Ever since his last assistant had quit, he’d been running himself ragged, trying to keep up with the appointments, the shelter and the day-to-day of running his practice. Dottie, his receptionist, was a big help, but what he really needed was a second pair of hands to work with the animals. Problem was, he’d been through three assistants in the past six months.
Either he couldn’t hire good help or he didn’t have the personality to keep good help. He had a feeling it was the latter.
Standing around thinking about the problem wouldn’t get it solved. He needed to work on plans for expanding the shelter and hopefully come up with a strategy to convince the Lawford Community Foundation to finance his dream. Their support thus far had been barely tepid, which, admittedly, was partly his fault. He wasn’t exactly a great communicator. If he was going to make his dream happen, he needed a miracle before Saturday night.
Without looking in the mirror, Garrett showered, shaved and dressed. He avoided his reflection, slipping into jeans and a light blue button-down shirt, stepping into loafers and combing his hair into the same pattern as he had for almost twenty-eight years. Minutes later, he’d fed his cats and dropped them off at the cottage for the day, then set off for the office. Charlie panted in the seat beside him, eager for work.
First thing, he’d see how that cat was doing. After tangling with her last night, he’d put off an exam until today. No sense igniting her temper more than he already had. Once she was deemed healthy, he could find her a home.
He’d miss her, despite her cranky personality. He missed every animal that left his building. You can’t keep them all, his mother always told him, or you’ll be running a zoo instead of a veterinarian’s office.
He already had three pets, more than enough for the cottage and for his aunt’s home. And here, in the office, there was always a dozen or so waiting for his attention. Between the shelter and his veterinarian practice, hundreds of animals came into his care each year.
He loved them all. Well, except for Miss Tanner’s giant Doberman. What he wouldn’t give for a little help with Sweet Pea, whose name had nothing to do with her description or her personality. Even Dottie feared the dog, a nearly maniacal barker who ate almost everything in sight. Garrett had to admit he dreaded Miss Tanner and Sweet Pea’s annual appointment. Not to mention her continual “emergency” visits with the dog.
Where her Doberman was concerned, Miss Tanner was a canine hypochondriac.
But the rest of the animals had a piece of his heart. Maybe because they never looked at him with a touch of revulsion in their eyes, never stood there with a question they dared not ask on their lips. They responded only to his touch and his voice, as if they were blind to everything else the world judged about Garrett McAllister.
He pulled up in front of the small white building decorated with a simple sign: Garrett McAllister, DVM. The sky was beginning to turn from gray to light pink as the sun edged up the horizon.
Charlie settled onto a padded dog bed by the front door. Garrett made his way through the darkened office, knowing the path without the help of a light. He’d worked here most of his life, first with Doc West, then by himself when he bought the practice from Doc three years ago. There’d been a year when he’d lived—and worked—somewhere else, but his life had always been here. These rooms were more like home than his own. More familiar, more comforting. The place where he most belonged.
He unlocked the door to the exam room. Last night, the shelter had been full, so he’d kept the tabby here. What he’d do with her once patients started coming in and out at nine, he didn’t know, but he’d figure something out. A freezing rain was predicted for tonight and he had no intentions of letting the cat wander Lawford’s streets.
He flicked on the light. She was sitting on her haunches, every sense on alert. As if she’d been expecting him.
“Good morning,” he said. “Did you sleep?”
She glared at him in response.
He laughed. “Neither did I.” Her food bowl was untouched. “Didn’t like the selections on the menu? Let’s try some canned food then.” He pivoted, reached for a can on the shelf and opened it into a bowl. The first signs of morning orange sky peeked through the blinds. The tabby let out a howl that sounded almost panicked. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he said, turning back toward her.
She was frantic now, pawing and gnawing at the bars, shrieking in frustration.
“It’s okay, little one. It’s okay.”
She began to toss herself against the door of the cage. Was she in pain? Sick? Garrett rushed to unlatch the lock and thrust his free hand inside to catch her.
With a howl, she leapt past him, missing his grip by millimeters, dashing across the room and out the door he’d left ajar. She was gone in the space of a heartbeat.
“You won’t get far. Not unless you can open doors, too.” Garrett picked up the bowl of food and left the room, following the cat’s path. The office was small and most of the doors were shut. He’d find her soon enough.
One more second and it all would have been over. Her secret discovered—in one heck of a big way.
Nothing like making a grand entrance.
She darted out of the room, down the hall and through the first open door she saw. Just in time. She could feel it beginning to happen. The tingling, the stretching and expanding of her body from cat to woman.
She braced herself, hugged against the wall, knowing the pain was coming, yet jerking away in shock when it did. It was always like this when the change started. She’d never gotten used to it, even after two hundred years.
“Here kitty, kitty,” came the man’s voice. She heard him tap against the plastic food bowl. “Shrimp dinner. Come and get it.”
By day a woman, by night a cat. The curse can only be broken if you find a man who loves you as both a woman and a cat. Every day, Hezabeth the Witch’s screeching voice echoed in Catherine’s mind.
Her arms and legs began to lengthen, the cat’s furry hide transforming into pale skin. Catherine closed her eyes and envisioned a quiet meadow, songbirds, blooming flowers, anything but the hideous half-animal, half-human creature she was for the next few seconds.
There was another momentary protest of pain from her body and then, finally, it was over.
Before she opened her eyes, Catherine ran a hand over her face and skin. As the end of the curse drew nearer, she worried one day it would all go horribly wrong, leaving her stuck between the two worlds and looking like some fifty-cent sideshow in the carnival.
Not today, thank God. Everything felt as it should. Human. Womanly. And then, she realized—
Naked.
“Here kitty, kitty.” His voice again, closer. A few feet away.
Catherine scrambled to her feet, her eyes still unseeing—the last part of her body to adjust to the switch. In a second, she’d have her vision, but right now she was essentially blind.
How could she be so unprepared? The first time she’d transformed, she’d been caught naked in a marketplace in London during the bustle before the holidays, with vendors scrambling
