Selling Grace: A Light Romance Novel (Art of Grace Book 1) (29 page)

I smiled, feeling a sudden rush of gratitude towards Della. She always knew just how to distract me. "No, but let me guess. Mrs. Anderson was testing out some of the new intimate massaging equipment?"

"Not alone," Della answered, and we both burst into giggles.

Chapter Five

*

Several hours, just as the sun descended down towards the horizon, I packed up my computer and turned my wine glass back over to Della. I'd stopped drinking a good hour before leaving, giving myself some time to sober up, but I still felt the warmth from the wine lingering in my stomach and body.

I'd left the wine bar just as most of Della's regulars had started streaming in, their own little shops and boutiques along Main Street closed for the day. Della no longer had the time to sit and chat with me, instead dashing around to make sure that everyone got fresh glasses and that none of the bottles ran dry, and I decided that I ought to go home and help calm the growing growling coming from my stomach. I certainly didn't have the discretionary budget to afford to eat out on a regular basis.

Besides, Whiskers would get grumpy if I wasn't home to give him his can of wet food for dinner.

Just as I unlocked my front door and headed into my house, I heard my phone start ringing in my bag. I paused for a moment, starting to reach for it, but then realized that the door still stood ajar. Remembering Whiskers' earlier escape, I took another step forward and firmly shut the front door before searching for my ringing cell phone.

When I saw the caller ID displayed on the screen, I groaned. Just who I didn't want to speak with, I thought to myself. I knew, however, that if I declined the call, they'd just keep on calling back, growing more and more frantic that they couldn't reach me. Once, when my phone died after I accidentally left the flashlight function turned on in my purse, they went as far as calling the police and sending a squad car over to my cottage.

"Hello," I said without much enthusiasm after swiping across the phone's screen to answer the call.

"Oh good, you're around. Hi, dear, it's your parents," my mom said at the other end, as if I didn't know exactly who was calling me. Somehow, my parents had never quite grasped the concept of caller ID, and they always prefaced any phone conversation by announcing who they were.

"Hi Mom," I replied, rolling my eyes but not bothering to try and explain caller ID to her for the umpteenth time. I crouched down to pet Whiskers, who had emerged from wherever he'd been dozing and now wove between my legs, meowing his greetings to me. "What's going on?"

"Oh, we just wanted to call and check in, see how things are going for you," my mother replied blithely. "Your father is on the other line, so he can listen in. Are you there, honey?"

"I'm here," my father piped up with a grunt. He sounded distracted, and I suspected that he had some sports game turned on and muted, and that his attention was focused elsewhere.

"Anyway, you haven't talked to us in a little while, or really said anything, and so we wanted to know if there were any new developments in your life," my mother continued, sounding concerned and warm and coming across as totally smothering. "After all, it's not like you call us much."

I rolled my eyes as I scratched Whiskers under the chin, making him squeeze his eyes shut into slits as he purred a little louder. My mom called me at least once a week, and they always tried to guilt me into coming over to visit them. Sure, they lived just about twenty minutes away, in the next town over, but I still did my best to fight off those guilt trips.

I knew, from experience, that showing up would be a mistake. My mom tried to get information out of me over the phone, but she was even more insistent in person, trying to guide me in every little area where she felt that my life was possibly less than perfect. One time, I showed up at my parents' house for what she claimed was a "family dinner", only to find that she'd invited over not one, not two, but three different men as potential dates for me.

Just the memory of that disastrous night left me shuddering. One of those men had been my mother's doctor, nearly twenty years older than me, and he'd seen me for checkups as a little child! I definitely didn't want to even think about dating anyone who'd seen me naked as a small child. The other men had been just as bad, with their own issues that I didn't even want to consider trying to fix.

"Not much is new in my life, Mom," I replied, standing back up and carefully heading for my kitchen. Whiskers followed after me, still purring and doing his best to trip me up by weaving in between my legs with no regard for how he became a major tripping hazard. "And I would have called if I did have something. You really don't need to keep on checking in on me all the time."

"We're just worried about you, that's all!" my mom replied, sounding insulted by the very idea that she was doing this for any reason other than out of an altruistic desire to make my life better. "Aren't we, honey?"

"Uh huh," my dad said absently, clearly not listening to a single word but sensing that some input from him was required.

"Well, I'm fine." The warm residual glow from the wine was now all gone, wiped away by conversation with my parents. "But look, I just got home, and I still haven't eaten any dinner, or gotten anything for Whiskers, and he's being quite insistent..."

From the floor, Whiskers glared up at me, probably indignant at being used as an excuse. My mother, however, wasn't about to let me go without a fight.

"Don't you think it's a bit dangerous for you to have a cat?" she asked.

"What? You think he's going to attack me or something?"

"Oh, no, I'm sure that he's quite friendly," my mom replied in slightly unsure tones, the way that people without pets talk about them. "But what about the impression that he gives off?"

"What impression? That I like cats?"

"I just think that there's a certain... mental picture that some men might associate with a woman of your age owning a cat," my mom said primly. "It might suggest that you're growing a bit, well..."

"A bit what?" I demanded, putting her on the spot.

She sighed into the phone. "Desperate."

I rolled my eyes as I popped the top off a can of wet cat food. I set it down on the little plastic mat on the floor next to Whiskers' water bowl, and he eagerly buried his face in the food. "Look, Mom, I have to go. Don't try and set me up with anyone."

"Are you sure? We just bumped into an old friend of ours, and he says that he's got a son who's about your age, and has a nice steady job at the meatpacking plant-"

"No, Mom," I reiterated, and hung up the phone before she could try more guilt-laced tactics to get me to agree to a pity date with this new male specimen they'd managed to shanghai into going on a date with me.

