Free Six Months Later by Sarah Marston

 
     
     
    SIX
MONTHS LATER
    The empty blue pet
carrier crouched on the seat beside me, its presence a wordless accusation that
I had just killed my cat.  It didn't mean squat that the vet had assured me I
was doing the right thing for Raven - the little gray cat was old and sick and
there wasn't enough medicine in the world to make her right again.  The bottom
line was that my cat was dead and I was the one who'd packed her up in that
blue plastic prison and delivered her to her doom.
    Crying only made
me feel worse, but I couldn't stop.  Hot tears ran down my face and my vision
was so blurry I could barely see.  My eyes strayed once more to that empty
cage, which only made me sob harder.  Which is why that by the time I managed
to focus on where I was driving again, my SUV was about two seconds from a
confrontation with a rhododendron bush.
    "Shit!"
    A split second
before impact, I jerked the wheel to the right and steered the car off the
grass back on to the skinny dirt driveway.  Twenty feet later I pulled up to my
house, shoved the gear in park and shut the car off.
    Forcing myself
to knock off the bawling wasn't easy, and it took me a good two minutes to get
myself under control enough to grab the carrier and exit the vehicle.  I was so
lost in my misery it took me a bit to register that something was wrong.  At
first I couldn't figure out what, then it hit me.  It was the absence of my
dog, barking his fool head off, jumping around and acting like he'd been
deserted for days.
    My eyes zeroed
in on the large deck that hugged the back of the house.  Then I swear my heart
stopped.
    Holy shit.
    Cody was on the
deck all right, his big brown and white spotted body leaning with obvious bliss
into the deck chair while a large male hand stroked his neck.  My gaze
traveled  from that hand upward, taking in a tanned, muscular arm, then an
impressive olive green T-shirt clad chest, and finally landed on a
black-haired, blue-eyed devil wearing a definite smirk. 
    The son of a
bitch.
    I did not need
this right now.  This man had no business sitting on my deck like he owned it
and stroking my dog with those long, strong fingers.  The hot August sun was
beating down and I watched a trickle of sweat carve a path down his neck and
disappear beneath his shirt.  I remembered those hands stroking me, and my body
started generating a heat of its own, most of it concentrated in my crotch.  I
ignored it, made my way up the deck steps, set the carrier down, then leaned my
back on the railing and glared.
    "What the
hell are you doing here?"
    "That's no
way to greet an old friend, Emily.  I thought you'd be happy to see me."
    "You
thought wrong."
    Six months.
    That's pretty
much exactly how long it had been since I'd seen him.  For the first few months
I had waited, hoped, and dreamed he'd appear at my door, swearing he'd made a
huge mistake and he never should have left me.  Then about month four, I had
arrived at the conclusion that my dream wasn't happening and he was a
insensitive asshole.  John Heard was an emotionally challenged bastard who
wouldn't know how to give or receive love even with the aid of an instruction
manual written so simply a five-year-old could understand it.  The only thing
he cared about was sex.  Lots and lots of hot, sweaty sex.
    A movement off
to the side caught my eye.  Casey Lee, a fat black cat with an alpha male attitude,
launched himself toward John's lap.  His landing was a tad ungraceful, so to
compensate he dug in the claws to maintain his balance.  I could tell this by
the look of pain on his target's face.  Then the cat crawled up that rock hard
chest and rubbed his drool spattered face against that sweaty neck.
    John leapt up
and sent Casey Lee flying.  The cat landed with a thump, hissed, then stalked
off into the yard.  Cody woofed and took off after him.
    "Damn it, I
hate cats!"  Black cat hair clung to his shirt.
    Another huge
flaw in his personality that I had foolishly