Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
“I’m sorry,” Fancypants said. “I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”
I rubbed my forehead, trying to stave off the sudden headache that came sweeping in the moment I walked into the kitchen. “There’s a reason I asked you not to tease the cats around the kitchen counters.”
“I realize that now,” Fancypants said.
“Was this mess here when May came over?” I asked, wondering where to begin.
The dragonette shook his head. “No, it wasn’t. She would have cleaned it up.”
That was true enough. May would have immediately pulled out the broom and mop, and Fancypants would have been ordered to help her.
The kitchen was a total mess. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but the flour and sugar canisters were on the floor, broken.
Flour and sugar were everywhere—coating the kitchen in a dusting of white.
I kneeled down to examine what turned out to be a pile of china shards.
Faron had stacked dishes on the counter to put away, but apparently the only place they were going was into the trash.
I sidestepped the broken dishes, cautiously moving to the other side of the sink.
What had been a vase of roses was now shattered glass, water everywhere, and the remains of the flowers.
I leaned on what looked like a clean part of the counter, only to realize that my hand was covered in oil. That’s when I saw the upended container of oatmeal and the carafe of cooking oil that had been tipped over. The stopper was gone, and the bottle had only a few ounces left in it.
I was usually incredibly patient with the cats and Fancypants, but my temper had reached its boiling point. “What the hell happened?”
Fancypants winced, then pointed to the catnip mouse that was still on the counter. “I wanted to play with Gem and Silver. I went to get them a catnip toy; I wanted to give them a treat. I dropped one on the counter when I was trying to shut the cupboard and…”
He looked so bereft that I almost took pity on him. Almost. “And they were on it like white on rice,” I said.
“Right. I threw another one, trying to get them off the counter, but it landed next to the canisters and—”
“You have lousy aim,” I said, scowling. “I suppose I’m going to be the one cleaning up this mess?
You realize I have a car full of groceries, including frozen food, that needs to be put away?
” I was trying to maintain my anger, but the more I looked at the mess, the more ridiculous it seemed, and the more I envisioned Fancypants frantically trying to stop two cats with drug-addled motor skills, the more I wanted to laugh.
“I’m so sorry. I’ll help you clean—and you can cut my television privileges.”
Fancypants looked so bereft that I finally let out my breath and shook my head. “Seriously, next time, toss their jingle balls around for them. Okay?”
Fancypants nodded. “I’ll get the whisk broom.” He could carry a whisk broom while flying.
“Let me take off my jacket and we’ll get busy.
” I tried to step over the remnants of the broken vase, but when I set my foot down, it landed in a pile of granulated sugar.
Unbeknownst to most people, sugar was one of the slipperiest substances on the planet.
My foot slid forward, and I ended up doing the splits right into the pile of thorny roses and broken glass.
I yelped, grateful that I was wearing thick leather pants. A thorn still poked through to stab me in the thigh, but I landed just shy of getting sliced and diced in my cooch.
“What on earth?” Farron asked, opening the door.
He looked around the kitchen, then back at me.
“Do you need help?” He immediately started toward me before I could warn him about the sugar.
The next moment, his feet slid out from under him, and he landed on his ass in the pile of flour and sugar. “What the fuck—?”
“Welcome to the first annual Kitchen Disaster Olympics,” I said, easing myself around to grab the counter as I got to my feet.
“Fancypants and the cats decided to redecorate in a catnip-infused frenzy.” I grunted as I stepped away from the mess and stripped off my jacket.
I brushed off my pants, between my thighs, brushing away the sugar, flour, and a rose that had attached itself to my leather pants.
“Get the whisk broom and a couple of rolls of paper towels,” I told Fancypants.
Faron extricated himself from the mounds of flour and sugar and cautiously strode to the closet where he retrieved the broom.
He quickly realized that the broom wasn’t necessarily the best option, and retrieved the sponge mop and dampened it enough to give it traction on the floor.
As he began using it to push the mounds of flour and sugar together, I crouched and began picking up the roses.
Fancypants landed on the ground and—using a paper towel—swept up piles of sugar and flour.
I asked him to hold the dustpan while I whisked the piles of sugar, glass, china, and flour into the pan.
