Page 50 of Missiletoe
No, seriously, I would have given him the ankle-biting of a lifetime. And once my family got there and saw us fighting, Mike would be dead as dirt. He’d never even see it coming.
“Paris, let me take care of this. You stay with Sylvia and your new bunny.” She gave me a pat on the head.
Why did everyone do that to me?
Paris gave her a sharp look that had her skittering backward, grabbing Mike by the arm, and dragging him with her out the back door.
After Paris and Baz, Melanie had officially become my new favorite person.
Sorry Gareth!
Paris went back to stroking Sylvia, all annoyance gone. He was just warm, soft safety and chill vibes once again.
“Why can you touch her, but I can’t?” I asked.
Parishmmedas he mulled over my question. Sylvia pushed her head against his hand in encouragement. “She likes it.”
“But she doesn’t like me?”
Paris tilted his head thoughtfully, and he appeared to be communing silently with the cat. “She’s busy right now. Try her again tomorrow. You smell nice though.”
“She talks to you?”
Paris gave me a hesitant smile. “Something like that. Does it bother you?”
I snorted. “My brother kills people for a living. It takes a lot to bother me.”
Was that TMI? That might have been TMI. How was I to know? I didn’t have a ton of real life experience.
That tends to happen to people who spend most of their time playing with gadgets or sleeping.
Paris didn’t get weird about it at all, though. Instead, he smoothed a curl out of my eyes, and said, “That’s good.”
We didn’t talk much after that. We were too busy watching over Sylvia while she got down to the business of kitten making.
Paris didn’t do much. Mostly, he just sat on the floor next to her and vibed. Sometimes he gave her soothing pets, other times he offered words of encouragement. It took forever, but I didn’t get bored at all.
I did wonder why my family was taking so long to show up, but then I remembered what Adam had done to Gareth’s office. Gareth’s police scanner and all of his computers were probably toast, and it would take forever to get his backup equipment up and running.
Gareth was going to need to break into one of my workshops to get his other laptop in order to hunt me down. I’d been improving it for him. Maybe when he saw some of my additions, he’d be less bananas about my great escape.
There was a very gross part during the kittening (did you know that’s what cat birth is called? I didn’t, but Paris told me, and my god, he is just so smart.), but I’m going to be nice and leave that part out.
We were nice and comfy because Paris moved a pet bed over to the cage for us to cuddle on. It was even softer than the one he’d given me. I sat in his lap for the most part, but sometimes, I’d move to the floor next to him so he could give Sylvia extra attention when she needed it.
And you know what? I wasn’t jealous even a little. Sylvia was working so hard and needed all the love she could get.
I even apologized for calling her a floozie too, even though she’d never heard me say it out loud. It wasn’t her fault the father of her kittens dirty ditched her like that. If I’d known she was a cat and not a home wrecker, I would have been way nicer to her in my head earlier.
Even more grossness happened at the end, but I’d seen Baz covered in entrails and Vale drenched in blood on several occasions, so I didn’t lose my hot cocoa and cookies over it.
While Sylvia finished cleaning her babies, Paris explained to me how we couldn’t pet the kittens yet because they were too young, but he promised to let me know the second it was okay.
Once they were no longer disgusting, I took on the very important responsibility of naming them.
“This one is Loki, and this one is Moriarty, and this one is Rasputin. But let’s call him Raspy.” Raspy had a really weird meow, so it was appropriate. “The black one should be Kujo because he’s the fierce one. And this one can be Oda Nobunaga. You can’t give him a nickname to make it shorter because he’s the smallest and needs a big name. That way he’ll have an easier time getting the other cats’ respect.”
Paris agreed with every single one of my naming choices, and I got alotof kisses during the process. I think that was because he was rewarding me for how good I was at naming cats.
