Chapter 12
The darkness exploded into a million shards of shimmering light. Kit started and half-arose from the bed, blinking and squinting as he tried to get his bearings. For a brief moment, he had this wild notion that someone had broken into their apartment, that he'd forgotten to set the alarm, but then his aching back made him realize that he wasn't at home. He was still in Cincinnati, and it was quite literally the dead of night.
"Time to get up in here," John's voice called softly, but then again, after turning on the light, there wasn't much more that he had to do. Kit got his eyes to work and focused them on the dark-faced cat, and he saw that John was looking away politely as he closed the door. Kit blinked a few times to get his eyes adjusted to the light, then looked beside him and saw Jessie, laying on her back with her paws over her face, when they should have been covering something else with her father in the room.
"You realize you just flashed your father?" Kit asked conversationally.
"Mmph," Jessie grunted, then she took her paws off her ruffled face and laughed helplessly. "I think you're the one to blame for that. If you hadn't have sat up and pulled down the blanket, my pristine modesty would be inviolate."
"So, we're awake enough to throw around the big English teacher words, eh?" he asked. "Not like it's a big deal, he is your dad. He's seen you naked before. Just not quite so well developed."
Jessie whacked him with his own pillow.
"Now, before we have to get up, and I don't get another chance to see this until Sunday," he said, grabbing the blankets and pulling them all the way down. She laughed as he looked at her from toes to ears, quite methodically. "There. That should hold me over until Sunday," he said with a grin.
"C'mere, you tease," she giggled, hooking her claws in his shoulder and dragging him down into a playful kiss. Their playful mood was broken, however, when a loud knocking issued from the door.
"There's no time for dawdling, kids," John's voice called. "There's not even time for breakfast! Get dressed and let's go!"
Kit looked at the clock on her nightstand and saw that it was 2:14am, which really was running a bit late. "Oh crap!" he gasped, jumping out of bed. "He isn't joking, pretty kitty, we gotta go!"
Dressing was a quick affair. While Jessie threw on her clothes, Kit packed his carry-on, then sat down to pull on the winter shoes he's bought just for this trip. "I'm gonna go see if I can't sneak a cup of tea while you finish," he told Jessie.
She nodded. "Try to sneak two. And there are some travel mugs in the cabinet over the microwave."
Kit rushed down to the kitchen, but to his surprise, found Hannah there, handing John a cup of coffee. "Morning," she said in a politely neutral voice. He had no doubt she knew what they did last night, and he could see that the veiled consent she gave last night wasn't quite sitting so well with her this morning. "I have some hot water boiling if you want tea, but you'll have to be quick. John overslept."
"We all did," Kit said with a grunt. "Mind if I borrow one of your travel mugs?"
"Over the microwave," she said with a point.
Kit pulled two down and poured water for tea, and was steeping the bags when Jessie rushed into the kitchen. "Dad's putting your suitcase in the car," she said. "It looks nasty outside, I hope you can get out."
"Huh?"
"It's snowing," Hannah told him, pointing to the window over the sink. Kit handed Jessie her mug and went to look, and saw it coming down pretty hard through the light on the back porch.
"Bah," Kit grunted.
"Let me go help Dad, odds are the car's buried," Jessie said after noticing the cool look Hannah was giving her, rushing into the laundry room and the back door, leaving Kit and Hannah alone in the kitchen.
"Thank you for last night," Kit said honestly, leaning against the counter with a slight wince.
"Thank John, not me," Hannah said abruptly. "I still object to this marriage, Kit, but John used some very frank language when we discussed… what goes on in your house. As much as I think you're making a big mistake, I guess I can't deny that you and Jessica are adults, and you're in an adult relationship." She sighed. "I had to admit to myself last night that I can't keep you two separated, and if I try to treat Jessica like the child she is instead of the adult she thinks she is, I might permanently damage our relationship. All I can do is stay back and let her learn from the mistake she's about to make."
"I think you'll be surprised about that, Hannah," he said mildly. "I've only known her for three months, but I know her better than I know myself. She's serious about this marriage."
"That's the only reason I'm going against my better judgment to fight it tooth and claw until my last breath," she said with calm honestly. "She is serious about it, and it's not just some crazy Jennifer-style stunt to kick sand in my face."
"Well, I'm glad you can at least admit to that," Kit chuckled. He came over to her, leaned over, and kissed her on the cheek.
"Hey now, you're not getting your paws on every girl in this house," John said with a chuckle as he came into the laundry room. "We can't wait for the car to warm up, Kit, we have to go. The roads aren't bad yet, but they're gonna be, so we have to get you there before it happens."
"Alright. Thank you again, Hannah. I had a great time."
"Well, remember, you're coming for Christmas."
"I'm looking forward to it," he said with a smile, picking up both mugs of tea.
Outside, he saw that there was already about two inches of new snow on the ground, and it was coming down hard and steady. "You want me to drive, John?" he asked. "I'm used to driving in this."
"Nah, we get enough snow around here for me to be in practice," John chuckled as he opened the driver's side door.
Kit got into the back, and Jessie pushed him down and got into the back with him. "Pretty kitty–"
"Hush. I'm about to send you home, I'm not spending what little time we have left with a car seat between us."
"Just keep it PG rated back there, you two," John laughed as he put on his seat belt. "Put your seat belts on, kids, no chances."
"Are you saying you're a bad driver, John?" Kit laughed as he did as he was told.
"You've never driven in Cincinnati, I see," John said without much humor.
"People here drive like maniacs," Jessie told him. "I'll bet you five dollars we'll see some guy in a four wheel drive doing seventy down interstate."
"Ah, so you have a lot of Nascar wannabes around here?"
John chuckled. "No, just people who think they know how to drive, mixed in with people who think that driving on snow is the same as driving in white rain."
"Say no more," Kit chuckled.
Jessie's prediction turned out to be true. When they got to the interstate, they were passed by several cars that were going entirely too fast, even despite the fact that the interstate had been plowed and salted. What they didn't take into account was that salting may clear a road, but as more snow fell on it without cars traveling over it, eventually the salt diluted down and stopped melting the snow. But, thankfully, John was quite content to plod along in the slow lane at a reasonable and safe rate of speed, allowing others to be the ones to gamble with their lives.