I put the phone down on the counter and sighed. "You'd think that she hates having you as her only grandchild," I said down to Whiskers, who didn't seem to care about anything outside of the can of cat food.

I turned my attention to my fridge, searching for some dinner for myself. I found some leftover lasagna and cut out a chunk, popping it into the microwave. Once I heard the popping sound of little bits of sauce exploding, probably painting the interior of my microwave with red stains, I pulled it out and dug in.

Perfect. Leftover lasagna, the quintessential meal for one, eaten with no one but my own cat for company. I really should be proud of my life.

I dumped the dirty dishes into the sink, and then turned to the other chores around the house. I bent down and picked up the can of cat food, despite the cry of protest from Whiskers as he tried to lick every single molecule of food out of the can's crevices. I rinsed it in the sink and then added it to the stack of similar cans in the recycling can.

Next, I headed over to the least enjoyable task of my day - emptying out my cat's litter box. I did my best to breathe only through my mouth as I sifted through the litter with a scoop, digging out the clumps and dumping them into a plastic bag to toss in the garbage bin outside. I ended up pushing a window open a bit to get rid of the smell of old cat shits, although I tried not to crack it wide enough for Whiskers to slip his fat, furry body out in another escape attempt.

Heading outside to drop the little bag of kitty turds into the garbage, I stopped for a minute and glanced over at the dark, hulking shape of the Winterhearst mansion next door. Most of the windows were dark, as usual, but I saw one light turned on, glowing out of an upstairs window. I wondered if that was Sanford's room.

For just a second, I looked up at the window, imagining that maybe Sanford would step in front of it. Maybe he wouldn't be wearing a shirt, and I'd get a glimpse of that toned, broad-shouldered body that he possessed. At this distance, I wouldn't be able to see any cruel, angry frown or other expression on his face.

After a moment, however, I shook myself and turned to head back inside. Just because I didn't have any real dating options, I shouldn't start daydreaming about the arrogant jerk living next door, I told myself. Even though I didn't have anyone else in my life at the moment, I could still do better than cold, stuck-up Sanford Welles.

Maybe I should think about reactivating some of those old online dating site accounts I'd made, I considered as I headed back inside. I'd been off them for a few months, now, and maybe there would be some winners among the next crop of guys who'd joined during the months I'd been absent.

Whatever. I went back inside, tried to not think about my lack of a love life or my slowly shrinking bank account balance, and dug around in my freezer to find the carton of rocky road ice cream I'd bought in a wave of self-pity a couple days earlier. I'd go on the stair climber machine tomorrow, I promised myself as I dug in greedily, eating right out of the carton.

After all, as my mother never hesitated to point out, a moment on the lips, forever on the hips - and no guy liked women with a big round tush. And mine was already plenty round, thanks to stress and not being willing to commit to daily high-intensity spin classes.

I thought that Della might provide evidence to the contrary, on that last point, but I didn't have the confidence or the natural sexiness that she possessed. For her, ice cream gave her luscious curves that drove men crazy, but for me, ice cream just made me fat.

I dropped the empty ice cream carton into the garbage, gave Whiskers one last little pet, and then headed upstairs to bed. I left the door to my bedroom cracked, and after a few minutes, I heard the soft footsteps as he padded in and jumped up onto the bed to curl up on top of my feet.

I petted him a few times in the darkness, eliciting a soft, gently rumbling purr, and then lay back against the pillows. Tomorrow, I promised myself. Tomorrow, I'd somehow manage to find a new job opportunity, a way to turn my life around and end this long, slow decline.

I drifted off to sleep as I listened to my fat cat's soft purring.

Chapter Six

*

The next morning, I woke up, headed downstairs - and couldn't find Admiral Whiskers anywhere.

"Oh, not again," I groaned, my eyes falling upon the window that I'd cracked open after cleaning his litter box the previous night. Now, in the thin rays of the morning sun as it peeped just above the horizon, I could see that the window stood a bit wider open.

In fact, it looked just as if a cat had bumped gently but insistently against it until it had opened up wide enough for him to slip out and escape.

This time, when I headed outside, I guessed immediately where Whiskers had headed, as soon as he got his first taste of freedom. Sure enough, when I stepped up to my chair against the fence in my backyard and peeped over, I spotted his orange bulk sprawled out on the patio on the Winterhearst side, lying back in the sunbeams.

"You're a huge jerk, you know that?" I called over the fence to him, but he wisely chose to not respond.

This time, however, I was going to be smarter about retrieving my pet. I still felt the scabbed-over scrape on my forearm from jumping the fence yesterday, and my foot still twinged slightly when I put my weight on it. I wasn't going to try that approach again.

Instead, I cut back through my house and headed out the front door, down the sidewalk, and up to the front door of the Winterhearst mansion. The front door had both a doorbell and an ornate, lion's head knocker mounted on it, and I chose to use both methods to alert Winston that I was outside.

A minute later, Winston opened the door, peering out at me. "Ah, Miss Dean," he greeted me, putting on a polite little professional's smile. "What can I do for you this morning?"

"Hi, Winston," I greeted him, putting on my most charming smile. "I'm afraid it's my cat, Whiskers - he's gotten into your backyard again. Instead of climbing over the fence, I was hoping that you could just let me into the backyard so I can retrieve him. I'll even let myself out through the side gate."

"Why, of course, Miss Dean," the elderly man replied immediately, holding the door open for me. "Your cat is quite the escape artist, isn't he?"

"You'd never guess it from looking at him, but yes, it seems that way," I nodded, entering the mansion. "I'll have to start double-checking all the doors and windows at night before I go to sleep to make sure he doesn't pull any more breakouts."