Chapter One
Norman, the sleek, black-and-white cat, sat expectantly on the kitchen table across from Catherine Travis’s chair. Her mother would be horrified to see a cat on the table, but Catherine merely shrugged in response to that thought. Her parents were in China, enjoying each other’s company, while she was stuck here alone in Little Rock, Arkansas. Since Norman was the only one available on this September Sunday evening to help Catherine celebrate her thirtieth birthday, he could pretty much sit anywhere he liked, as far as she was concerned.
He watched intently as she lit the single candle topping a chocolate-frosted cupcake. She sat back to admire the flickering flame, noting the way it reflected in Norman’s big, golden eyes. She couldn’t help but smile at his expression as he looked from her to the candle and then back again.
“You look as though you know exactly what we’re doing,” she remarked to the nine-month-old cat who had made his home with her for the past six months. “I half expect you to start singing the happy birthday song to me now.”
Norman meowed obligingly. The sound was actually rather musical, Catherine decided. “Thank you. That was lovely.”
She leaned forward to blow out the candle but then stopped herself. “Oh, wait. If I’m going to throw myself a birthday party, I should do it right. I’m supposed to make a wish before I blow out the candle, aren’t I?”
Norman’s ears flicked in interest. Curling his tail around his white feet, he sat up straighter, looking at her encouragingly. Although she knew darned well that he was waiting for the cat treat she was holding for him, she indulged herself with the pretense that he was actually interested in what she had to say.
“Okay, here’s my wish. I wish I had someone with whom to share occasions like this. Birthdays, holidays, other special events. As much as I appreciate your companionship, Normie, it would be nice to have a human male in my life.”
She blew out the candle. She and Norman both watched the thin line of white smoke drift from the blackened wick to dissipate above the table. Only then did she set the salmon-flavored treat in front of her cat. “There you go, pal. Enjoy.”
He sniffed at the treat, took an experimental lick, then began to nibble delicately, his tail twitching with pleasure. Catherine peeled the paper from the sides of the cupcake and took a bite, letting the rich chocolate frosting dissolve slowly on her tongue. “Mmm. Good.”
Norman responded with a muted, whirring noise that might have been agreement.
She reached out to stroke his silky back, and he arched into her touch. If only people were as easy to understand as her cat, she mused wistfully. Men, especially.
She had a couple of advanced degrees, was quite successful in her career as a biomedical researcher, had a few good friends and a nice apartment, but she had never really learned the art of dating. As far as she knew, there were no classes in flirtation, and she had never picked up the talent in her science labs.
She had been focused so single-mindedly on her education and her career that she had missed out on learning how to play. She just wasn’t a “fun” person, she thought with a sigh. The only men who had asked her out during the past couple of years had bored her half-senseless. She seemed destined to be alone with her work and her cat.
To distract herself from her mounting self-pity, she reached for the small stack of presents she h
ad saved to open all at once. Her friend Karen Kupperman from work had given her a tin of herbal tea and a scented candle in a pretty cobalt glass holder. Practical and yet slightly self-indulgent—just the sort of gift Karen would appreciate herself.
Karen was in Europe now, on a two-week trip with her husband, Wayne. They had combined a vacation with a science conference in Geneva, and Karen had been looking forward to the excursion for months.
Catherine’s other friend, Julia, a public attorney, had given her another practical, but elegant, present—a pair of soft brown leather gloves lined with cashmere. Lovely, she thought, trying them on to admire the perfect fit. Typical of Julia—who was currently in New York City at a convention of lawyers.
A couple of Catherine’s graduate students had gone in together to buy her an emerald-green cashmere scarf. Rubbing it against her cheek, she murmured her appreciation of the luxuriously soft feel. She would enjoy this when the weather turned cold. Since it was almost the end of September now, it wouldn’t be much longer until the temperatures began to drop.
Finally there was the package from her parents, both academics currently teaching at a university in China. They had sent her a beautiful silk blouse and a check. The blouse pleased her; the check made her frown.
She wished she could convince them that she was doing fine financially. An only child born to them rather late in life, she had been overprotected and indulged, gently pushed to follow in their academic footsteps, raised in a sheltered, Ivy-League environment that hadn’t exactly prepared her for modern dating and socializing. And now, despite her career and her friends and her financial security—she was lonely on her birthday.
Biting her lip, she set the gifts aside and picked up her pet, snuggling into his neck. His purr vibrated against her cheek as she murmured, “I know wishes don’t really come true, Norman, but just this once I’ll try to believe….”
The day after Catherine’s birthday was a Monday, and it started out with a minor frustration. After she had showered and dressed for work, she walked into the kitchen to prepare her breakfast, only to find one of the knobs from her stove broken off and lying on the linoleum floor.
“Great,” she muttered, bending to pick it up. The knob had been loose for weeks—something she had meant to report but kept forgetting. She couldn’t imagine how it had broken off by itself during the night, but here it was.
Shaking her head, she stepped over the cat winding himself around her ankles and picked up the phone to call the rental office. As it happened, the new maintenance guy had just stepped into the office, she was told, and he could come right then if it was convenient for her. It would take him only a couple of minutes to repair the knob.
She agreed, then called her lab to let them know she would be a little late. Fortunately, her schedule was flexible that day, so she didn’t have to rush in. If something had to break, it seemed it had happened at a convenient time, she mused, walking toward the front door in anticipation of the maintenance man’s arrival. While she was accustomed to prompt responses from the management of her upscale apartment complex, this was even faster than usual.
Three quick raps announced his arrival, and she opened her door. Then very nearly dropped her jaw.
The last maintenance man who had repaired something in her apartment had been sixtyish, beer-bellied, balding and borderline surly. This guy looked somewhere in his mid-to late-twenties, athletically built, handsome in a blond, blue-eyed way, and flashed a hundred white teeth in a melt-your-spine smile.
All semblance of her usual intelligence and composure leaked right out of her brain. “Er…uh…”