John got them to the airport safely and securely, after they passed three separate incidents of car crashes or cars spun out and either sitting against guardrails or halfway down embankments, the attrition of fools who didn't understand that snow was slippery. Despite it being somewhere close to three in the morning, there were quite a few cars in the short-term parking lot, and the terminal was quite busy. The first thing they did was check the board that showed arrivals and departures, and there were quite a few "Delayed" in both columns. Kit's own flight was showing that it was still leaving on time, however. Jessie held his paw as he checked in at the counter, and walked snuggled under his arm as they meandered through other sleepy people towards the security gate. When they got there, he gave her a long, lingering kiss as John hovered nearby. "Well, pretty kitty, I'm afraid this is where we say goodbye," he told her, then he shook John's paw. "It was a wonderful visit, John, thanks for having me," he said.
"We enjoyed having you," he smiled in reply.
Jessie, however, wasn't quite ready to give him up. She kissed him again, deeply, passionately, and he had to grab onto her just to keep his knees from unlocking on him. John chuckled as she basically conquered him, and left him breathless, his paws on her shoulders basically for support as she giggled and nuzzled his cheek. "Now that was a proper goodbye kiss."
"Who are you, and what have you done with my daughter?" John asked teasingly. "I'd never have believed to see my shy little Jessica kissing in public."
Jessica's cheeks ruffled when she looked around, then she laughed. "Well, I'd better get used to the idea, we have to kiss at the ceremony."
"Just don't kiss me like that, or Rick'll have to help me off the dais," Kit said, still breathless, but stable enough to let go of her. He shouldered his carry-on, leaned down and kissed Jessica once more on the cheek, which made her laugh. "I'll call you when I get in," he promised.
"I'll be waiting," she said. She blew him a kiss as he stepped away, and he waved to them as he passed into the security checkpoint and got in line.
Despite the snow, it didn't dramatically affect his own flight. By the time he was through security, the airport crews were already hard at work attacking the snow on the taxiways and runway, and the "Delayed" signs on the boards began to disappear. When he reached his gate about an hour before the flight, the attendant assured him that their own delay wouldn't be very long. Kit passed the time reading a newspaper to keep himself from dwelling too much on another stretch of separation from Jessie. At least this stretch would only be basically two days without her, and he had to work for both of them. That would keep him distracted enough. He had a good feeling that it meant that things would go smoothly until Sunday.
He really needed to learn to ignore those feelings.
It started at the gate. He was in line to board the plane, and to his surprise, he recognized someone rushing towards the gate, a short, slender bear femme whom he knew for a fact was a reporter from CNN. She got in the end of the boarding line, and Kit didn't think much more about it until she stopped in front of his seat.
"No comment," he said absently as he turned his USA Today to the sports section.
"That's nice and all, but can you move so I can get to my seat?" she asked.
Kit glanced up and saw her putting her bag in the overhead, then waiting by his legs. Bloody hell, that's one dirty trick of a way to get an interview, he thought to himself darkly. She must have found out he was on the flight, and somehow got the seat beside his! He pulled in and she inched by him, and she got in the seat beside him and buckled her seat belt. "I'm surprised you recognize me. Almost no one does," she chuckled. "I've only been working there for a year."
"Right," he said dryly, going back to his paper. "Just remember what I said."
She looked at him, he could see out of the corner of his eye, then she looked at him again, more closely. More to the point, she was looking at his ear, that distinctive left ear of his, then she laughed delightedly. "No wonder!" she said, laughing again. "Well, this is just dumb luck!" she said.
"Sure it is," he muttered darkly.
"Sure is," she chuckled. "My folks live in Cincinnati, but I'm being sent to Austin to cover a story. I have an interview with an anthropology professor at the university, then I fly to Alaska on Saturday to finish up the story." She grinned at him. "I had no idea you were on the flight. I don't cover furs, Mister Vulpan, I cover science. If you know who I am, then you should know that. I'm a science correspondent, remember?"
Kit considered it a moment, and finally nodded. "So you are."
"But, I can do another interview," she grinned.
"No."
"Well, I had to try," she laughed.
Her name was Lisa Gilmore, and she was an outgoing, chatty femme who just talked away. Kit basically tuned her out, not getting involved with her for fear she would try to use it as a stealth interview. She did seem to honor his personal space, though, for when the plane pulled out of the gate and it was clear the window seat was vacant, she jumped over to it to put an empty seat between them. Once they were airborne–after only forty-five minutes delay due to the snow–she slid past him again and got her laptop, and happily sat by the window clicking away on it.
"Here, let me show you what I'm working on," she invited, turning the laptop on the tray so he could see. He glanced over, and he saw a picture of old, very unusual bones, half-buried in ice. "This is my story."
"Bones?"
"Look at the skull in this picture," she said, bringing up a very weird, flat-faced skull unlike anything he'd ever seen before. It had a heavy forehead and a sloping face, with no muzzle, no maw, and no lower jawbone. Everything else looked strangely close to a fur, though. "Isn't that cool?"
"What breed is it?"
"Well, it's not any breed," she said with a grin. "It's a skull from the extinct simean family scientists have never seen before, found in a glacier in Alaska," she said. "They haven't dated it, but since it was in that glacier, that means it can't be any older than the glacier itself, tens of thousands of years minimum," she said in a distracted yet excited tone. "All the paleontologists say all branches of the simean species all died out hundreds of thousands of years ago, with homo erectus being the last known surviving species of them, but this skull can't be more than thirty thousand years old," she said excitedly. "If that's true, then there were descendents of the simean lines still on earth during the Ice Age."
"So, maybe it was some isolated little pocket."
"That survived for hundreds of thousands of years? I don't think so," she said, clicking her teeth together. "The scientist I'm going to interview has a theory that the homo branch of the simians actually survived up to the end of the ice age, but we just haven't found any of their fossils yet because there were so few of them," she noted. "He thinks that competition with the early furs, the animus proteus, basically drove them to the edges of the earth."
"Possible," Kit shrugged. "Wait a minute. Proteus? He thinks there was only one species of fur?"
"Yup," she nodded.
"But–"
"That's where it gets complicated," she winked. "He thinks the original species spawned all the breeds we know today, just like the proto-apes spawned the extinct branches of the homo family."
