Free Where Dreams Are Born (Angelo's Hearth) by M.L. Buchman Page A

legs. She gasped and hung on to the too thin rail with both hands.
    Russell casually reached down with one hand and scooped up… a kitten. A calico kitten with shaggy hair and outrageously long whiskers.
    “This is Nutcase. She has absolutely no fear. She sticks her little nose in the strangest of places. One day she fiberglassed her tail and it took me an hour to trim it off because she wouldn’t hold still.” It climbed up his chest to perch on his shoulder.
    “You can see where it hasn’t grown back yet.” He pulled the long tail from around his throat and one side was indeed shaved.
    A cat.
    When she was just starting out, her career was almost aborted by a cat. Right before a shoot when she was ten, she’d tried to pet the photographer’s cat. It had swiped her with its claws and left a long red scratch down the side of her finger. They had to get another hand model.
    Her mother had been furious.
    Melanie didn’t sleep for four days as she watched it to make sure it healed. Skipped school and rubbed in salves and moisturizers to make sure there was no unsightly puckering. Finally wept herself to sleep with relief when she could no longer find exactly where it had been. She turned down every shoot with a cat since then.
    There was no way she was going to pet Russell’s cat.
    “She’s really quite sweet. She likes being scritched under the chin like this.” He demonstrated and Nutcase purred loudly.
    How badly did she want this? How badly did she want him? She’d never told him the cat story. Never told anyone that she could still feel the outline of her mother’s slap on her face that had shone for days, as livid a red as the cat’s mark , that still burned though her mother was long dead.
    “She won’t hurt you.”
    How many tests did she have to pass? Clearly there would always be another. But she hadn’t reached her limit yet. She’d manage this one.
    Melanie extended her finger until the cat had to lean forward to sniff the black leather. After a careful inspection, it’s pink and black nose wiggling like a tiny bumblebee, another of her fears, the cat leaned even farther out and rubbed its chin along her finger. Russell was right. She was gentle.
    But there was no way she was taking off her gloves.
    # # #
    “No, it cannot be.” Jo Thompson insisted in her best lawyer voice.
    Before Cassidy could add her own protest, Perrin continued on, excitement rippling off her in high-energy waves.
    “Uh-huh! Way! Could I make something like this up? Well, I could, I guess, if I wanted to but I’m not.” Perrin spoke loudly enough that half-a-dozen heads turned in their direction despite the noise level in Cutter’s.
    The lounge was hopping and it was barely six o’clock. Another hour and it would really be rolling. The décor was simple and modern in a plush-chairs-around-knee-high-glass-tables motif. The air smelled of exquisite seafood being served in the restaurant beyond the tinted glass wall. The wrap-around windows revealed the tail end of an awesome winter sunset over Puget Sound.
    Cassidy had learned from long practice that it wasn’t worth the effort to quiet her friend. Perrin didn’t mind being shushed, but ten seconds later she’d be bound to forget and her volume would climb once again.
    Everything about Perrin Williams was loud. She’d dyed her hair half chrome-blue and half the black of India ink. And not side-to-side or front-to-back, but in diagonal stripes three-inches wide spiraling down from the high part. The stripes followed the line of the sloping haircut that started well down her bare left shoulder and rose shorter and shorter to the line of her jaw on the right. The clothes following the line of the hair from bare shoulder to a high collar on the other side. It was quite striking once you got past the strangeness of it.
    Cassidy hoped that maybe it was wig, but it was always hard to tell with Perrin because she did her fashion statements so perfectly.
    Her clothes matched