4c392a139708e5efb30cc267dbb0c768

She glanced in the rearview mirror.“Oh, Dooley. Of course you’re not going to die. It’s fleas—not cancer. By this time tomorrow you’ll have forgotten about the whole thing.”

“But—remember the movie the other night? Where Rose fromTitanic died?”

Max heaved an annoyed grunt.“Not Rose fromTitanic again, Dooley!”

“Rose fromTitanic died,” Dooley insisted stubbornly, “and so did Gwyneth and a whole bunch of other nice people, except for Matt Damon for some reason. And until they discovered patient zero and the bat and pig poop they had no way of stopping the disease.”

“This isn’t the same thing,” she assured him while suppressing a smile. Dooley had a flair for the dramatic, and for some reason always thought he was going to die. “It’s fleas, not some terrible virus. And you know that wasn’t Rose fromTitanic, right? Kate Winslet is an actress. She simply played a part. She’s alive and well and probably still living in that nice English cottage fromThe Holiday.” Though that was probably only true in the movie as well.

“Oh,” said Dooley as he thought about this for a moment. It was obvious she’d given him food for thought.

“Odelia?” asked Max.

“Uh-huh,” she said, parking the car in front of the house.

“Is Chase going to be living with us from now on?”

She’d extracted the key from the ignition and now sat poised, not expecting this particular question. At all. “Um…”

“I mean, he’s been sleeping in your bed for the past four nights. And he’s got his toothbrush and his toothpaste up in the cup in the bathroom and his underwear on that shelf you cleared for him in the bedroom closet, so…”

She blinked and turned to face her cats. They both looked at her expectantly.

“Um…”

“He seems nice,” Dooley commented, that sandbagged look slightly waning.

“Yeah, he seems very nice,” Max added. “And he killed a flea.”

“Two fleas,” said Dooley. “He’s a hero. A flea-killing hero.”

“Truth is, guys, I don’t know. I like Chase. I like Chase a lot.”

“And he likes you,” Max offered.

“It would appear so,” she said with a laugh. “It’s just that… we’re taking things one step at a time. I wish I could tell you what the future will bring, but I can’t. You see, human relationships are like puzzles. Sometimes you know all the pieces will fit from the moment you dump those pieces out on the table. Other times? You just don’t know. Maybe things look good for a while, and then suddenly you discover the puzzle company decided to short you a piece and without it you can’t complete the puzzle. Other times you get bored laying that puzzle halfway through or things are just too hard and complicated and you give up.”

Max and Dooley were frowning seriously. The puzzle analogy probably wasn’t the best one she could have come up with, but there was some truth to it. She liked Chase, and she liked the way he made her feel. But it was early days, and she had no idea if he was a keeper or not. And neither, probably, did he. At any rate, things were going great, and she had no intentionof taking them further by making big promises or launching big ambitious plans. Plans had a way of backfiring on her. Big time. So she wasn’t going to jinx anything at this point when everything was humming along fine.

She gave them both a poke in the tummy.“You guys sit tight and I’ll pick up Harriet and Brutus, okay?”

As she slammed the door, Max and Dooley were still brooding. She smiled to herself. Sometimes, she thought, her cats were almost more human than most humans she knew.

And a heck of a lot smarter, too.

Chapter 9

Chase and Chief Alec took a seat on one of those plush overstuffed chairs in the hotel lobby. With the fire marshals going over Burt Goldsmith’s room with a fine-tooth comb, trying to figure out what exactly happened there, the techies wrapping up Burt’s body and transferring it to their van, and Alec’s people talking to staff and guests, they took a respite.

“Do you really think your mom had Burt Goldsmith’s son?” asked Chase.

Chief Alec patted at the few remaining strands of hair on his wide dome and groaned.“I don’t know what to think, buddy. You would imagine a woman would know if she popped out a second son at some point in the past.”

“She says she doesn’t remember. Which doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

Alec gave him his best scowl.“Wipe that grin off your face, Chase. I’m begging you.”

Try as he might, though, Chase could not comply. The situation was simply too outrageous.“Could be that your mother is one of those women who don’t even notice they’re pregnant, then pop out a newborn without paying attention and go on about their business without a second glance.” At least that was the story Grandma had told them.

“I find that very hard to believe. And I find it equally hard to believe Scarlett Canyon would have the exact same story to tell. About the baby just suddenly… being there, I mean.” He waved his hands about a bit. “I mean—how can a baby just… pop?! That’s impossible!”

“And yet it happened, if your mother is to be believed.”