Raining Cat Sitters and Dogs by Blaize Clement Read Free Book Online

the front steps to theBronco. I looked, but I didn’t see any ghostly faces peering at me through the dark trees. Maybe Jaz had left town. Maybe she wouldn’t show up at Hetty’s the next day. Maybe those scary boys had left town too.
    That’s what I told myself. If I’d been able to, I would have thrown a light cover over myself like Big Bubba’s so I wouldn’t have to see reality.
    When I got home, the sun was a golden balloon lightly bouncing on the distant horizon, sending a glittering path across the tops of waves to the shore. Michael and Paco stood on the sand watching it, Michael with his arm slung loosely over Paco’s shoulder. I scurried over and stood on his other side so he could hug me too, and we all waited in awed silence while the sun did its daily flirtation with the sea. Like a coy virgin, it hovered just out of reach, seeming at times to pull upward a bit and then dip slightly toward the lusting sea. Behind it, translucent bands of cerise and violet danced with streaks of turquoise and sparkling yellow. Just when it seemed the sun would hold itself aloof forever, it abruptly changed its mind and fell into the sea’s open arms. Within seconds, it was lost in a watery embrace, and all that was left were rainbow sighs of contentment.
    Michael gave me and Paco a little squeeze and we all turned and trooped toward the wooden deck. Michael’s prized steel cooker was smoking and all the extra little gizmos for baking and boiling things were occupied with good-smelling somethings.
    Next to Paco and me, Michael loves that grill beyond anything else in the world. He can get rhapsodic pointing out its little side extensions on which you can cooksomething in a pan—boil potatoes, maybe—while the stuff on the rack grills. And the warming oven below the grill seems miraculous to him. He just loves to warm dinner rolls down there and never fails to mention when he does. Men and outdoor cookers are like men and cars, a mysterious love affair women will never understand.
    Michael said, “Ten minutes, tops.”
    I said, “Gotcha,” and raced up my stairs two at a time, punching the remote to raise the shutters as I went.
    If there’s ever a reality TV show that gives prizes for the fastest shower takers, I’ll enter that sucker and win. The trick is to peel off clothes on the way so you’re already naked when you turn on the water. A squirt of liquid soap on a sponge, a slick up one side and down the other, turn around to rinse all areas, and that’s it. Two minutes tops. Then a quick foot dry to keep from sliding on tile, a fast comb through wet hair and a slick of lip gloss—another two minutes—before a gallop to the closet for fresh clothes while towel-patting exposed damp skin. In nanoseconds I was stepping into clean underwear and pulling on cool white baggy pants and a loose top. No shoes, but I took a second to slide a stretchy coral bracelet on my wrist.
    I left the shutters up and clattered down the stairs to the deck where the table was already set for three, with a shallow bowl of gazpacho on each plate. Paco was pouring chilled white wine into two glasses and iced tea into a third. The glass of tea meant Paco would be leaving later on some undercover assignment. I didn’t comment on it. He’s safer if we know nothing about his work, but it’s impossible not to know some things.
    Paco gave me a quick once-over the way men do and nodded in silent approval. Cats and dogs wave their tails to applaud, men nod and twitch their eyebrows.
    From his beloved grill, Michael said, “Good timing, Dixie. Heat’s just right.”
    I went over to a redwood chaise where Ella Fitzgerald was surveying the scene. She wore a kitty harness with a long thin leash attached to one of the chaise legs, and she gave me a glum look when I stooped to kiss the top of her head. Paco had bought the harness and leash after Ella had bounded into the woods behind the house and he’d spent several anxious hours looking for