Читать книгу Perfect Scents - Virginia Taylor - Страница 7

Calli checked where to find the nearest vet and wrapped the cat in a towel. One look at her bundle by the receptionist, and she was ushered into a tiny cubicle.

“She’s a pretty girl,” the leathery vet said, his careful eyes and gentle hands checking out the cat, not Calli, who was rarely called pretty, even by men her own age. “She came a long way to find you. Look at the pads of her paws. She has done some travelling.”

Calli cleared her throat, trying to force her voice. “Why would she want to find me? I don’t even like cats.”

“She’s not yours?” His brown-eyed gaze connected with hers.

“She walked into my house. Sorry for whispering. I think I have a touch of hay fever.”

“So, you want me to euthanize her?” He stood back, staring at her, his expression impartial.

“I promised her I would help her if I could.” She lifted her shoulders, blinking at him.

He examined Calli’s expression for some seconds, and then he wiped the cat’s eyes with a wet cotton ball and squeezed ointment into them. “A cream Burmese I would think. De-sexed and starving. Put this ointment in twice a day and clean her eyes as often as need be.”

“Will she be okay?”

He shrugged. “She was looking for someone. It might have been you. No charge if you are planning to give her a home.”

Calli moistened her lips. She could offer the little cat a home until the creature was strong enough to be passed onto someone who liked cats. “Would I be allowed to give her a bath?”

“Good luck,” the vet said, already on his way to the next patient in the next cubicle.

Calli made a nest out of her oldest T-shirt when she arrived home, and put that and the cat close to the milk and fish. “What shall I call you?”

The cat gave her a bleary-eyed blink.

Calli shrugged. “Hobo?”

The cat staggered out of the towel and nosed at the fish.

“Hobo it is. Now, will you be okay while I earn my living? I’ll come back at lunch time and check on you.”

The cat ignored her and daintily sniffed at the food.

Calli changed into her gardening gear: jeans, a stiff new khaki work shirt, and her old work boots. She jammed on a khaki military hat and sunglasses. With her diagram in her hand, she grabbed up a spray can of marking paint and strode over the rolling green lawn to the area of the garden in front of the main house. The cat would either be better or worse when Calli saw her next. She hoped for the former. The sooner Hobo fattened up, the sooner she would find a good home.

The cream paving from the cast iron front gate led straight to the door. Calli planned to change the paving to gray slate, laid French style. The iceberg roses standing sentinel on either side had to go, and not because of the new wider path. For this lovely bluestone house, she wanted a base of blue and silver, forming a softer and gentler, more cottage-like entrance to the old and gracious property.

Without stakes and string, she didn’t attempt to spray the straight edge where the lawn would end at the planned garden bed. Instead, she sprayed a small dot at one end and the other, and filled in the line with a few dashes. As she moved to do the same on the other side of the path, she heard, “You! Out!”

She raised her head. Standing by the front gate, the impossibly handsome stranger from this morning glared right at her. His lowered eyebrows showed his disapproval of her, but she stood, staring straight back at more than six feet of annoyed male, his fists planted on his lean hips, taking his morning neighborhood-watch duties one step too far.

Although conscious that she looked far from her imperfect best, she instantly reacted to his imperious manner. She’d had enough of men telling her what she could do. He could get rid of her neighbor with her blessing, but other than that, he could mind his own business. He appeared to be able to speak civilly to the gangster next door, but not to a harmless woman. As she rose to answer, her throat completely closed over. “Me?” she asked in a husky whisper.

“Put down that can.”

She rose to her full height of five-eight, ready to set him back into his place. Trying again, she forced through, “Now, j—”

“Don’t make me come in and take it,” he said in a dangerous tone.

Backing a little, she held up a placating palm and began a far from ladylike hawking of her throat, and finally managed to say, “I’m the gardener,” in a voice that sounded like a scaredy-cat with laryngitis rather than a fully-grown woman.

His dark eyebrows arched with disbelief. “Well, buddy, in that case you would know the name of the owner of the place.” He folded his arms across his manly chest and stared down his nose at her. The morning sunlight emphasized his wonderful cheekbones and made chiseled angles of his clean-cut jaw.

She smiled at her challenge. At this time of day, still before ten and wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, he could be a doctor, a lawyer, or possibly an architect, but he was most likely a professional sportsman. His clear skin said healthy living and his perfect haircut said money. He looked about the right age to be a footballer. She knew a few lived in this area. If so, he would be married. She didn’t know why she tried to see a ring, but angling her gaze to his left fist took her eyes to the front of his well-packed jeans. She hastily glanced back at his face. His relationship status had no relevance at all to his infuriatingly melting effect on her.

“Buddy,” she repeated, belatedly realizing he thought she was male which capped her indignation. Tallish she might be, and square-shouldered, but she had all the girly bits in all the right places, too. Not that any showed under her stiff shirt. However, no matter how she looked, he had apparently decided that the spray can she still held and had somehow pointed at him, was a weapon. She lifted the can higher, narrowed her eyes, and aimed more directly at him. Her thumb toyed with the nozzle, her lips firm.

“Don’t even think about it,” he said in a deadly tone.

She paused. Of course she shouldn’t. Aside from that, if he wrestled with her for the can, he might knock off her hat, and then he might recognize her. Not too long ago, her picture had not only been splashed across the daily paper, but also flashed on the news screens. At this stage, she couldn’t deal with any more opinions of her character. She drew a resolute breath.

