Page 108 of Second Time Around
Chapter 21
On Sunday morning, Kyra stood in the cat room of the same animal shelter that all the K-9 Angelz came from. Now that Shaq didn’t need rescuing, she had no reason to adopt a pet. It was an expense that would only delay paying off her debts even longer.
But Will had made her realize that her life was missing the same thing so many of the center’s kids were: unconditional love. Her apartment seemed cold and gray, no matter how much spring sunshine poured in through the windows. For so long she’d shut everything out of her life except scraping together money, but now ... now she wanted more.
So she had decided to adopt a cat.
Hysterical laughter bubbled up in her throat as she compared the down-on-their-luck cats in the shelter with Will’s patrician good looks.
Shantay, the shelter volunteer assisting her, gave her a quizzical glance, but said, “Let me know when you find a cat you’d like to take out of the cage.”
Kyra nodded and walked up to the small, barred cubicles that lined two walls of the room. As she scanned the shadowy recesses where cats crouched, slept, or lolled, a yellow-and-white leg poked out between the bars to pat her on the thigh with a softly padded paw. She squatted to see who wanted her attention.
A matching-colored face with long whiskers peered out at her. “Hello, Malcolm,” she said, reading the tag on the cage. Malcolm meowed loudly and stretched his paw farther so he could pat her cheek. “You’re a very insistent fellow,” Kyra said, her heart squeezing at the cat’s gentle touch. She checked the fine print on the tag. “And a man of mystery. A broken leg, a guess that you’re about four years old, and nothing else.”
“He probably got hit by a car,” Shantay said. “You want to take him out?”
“Will it hurt him?” Kyra could see the cast on Malcolm’s right front leg.
“Just handle him carefully and it will be fine.” Shantay swung the door open and gathered Malcolm in her arms. “Besides, getting him adopted is more important than some brief discomfort.”
Shantay transferred the cat to Kyra. He was lighter than he looked, so she suspected he was undernourished under all his long hair. As soon as she had him settled in her grasp, he butted his head against her hand, and she stroked his soft fur. Loud purring vibrated through his little body.
“He likes you already,” Shantay said with a grin.
“I’ll bet you say that to everyone who picks up a cat,” Kyra said, but she was smiling, too. Malcolm’s enthusiasm for her touch was endearing.
Shantay shrugged. “Do you want to take Malcolm in the playroom to spend a little time together?”
Kyra gave her a sideways look. “I think you already know the answer to that.”
Shantay chuckled. “Because of his broken leg, there will be some extra work required, just to warn you.”
“As long as it’s not hourly, I can handle that,” Kyra said, although inwardly she winced at the additional expense for medical care. Malcolm snuggled his head just under her chin while he made a trilling sound ofcontentment. “Okay, let’s not pretend any longer. He’s coming home with me.”
A few hours and a couple of hundred dollars spent at the pet store later, Kyra poured clean kitty litter into Malcolm’s new box in her apartment’s bathroom. The cat sat on his haunches watching her. He hadn’t left her side from the moment she let him out of the cat carrier in her apartment, surveying all her cat-prep activities with interest and the occasional meowed comment. While his cast made him limp, he didn’t seem to be bothered by it otherwise.
As soon as she smoothed out the litter and leaned back on her heels, Malcolm stepped into the box and did his business.
“What a very smart and considerate gentleman you are,” Kyra said.
Malcolm scratched around in the box and then jumped out, coming over to plant his good forepaw on her thigh so he could stretch up and lick her chin.
“You act more like a dog than a cat,” Kyra said, ridiculous tears starting in her eyes. She scratched behind his ears and gathered him up in her arms before she stood. “Let’s give you a little treat for using your litter right away.”
As soon as Kyra sat on her sofa with a book in hand, Malcolm curled up on her lap. She found herself paying far more attention to stroking the cat than to reading the novel she’d picked out. Malcolm purred almost continuously, shifting positions in order to offer different parts of his furry little body to her touch. Occasionally, he would flick his little pink tongue out to give her a sandpapery slurp.
A bone-deep contentment radiated through her, muffling the constant misery that thrummed through her over losing Will.
She supposed she should be grateful to him. Before they’d met at Ceres, her focus on earning the money to pay off her mother’s debts had narrowed to near obsession. He had shown her how much more there was to life. He had made her feel again—to the point of agony—but it was better than letting her heart shrivel up to a money-grubbing husk.
Loving meant sowing the seeds of loss. She knew that, but it made her sad that she’d never had Will’s love in the first place. Crazy of her to aspire to that, but the heart didn’t listen to reason.
At least now she had Malcolm’s purring to get her through the loneliness.
“Don’t be ridiculous! You can’t walk away from a billion-dollar company or the family law firm,” Betsy Chase said, calmly sipping her coffee as she sat at one end of the mahogany dining table.
Will and Schuyler exchanged glances across the polished wood between them. They’d made their respective announcements over the raspberry-and-rhubarb sorbet.
