Hosed (Happy Cat #1)(34)

“Sheriff’s on it,” she tells me. “But if you hear anything, you let me know.”

Our radios squawk to life. “Possible HAZMAT situation at Gordon’s Taxidermy Shop. Station Two, respond.”

We all leap for our turnout gear.

“Ten bucks says it’s a live squirrel high on weed, because what other HAZMAT is he gonna have?” Jojo says as we load up. He grins. “And another ten that you and Cassie are outed as official by this time tomorrow.”

“Save the gossip for the locker rooms,” Jessie orders. She flips on the lights and sirens, Hank cranks the engine, and we’re off.

Just a routine call on a routine day.

But after hearing that the fire at Sunshine was suspicious, and possibly arson, nothing feels routine.

This is going to be the longest shift of my life.





Seventeen





Cassie





* * *



Everything is crazy.

I can’t believe this is my life.

Down is up and up is down and somehow I’ve gone from being girl voted most likely to spend a Friday night binge-playing Doctor Mario by myself to an arson suspect with the fate of a faltering sex toy company resting on my shoulders, more life drama than Kim Kardashian post sex tape, and a sort-of-maybe boyfriend who texts me on his breaks at work to let me know he’s thinking of me and that I should keep my “adorable chin up.”

My adorable chin.

Ryan thinks my chin is adorable.

“Bigger things to worry about,” I grumble at my reflection in Savannah’s private office bathroom. But no matter how serious I try to keep my reflection, I can’t keep the smile from my lips.

And then another text pops up on my phone and my grin goes into super stretchy mode.

Ryan: Any plans for tomorrow? Jace is bringing back karaoke night at the Wild Hog. I thought you might like to go, drink a few beers, forget about sex toys for a while?

Cassie: Sounds amazing. I’ll need a break from crisis mode by then. The news trucks are still outside and half my staff didn’t come into work today.

Ryan: Why?

Cassie: I don’t know. Ruthie May thinks maybe they’re afraid of getting caught walking into a sex toy factory on TV. Most of their families know what they do for a living, but I guess some of them are keeping the Sunshine portion of their lives a secret from their friends and neighbors. I’m helping Neil out in the lab today to pick up the slack. We’ll see how much I remember from high school chemistry. Hopefully I won’t blow myself up along with the self-lubricating butt plug prototypes.

Ryan: Be careful. No blowing yourself up allowed. At least not until I get to hear you sing “I Touch Myself” at karaoke.

Cassie: LOL. On a cold day in hell, O’Dell. I have a go-to list of karaoke songs and that one is NOT on it.

Ryan: Can’t wait to hear your go-to list. Gotta run. Break’s over. Hang in there.

Cassie: Will do.

I slip my phone back into the pocket of my borrowed lab coat and practically float out of the bathroom and down the hall toward the lab, not even the smell of the pineapple lube prototype Olivia’s mixing in a room the employees affectionately call “The Sex Kitchen” able to dampen my mood. Pineapple makes my tongue break out in hives and usually the scent alone is enough to make my lips itch.

But not today. Today I am bulletproof.

I know it’s just a stupid crush, but it’s a mutual crush. Ryan is into me and I’m into him and I’ve all but decided to go for it—to screw my courage to the sticking point and pounce on Ryan like he’s a two-pound bar of chocolate at the end of a thirty-day sugar detox.

Maybe tomorrow night.

Which means I’m potentially within a day of losing my V card, a state of affairs so exciting and panic-inducing I don’t notice Ruthie May waiting for me by the entrance to the lab until she seemingly materializes out of the shadows to scare me half to death.

“Oh my God!” I press a hand to my chest, where my heart is doing its best impression of a Donkey Kong hammer. “You scared me. Sorry. I was distracted.”

“Understandable,” Ruthie May says, her expression uncharacteristically serious. “You’ve got a lot on your plate these days, and I’m afraid nothin’ I’ve got to say is going to help you any.”

Stifling a groan, I ask, “Is this about the sales projections I asked for?”

Ruthie nods, her lips pruning into an unhappy pink starburst at the bottom of her lightly wrinkled face.

“Lay it on me,” I say, pinwheeling one hand. “Don’t sugarcoat it. I have to know how deep the doo-doo is before I can figure a way out of it.”

“Well, it could be worse,” Ruthie May says, before proceeding to give me the bad news. “Sales are down ten percent from this time last year, a dozen vendors have declined to renew their contracts, and apparently there was a glitch in the online ordering system that kept new customers from making profiles or being able to complete the check-out process for nearly a month. We’ve caught it now, but the damage has been done. I’m projecting a major cash flow problem if we can’t turn things around and get more green flowing in. And I mean yesterday.”

I shake my head. “But how did this happen? I thought Savannah said there was still so much room for expansion in the organic sensual product market.”