wouldn’t,” Dane replied. What was Blaze up to? He glanced around the room. “Obviously you don’t have electricity yet. Did you just get here?”
She nodded, looking around the barely furnished room—complete with cobwebs—with an expression of dismay.
“You know, there’s a cozy bed-and-breakfast about a mile from here, on the lakeshore,” Dane said. “I’d be glad to call Shatzi and see if there’s a room available for the remainder of the night.” He would negotiate a good price for her—it was the least he could do after terrorizing her tonight. “There’s usually a vacancy this time of year. That way you could have a nice hot breakfast before you come back out here to finish unloading your car and put everything in order.” He was talking too much again.
She gave him an enigmatic smile. “Thanks, but I’ll be fine. The owner will have the power turned on first thing in the morning—she just didn’t expect me to arrive so early.” She raised her voice. “Gavin, are you in here?”
They heard a thump and a mutter of unintelligible words through the door at the western end of the room.
Dane opened the door and stepped through. “Blaze? We need to go home now, son.” He aimed the beam of his light around the plain, paneled bedroom, which contained a twin-size bed and small dresser in the southwest corner. There was a brown mess of stains in the center of the bare mattress. Something stank.
A grunt drew his light to the closet, where a denim-covered derriere presented itself to them. “Blaze.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, you want to let me in on the little mystery?” Dane asked. He felt the victim of tonight’s onslaught step up behind him. He turned to her. “I’m sorry about all this, really. Crazy as it seems, Blaze usually has a reason for behaving the way he…does. Blaze, we see your photogenic side, now would you show us your face and try hard to explain why you’re hiding in a closet in a stranger’s house?”
“Not hiding,” Blaze muttered. “Seeking. Come here, little darling.”
Dane could almost feel Cheyenne Allison’s alarm. She must think he ran a ranch filled with lunatics.
“Aha!” Blaze said. “There you are, you little fighter. Come here, let me take you to some milk. I bet you’re starved half to death. Where’s the rest of your family?”
Dane cleared his throat. “Blaze.”
“Ah, gotcha!” Blaze backed out of the closet, cuddling four mewling balls of golden kitten fluff beneath his chin. “Finally found them. You know the cat that was executed Saturday? I’m pretty sure these are her babies.”
Cheyenne caught her breath. “Somebody executed a cat?”
“We have a repeat offender who likes to vandalize the community every so often, “Dane explained. “Blaze, how did you—”
“I was hoping I could do this without getting in trouble.” Blaze nuzzled one of the kittens, then wrinkled his nose. “Phew, you stink. Didn’t Mama teach you how to use the kitty litter?”
“Blaze.”
“Okay, okay, but you’re not going to write me up over this, are you?”
“I’m not sure I—”
“I heard them crying the first time I came over here a couple weeks ago.” Blaze untangled one kitten from two of his dreadlocks and squatted to place them all on the floor. “I couldn’t tell what the sound was, and before I could find out, Cook caught me and made me go home, then ratted me out to you.”
“But of course you had to come back and investigate,” Dane said.
“Not for a few days, and that was when I saw Mrs. Potts’s cat coming in through the window. I only did it then because—”
“I know, you were afraid there was some animal trapped in here.” Dane strolled over to the bed and studied the stains. “Apparently, she gave birth to them in the bed.” He glanced at Cheyenne. “Sorry. It’s a mess.”
“I’ll sleep on the sofa tonight.”
“The babies have been without food at least since Friday night sometime,” Blaze said. “We need to get them fed. Can we keep them in the house tonight?”
“Nope. Barn.”
“Oh, come on, Dane, they don’t need to be alone tonight.”
“They won’t be alone. You know the rule about animals in the house.”
“But we kept the racing pigs in there last week.”
“That’s different. Cook isn’t allergic to pigs.”
Still grumbling, Blaze went to the other room. “Fine, I’ll just get the bag and close the bathroom window.”
Cheyenne picked up one of the kittens that had wandered from its siblings. The kid was right, these kittens needed to be fed soon.
She looked up and studied Dane Gideon’s face more carefully in the dim glow from their flashlights. The hair wasn’t Santa Claus white, it was more silver-blond, and carefully trimmed. Dane’s silhouette was craggy, with intense green eyes, slightly prominent nose and firm chin outlined by the short silver-blond beard.
Gavin’s words finally sank in, and Cheyenne frowned when he reentered the room with the bag. “Racing pigs?”
Dane and Gavin looked at her as if she should know exactly what they were talking about.
“You race pigs?” Had she just stumbled onto the SciFi cable channel?
“Sure, Dane told me they do it at the September festival every year,” Gavin said. “We brought ours into the house when the old sow got cantankerous and started hurting them.”
“And you kept them in the house?”
“Lady, don’t you know nothing about farm life?”
“Apparently not.”
“Blaze,” Dane warned. “You’re in enough trouble already. Count your blessings that I’ve decided not to write you up about tonight. Now let’s leave Cheyenne in peace.”
Cheyenne found herself intrigued by this man. Though he had a tough appearance, there was a gentleness in his voice, in the way he handled Gavin-Blaze.
She handed off the kitten to the teenager. “Do you mind if I ask why the nickname? Why Blaze?”
“It’s my reputation.” He eased the kitten into the cloth bag. All four of the felines protested their new environment. “Hush up, we’ll get you dinner soon.”
“Reputation?” Cheyenne asked.
“I accidentally set fire to a house. It’s why I’m here.”
“Accidentally?”
“I
