Hosed (Happy Cat #1)(2)

Her round cheeks are turning pink. “It’s complicated.”

“Who can tell me if the building is empty?” I ask, hurrying across the last stretch of asphalt.

“One of them?” She motions toward the other Sunshine Sex Toys employees huddled in the grass at the edge of the parking lot. “Maybe Olivia?”

“Oh, yes, me! I can help! I’d love to help!” The familiar blonde waves, making the silver bangles draping her arms clank.

Under normal circumstances, I’d wince at Olivia Moonbeam’s eager enthusiasm. Right now, a wince isn’t strong enough. “You know who might still be in the building?” I ask her.

Her lips purse. They’re painted Goddess Core Pink, which I know because she made an announcement about it being her signature feminine-power color at the fish fry two weeks ago. My brothers have been making jokes about their “goddess cores” on a group text ever since.

“Well, no, we don’t do roll call,” Olivia says. “We’re all about working when the energy is right. Letting vitality move organically through the chakras to the heart center and then the hands, you know?”

Unfortunately, I do. Since Olivia moved to Happy Cat I’ve learned more about my chakras and my “energetic soul body” than I ever wanted to know.

“Ruthie May?” I call. I know the town gossip works here. No idea what her job is, but it doesn’t matter. She’ll know who came to work today, what they were wearing, and whether or not they’re feeling regular or still bound up from last night’s nacho dip.

The familiar grandmotherly busybody hustles out from the middle of the crowd, her usually cheerful face drawn and serious under her dyed-brown hair. “Everyone’s out and accounted for, darlin’. Well, except Frank, but he was testing some product over at Widow MacIntosh’s place last night and is late gettin’ in. And Savannah, of course, who’s run off on account of her mental breakdown. But I’m sure you saw that on InstaChat.”

“She did not have a mental breakdown,” Brown Eyes hisses.

Ruthie May’s weathered forehead wrinkles sympathetically. “Honey, she had an entire truck of dicks-in-a-box delivered to Steve’s parents’ house, then posted a video on InstaChat of her playing Whack-a-Husband with a dildo. If that ain’t a mental breakdown—”

“He was cheating on her with a sheep,” someone else in the crowd offers. “He earned that dildo beating.”

“She was entitled to it!” another pipes up. “Especially with the grief she got just for telling the truth!”

“Back to the matter at hand, please,” Bird Girl squeaks in an attempt to shift focus. But good luck with that. People are going to be talking about Savannah Sunderwell’s breakdown when our children’s children are riding to school in self-driven cars. Aside from Savannah coming home to open a sex toy factory in the first place, the situation surrounding her divorce is the biggest scandal Happy Cat has seen in years. “How did the fire start?” she continues, “and how do we stop anything like this from happening again?”

“The lube shouldn’t have been flammable,” the lab rat says. “I did all the calculations myself. The solution shouldn’t start smoking until at least three hundred fifty degrees. We were still at room temperature, and none of the ingredients are particularly volatile. Unless I grabbed the wrong bottle…”

“So there’s no one else in the building?” I clarify with Ruthie May.

“As far as I know.” She gnaws on her lower lip as her gaze shifts to the brown-eyed woman. “Savannah isn’t back in town, is she, Cassie? You talk to her today?”

Cassie…Cassie Sunderwell? Savannah’s sister?

Fuck me with a spoon. I should’ve seen the resemblance.

But she’s so…grown up. And wearing a tight white tee shirt with a cartoon Viking whose horns hit right at her nipples.

Damn. It’s a damn good thing I’m here for a fire, or I might be staring.

“Savannah’s on vacation,” Cassie repeats. “She’s not in the building. She’s not even in the country.”

“She’s totally gone,” Olivia agrees with a toss of her long blond hair. “She cleaned out half her bedroom and had me grab her a wide variety of vibrators to take along on her soul journey. Variety is important when you’re healing a heart chakra wound.”

Cassie opens her mouth, then closes it. Her cheeks are turning the right shade of pink to highlight the freckles on her nose, and for a split second, I wonder how many of Savannah’s products she’s tried.

At that moment, the sheriff finally decides to pull into the parking lot.

About damned time.

“Stay here,” I tell the group of employees.

Cassie, Olivia, and Ruthie May all ignore the order, skittering after me as I stride to meet the sheriff, who’s taking his sweet time climbing out of his cruiser.

Just a lube fire and some explosions. No big deal. Not worth rushing to.

He scratches his belly and looks around. “What we got goin’ on here, Ry?”

“The lube exploded,” Olivia says.

“I wasn’t inside the lab when it happened,” Ruthie May adds. “But if you ask me, it was probably a bad reaction between the eco-rubber in the self-lubricating butt plug and the lime in the mango-lime lube.”