Page 54 of My Best Friend's Mardi Gras Wedding

“Yeah.And I built them shelters and made them food—”

“Madethem food?”

Well, she was this far in.“Little cakes made of seeds and things they liked.Stuff like that.”

“And you were just a little girl?”

She nodded.“And I thought it was really cool.Until I told about them during show-and-tell and everyone started calling me Cinderella.”

“Why Cinderella?”

“After I admitted that I talked to the animals, they teased me about having the birds and mice help me make my clothes and do my chores.”

He laughed softly, but it didn’t feel mocking.It felt like he was sharing a memory with her.

She could smile about this now.He was acting interested and was being sweet about her story.She relaxed and kept talking.“So that was my reputation growing up.I had dogs and cats, too, of course.And my dad raised all kinds of farm animals.I took care of any runts or anything that got hurt or had any problems.I made a cart for our dog that broke his leg.I’ve bottle-fed more cats than I can count.We had a mama cow die in childbirth and I took care of the calf.He became like a dog, really, following me around, meeting me by the fence when he knew I’d be getting home from school.”She took a long swallow of her champagne.“But that was why I didn’t socialize much or go out for things after school.I needed to get home to take care of my animals.”

“And you preferred that, didn’t you?”he asked.“You never wanted to play basketball or be in the school play.”

She looked up.“I really didn’t.I always preferred the animals.And my classmates thought that was weird.”

“I can’t speak for the girls, but I’m guessing at least some of the guys were just jealous that you didn’t want to spend time with them.”

She laughed at that.“You really can’t help the sweet talk, can you?”

He gave her a sheepish grin.“While you were saving the animal kingdom, I was spending time withmyfavorite hobby.”

“Girls.”

“Pretty much.”

She couldn’t even fault him.He was so upfront about it.And yeah, sweet.It made her want to tell him everything.

“So, the rest of the story is then the special needs animals I have now.I take on the hurt ones and the ones with birth defects and the ones that just don’t…fit.I have everything from chickens to horses to cats and…” She hesitated for a second.

Josh leaned in, his eyebrows up.“Come on…what else do you have?”

She grinned.She kind of thought Josh might like this.“I have a pig who is scared of thunder.I have a very sweet alpaca who loves me to sing to him.And…I have a mountain lion.”

Now he was staring at her.Not necessarily in a you’re-super-weird way, but in a wow-that’s-pretty-cool way.There was a fine line between those two, she’d found.

“So you do sing to the animals,” he finally said.

“I do.”

“Maybe you are a little like Cinderella,” he said, with a grin that made her want to crawl into his lap and do very un-princess-like things to him.

But again, from him it came out completely differently than it had from the kids at school.She was over the teasing from grade school.She remembered it, of course, but she was twenty-eight now.She worked with and lived with animals, and she was completely happy and she’d figured out that she didn’t need people to understand her.

But it was nice when they did.Or when they accepted her anyway.

She wasn’t the same little girl who’d been teased.She wasn’t the teenager who’d gotten comments about how she had to keep her only friends in a pen to get them to stay.She was the woman they all came to or called when their pets or livestock needed help.There was some definite satisfaction in that.And she was pretty damned gracious about it, to be honest.It wasn’t the animals’ faults that their owners had been jerks as kids.

“And a mountain lion?”Josh asked.“Really?”

“Really.Found him as a cub.He’d been injured badly.Shot, actually.I don’t know if it was an accident or if someone shot him on purpose and just left him there.But I operated and nursed him back to health.”

“And then he didn’t want to leave either, right?”Josh asked.His voice was softer now and a little huskier.

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