Page 21 of The Honorable Texan
His head jerked back.Violet reached down and grabbed her ankle just as Yow drew back, hissing.
“Yow!”Kemp exclaimed, moving around the chair to shoo the cat away while he knelt and examined Violet’s ankle.It was bleeding.“I’m sorry!I wouldn’t have had this happen for the world!”
“I must have stepped on her tail, poor thing,” Violet faltered.It was exciting to kiss Blake Kemp.It was equally exciting to have him at her feet, concerned for her.
“You were kissing me,” he corrected.“They’re jealous of any attention I pay to other people.”
“This has…happened before?”she asked miserably.
“Yes.Well, no, not like this,” he said.“Mee sank her teeth into Cy Parks one day when he was having coffee with me in the kitchen.”
“I see,” she began.
He gave her a wicked grin.“I wasn’t kissing him.”
She burst out laughing.
He stood up, pulling back her chair.He tugged her to her feet and suddenly swung her up into his arms.She gasped and clutched at his shoulders.
He raised an eyebrow rakishly.“Now it’s my ankles that will be in danger.I have to clean that and put antiseptic ointment on it,” he mused as he turned and carried her down the hall toward the bedrooms.
“I’m too heavy!”she protested.
“You’re not,” he assured her.He looked down at her in his arms.He felt several inches taller.She was delightful close up.He enjoyed kissing her.He’d liked to have done it again, but this wasn’t the time.
He put her down on the vanity in the huge, blue-patterned tile bathroom.There was a whirlpool bath and an enormous space that held commode, vanity, chair, and a linen closet, as well as a large medicine chest.
He fumbled in the chest for what he needed, tugged a washcloth out of a drawer and proceeded to clean and bandage the wound.
Yow peered into the bathroom, her blue eyes huge in her triangle-shaped face.
“No tuna for you tonight, young lady,” Blake told her firmly.
She flattened her ears and hissed at Violet.
“And none tomorrow, either,” he added curtly.
Yow turned her back and flounced out.Mee, in a conciliatory tone, meowed at the door and walked in, watching the byplay curiously but without much antagonism.
“Beautiful girl,” Violet mused, lowering her fingers for the cat to sniff.
Mee sniffed them, rubbed her face against them, and then wrapped her lean body around Violet’s legs.
“You can have tuna,” Blake told the cat.
The purring grew louder.
Violet stroked the cat, but her eyes and her heart were on Blake’s bent head as he put a sticky bandage over the scratch.
“It should be fine,” he said.
“Of course it will be,” she assured him, smiling down as he finished.“Thanks.”
“I’m really sorry,” he said again as he gathered up the first aid supplies and put them away.“Yow’s spoiled.”
“I love cats,” Violet said, still stroking Mee.“I’d have loved to have some, if Mama wasn’t allergic.”
“I don’t know what I’d do without mine.Although there are times when I’m tempted to try,” he added, with a glowering look toward the door where Yow had reappeared and was hissing again.