"He's not going to get many fans with a theory like that," Kit noted simply.
"It sounds a little outlandish, but it does make a kind of sense if you're familiar with paleontology," she said. "There's a geological boundary in the rock history called the Ash Event. It's a layer of thin ash in the rock and soil layers from three hundred thousand years ago. but it's found all over the world, and it's a similar event to the KT boundary in the prehistoric era. The ash boundary marks a mass extinction just like the KT did, where about thirty percent of all species on Earth died out quickly, but where the KT boundary marks the end of the dinosaurs, this scientist thinks the ash boundary was the event that killed off the simians."
"What, a meteor?"
"No, volcanoes," she told him. "This kind of ash is from a volcano. He thinks a super-volcano erupted and choked the entire world in ash, and that event was a trigger that killed off the simians and gave the animus proteus room to evolve without competition. His theory is that the simians didn't die out in the ash event, but it did cut their numbers down to the point where the animus proteus had less competition and was able to dominate," she explained. "It's already been proved that the earliest fur fossils are in Africa. But there are furs on every continent but Antarctica. So… how did they get there?"
"They all evolved," he said, an answer right out of any textbook on the matter. "Evolved from the animals that are still there. If you buy into the science aspect. As a Catholic, I was raised to believe that God simply put us here, but I'm not quite as Catholic as they'd like. I go for the intelligent design idea, that evolution is real, but it was guided by the hand of God."
"Really? Then where are the American smilodon furs? The giant sloth furs? The three-toed horse furs? Why are there no furs of any animal that's extinct in the Americas and Australia? If we evolved from animals all over the world at the same time, then why didn't the intelligent fur live beyond the species that spawned it?"
Kit opened his mouth, but nothing came out. She had a point.
"This scientist's theory is that the animus proteus spread out from Africa, and contact with the proteus triggered the evolution of all the different breeds, somehow. Even he admits he can't figure that part out, but he has enough circumstantial data to at least back up his theory. According to his theory, that's why there are cave bear furs from Europe, while the cave bear itself is extinct, but there are no extinct American furs. He thinks the proteus crossed over into the Americas much later than it spread through Europe, Asia, and Australia, maybe as early as twenty thousand years ago. And since there were no furs here, he thinks that the few simians that survived the ash event and managed to get here first managed to build their numbers up before the proteus fur arrived to compete with them."
"Well, there's a hole in that. If there was this protean fur only thirty thousand years ago, where is it now?"
"He thinks it died out in the ice age," she answered.
"Okay, if the protean fur came over thirty thousand years ago, why is there documented evidence that there were furs in America way earlier than that?"
"Ah, he thinks that what we thought was evidence of prehistoric furs in the Americas was actually this simean race," she told him. "The bones they've found have all been just pieces, shards, they've never managed to build even half a skeleton. And there's just enough skeletal similarities that Doctor Browning thinks that we've mistaken prehistoric furs for this extinct simean race."
"I think it's reaching a bit."
"Yeah, well, it's an interesting angle that does put a different light on this discovery," she said. "We've always wondered if we're alone in the universe, if we're the only sentient life… well, there was non-fur intelligence on Earth, it was just a very long time ago. They found tools with the skeleton, stone tools, proving that this creature was intelligent."
"Okay, now that I'll buy," he said. "But that whole to-do about a protean fur, that's a little too outrageous to take seriously."
"It is a bit reaching, but there's a hint of truth about it that tickles at me, and most other paleontologists can't easily explain away," she mused. "The earliest documented fur fossils are in Africa, then they spread out from there in a chronological fashion. If you put all the data of where they were found and when they were dated, it shows the spread distinctly. That part of his theory is actually someone else's theory, that we originated from one point and then spread out, but that theory doesn't explain why there are so many different breeds of fur. After all, if all furs originated from Africa, then why aren't we all African breed furs? I don't think there are any bears in Africa," she grinned. "But there are foxes, just not red ones. Ever met a fennec fox fur? Their ears are huge!" she laughed. "But think about that. You're a British fox. How did your ancestors become a British fox if we all came from Africa?"
"I have no idea."
"It's just one of the many mysteries of our species," she said with a bright smile. "Where we came from, why different breeds can intermarry and produce mixed breeds when the animals we evolved from can't do the same, why the animals we evolved from didn't evolve with us and are still here, and so on and so on. That's why so many still believe in the religious explanation… we're here because God did it. If you don't put faith in something, somewhere, it just doesn't make sense."
"Remind me not to become a paleontologist. They sound like their entire careers are exercises in frustration."
She laughed. "They're the most determined furs on Earth," she grinned. "They know there's an answer, and they're willing to dig for it for their entire lives."
"They can have it," he shrugged.
"You mind if I ask a question, completely off the record?" she ventured.
"As long as it doesn't keep leading to another one."
"Nah, this is just for my own curiosity. Someone leaked a bunch of stuff about the trial. I haven't really read much of it, since that's not the kind of work I do, but I do remember that you're not just no part of it, you've said you don't want the money even if you win."
"I'm no part of it."
"Well, you know what I mean. What I want to know is why?"
"Why? Why what?"
"Why give up all that money?"
Kit actually laughed. "Why does everyone keep asking me that?"
"Because us mere mortals just can't understand it. I'd jump all over that money if it was me."
Kit gave the small bear a very serious look. "Money is a curse, not a blessing," he said seriously. "If you have enough to live on, you're good. When you have so much that money becomes an end in and of itself, it becomes a curse. I've lived on both sides of the money line, and given the choice between the two, I'll choose what I have now every time. I'm happy. I have a good job that I enjoy, a fiancée I'm madly in love with, good friends, and a great life. And if I had all that money, I'd lose it all. It would change everything, and change everyone I deal with every day. My friends would treat me differently. My co-workers would treat me differently. My fiancée wouldn't leave me, but it would change our relationship. It couldn't help but do it. I'm happy without money. If I had money, I'd lose sight of what's important in life and only worry about money, and all the anchor chain that comes with it."
She was silent a long moment. "I don't entirely understand that, but I guess it's because I can only see it from the low side of the line," she noted.
