Hosed (Happy Cat #1)(12)

I have to do something. Stat!

I’m bent double, hacking out my tonsils while I rack my brain, when a raccoon on a leash stops in front of our table.

The hairs on the top of my head prickle just like the hairs on my nape stood up at the Wild Hog last night when I was failing miserably at not being oh-so-aware of Ryan sitting at the bar, looking delicious in faded jeans and a tight blue tee shirt the same pristine mountain lake shade as his eyes.

I blame Ruthie May for that too.

She kept whispering that he was looking at me until he left.

“You okay, Cassie?” Ryan asks.

“Oh my gosh, Ryan, thank the goddess you’re here,” Olivia says while I try not to cough-spit on Ryan’s shoes. Or his raccoon. “I think she needs the Heimlich.”

Metal clinks, and an open stainless-steel water bottle appears under my nose. Two more points to Ryan for being environmentally friendly. “Here,” he says, “take a drink. George doesn’t mind sharing.”

I’m too grateful for the water to get mad that he’s offering me his raccoon’s water. I gulp the cool liquid, spilling some down my favorite Firefly tee shirt.

“Thank you,” I say when I’m finally able to talk without hacking up a lung.

And that’s when I make the fatal mistake.

I look him straight in the eye, and the raw concern in the furrow of his brows melts into one of those friendly smiles that flips my belly inside out and renders me incapable of using my tongue for speech. Though I’m pretty sure I could work up the lingual fortitude to lick several parts of him—repeatedly.

Why does he have this effect on me? Even after being responsible for the most mortifying moment of my entire life, he still makes me swoon like I did that time Wil Wheaton told me he liked my Supergirl costume at Comic-Con.

In California, I learned to expect that people might not be what they pretend to be on the surface. Yes, I was young, but my parents were like hawks on set, and they made sure Savannah and I knew not to trust the boys—or sometimes men—who hinted at wanting to spend time alone with us.

But I thought Ryan, at least, was one of the good guys, and that I wouldn’t find Hollywood-level deception in Happy Cat.

He proved me wrong.

He proved me so wrong.

And if the Ryan O’Dells of the world are secretly backstabbing creeps, then what hope is there for any other man?

“Better?” he asks.

I want to believe that honest, friendly concern is real, but I have trust issues.

And they’re his fault.

“Yes.” My voice is all kinds of raspy and unattractive, but it doesn’t matter, because I refuse to care if I’m attractive to Ryan. “Thank you.”

I hand him back his bottle and wipe my sweaty palms on my shorts.

He scans me up and down, but I remind myself it’s professional firefighter Ryan making sure I’m okay, and that the fact that my skin tingles under my clothes everywhere he looks would mean nothing to him. This attraction is not a reciprocal problem.

“That’s so sweet of you to take care of Cassie,” Olivia says. “You two are just adorable, and not just because you have complimentary auras. Which reminds me, Cassie, I need to do your birth chart this week.” She sighs dreamily. “Aren’t they adorable, Ruthie May?”

Ruthie May perks up like a shark that’s smelled blood in the water. “Well, I reckon they are.” She shoots a look between Ryan and me, and I can already see heads twisting. The entire town can sense when Ruthie May gets her teeth sunk into a new story. She lets off gossip pheromones.

“George is the adorable one,” I say, because the raccoon is kinda cute. When he’s not wearing anal beads and lifting penis pops out of Savannah’s trash can. “How are we doing on ice? Do we need more? I can go pick up more if we’re running short.”

“We have plenty,” Ruthie May says without looking, so I lean over and look in the cooler.

“Oh, we do, don’t we?”

“And we have plenty of lu—”

“FLAVORING!” I yell over Olivia. “We should get grape flavoring too. I love grape.”

“But we don’t have any—”

“Exactly. Grape flavored flavoring is important.”

Ryan’s smiling at all of us like we’re highly amusing, albeit a little crazy. “I like lemonade on my cone,” he says.

“Ooooh,” Ruthie May and Olivia say together.

“I’ll text Savannah,” Olivia adds.

“Psh,” Ruthie May replies. “Don’t bother her. We can handle this on our own. Cassie, we need you to approve lemonade-flavored lube.”

“Approved,” I say, desperate to change the subject before my already flaming cheeks ignite with embarrassment. “Can we—”

“Help! HELP!” a terrified young voice shrieks from the other side of the market.

I turn to see the two teen girls who just snagged sno-cones from our booth dropping to their knees on the ground beside the glass blowing booth. Ryan takes off at a run, leaving George Cooney’s leash in Olivia’s mostly-capable hands. After a beat of hesitation, I race after him, in a huffing-and-puffing, can’t-keep-up-with-fit-people kind of way.

I don’t know exactly why I’m running, except I have this awful feeling that I need to go. I need to see what’s happened. I need to make sure everyone is okay. Maybe it’s paranoia, but between the fire at the factory and the fear that someone will find out we’re serving lubed-up sno-cones, my control issues are revved up in a major way.