teenage wish to create a love child with Ferris Bueller.
She blew out a sigh of relief. For all her heart palpitations, buttery knees, and stomach jitters, she found the idea that Spanky played for a different team left her with one less thing to worry about.
Well, then.
A reason to go on living.
CHAPTER 6
A sharp whistle startled Katie, who was deep in the midst of savoring a cup of coffee and distractedly doodling on her favorite morning ritual—a crossword puzzle. Though, she was stuck on a six-letter word for cat.
Katie had only five letters in it.
Yet her attention kept returning to the big bay window, overlooking the cement pathway that lead to the wide front porch steps of her aunt’s house, while she swirled coffee in her mouth. Today the coffee had a heightened pleasure to it, likely due to her new taste buds.
Even with the added layer of flavor, there was nothing like Aunt Teeny’s coffee.
With cream.
Yesterday, she’d liked her coffee black.
Today, she liked milk.
And apparently large game.
Huh.
Good thing at least her teeth had returned to normal, or she couldn’t say for sure the deer in the backyard that had caught her attention earlier would be safe from her gnashing pearly whites. They had called to her in the way of delicious, warm blood coursing through their veins and the promise of some soft squishy . . . Katie shuddered, fending off the offensive images and forcing herself to greet her aunt.
She swiveled around on the wooden chair with the green-and-red-plaid cushioning to find her aunt Teeny in her customary floral housecoat, trailing across the floor in pressure socks and sandals. An unlit cigarette hung from her wrinkled lips.
Dozer, an old yellow Lab mix and their fourth stray dog in four months, followed close behind her, plunking himself down on the blue-and-green braided rug to bask in the shafts of weak, buttery sunlight coming from the bay window.
Li’l Anthony wasn’t far behind, all five pounds of him. A pushy, arrogant, cranky, “hands off me, I don’t need no lovin’ ” mixed breed with a painfully infected ear that she’d found in the surrounding woods while walking one afternoon a couple of months ago. He was confrontational, a total bully who barked at everything that moved, but a snuggle bunny at night when he curled up next to her in bed.
Katie scooped him up and checked his torn but finally healed ear, then gave him a dreaded kiss on the side of his black muzzle. He squirmed his displeasure. “Hey, cranky. Where’re Petey and Paulie?” Petey and Paulie were the other two-thirds of what she fondly called the mob. They were a brother-and-sister pair of terrier mixes that had been abandoned out by the creek. Being younger dogs, they ganged up on poor Dozer at regular intervals. As a pack, their gang mentality was bark at high-pitched intervals first, pee on it later.
“Looky that, would ya? Nice-lookin’ boy there,” Aunt Teeny commented with approval, nodding her head in the direction of the opposite window where Spanky, in Kaih’s borrowed jeans that were too short, and too loose around the waist, chopped wood. She went immediately to the bin of dog food they kept in the open pantry and filled the dogs’ bowls. “You hire him to do odd jobs around the place?”
Katie’s eyes fell back to her coffee as she set Li’l Anthony down, clamping the mug with her one good hand, and resting the other between her jean-clad thighs with a wince. She’d spent the better part of a restless night trying to figure out a cover story for her aunt and anyone else who might ask about Spanky and the women who were still sleeping soundly upstairs.
Of all the stories she’d come up with, declaring him the help, the simplest of all fabrications, had never occurred to her. “Um, yup. I hired him to take care of some things around the house and the clinic. Winter’s coming. We need wood chopped and . . . and stuff done.” Lots of stuff. Li’l Anthony gave her a
She blew out a sigh of relief. For all her heart palpitations, buttery knees, and stomach jitters, she found the idea that Spanky played for a different team left her with one less thing to worry about.
Well, then.
A reason to go on living.
CHAPTER 6
A sharp whistle startled Katie, who was deep in the midst of savoring a cup of coffee and distractedly doodling on her favorite morning ritual—a crossword puzzle. Though, she was stuck on a six-letter word for cat.
Katie had only five letters in it.
Yet her attention kept returning to the big bay window, overlooking the cement pathway that lead to the wide front porch steps of her aunt’s house, while she swirled coffee in her mouth. Today the coffee had a heightened pleasure to it, likely due to her new taste buds.
Even with the added layer of flavor, there was nothing like Aunt Teeny’s coffee.
With cream.
Yesterday, she’d liked her coffee black.
Today, she liked milk.
And apparently large game.
Huh.
Good thing at least her teeth had returned to normal, or she couldn’t say for sure the deer in the backyard that had caught her attention earlier would be safe from her gnashing pearly whites. They had called to her in the way of delicious, warm blood coursing through their veins and the promise of some soft squishy . . . Katie shuddered, fending off the offensive images and forcing herself to greet her aunt.
She swiveled around on the wooden chair with the green-and-red-plaid cushioning to find her aunt Teeny in her customary floral housecoat, trailing across the floor in pressure socks and sandals. An unlit cigarette hung from her wrinkled lips.
Dozer, an old yellow Lab mix and their fourth stray dog in four months, followed close behind her, plunking himself down on the blue-and-green braided rug to bask in the shafts of weak, buttery sunlight coming from the bay window.
Li’l Anthony wasn’t far behind, all five pounds of him. A pushy, arrogant, cranky, “hands off me, I don’t need no lovin’ ” mixed breed with a painfully infected ear that she’d found in the surrounding woods while walking one afternoon a couple of months ago. He was confrontational, a total bully who barked at everything that moved, but a snuggle bunny at night when he curled up next to her in bed.
Katie scooped him up and checked his torn but finally healed ear, then gave him a dreaded kiss on the side of his black muzzle. He squirmed his displeasure. “Hey, cranky. Where’re Petey and Paulie?” Petey and Paulie were the other two-thirds of what she fondly called the mob. They were a brother-and-sister pair of terrier mixes that had been abandoned out by the creek. Being younger dogs, they ganged up on poor Dozer at regular intervals. As a pack, their gang mentality was bark at high-pitched intervals first, pee on it later.
“Looky that, would ya? Nice-lookin’ boy there,” Aunt Teeny commented with approval, nodding her head in the direction of the opposite window where Spanky, in Kaih’s borrowed jeans that were too short, and too loose around the waist, chopped wood. She went immediately to the bin of dog food they kept in the open pantry and filled the dogs’ bowls. “You hire him to do odd jobs around the place?”
Katie’s eyes fell back to her coffee as she set Li’l Anthony down, clamping the mug with her one good hand, and resting the other between her jean-clad thighs with a wince. She’d spent the better part of a restless night trying to figure out a cover story for her aunt and anyone else who might ask about Spanky and the women who were still sleeping soundly upstairs.
Of all the stories she’d come up with, declaring him the help, the simplest of all fabrications, had never occurred to her. “Um, yup. I hired him to take care of some things around the house and the clinic. Winter’s coming. We need wood chopped and . . . and stuff done.” Lots of stuff. Li’l Anthony gave her a
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