Page 116 of Role Model

“Who’s Ursula? The ghost of your great-grandmother?”

Harris laughed. “The cat. She was probably under the bed.”

Ursula swished her enormous fluffy tail and knocked a hairbrush to the floor.

“Oh,” Troy said. “And how many cats do you have? Eight?”

“Nope. Just one. If she treats you like garbage, don’t be offended. She’s not into people.”

“That makes two of us, Ursula.”

Harris shifted off Troy and sat on the edge of the bed. Troy moved to sit beside him.

“This seems like an okay house to grow up in,” Troy said.

“It was the best.”

“It would be nice, out here in the country, I think. I grew up in the suburbs of Vancouver.”

“I like being downtown, but I miss the quiet sometimes,” Harris said. “I’ll probably move back here someday. Not to this house, exactly. I mean, I don’t think so. Anna and Margot built the cidery on the west side of the orchard, and they more or less run the farm now. I assume one of them will get the house eventually. It’s been in the family for four generations so far. I’m glad my sisters are passionate about the farm.”

“You’re not?”

“I love it, but I don’t know if I want to run it.” Harris shrugged and gazed out the window. The sun had almost set over the snow-covered orchard. “I like my job a lot. I think I’d like to see how far I can go doing marketing and communications stuff.”

“And you get to work for the team you’re obsessed with.”

“True.”

“And you get to bone down with the hottest guy on the team.”

Harris elbowed him. “You’re making me feel unprofessional.”

At that moment, amazingly, Ursula hopped off the dresser and walked directly over to Troy. She paused a moment, glancing up at him, before jumping onto the bed beside him.

“Holy,” Harris said. “She never does that.”

Troy cautiously stroked Ursula’s head with a gentle hand. She leaned up into his palm, seemingly as fond of Troy’s touch as Harris was. Within seconds, she was purring loudly with her front paws on Troy’s thigh.

“Wow. She loves you.”

“Because she has great taste,” Troy said as he stroked under her chin.

Harris watched in astonishment for several minutes as Ursula shamelessly soaked up as much of Troy’s attention as she could get.

“Should I leave?” Harris asked.

“Are you still here?”

Harris laughed and kissed Troy’s cheek. “We should go back downstairs.”

“Okay.” Troy stood, and Ursula meowed angrily. “Well, come downstairs then,” Troy told her. “Jesus, it’s a pretty simple problem to fix.”

“She hardly ever comes downstairs. This is her domain up here.”

But as they grabbed their cider bottles off the nightstand and walked out of the bedroom, Ursula followed. “She can’t get enough of me,” Troy said.

Harris grinned. “That makes two of us, Ursula.”

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