"My family's the perfect example of what I mean," he told her. "What are they doing right now? They're fighting over the family fortune. Does that sound like a loving family to you?"
"I guess not," she chuckled.
"Then you see the point."
"So you're saying that love trumps money."
"That's an oversimplified way to look at it, but that's kinda correct. My family forgot what it means to be a family a long time ago. Money poisoned them, and I want no part of it."
"How does your fiancée feel about it?"
"She doesn't entirely understand it either, but she does understand how I feel about it," he told her. "She's okay with being poor, as long as we're together, and we're not living on the street or anything like that."
"She sounds understanding."
"She's the greatest femme in the world, at least in my opinion," he chuckled. "I'm the luckiest male alive that she wants to marry me."
"My husband had better disagree with you," she said in a tone that made him laugh.
"You're not bad for a reporter."
"And you're not bad for a crazy ex-rich kid."
"We're called eccentric, not crazy," he teased.
"Only when you're rich. You're not rich, so you're just crazy."
"Point," he chuckled.
All in all, Lisa wasn't as bad as he feared. She was true to her word and didn't ask any other questions. They passed the rest of the flight in amiable chatter, and she even gave him her card and told him to call her whenever he felt like talking once the plane landed in Austin, about an hour late.
The second shock of the day waited for him at the airport. He came through the security gate with a large crowd, and as he opened his phone and called Rick to tell him he was back, someone crashed into him and grabbed hold. "Kit!"
He was a bit surprised, he never saw whoever grabbed him do it. He pushed the figure out, a bit roughly, and he gaped when he found himself staring into two eyes of different colors. The left eye was amber, but the right eye was green. He swam in shock for nearly ten seconds, then he took in the entire face. Narrow, short muzzle, high cheeks, large eyes, long red hair done in a wavy, curly style that reached her shoulders. Kit recognized her, it was Sheila, Aunt Sarah's younger daughter and his cousin.
"Sheila!" he said in consternation. "What in the bloody blue hell are you doing here?"
"Kit, I just had to talk to you!" she told him, almost pleadingly, holding onto his shoulders with her paws. "I, I didn't know who else to turn to!"
Sheila, as Vulpans went, was relatively harmless. She was eighteen, the second youngest of the five children of Aunt Sarah, spoiled and shallow, a typical Boston blue-blood debutante. Sheila was very much in love with her trust fund, and was the typical rich girl. Bored, wild, and notorious. She, like Lynn and Bess, was a tramp, a drinker, a partier, indulging herself in all manner of legal and illegal vices because she had the money and had nothing else to do. Sheila had probably never had a serious thought in her life, and had just started classes this semester at Harvard as a legacy student, getting in only because her father was a Harvard alumnus, and she was a Vulpan. Kit had no doubt she didn't even go to classes, yet she had a passing grade point average.
"Turn to? What the hell are you talking about? How did you know I'd be here?"
"Your landlord said you were flying back today," she told him. "I went to go see you yesterday, but you weren't home! Oh, Kit, you've got to help!"
"Help? I have no idea what you're talking about, Sheila! And you have a damn lot of nerve to come to me asking for help, after what the family did to me," he added coldly.
Her eyes darted up, up to his ear, and she looked chagrined. "What could I do, Kit? Lose my trust fund? I'm not like you, I'd never make it without my money."
Kit couldn't really argue with that point, and he was surprised that Sheila would lower herself to the point of admitting it.
"Quite a few of the cousins felt sorry for you, but we're just the kids! We're not from your family. We don't have any say. Our parents don't take us seriously, not like they take you and Vil seriously. We're not like you two. You're from Uncle Luke's family, the important Vulpans. We're just the nameless masses that fill up the photographs and give the paparazzi targets to chase."
Kit snorted. "Stop talking like that. Why are you here?"
She clicked her teeth together. "Can we go somewhere and talk about it?"
"I have to go to work," he told her.
"You work?" she gasped.
"What do you think I do to make a living, girl?" he asked scathingly. "Stand on street corners and beg?"
"I, I never thought about it," she said honestly. "Can you take me so we can talk on the way? I didn't rent a car, I've been getting around in cabs."
"My boss is coming to pick me up," he answered, a little curious now. Just what would make Sheila fly halfway across the country on a holiday to track him down? What was so dire that the only person she could turn to for help was him? Whatever it was, it had to be serious.
Kit put the phone back to his ear after speed-dialing Rick. "Rick, where are you?"
"I'm looking at you right now," he answered with amusement. "If Jessie catches you with that vixen, she'll cut your tail off."
Kit closed the phone and looked around, and saw the dingo when he waved across the crowd. Rick advanced on them quickly, his eyebrow raising when he got a good look at the vixen with him, when he saw her eyes. "My, I didn't know you came back with a relative, Kit," Rick said, his voice calm, but Kit knew him well and could hear the question lurking in that greeting.
"I didn't," he said. "Rick, this is Sheila Vance Vulpan, my cousin. Sheila, this is my boss, Rick."
"Hi," Sheila said, taking her paw off Kit's shoulder and offering it to him.
"Hello there, young lady," he said, shaking it gently. "I can't help but ask, but why are you here? Kit's situation with his family is something of common knowledge among his friends. I'm a bit surprised to see you."
"Well, I had no one else to talk to," she told him honestly. "May I ride with you when you take him back? I really need to talk to him."
"It's his car, girl," he chuckled. "You'll have to ask him."
She turned pleading eyes to him. "Kit?"
He looked down at her, his ears twitching, then he sighed and nodded. "Come on," he said to her.
They were silent as Rick led them back to his Pathfinder, but once she was in the car, sitting in the passenger's seat, she erupted like a pent-up volcano. "Kit, I think Cybil's trying to kill me," she said.
Kit nearly rear-ended the Sentra in front of him in the lane leading out of the airport. "What? What are you talking about?"
