Her mood was hard to resist, however, and suddenly it struck him what he was being offered.
Freedom. The great outdoors in springtime.
She had bird feeders everywhere in that backyard! It would be like having his very own drive-through window.
I’ll have the McFinch, please.
Conan chuckled to himself. It came out as a deep, rich purr, and his mistress hugged him tighter.
“I knew I could make you happy,” she said blissfully.
Justin West hopped out of his truck and eyed the house. It was in the older part of Hunter’s Corner, a neighborhood called Honeysuckle, where small, postage-stamp-size houses sat on huge lots surrounded by the neighborhood’s namesake. At this time of year the air smelled sweet with the scent of the blossoms that hung heavy in the shrubbery.
This house was extremely well kept, the shingle siding painted sunshine-yellow, the trim, stairs and window boxes white. Cheerful red geraniums were already planted in those boxes. A front window was open and a lace curtain danced on the light spring breeze.
“Thanks, Fred,” Justin muttered.
Justin owned West’s Construction, a construction company specializing in framing new houses. The north side of town was building up phenomenally as more and more people left the cities looking for exactly what Hunter’s Corner, population fifteen thousand, had to offer—a small-town feel and flavor.
There was no Wal-Mart, no Starbucks, no multiplex theaters. The town was tidy, safe and neighborly. For amenities, it boasted a town square with a park that children still played in. There was a library, a swimming pool that was open in the summer, two grocery stores, one ice cream parlor and close proximity to the great outdoors and all its attractions. People here sat on their front porches, grew gardens, threw out a fishing pole in their spare time. Kids rode their bikes down the tree-lined streets and walked unescorted to school.
Justin West had more work than he knew what to do with.
He didn’t need the kind of job a tidy house in Honeysuckle implied—a little old lady who wanted a new washstand for the backyard. He’d be plied with cookies and tea—and get phone calls long after the job was done about imaginary popped nails or squeaks. When he arrived to investigate, there would be more cookies and tea and pictures of the new grandchild.
On the other hand, Fred had asked him to come and at least look at the job. And how could he say no to Fred?
In his seventies, Fred was still the town maintenance man, refusing to reveal his actual age or to consider retirement. He had also been Justin’s father’s best friend since the days when Hunter’s Corner had been little more than an autumn retreat for city boys who wanted to bag a deer or two. Fred had been there through all those lonely, hard years when the Alzheimer’s took hold, wrapped its tentacles around Justin’s father’s mind, changing him from a powerful man into a baffled, helpless child. Fred had never once said, “I’m too busy,” when Justin called in panic because he had to be at work and his dad was having one of “those” days.
His dad had gone finally, a bittersweet blessing. And now Fred was asking a favor of him, of Justin, for a lady friend.
Justin wasn’t going to return the friendship and loyalty that Fred had shown his father with I’m too busy, even though he was.
Justin took the front steps two at a time, knocked on the door—loudly, in case Fred’s lady friend was deaf. He thought it was nice that Fred had a lady friend. Fred’s wife had been gone for nearly fifteen years. And his best friend for just over a year. It was about time—
The door opened, and Justin reeled back, nearly stumbling off the step. He grabbed the handrail and steadied himself.
The woman smiling tentatively at him was shockingly beautiful, maybe particularly in contrast to his expectation that the door was going to be opened by someone old and wrinkled and deaf.
Justin gauged her to be in her mid to late twenties. She had hair the exact color of shiny new copper, pulled back quite severely off her face. But the severity of the hairstyle only emphasized the loveliness of her features: high cheekbones, a pert nose, a small tilted chin, a gloriously generous mouth. There was the slightest smattering of freckles over milky-white skin, and eyes that were huge and green as Smoky’s Pond on a summer afternoon. She was slender as a reed and petite, the kind of woman that gave a man the dangerous feeling that he was big and strong and that he had been put on this earth for the sole purpose of protecting those more fragile than himself.
She had an enormous orange cat in her arms that was comically bandaged around its head. Justin had a feeling it might be a mistake to laugh at the cat, which was glaring at him with baleful dislike. She juggled its bulk to offer a slender hand.
“Justin West?” she asked.
He took a steadying breath and accepted her hand. It was cool and soft and small—and packed a jolt like a shock from a circular saw with a bad connection in a rainstorm. He held her grip a fraction longer than might have been necessary. The cat shifted its weight, forcing her to withdraw her hand or let the cat slide down her front.
“I’m Bridget Daisy. Thank you for coming.”
So he did have the right address. She was Fred’s friend, though obviously not his lady friend in the way Justin had imagined. He glanced at her ring finger. Bare. Lord have mercy!
“Come in.”
He stepped by her, aware of a lovely fragrance, light and sweet, as he moved directly into her living room. The room increased his sense of being big and male, clumsy and uncouth. There were trinkets, potted plants, a vase of fresh flowers on the floor at the edge of the couch. If he breathed, he was going to break something.
“Have a seat,” she suggested.
Where? Everything in the room was small and frail-looking, not man-size at all. The tiny sofa was set on curvy legs and was covered in a fabric that looked suspiciously like ivory silk that would be destroyed by his just-finished-work-for-the-day jeans and T-shirt.
His gaze caught on an old leather wingback that looked slightly sturdier than her other furniture. The chair was rump-sprung, as if it was the favored spot of someone with a little more meat on their bones than her. Justin beelined for it, but her delicate cough stopped him just short of sitting down. He glanced back at her.
She smiled apologetically. “That’s Conan’s chair.”
Conan? He felt a wave of relieved disappointment. Ring fingers didn’t really tell the story these days. But he should have known a girl like her came with a guy named Conan. Muscle-bound. Big. Territorial. Couldn’t the roommate build her washstand or whatever she wanted?
She moved by him and set the cat in the chair. “Isn’t that right, Conan?”
Conan was the cat? The cat inspected the spot carefully, turned two full circles, then plopped himself down. The chair groaned, and the cat gave Justin a look of naked dislike, as if it was somehow his fault the chair was making noises. Then Conan dismissed their visitor by delicately lifting his tail and beginning his bath.
“I didn’t want you to get hair on your clothes,” Miss Bridget Daisy told him.
He
