when she moved in two years earlier. “Walkies time. We’re going for real walkies today, not just down the lane and back. I’m dressed for the part now.”
The dogs got up. They looked at each other, then back at her before wagging their tails, which Rose found odd.
“Do you like my new suit and shoes?” She pirouetted for them, then held up one foot at a time. “Snazzy, huh?”
Furtively, she checked around to make sure she was completely alone before she laughed at her own expense.
When she led the dogs from the pen, Simon Falzone’s big tabby cat walked straight up to her. Rose stood still, amazed. Clawdia—Rose had heard Simon call her that—was one of those aloof cats that ignored you, but here she was actually rubbing herself around Rose’s legs.
The cat moved on and went right up to Dickens and Madeleine.
Rose clutched the dogs’ leashes tight and felt shaky. How horrible it would be if they got into a fight. Simon would be furious if his cat was hurt.
“Clawdia,” she said. “Kitty, kitty, good kitty. Dickens and Madeleine, don’t you be mean to Clawdia. She’s our neighbor.”
All three animals looked at her for the longest time. If cats could sneer, Rose thought the expression on Clawdia’s elegant face would be a sneer.
“Oh, my,” Rose said and felt herself sag with relief. The cat nuzzled Dickens and Madeleine who just stood there and . . . Madeleine licked Clawdia!
“You are so good,” Rose told them. “Sweet, dear things. You could teach the world a lot about different people getting along.”
Awkwardly, she patted each animal’s head. The cat flashed her tail. Dickens and Madeleine wriggled a little.
The dogs walked around Clawdia, who purred loudly and curled up in a puddle of sun by the run door, as if waiting for her friends to get back.
Simon liked loblolly pines. He liked their long, spiky needles and the sound of their name. He also really got into their sharp scent. This was a good place, up here on this hill. He wanted to stay. Or he thought he did most of the time.
Then there were the encounters with Rose.
Darn, he’d lost all his social graces when it came to women, unless he wasn’t interested in them. That meant he did just fine with every woman he encountered—except Rose Gibb.
He had bought a place up here to get out of the city. The lot was perfect, remote and with just the right sized clearing for his double-wide house trailer. Everyone who knew him wondered why a successful, syndicated cartoonist lived where and how he did. Let them wonder. This was where he wanted to be.
His life would be bliss if it weren’t for Rose. “That’s not what you mean, Falzone,” he muttered. “It would be perfect if you had Rose.”
He got hot all over, then cold. What was the matter with him? He was thirty-five and sophisticated, so why did one sweetly beautiful woman with a quiet, charming manner, reduce him to quivering incoherence?
“Forget it. You’ve got work to do. Clawdia!”
He left his drafting table and shoved open the door to his screened-in porch. Clawdia liked to curl up out there on the seat of his bentwood chair.
The chair was empty.
“Clawdia!” He raised his voice a notch. She was one of the inspirations for his cartoons, which had always featured cats.
First he toured the whole trailer but when he didn’t find his buddy, he went outside and called her name repeatedly.
He did worry about her being outside on her own in case something large, alive, and predatory took a fancy to her, but she didn’t usually venture more than a few yards from home.
The light had started to fade.
Concerned, Simon strode rapidly along the cut that led through the trees to the lane beyond. “Clawdia,” he shouted.
Rose came into view, climbing the hill. Two white dogs with black and brown splotches came with her. Simon could hear Rose breathing hard and he frowned. With all the running around she must do at the hospital he was certain she was fit, so why was she out of breath?
He considered turning back before she saw him. Oh, hell . . . “Hey, there, Rose,” he said. What kind of man ran away from a woman he wanted to see?
“Hello, Simon.”
She was panting. He looked at the dogs. They weren’t leaping around much either.
“Been for a walk?” he said and felt ridiculous.
“Yes.”
Rose never said much.
“Whose dogs are you babysitting?”
“Mine,” she said.
He nodded, and squinted. “You got two, huh?”
“Two, yes.”
“You decided against starting out with one?”
Rose stopped a few feet from him and the dogs promptly sat, then flopped all the way down. “They’re together,” Rose said.
“A pair?” Simon asked.
“Brother and sister.”
“Ah.” They looked as if they had terrier in them, maybe Jack Russell, but there was Sheltie in the full tails and pointed noses, and the ears weren’t right for Russells. “They’re cute.”
“Yes.”
“You went for a long walk?”
“Yes.”
This was getting hard. “You’ll put us all to shame,” he said. “You’ll be so fit.”
Rose gave a short laugh. “If I get rid of some fat it will be worth it.” She flushed scarlet to the roots of her curly blond hair.
“What fat?” he said. He shouldn’t say anything at all, he guessed, but he hated to see her embarrassed like that. “You don’t have any fat to lose. You’re just right.”
Well, she didn’t . . . and she was just right. She had the kind of figure a woman ought to have as far as he was concerned.
“Take care,” she said and scurried off so fast the dogs had to scramble to their feet and run.
“I was looking for my cat,” he called after Rose. “Clawdia. She’s a tabby with long legs and pretty markings. Her tail—”
“Oh, yes.” Rose turned around at once. “Clawdia was visiting at my place. I’m sorry. I should have made sure she went home but I didn’t think. I’m not practical about things like that. Um, she could still be here.”
“Great.”
“No, what am I thinking?” Rose said. “She wouldn’t be here now. That was a couple of hours ago when I . . . well, you don’t care if I was leaving for a walk two hours ago.”
He did. Yes, he cared a great deal what Rose did. “I see,” he said. “If you do see her, could you give me a call?”
She fluttered a hand. “Yes.”
“Here.” He fished his wallet from his back jeans pocket and took out one of his cards. “My number’s on here. We should know each other’s numbers anyway, just in case there’s ever a reason . . . If you need help or just need something or someone, call me. Please call me.”
Once more she blushed. “Thank you.”
She hurried through the opening in the wooden fence around her property and quickly left his view.
For a while Simon stared in the
direction she had taken. He noted the roof of her house, tiled blue, and trees: ash, oak, pine. He hadn’t actually been into her yard but he imagined it would be filled with flowers.
“Simon!”
He heard Rose call his name and took off after her. His feet pounded on tamped-down bark and pine needles in her driveway. The little yellow Astra she drove stood in front of the one-story house.
“Rose, where are you?” He couldn’t see her. “Rose, what’s happened?”
She came from the far side of the house. “Clawdia’s still here. I don’t think she wants me to pick her up or I’d bring her to you.”
Simon slowed down. He took a narrow path that led past flower beds encircling the house. Just as he’d imagined, there were tons of flowers and standing where she was, the setting sun turning her blond curls into a bright nimbus around her face, Rose looked just right. Her eyes were dark brown and bright with intelligence and, he had to admit, uncertainty.
“I’ll get her,” he said. He was unsettling Rose. That made him angry with himself. “Don’t trouble yourself. You go about your business and I’ll deal with the cat.”
“Well—”
“Really,” he said grimly. “She’s making a nuisance of herself. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“It’s scary out here in the dark,” Madeleine said, later that same evening. She and Dickens huddled together inside the roomy wooden shelter Rose had provided for them. “Do you think anything could get in here? Like a bear, I mean?”
Dickens snorted. “A bear. I should think not. If a bear came anywhere near I’d scare it off.” He squeezed closer to her.
“Would that be before or after he ate you?” Madeleine said and immediately felt mean. “Sorry. You’re trying to make me feel better. I wish Rose would take us in with her. We’d be ever so good.”
Now Dickens was shivering although it was a warm night. “I like her,” he said. “I like the way she talks to us, too, like we’ve got minds.”