Free The Cat Sitter's Nine Lives by Blaize Clement

shoulder, “Sorry, babe! I’ve got a meeting in Tampa with a new client.”
    Just then my cell phone rang from the bedroom, and Ethan called out, “Somebody’s calling you.”
    The only people in the world that could possibly be calling at this hour were Michael, Paco, and Ethan, so I decided I’d just enjoy my breakfast and check my voice mail later. Except, if it was a client with an emergency, like a lost cat or …
    “Hey, can you see who it is?”
    There was a pause, and then he said, “Sara somebody.”
    I couldn’t think of any clients named Sara. The only Sara I knew was a girl who worked the hot dog stand at the pavilion on Siesta Key Beach, and I wasn’t even sure she knew my name. “Sara Somebody” was probably a new client. I figured I’d check my voice mail after breakfast and call back at a more godly hour.
    Just as I was digging into my fresh fruit, Ethan came back out on the porch in a crisp white dress shirt with a dark gray jacket. He leaned against the railing and draped a pale, silvery-blue tie around his neck.
    “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you…” There was a forced nonchalance to his voice that immediately made me a bit nervous.
    “Whaffat?” I said, my mouth full of mango and kiwi.
    “So … what’s the EPT for?”
    I swallowed, “The huh?”
    I knew exactly what he had said, but for some reason I needed a little time to think. He crossed the skinny end of his tie over the fat end and looped it around into a bow. “The early pregnancy test that’s in your medicine cabinet.”
    “Oh!” I wiped my mouth with a napkin. “Um … I bought that.”
    He nodded slightly, gazing off into the distance as he slipped the tie’s long end through the bow and pulled it into a tight knot. “Okay…”
    It took me a couple of seconds to figure out what he was getting at. The vague note of a question in his voice finally tipped me off. I said, “Oh my gosh! You didn’t think…”
    He shrugged, “Well, I was kind of wondering.”
    “No! It’s not for me. It’s for a girl I know—the daughter of a client. It’s a long story, but basically she thought she was pregnant. It turns out she wasn’t, but I figured she should probably have a way of knowing if it ever happens again. Hopefully she’ll never need it.”
    He nodded and straightened his jacket. “Okay. It just got me thinking.”
    I put an impossibly large heaping spoonful of fruit in my mouth. I was about to ask what it was he was thinking, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.
    He leaned over and kissed me, and I immediately got a little dizzy-headed. Ethan’s kisses have the ability to make me feel like I’ve had a couple of fine Belgian chocolates, or a shot of very expensive, smooth whiskey.
    He whispered, “Your lip looks better.”
    I smiled drunkenly. “Thanks.”
    Usually I’m not all that attracted to business types—I’m more of a jeans and T-shirt kind of girl—but the more time I spent with Ethan, the more I realized I was turning into a suit and tie kind of girl. As Ethan went down the stairs and crossed the courtyard to his car I thought to myself, There goes one sexy, suit-wearing hunk of hotness. Of course, if Ethan walked around in a burlap sack and a shoe box on his head, I’d probably turn into a burlap sack and shoe box kind of girl in two seconds flat.
    *   *   *
    My first stop almost every morning is Tom Hale’s condo on Midnight Pass Road. Tom is an accountant. He works out of his home since traveling back and forth to an office is a little difficult for him, to say the least. Ten years ago, he was in one of those sprawling home improvement stores shopping for doorknobs when a wall display collapsed on top of him and crushed his spine. He never walked again. Sometimes I think if that had happened to me I wouldn’t have the strength to go on, but Tom is one of the most cheerful people I’ve ever known. He does my taxes and deals with everything else money-related in my