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She wanted that shaking so badly.
“How do you do it, Martha? Hang out with such a sexy beast and keep your calm. I’m ridiculous. I just want to kiss him all over and never stop.” She laughed as Martha turned away from the closed bedroom door after head-butting it a few times. “Yeah, if I didn’t know he was coming back I’d do that too.”
The cat skirted by as if Derelie took up an unnecessarily large amount of space and Martha was offended by that, and jumped onto Jack’s considerably tidier desk. “Are you allowed on there?”
Martha picked her way over the pile of folders and wove between the two computer screens, then pushed some items around to make room to curl up. Two of those items she simply tipped off the desk, a box of tissues and a foldback clip holding a stack of business cards and notes.
“So that’s the way it is then.” Derelie picked up the tissues, but when she put her hand to the foldback clip she recoiled. The first card in the stack had a picture of a naked woman, tastefully silhouetted, on it, with a phone number and the words Jane F, available for no strings sex. The next card showed a woman in a red corset—her name was apparently Heidi, and she liked uncomplicated arrangements.
She dropped the clip to the ground. That woman in the market had handed Jack something he’d put in his pocket. Derelie had had his cap on, pulled down low and thought she’d mistaken it, but no, the other woman propositioned Jack, and so had the owner of every card or note in this stack. Why would he keep them? Why would she want to be part of the stack?
She was such an idiot. He’d never said why he was single other than being busy. This was how he’d been busy. She didn’t need her heart broken this way.
It took two seconds to collect her purse and her overnight bag and fling Jack’s front door open. Let him figure out what went wrong, he was the investigative reporter.
She’d have gotten away with her swift exit too, but Martha was a slick ninja and slipped out the door and bounded onto the landing before Derelie could react.
“No, Martha. Be a good girl and go back inside so I can avoid making a huge mistake. Big scary things live out here, like falling for the wrong men, like thinking you’re smarter than you really are, and trusting an experiment.”
Martha gave her paw a cursory lick and looked at Derelie. There was only the width of the corridor separating them. She could do this—grab Martha, shove her inside and take off. Derelie put her bag down. If ever she’d wanted to be an animal whisperer, this was the moment.
“Come on, Martha, you don’t want to be out here. It’s noisy and smelly and there are too many people and not enough trees, and you can’t see the stars at night. That’s not the kind of world you want to live in.” She took a step toward the cat, another. “Good girl.”
She ducked down and reached out and got her hands to Martha’s shoulders, but she didn’t hold tight enough or Martha was made of liquid silver; all she got was a handful of loose fur.
“Shit.” Martha took off down the stairs and Derelie couldn’t simply let her go. Three flights down, there the slinky ninja was, grooming her tail. If she’d stuck with the Dr. Doolittle ambition this wouldn’t be a problem. Instead she had to think she was a match for Jackson Fucking Dinkus Haley.
“Here, kitty. Come on, Martha. You’re not meant to be out here.”
Martha took that instruction to mean bolt. Derelie didn’t catch up with her until she hit the bottom landing. Martha was standing with her front paws on the glass door that led to the street. If someone came in, she’d make her escape, but she was also well placed for Derelie to grab her.
She picked Martha up under the front legs and flipped her like Jack did so the cat landed in her arms like a baby with her tail over Derelie’s arm. She gave up her bid for freedom and lay there like a big warm fur loaf of bread.
“You’re trouble, just like your owner.”
She knew Jack was on the stairs behind her, he’d made a racket. “Come take her, Jack. I’m going home.” She didn’t turn around; he’d have to come to her.
“I can explain.”
“Cliché.”
“Sometimes a cliché is the shortcut you need. ‘I love you’ is a cliché.”
Like nothing in a tough yoga pose or moving to the city, that made her body go tense. But this was Jack who picked up women in markets—he was just making a point and being a dick.
“Please, don’t go.” He stepped up beside her and fastened a collar with a lead attached to it around Martha’s neck. Martha looked at him adoringly and Derelie dumped the cat in his arms.
“In the market, that woman you saw propositioned me,” he said. “It happens more than I’d like. Sometimes it’s women, occasionally men who hit on me, and honestly, that’s the easy part. Sometimes people approach to abuse me because they don’t like something I wrote or said on radio or TV, or just don’t like me, the way I look or talk or breathe.”
Oh God, that was awful. “Why?” She knew why he got propositioned. He was GQ in his suit, an adventure catalog in his jeans and boots and shirtless, well, stop the clock. But why did people think they had the right to abuse him?
“It goes with the job. Will you come back upstairs?”
“No, I’m going to sulk here for a while.” It might be possible she’d overreacted.
Jack backed up and sat on the steps, putting Martha between his feet.
Derelie sat beside him and poked Martha in her large rump, earning a tail flick. “She doesn’t look like she’s got fast in her repertoire.” Martha’s ears flattened as if she wasn’t sure of the compliment.