"I got deposed by Cybil's lawyers, just like you did," she told him as they pulled out of the airport, on the highway that led back to Austin. "But when I got deposed, Cybil was there in the lawyer's office. After they finished with me, it didn't take long, I stopped to talk to this cute hedgehog outside an office, and I heard her voice inside. I hushed up and listened, and they were talking about the suit, and how they thought they had a real shot at getting a big piece of the family money. I didn't think much of it and went to leave, but then Cybil asked about cousin Vil. The male in there with her told her not to worry about Vil, that he had her handled, but then she asked about you. She said something like Is there any chance of getting Kit out of the picture. She went on to talk about the will, and how you being in the one Vil's trying to reinstate was a major problem. I didn't understand why, but then the male said that Vil was too alert now, and you were totally out of reach. He said something like there's no way after that failed hit on him. There was something in his voice when he said that, Kit. It wasn't what he said, but how he said it. I, I think Cybil may be thinking of trying to kill you."
Kit gave her a serious look, far too long to be safe since he was driving.
"I know. After I heard that, I hurried off, but she came out of the office. I glanced back, and she looked right at me. Well, to cut it short, three days ago, someone tried to kill me."
"What happened?"
"I was at a party in Chelmsford, with a few girlfriends, and some guy took out a gun and just started shooting at us when we came out to go back to campus," she told him. "We just got lucky. Nobody was hurt, and the guy's gun jammed or something. He tried to shoot us, but his gun didn't work."
"Are you sure it wasn't a mugging?" he asked.
"Kit, he never asked for money. He just pulled out a gun and aimed it right at me. His gun jammed or something, and then he ran off."
"Why do you think he was after you?"
"I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid," she said. "Cybil knows I heard them at the door, and not two days later, someone tries to shoot me. She tried to kill me, Kit, I know she did. My parents don't believe me, and I didn't know what else to do. I don't feel safe anymore. Nothing's stopping her from trying again."
"Well, what do you want me to do about it?" he asked, a bit archly.
"Kit, you can talk to Vil. I tried to call her, but she won't even take my call! Please, you have to help me!"
Kit opened his phone with one paw and hit a single button. "Vil," he said calmly, "someone needs to talk to you." He handed the phone to Sheila.
"Cousin Vil?" she asked tentatively. "No, don't hang up!" she all but screamed, then she held the phone away from her ear as Kit heard a string of vile, sulfurous curses issue from his phone as Vil screamed into the phone.
Kit sighed. "Give me the phone," he prompted. He took it back from her and waited out the loud and long epithets, then grabbed his chance when she paused for breath. "Vil, it's me," he said.
"Kit? What the hell is she doing there!"
"Scared for her life," he answered calmly, which made Sheila give him an adoring, almost slavish look. "Now, you wanna shut up and listen to her? I think you might be interested in what she has to say."
"Alright, put her back on."
Kit handed the phone back to Sheila, who nodded and took it. "Vil? You have to help!" she said quickly, and then plowed headlong into the story she'd just told them.
"What are you thinking, son?" Rick asked quietly from the back seat as Sheila continued.
"I think she's wrong about Cybil trying to kill her, but what I heard does warrant Vil taking a closer look at what Cybil's been up to," he said evenly. "I don't know how much Vil looked into Cybil, but it's something she can check out. If Cybil wants to try to get me out of the picture, that's something Vil needs to know. I don't think Cybil tried to kill Sheila, but it sure sounds like she might be entertaining the idea of sending someone down here to cause me trouble. And that's something Vil needs to know."
"I, well, it sounds a little thin, but from what I've heard about your family, I don't think you should believe in coincidences," Rick told him. "Someone tried to kill your cousin, and though it could have been a mugging, I wouldn't call it a coincidence until it's proven it wasn't. If it wasn't Cybil, then it was someone else. Maybe another cousin looking to thin the number of paws reaching into the pot."
"Yah, that's why I called Vil. Let her worry about it."
Sheila talked with Vil the whole way to the office, and for nearly half an hour after they were there, as he accepted pawshakes and hugs from the crew after he got back. Sheila sat in Rick's office and kept at it while he settled in in his tiny office, and Rick came in. "Martha brought Jessie's car to the office this morning," he said. "Mike's gonna follow me to your house after work so I can drop it off, then bring me back so Martha can pick me up and take me home."
"That's nice of him," Kit said with a nod. "What's this new project sitting on my desktop?" he asked, pointing at his monitor, to an icon on his desktop called Project A.
"Oh, with next year being an election year and all, we're gonna do a series of pieces starting in January about college kids, politics, and whatnot. So, Mister Lead Researcher, you get to earn your pay. There's a lot of ground we gotta cover. Candidates, student attitudes, how many are registered to vote, voting trends among the young statewide and nationwide, and so on and so on. Me and Barry haven't decided which piece we'll run first, but I'd like you to gather up some general data about the points in that file so we have a very rough overview of things and can decide where we want to go first. This should keep us all busy over the winter break. We're all gonna be doing real news work while the college is on break."
"Not a problem," he said easily after he opened the project file and was met with a Word document listing the information Barry and Rick wanted gathered and organized, and spent a brief moment going over it. "Looks like simple work."
"Just a lot of it," Rick told him.
"Simple work is fast work," Kit shrugged. "I'll have to do a few student surveys, though."
"Yeah, but those'll have to wait til after Thanksgiving break. And you'll only have two weeks to get them done before the semester ends."
"I can manage."
"So, what was the trip like? Did Jessie's mom cause problems?" he asked.
Kit laughed. "It actually went pretty well. Me and Hannah had a long talk, and though she still objects to the wedding, at least she admitted it's not because she hates me. She thinks we're too young and haven't known each other long enough."
"Well, a couple of years will show she's wrong about that."
"I hope so. I actually like her, and Jessie's whole family. Ben is very kind, her sister Jenny is wild and funny, and her father is mild, but sharp as a tack. It was a treat spending just one day with them and watching them be a family." He laughed. "You should see their basement. Oh, wait, I have a picture of it," he said, digging into his carry-on bag. "Jessie took a bunch of pictures of the house and put them on a memory card for me."
They had to go out into the main office to use the card reader, since his computer didn't have one, so they borrowed the main editing computer and Kit brought up the pictures. Everyone else gathered around, but Kit realized that Jessie–or Jenny, for that matter–might have put something not entirely public on that card. "Uh, give me a second guys," he said. "I think Jenny might have put a bomb in this."
"What do you mean?" Lilly asked.
"Jenny's… wild," he hedged. "She might have taken a few pictures that you don't show in public, as a joke. She's the kind that'll snap a picture of you taking a shower then put it on the internet as a joke."