Twenty minutes later, I was mopping the floor while Faron brought in the groceries.
When everything was clean, Faron carried the trash bag of broken fun out to the garbage can.
When we were done, Faron made coffee while I went to change clothes. I shifted into black jeans and a green turtleneck and returned to the kitchen. Fancypants sat on the counter, looking anxious.
“Well?” he asked as I entered the room.
Puzzled, I asked, “Well, what?”
“What’s my punishment? I’m terribly sorry,” he said.
I stared at him for a moment. He squirmed a little, and I finally relented. “No more Real Housewives for two weeks.” For some reason, he loved the show, and two weeks without it would probably hit him harder than if I yelled at him. “And no dessert for dinner tonight.”
“I wasn’t going to make one,” Faron said.
“Well, that works out just fine,” I said. “Seriously, though, Fancypants, if you want to play catnip mousie with the cats, please do it in the living room where everything’s nailed down. And throw it on the floor for them, please?”
“I promise,” he said. “I think I’ll take a nap.”
“Why don’t you do that?” I asked. As the dragonette flew up toward his favorite perch—the top level of the cat tree, past where Silver or Gem usually slept—I turned back to Faron.
“Hey, I’m not sure if you want to know this, but…when I was at the supermarket, I saw Kyle.” I waited for his reaction.
Faron sat there, his gaze fixated on the floor. After a moment, he said, “What did he have to say, if anything?”
I cleared my throat. “He hemmed and hawed…I told him you were okay, and he seemed relieved. He misses you. I can tell.” Part of me wanted to urge him to go say hello to Kyle, but I knew he couldn’t—and wouldn’t.
After a moment, Faron nodded. “Thank you for telling me.”
“So, how did job hunting go?” I started putting away the groceries.
Faron crossed over to the counter to hand me food from the bags. “Better than I expected. Chaz Harley has a temporary position open, and he offered it to me.”
“You mean Chaz, the tree-guy?”
Chaz Harley was a fixture in Starlight Hollow.
He’d been the main arborist in the area for decades.
The old guy had to be seventy, if he was a day.
His tree-climbing days were gone, but he still ran the biggest tree-trimming service on the peninsula.
He could tell just by looking whether a tree was healthy.
I swore he had some sort of nature spirit in his blood, but nobody knew whether he was human or something else.
“Yeah, that’s the one. His lead tree-trimmer fell out of his harness last week when he was trying to trim the top of the Lion’s Mane oak tree, and he’s got a broken leg and a broken rib. I’ll fill in until he’s ready to come back to his job. Pay’s good, too. Thirty-five an hour.”
“Sounds good. Just be careful. You don’t need any more time in the hospital,” I said, finishing up the last bag. Faron folded them as I carried our coffees to the table and set them down. “Can you grab the shortbread?”
I loved shortbread, and May kept us well-stocked with it. She was an incredible baker who could have turned pro, but she maintained she enjoyed baking too much to turn it into a job.
Faron opened the cookie jar and arranged the cookies on the plate, and brought it over to the table with him. “I start tomorrow, so that should help with finances around here.”
Faron had his separate trust from his father, but the king’s ransom belonged with the king, and he no longer had access to the money that belonged to the throne.
He’d been contributing to the household, but the fact that this was the way things were now seemed to settle in.
And the wolf shifter never acted as if he was entitled to anything.
“Thanks,” I said, feeling awkward. The three of us had been navigating our relationship, trying to find our rhythm.
While we slept in separate bedrooms—Faron in the guest room, and Bran and I in our room—the fact was, we were slowly settling into our unexpected threesome.
The fact that, before Faron found out he had to get married, we’d been inching toward this very relationship… it didn’t make it any easier.
“Can I go outside?” Fancypants asked as he flew into the room.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll leave the door ajar in case you need to come in and I’m not in the kitchen.
” I let him out, leaving the kitchen door ajar.
Fancypants could manage the screen door, but he wasn’t good at turning doorknobs.
“Have fun and don’t stay out too long,” I said as he zoomed around the yard.
“He has the zoomies?” Faron asked with a grin.