“I’ll have the name of your employer right now.”

She lowered the can. For all she knew, he might be a very good friend of her employer, who trusted her not only with his garden but the keys to his house. She had no business offending a stranger. But to keep her self-respect she couldn’t give in without a show of resistance. “Horace Rumpole.” She raised her chin.

“Try again,” he said through his teeth.

“John Deed.”

“One last try, smart-arse.”

She thought he had relaxed slightly. “Adrian Ferguson,” she said, taking her thumb off the nozzle of the spray can.

His eyebrows lowered as his gaze pierced through her. Finally, he unclamped his lips. “Keep in mind that around here, neighbors look out for each other.” After a terse nod of his head, he went on his way.

She didn’t watch, although she wanted to. That was one hunk of a yummy man, not a dimpled charming man like Grayson, but his polar opposite. Pushing out a huff of self-impatience, she turned back to the garden and sprayed more blue spots onto the lawn, marking out where she expected the string lines to go.

She wished she had checked to see where the neighbor lived. When the judge came back, she could tell him and make the story funny. Then she laughed. The story was already funny. Mr. Neighborhood Watch thought she was a boy.

Then again, for a woman who had been shown only too often that she had no appeal, that wasn’t so funny.

At about one, she stopped work for lunch. The cat had again curled on the couch, leaving the food dish half-full.

“Progress,” Calli muttered, scraping the stale food into the bin. She swallowed a long glass of water, and hacked out a cough, clearing her throat, momentarily.

Hobo glanced in Calli’s direction, but her eyes seemed to be leaking again. Calli made an ick-face. The idea of cleaning gunk from the cat’s eyes made her stomach churn. The idea of being so heartless as to leave the cat in misery caused her to find a couple of cotton balls and wet them.

She gingerly sat beside the cat. “Help me here. I don’t know how to do this. I’m going to wipe your eyes, right? Here goes.”

With a tentative hand under the cat’s chin, she tilted up the little furry face. Quickly she wiped the first eye. The cat sneezed.

“Well, that was easy, don’t you think?” She did the second and, not with any confidence, she squeezed a row of ointment across each of Hobo’s eyes. The cat sneezed again and curled up into a dainty, weary ball. For a bundle of filth, she had elegant pretensions.

Calli washed her hands and picked up her phone, thumbing numbers while she ate her cheese sandwich. First, she confirmed the order for the pavers and the sand. Next, she checked with the paving company she had always used. The job would be a large one, and she had already booked the work team.

“Monday next week,” she said, repeating the date, noting that the more she spoke, the better her voice. After concentrating for a moment, she realized she had hardly spoken to anyone in the past few weeks. Now with all her cat conversations, she almost sounded normal. Use it or lose it seemed to be the cure here, though when she forgot to drink she also did her voice no favors. To make sure of her hydration, she drank another two long cool glasses of water.

“You don’t have any water either,” she said to the cat, and she filled a large breakfast bowl with water for her scruffy companion.

“I’m off now. Keep yourself clean, or wash yourself, because if you aren’t shiny bright when I get back, some time tonight you are having a bath. No one ever got well lying around in their own dirt.” And she gave a reluctant laugh because she sounded like her mother.

After rinsing out her cup, she closed the door behind her and stepped back into a clouded spring day. For a moment she paused, glancing briefly at the dividing fence. The Tudor house remained silent, but a distant clank and the murmur of male voices could possibly be the gang discussing their next hit while rattling their numchucks. Or not. Whatever the business of the people next door, she could mind her own.

However, she was pleased to see that the gangster had left for the day. She knew this because his SUV hadn’t returned. Probably even thugs had regular employment. Nevertheless, her idle speculation about her tattooed, bottle-breaking neighbor could certainly hold elements of truth. He looked like a biker. Tattoos might be trendy, but his didn’t look arty, and the rev of the motorbikes last night had been threatening. Likely he had gathered together the other members of his gang to break bottles on a Sunday night, expressing an antisocial protest against recycling. She actually laughed aloud at her clever cycling pun as she pulled her gardening gloves back on.

Despite the gray sky today, this coming summer was predicted to be as dry as the last. During winter, the judge’s garden had dried out considerably. Calli couldn’t remember the last time she saw rain, and she needed to install a new water-saving irrigation system before the heat set in.

Since the whole garden would be changed, she would also need to change the hose grid. Although the old drippers had kept the garden alive, the new plan using less water would make the garden lush. In the meantime, she ignored the blockages and the leaks, managing to hand water the plants that showed the most wilt. Normally, she supervised the gardens she designed, leaving others to perform the hard slog. These days, she couldn’t afford laborers, but apparently venturing out of her comfort zone was doing her good.

As she had supposed, performing the work herself kept her mind on the job rather than on her woes, the worst of which was caused by her decision to bankroll her partnership with Grayson. The people who cared for her, friends and family, had queried his background, but after the failure of two personal relationships with men from the “right” backgrounds, she had seen this as snobbery. She thought she had made a sensible choice, but she hadn’t.

For the first time since the man she had trusted with her start-up business had left with her money and reputation, she realized that she had begun to relax. She appreciated being offered a chance, and she would certainly give the judge her best effort. He trusted her to do a good job despite her having such a pitiful record. All she wanted now was to reclaim her credibility with her family, friends, and anyone she had ever worked with or whom she knew.

Sighing, she marked out the spot for the fountain in the back garden.