"All the better!" Rick laughed, reaching over Kit and opening the card with the mouse.
A series of thumbnail pictures appeared, and to Kit's relief, there was nothing on the card he'd consider out of bounds to show the gang. There were about twenty pictures of the house, and of Jessie's family. Kit cycled through them, then showed them the four pictures she'd taken of the basement, which made them all gasp and gawk. "John's like the ultimate Bengals fan, so he made this theatre in his basement so he can watch the away games," he explained as he showed them the pictures. "He calls it the Bengal Den. I've never seen that kind of a setup before. It was awesome."
"It must have cost a fortune," Rick chuckled.
"He said it took him two years to save up for it," Kit answered. He cycled over to the individual pictures. "This is Hannah, Jessie's mom. This is John, her dad. This is Ben, her younger brother, he's gonna be playing college football next year. This is Jenny, her younger sister."
"She's adorable," Mike gushed. "That black mask makes her look like a raccoon."
"Not when you look at her from behind," Kit chuckled. "She has a longhaired tail that looks almost exactly like Jessie's. Jenny's a trip."
"She sounds like a girl I should meet," Mike mused.
"You will next month, she's coming to the wedding," Kit assured him, showing them pictures of the snow. "This is what greeted me in Cincinnati. It snowed before I got there, and was snowing again this morning when I left. John said it was the earliest he ever remembered seeing so much snow."
"Clearly it was because of you," Jeffrey chuckled. "Just don't bring that snow down here!"
"It's the Yankee curse," Kit teased, using full-out Boston dialect. "And I'll bury Austin in snow by February!"
"Then we'll have to kill you, honey," Marty grinned. "Savid! Bring me, the garden hose!"
Sheila came out of Rick's office, the phone in her paw. "Kit, Vil wants to talk to you," she said, handing him the phone.
"Yeah sis?" he asked.
"I think her story's a little outlandish, but there's a little something in there," Vil told him. "I think maybe I need to take a little closer look at Cybil Whitmore Vulpan."
"And that's why I called," he said easily.
"I'll get to work on it, baby bro," she told him.
"Uh, what about Sheila?"
"What about her? She's a grown fur, she can take care of herself."
"Did you at least tell her what to do?"
"Hell no," Vil snorted. "She's an adult. She can figure it out. And I'm surprised you care at all. She's one of them, bro. She sure as hell didn't do you any favors, but as soon as she's in trouble, where does she run to? She runs to us. She can go to hell."
"Yeah well, a visit with Jessie's family just rekindled something in me, I guess. I'll talk to you later, Vil."
He closed the phone and looked at Sheila, who looked at him nervously. "You going back home?" he asked her.
"No way!" she said fearfully. "Not as long as she's there! Her thug said Vil had control of Austin, so I'm staying here, where it's safe!"
"What about school?"
"I put in for a sabbatical," she said. "I told them I'm going to rehab."
"That won't be very far from the truth," Kit grunted. "Oh, yeah. Gang, this is Sheila Vance Vulpan, one of my cousins. Sheila, this is the gang. Rick you've met. Savid, Jeffrey, Barry, Lilly, Mike, and Marty."
"Uh, hi everyone," she said, shaking paws. "So, what should I do, Kit? I've never been, been alone before."
"Get a place to live, buy a car, find a job or something," he shrugged. "Doesn't matter to me, Sheila. I'm not going to hold your paw."
"But, but I don't know how," she whined. "I don't know anybody. I don't know where to go. I don't know what to do!"
"Welcome to how I felt when I was sixteen," Kit said, a bit coldly.
"Damn, you really were sheltered, weren't you?" Barry noted aloud.
"Calm down, hon," Rick said gently when she began to cry, her paws over her face. He put a paw on her shoulder and leaned over to look down at her. "My boys are all grown and gone, so I have some extra bedrooms. How about you come stay with us for a few days, so you have a nice place to stay until you find something more permanent. Martha, my wife, can help you find a car and an apartment. She'll even teach you how to cook," he smiled.
"Really?" she asked, looking up at him.
"Of course. You're the family of someone I consider to be family, and down here in Texas, we look out for each other."
"Oh, thank you!" she said explosively, giving Rick a crushing hug.
Kit wasn't too happy about that. Rick had no idea what he was about to get into. Sheila was a spoiled brat, and she wouldn't be in his house for two hours before she started treating him and Martha like servants, and getting herself into trouble. The warning look he gave Rick was noticed by everyone else, but Rick just nodded to him as he patted Sheila on the shoulder. "There are, of course, a few rules that come along with that invitation, hon," Rick told her. "And the first and foremost of them is you behave like a lady while you stay with us. My wife and I may be simple folk, but we're also people who don't tolerate foolishness within our house. If you stay with us, you will remember that you are our guest, and conduct yourself as such."
"I will, I promise," Sheila said immediately. "I just want to be safe."
"You'll be safe with us," Rick assured her. "Come on, let's go back to my office. I'll call Martha and have her come pick you up."
"I don't like that at all," Kit growled when Rick took her back to his office. "Sheila's gonna make life hell for Rick and Martha, I just know it. Rick has no idea what he's getting himself into. Sheila's a rich brat. She's nothing like me."
"Rick raised three boys, Kit," Barry chuckled. "He and Martha are much tougher than they look. I think your cousin might be in for a shock the first time she gets on Martha's bad side."
"I'd pay to see that," Lilly giggled.
"Well, I can't argue with that," Kit mused. Martha and Rick were very kind people, but they did raise three sons, and sons could be unruly. Perhaps his spoiled cousin, who was only being tractable out of fear, would find a little discipline living with Martha and Rick… at least until she got her own place.
One thing was for sure, she was about to get a rude shock. This wasn't Boston, where she could do whatever she wanted without fear because her family owned the cops. She couldn't go party every night and expect servants to wait on her, feed her, do her housework, and so on. But, there was one thing he did have to talk to her about, so he excused himself from the gang and let them look at the pictures and went into Rick's office. "Sheila," he called.
"Yeah Kit?"
"Did you plan this at all, or just run down here?"
