Jane scooped Cat up and hugged her close. “You’re a mama?”
Cat gently bumped her face to Jane’s and her heart nearly exploded. “You have babies?” And she probably didn’t even know where they were, how they were doing, if they were okay. If they had homes . . . Jane’s throat tightened so that it hurt to even speak.
Shirl leaned across the examination table and patted her hand. “You don’t need to worry. Our vet here is one of the very best.”
Jane hugged the cat tighter. “Thank you. Yes, I’ll think about getting her spayed, as soon as possible.”
Shirl smiled. “You’re a good person, Jane. If you’re worried about her, we’ve got personalized collars and tags out front. You can put your phone number on the tag. In fact, you can put multiple numbers on the tag. A lot of people put down their significant other’s number too, so if their pet ever gets lost, you can both be contacted. Would you like that? Would your significant other want to be put on the name tag?”
A tag that would claim Cat as her own. That seemed like both a horrible idea and the best idea on the planet. “I’ll think about that too,” she said softly.
LEVI SPENT THE day in the back office at Cutler Sporting Goods. He purposely waited until everyone was busy to let himself into the stock room. He wanted to do an inventory check against what was in the system, because so far, as near as Levi could tell, Cal had dipped his fingers into just about every corner of the family business.
Levi needed to get the authorities involved so they could nail Cal’s ass, but he didn’t want to freak out his parents and Tess until he’d finished his audit. He wanted to have all the details before breaking all their hearts. And he was close.
But after last night’s date, his mission at the store today was more than just the inventory check. He wanted to ask Tess what the hell she’d been thinking befriending his pretend girlfriend.
But his sister came to him, poking her head into the back storage room. “What are you doing poking around back here?” she asked.
He leaned against a wall of shelving. “Seems to me you’re the one poking around in other people’s business.”
She blinked. Grimaced. And then came all the way into the room and leaned against the shelving unit opposite him. “You’ve got something to say?”
He resisted the urge to be the baby brother and come right out with it, because from experience he knew that would only make her defensive. No, the only way to get information out of Tess was to outwit, outlast, and outplay her. Ten years older than him, she’d been bossing him around since birth. On the other hand, she’d also been loving him since birth. He knew she’d been blindsided by her divorce and terribly hurt, all the while still managing to be there for his parents and her daughter. And him.
That’s why she interfered, he reminded himself. Because she loved him, in her own messed-up way. Still, he just stared at her, knowing the value of silence when it came to gaining any intel from her. She hated silence and always rushed to fill it. And she would, in three, two, one— “Fine,” she said. “Clearly Jane told you about our coincidental meet-up.”
Coincidental, his ass. “I don’t know how you figured out where she would be scheduled that day and what time she would take her break, but that was no coincidence, Tess.”
She shrugged. “So one of our regular customers happens to be an X-ray tech and knows her. It’s not my fault you won’t tell us anything about your girlfriend. Like the fact that she’s not your girlfriend.”
Never underestimate the depths of deception that an older bossy sister would sink to. That had been his first mistake. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Mistake number two, denial.
Tess smiled, knowing she had him. “She’s clearly single, Levi.”