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The rest of Sully’s afternoon didn’t improve. When he returned to the Ugly Duckling, he tried to clear his mind with a few minutes of meditation. But instead of reaching zen, his brain seemed more interested in concocting a million different visions of Dede’s beautiful house blowing up. He could imagine the explosion scattering hummingbird feeders and colorful wind chimes for miles across Yucca Hills. When he finally gave up on meditating and started working on the seafoam glass backsplash in the kitchen, his brain switched to replaying the fight with Alanna.
Why had he ever thought such a volcanic woman was right for him? His mother was always telling him to find a nice girl.
Nice. Sully huffed out a short laugh. Alanna Sandoval stepped on nice with her stiletto heels before walking out the door. She ate nice for breakfast. She burned nice to fuel that expensive little GT of hers.
Why had he never asked out Dawn, a sweet, pretty woman who’d worked in the accounting department of his old company? She’d possessed long dark curls and a wide smile that she’d often flashed in his direction. Every year she’d go around the office collecting donations for her walk-a-thon for kids with cancer. So why hadn’t he made a play for her?
Easy: because Dawn didn’t excite him. She didn’t make his blood burn like a certain blonde with a penchant for dark lipstick.
Sully stepped back and groaned. The backsplash looked like it’d been installed by preschoolers after a cupcake binge. Grabbing a scrapper, Sully quickly peeled off the backsplash pieces before they dried in place.
And then he remembered.
Alanna had lost the arbitration.
He’d realized it the moment she’d walked into the bedroom. The brittleness in her eyes and the too-rigid set of her shoulders told the whole story. When he’d tried to offer solace through his gaze everything had gone to shit.
The gas.
Her fury.
“Get. Out.”
That’s what she’d said. She hadn’t wanted his solace. She hadn’t wanted anything to do with him.
And then the cat.
The cat.
Sully’s stomach twisted with regret.
He’d left the cat. All alone. Probably terrified. Possibly injured. Definitely lost. A cat that beautiful couldn’t be a stray.
Sully stared at the messy kitchen wall. He needed to scrap off the adhesive residue before reapplying the black splash. And he was already days behind his renovation schedule onThe Ugly Duckling Project.
He imagined the cat, hurt and shivering under the bushes, its eyes beseeching him for help. Blue eyes, the same color as Alanna’s.
Sully groaned.
Yep. He had to save the cat.
*
At 8:15 PM that night, Sully’s smartwatch dinged with an incoming notification. He set down his guitar, glanced at the watch, and smiled to himself.
Ten minutes later, his headlights cut through the darkness of a quiet street on the edge of Dede’s neighborhood. He slowed the Mazda and pulled up against the same curb he’d walloped that afternoon.
Stepping from the car, he crossed the street and approached the now-familiar hedge. A low, unhappy growl rose from the bushes followed by a furious thrashing. For a moment, Sully felt uneasy. What if he’d caught a raccoon or even a bobcat instead of his intended target?
Switching on his phone’s flashlight app, Sully got down on his hands and knees and peered under the hedge. The small trap cage sat exactly where he’d placed it a few hours earlier, but it was no longer empty. Angry blue eyes glared at him from behind the metal bars. Yep, it was definitely the same cat from the afternoon.
Sully felt inordinately pleased with how well his homemade cat trap had worked. A trip to Lowes and a solid two hours of construction, aided by several YouTube tutorials, had produced a simple but functional spring trap. The true genius had come in placing a motion sensor tag on the cage, programmed to ping his phone as soon as the trap sprung. And the final piece of his devious plan? A delectable chunk of turkey originally scheduled for tomorrow’s lunch placed on the spring trigger platform inside the trap.
Sully slipped his hands into work gloves and pulled the trap from the bushes. The gloves turned out to be a wise precaution, as a paw lashed at him from between the bars. He set down the cage and got his first real look at his prisoner. His phone’s light revealed a surprisingly large cat with long fur patterned in a striking palette of orange and white.
The cat was beautiful. And pissed as hell.
No collar. Of course not. That would be too easy.
