“I’m not abandoning them. They’re going to a good home!” Alice wailed. “Gertrude…” She lowered her voice. “She keeps stopping by with more cats for me to keep in my house. It’s too much. It’s too many cats, and you’re adopting them out, Emmie. I didn’t think you’d notice.”
“Moose noticed,” I said.
“Charles did too.” Emmie pressed her lips together.
“Some of them didn’t quite make it into your shop,” Alice admitted. “Oh, please,pleasedon’t tell Gertrude. I’ll call off the protests. Just… I cannot take these cats back. My house is overrun. And you’re doing such a great job adopting them out. I think Cora’s going to open a cat diner or something, and she can take some. Oh, Gertrude is so mad about the town hall.” Alice wrung her hands.
“This is absolute madness,” I muttered.
“Do you think you could take these cats?” Alice asked hopefully.
Emmie sighed, and I picked up the carrier, much to Moose’s annoyance.
“Did you,” I asked as Alice started to dart away out of the alley, “happen to see anything suspicious while you were out here sneaking around at night?”
Alice blinked. “I’ve seen Rosie out late.”
“Doesn’t her shop stay open late?” Emmie said.
“Only during the holidays. Earlier this year? Not so much, but she’d be out. I thought it was suspicious because she wasn’t dressed for cat catching.”
17
EMMIE
“We need to just confront her,” I said, barging into Marius’s great-aunt’s apartment. Frances was out at bingo night with my grandmother. I knew I shouldn’t bother Marius, but I could feel it. We were close to solving this thing.
“Confront who?” he asked.
I walked into the kitchen, where he was standing shirtless at the sink with a big tub of soapy water, giving Moose a bath. “You bathe your cat?”
“Yeah, because you clearly don’t,” he said. “They all reek of that almond spray.”
“You ever tried to bathe a cat?” I complained.
Then it hit me.
Marius was standing in front of me with no,zero, shirt on.
Droplets of water from where the cat had splashed him clung to his chiseled chest. The muscles in his forearm worked as he shampooed the black-and-gold cat’s head.
“Guess he doesn’t sit in front of a computer all day,” I croaked.
Marius gave me an odd look.
I tried not to think about how he’d almost kissed me.
“You still owe me dinner,” the deep voice purred.
“Of course! I’ll cook for you anytime.”
“No,” he said, fishing the sopping-wet cat out of the bucket. “I still want to take you to dinner.”
Forget dinner—I wanted him to take me to bed.
He was literally all my favorite things in one perfect Christmas package as he stood there in front of me, just in the dress pants and barefoot, cradling his cat to his chest in a towel as he gently dried him off.
Marius kissed Moose’s little velvet nose.
