Page 10 of A Cozy Christmas Blizzard
“Do you have children?”
LaVonne answered for her. “Katherine is single, the same as you, Wynn.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” he returned.
K.O. thought she might have detected a smirk in his reply. “It doesn’t surprise me that you’re single, either,” she said, elevating her chin. “No woman in her right mind—”
“My dears,” LaVonne murmured. “You’re being silly.”
K.O. didn’t respond, and neither did Wynn. “Don’t you want to hear what I saw in my cereal?”
Phillip purred contentedly as LaVonne continued to stroke his fluffy white fur.
“The future came to me and I saw—” she paused for effect “—I saw the two of you. Together.”
“Arguing?” Wynn asked.
“No, no, you were in love. Deeply, deeply in love.”
K.O. placed her hand over her heart and gasped, and then almost immediately that remark struck her as the most comical thing she’d ever heard. The fact that LaVonne was reading her future, first in cat litter and now Raisin Bran, was ridiculous enough, but to match K.O. up with Wynn— It was too much. She broke into peals of laughter. Pressing her hand over her mouth, she made an effort to restrain her giggles.
Wynn looked at her curiously.
LaVonne frowned. “I’m serious, Katherine.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. LaVonne, you’re my friend and my neighbor, but I’m sorry, it’ll never happen. Never in a million years.”
Wynn straightened. “While Katherine and I clearly don’t see eye to eye on any number of issues, I tend to agree with her on this.”
LaVonne sighed expressively. “Our instructor, Madam Ozma, warned us this would happen,” she said with an air of sadness. “Unbelievers.”
“It isn’t that I don’t believe you,” K.O. rushed to add. She didn’t want to offend LaVonne, whose friendship she treasured, but at the same time she found it difficult to play along with this latest idea of hers. Still, the possibility of a romance with just about anyone else would have suited her nicely.
“Wynn?” LaVonne said. “May I ask how you feel about Katherine?”
“Well, I didn’t officially meet her until this morning.”
“I might’ve given him the wrong impression,” K.O. began. “But—”
“No,” he said swiftly. “I think I got the right impression. You don’t agree with me and I had the feeling that for some reason you don’t like me.”
“True... well, not exactly. I don’t know you well enough to likeordislike you.”
LaVonne clapped her hands. “Perfect! This is just perfect.”
Both K.O. and Wynn turned to her. “You don’t really know each other, isn’t that correct?” she asked.
“Correct,” Wynn replied. “I’ve seen Katherine around the building and on Blossom Street occasionally, but we’ve never spoken—until the unfortunate incident this morning.”
K.O. felt a little flustered. “We didn’t start off on the right foot.” Then she said in a conciliatory voice, “I’m generally not as confrontational as I was earlier today. I might’ve gotten a bit... carried away. I apologize.” She did feel guilty for having embarrassed him and, in the process, herself.
Wynn’s dark eyebrows arched, as if to say he was pleasantly surprised by her admission of fault.
“We all, at one time or another, say things we later regret,”LaVonne said, smiling down on Phillip. She raised her eyes to K.O. “Isn’t that right, Katherine?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“And some of us,” she went on, looking at Wynn, “make hasty judgments.”
