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Momma cat was happy to accept the treat. Unfortunately, she was the only one. He flashed Mia a smile and then dropped on to his stomach and started crawling. It was just like boot camp, except no one shouted obscenities and urged him to go faster.
“Are you looking at this place?” Sure enough, the porch’s underside was liberally festooned with cobwebs and where there were cobwebs...yeah. Not thinking about eight-legged surprises was probably his wisest move. Two feet in, he spied his target, an ancient T-shirt swaddling a handful of kittens.
He set the tuna-fish can down, but the kittens didn’t budge. Maybe momma had trained them not to accept candy from strangers.
“Excuse me?” Mia’s voice floated down from the porch. She was smart enough to stay far, far away from the glorious kingdom of spiders.
“Talk to me,” he ordered, inching forward slowly. If the kittens bolted, he’d have to go under the house and the odds of his getting stuck would go up exponentially. He made a note to add a smaller person to their search-and-rescue team ASAP. “If I’m braving spiders to rescue your kittens, the least you can do is talk to me.”
“They’re not mine.” He didn’t miss the note of uncertainty in her voice.
“Finders, keepers,” he muttered and tugged gently on the T-shirt. After all, as she knew very well, he had a menagerie and a half at his place, so where else would the kittens go but home with them? The island wasn’t big enough to have an animal shelter. “I’m going to hand them out to you, and you’re going to put them in the carrier, okay?”
The porch creaked as Mia stood up, so he decided she was on board with his plan. The first four kittens didn’t object too strenuously when he plucked them out of their nest and carefully handed them over to Mia. Kitten number five, however, didn’t think any amount of tuna fish could compensate for the indignity of being removed from its bed. It beelined for the back wall. Damn it. He lunged and... Got you.
“Did you lose one? I can’t have a kitten lost under my house.”
“Your house?” He handed over the escapee kitten by executing a strategic tuck and roll onto his back. Their fingers brushed as he handed over his prize. She didn’t react, just competently tucked the kitten into the crowded carrier.
“It’s for sale,” she said defensively. “Maybe I want to buy it.”
House lust, not man lust. That put him in his place. Her reasons for sticking around on Discovery Island didn’t include him. He had no idea where the notion had come from, but he scuttled it fast. He’d obviously been around Daeg and Cal too long. Possibly, diamond rings and happily-ever-afters were contagious.
“Is staying with me that bad?” As far as he knew, she’d been planning on leaving the island some day in the very near future. The question was rude, but he didn’t care. Mia understood blunt. Frankly, anything else was lost on her.
“Eager to be rid of me?” She sounded unconcerned. She also clearly had no intention of sharing her long-term plans with him, but he was good at guessing. The military recommended at least thirty days of downtime before former soldiers tried to reintegrate, find a job and all that crap. Mia would take whatever time she needed to get her feet on the ground and her head straight. And whatever plans she made were her business. He was deploying soon, so what did it matter to him?
He gently shook the T-shirt-nest, just to make sure he’d gotten everyone. No man left behind, even if the man in question had four legs and a tail and weighed less than two pounds.
His instincts must have been talking up a storm because...bonus kitten. The first five kittens matched, but the sixth was a white-and-orange Siamese that stuck out like a sore thumb. There had been some two daddy action here.
“Momma here apparently had herself a ménage.” The last kitten was feistier than her brothers and sisters, too. Hissing and spitting, it sprinted, tail up, ears back, for the crawl space under the house. Damn it. He hated small spaces.
* * *
A CAR CRUNCHED to a stop in front of the cottage to the accompaniment of Ben Franklin’s happy, excited bark. The older model BMW screamed posh and drive me fast. A woman who had to be the Realtor popped the driver’s-side door, swung her legs out and froze. Mia followed the other woman’s gaze...straight to Tag’s mighty fine butt sticking out from under the porch. The man was definitely worth a second glance. Her own eyes certainly refused to stop looking. She’d had him twice yesterday, and she was no closer to being over him than before. Their sexual chemistry was off the charts.