"I just ran down here," she said, her cheeks ruffling a bit. "I already called Higgins and asked him to gather my clothes and some important things and get ready to have them shipped to me next-day air. I don't even have a change of clothes, just my purse," she said with her cheeks ruffling.
"So, you're not broke? Your mom didn't disown you?"
"No, no!" she said. "I still have my trust. I already wrote Rick a check so he doesn't have to pay for me staying with him til I figure out how to get an apartment."
"Does Aunt Sarah know you're here?"
"She will by tonight," she answered. "I'll tell her the truth, Kit. I'm afraid to go home, because of Cybil. Mom knows about the attack, remember? She didn't believe me when I told her, so, so she won't be all that surprised when I tell her I'm here."
"She'd better not cause Rick any trouble."
"Why should she? He's being very nice to me."
"Alright. But if Sarah starts causing problems, I'll boot your tail outta Austin so fast you won't know what hit you. Understand?"
"She won't, I promise. Mom thinks I'm a flake, Kit, but she won't get her tail twisted over this. I'm where you can keep an eye on me, and I'm not dropping out of school, just asking for a semester off until Cybil goes back to England. When Cybil goes away, I'll come back home."
Kit felt it was a bad idea for Sheila to stay with Rick, stay in Austin, but spending time with Jessie's family made him feel like he should at least give Sheila a chance. Hannah and John were taking a chance on him despite his family and the real danger he might cause Jessie, so the least he could do was at least try to deal with his family and see where it went. He wouldn't have anything to do with his uncles and aunts, but he'd at least try to deal with one of his many cousins, especially one that had never said anything bad to him like some of the others had. Sheila had been too busy getting stoned and chasing males to worry much about the important things. The attack on her had scared her badly, so much she ran from her soft life of comfort and fun, but maybe it would be a good experience for her in the end. A few days of living as a normal person might give her a new perspective.
Martha came and collected up his wayward cousin, and it left Kit a little scattered. He called Jessie, finally, and had to apologize for not calling her as soon as he got back. He explained the situation with his cousin, then blew out his breath. "I'm really sorry, pretty kitty, but with her showing up, it totally messed up my day."
She giggled over the phone. "I was getting worried," she told him. "So, what's this cousin like?"
"Sheila? She's a typical Boston debutante, Jess. She gets drunk, gets stoned, and pretends to go to school while she parties every night and screws any guy who'll give her the time of day."
"That's a pretty ugly description."
"It's the truth. Sheila's just one of what the Boston gossip columns calls the Party Pack, a group of Vulpan cousins notorious for that kind of behavior. She's not half as bad as Bess or Lynn. Lynn's a legend in Boston." He leaned back in his chair. "Sheila's a good example of the curse of money, pretty kitty. She's rich, so she has no reason to work. So all she does is pursue whatever vanity crosses her mind at the moment. She's flighty, shallow, vain, and petty. Her whole life revolves around nightclubs, boys, and parties. But now she thinks that Cybil's trying to kill her, so she ran down here where she thinks Cybil can't reach her. Rick and Martha are gonna let her stay at their house for a few days, so they can teach her how to do for herself."
"What do you mean?"
"Kitty, Sheila's a rich brat. She has no clue how to make it in the real world. Her whole life, she's had others to do things for her. She doesn't know how to cook, she doesn't know how to find an apartment, hell, the only reason she made it down here for two days by herself is because she knows what room service is."
"I think you're exaggerating a little, my handsome fox," Jessie chuckled.
"Not much," he replied. "She still has her money, but she has no idea how to use it for something other than parties and shopping. If she won't go home until Cybil goes back to England, then she'll be here for a few months. That means she needs to get an apartment, a car, and so on and so on, and she has no idea how to do that. I can bet that the monthly income from her trust won't cover servants, so she'll have to learn how to live on her own, which will be a first for her. She lives in an apartment just off campus her mother rents for her, and she has her own personal butler to do her cooking and cleaning for her."
"Hmm," Jessie mused. "If he's her personal butler, why won't he come down and take care of her?"
"She probably could, but she'd have to pay to have her butler move down. If he'll even come. Something like that may not be in his contract."
"Contract?"
"Yeah, contract. Any Vulpan servant has to sign a contract stating they never talk to the press, but some of them get some stipulations added for their own side. Clancy has a stipulation that states he only serves at Vulpan Manor, and he never leaves, even after he retires. He literally owns his apartment on the manor. Sheila's butler might have a similar no-transfer clause."
"You said she's going to stay with Rick and Martha?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. I'll talk to you tonight, love, I'm gonna go."
"Alright. Be good, love."
It was Kit's long day, so he got busy with the new project, and quite simply let Sheila slip out of his mind as he got to work, once Martha came, fussed over her a little while, then took her back to the tiny ranch where Rick and Martha lived. But she didn't get far out of his mind for long once he got home. Lupe came out of his apartment when Kit pulled up in the parking lot, and met him at his door. "Yo, brah, I got the apartment all ready."
"What happened? Did the water go out or something?"
"No, no, the other apartment. Your cousin and Rick's wife stopped by about an hour ago and signed the lease. Jessie set it up," he said. "For that one bedroom over in building D. Since she's your cousin and in a fix, I gave her a month to month lease for four hundred."
"Jessie–meh," he grunted. "So, Jessie decided to put a paw in, I see."
"Actually, your cuz was happy about it. She said you're the only person she knows here, so she's glad you're living close to her. Damn, brah, she's cute."
"That's about all she is, Lupe. All body, no brain."
Lupe laughed. "Hell, brah, I'll be happy to look at her. Kinda makes me wish we had a pool. She must drop some jaws when she's in a bikini."
"Heh," Kit grunted as he unlocked the door, opened it, then stepped in and turned off the alarm. "Let me call around and find out what's going on, Lupe. I had no idea about this."
"Hey, no prob, brah. We still on for Sunday?"
"You bet. I should have Jessie home before the game starts."
"Dude, you sure you ain't gonna be busy?" he grinned.
"I pick her up at nine in the morning Lupe. We'll surely be finished by then," he grinned, then closed the door as Lupe laughed.
Calling around to Rick, Martha, and Jessie built a complete picture. Jessie had called Martha not long after she got home with Sheila, talked to Sheila, then called Lupe. Lupe agreed to help and let her sign a month to month lease for the only one bedroom apartment he had available, over on the far side of the complex, which Sheila had picked up the keys for just about two hours ago. Martha and Sheila were buying some furniture she'd need, since all Westwood apartments were unfurnished, and Sheila already had a car. Higgins, her butler back home, was driving her Mustang down to Austin for her along with carrying some of her clothes and things, and would fly back home once he delivered. It took two days to drive from Boston to Austin, so he'd be arriving with her car on Sunday. He wouldn't be staying, but Sheila had already hired a maid service to come clean her apartment starting next week, but had taken up Martha on the offer of teaching her how to cook.
Sheila, it turned out, surprised him a little. She did have money saved, and told Martha she was more than able to buy all the furniture she'd need and still have more than enough money to live on. Martha brought Sheila by the apartment about an hour after he got home, and his cousin looked both happy and excited. "You should see the living room suit we found at this place called Value City!" she told him after he let them in. "It was beautiful! You know, I never thought I'd find good-looking furniture in a place like that," she mused.
"Well, I'm glad you're getting set up, but you'd better behave," Kit warned. "Lupe, the landlord, is my friend, and if you cause any trouble or embarrass me, I'm gonna whip you."
"Kit! Why, I'd never do that!"
"Mmm-hmm," he hummed as he sat back down on the couch, with his laptop on the coffee table. "And who did three weeks in forced rehab last year after she got busted with a purse full of ecstasy?"
Sheila's fur ruffled. "Alright, I'll behave," she said with a grumble. "But don't think I'm not going to have any fun!"
"I'm not your mom, Sheila. I'm not going to hold your paw or tell you what to do. But, since you're living in the same complex with me, remember that if you cause trouble for Lupe, you're causing trouble for me too. And I'm not afraid to come over to your apartment and spank you if Lupe complains about you. So keep it legal. There's all kinds of places around to have fun, Sheila, hell, I'll even take you to some of them. But remember, you'd better keep it legal."
"I'd better not hear of anything like that," Martha told her, a bit sharply.
"No, of course not, Martha," she said quickly. "I don't want to cause any problems, but I also don't want to spend the time waiting for Cybil to leave Boston hiding in my apartment."
"Then you need a job, dear."
"A job?" Sheila gasped. "Me, get a job? Whyever for? Even after buying all that furniture and raiding the store, I still have twenty thousand dollars in the bank. I don't need a job!"
"It's to keep you out of trouble," Martha told her imperiously. "Idle paws are the devil's plaything."
"But, weren't you going to teach me to cook?"
"That doesn't take all day," she told her calmly. "I think I'll make a few calls and find you a job."
Sheila looked devastated. "I'm not supposed to work until after college," she complained.
"Dear, a job isn't always a chore," Martha told her. "You just need to find something you like to do and find work that's as close to it as you can get. Look at Kit. He loves history and reading, he loves digging through a pile of material for the truth, so he found a job where he uses his love of those things to earn money. Rick runs the magazine. Yes, it's a job, but he loves it, so it doesn't feel like work."
"Yup," Kit nodded. "What do you like to do?"
"Drink, have fun, and talk to people," she said immediately.
Martha chuckled. "Well, dear, then let's ask what interests you. What subject did you like in school? Do you have any hobbies?"
"Well, like any Vulpan, I'm good at math, and I'm a business major," she answered.
"Not any Vulpan," Kit chuckled.
"Present company excluded," she grinned.
"Can you type, dear?"
"Of course I can. Who can't type?" she asked, quite baffled at the question.
"Then I know just who to call," she said with a slight smile. "And since you don't need money, well, you can just work for free."
"Huh?"
"Rick mentioned the other day that it's always so busy in the office, they could use an intern," Martha told her. "A job that keeps you busy and doesn't pay, well, that sounds like it's right up your alley, young lady."
"Woah, woah, woah, you mean she works at the office?" Kit asked. "Around me?"
"What's wrong with that?"
"She's part of my family, that's what wrong with it," Kit answered. "If you didn't know, I don't exactly get along with my family, Martha."
"You seem to get along with Sheila."
"Jessie moves her in right down the street from me, and now you want to put her in my office? What is this, some kind of conspiracy?"
"If you want to call it that," Martha said easily. "Come along, dear, we have to get back and start dinner, and your first cooking lesson."
"Okay," Sheila said with a nod. "Bye Kit, and thanks again for helping me. I won't make you regret it, I promise."
"You'd better not," he growled in warning.
Clearly, there was some collusion going on around here. Jessie had put a paw in from Cincinnati to put Sheila in the complex with them, and now Martha was going about her own little agenda about his deviant cousin to place her in the office. What the hell was going on?
A call to Jessie didn't shed any light on it. "She's alone in a big city and scared," she said simply, the sound of water pouring in a bathtub in the background. "I thought if she lived close to us, she'd be more comfortable. Besides, I want to get to know her, Kit. You've talked about your family, and I want to get to know more of them than just Vil. I want to see what the Vulpans are like outside your immediate family."
"You're on the road to disappointment," Kit warned her. "Sheila is like any of the Party Pack. As soon as she gets over the change and gets more comfortable, she'll go right back to her normal ways. Booze, drugs, sex, and parties. And Martha wants her to work at the office," he grunted. "I have no idea what that's about."
"Well, Martha looks at her like she's a little lost puppy," Jessie giggled, then she changed the phone over to the speaker phone, and he heard water sloshing.
"Are you taking a bath?" he asked.
"Sure am," she answered. "I put down the toilet lid and put the phone on the top of it, so it won't fall in or get wet."
"Be careful when you turn it off."
"I will."
"I showed the gang the pictures you took," he told her. "I was cheated, you know that?"
"Huh?"
"Where's that picture you promised me?" he teased.
She laughed. "You can take it when you get home," she purred at him. "Actually, I should make you wait until we're married. No photographic evidence til you're officially mine."
"Oh no, a Vulpan never lets someone back out of a deal. You agreed to a picture, and I'll get one, even if I have to cheat," he taunted.
"Cheat? How are you going to cheat?"
"Well, you'll be easy enough to photograph when you're asleep," he noted.
"Kit! Don't you dare!"
"Oho, that sounds like a challenge," he noted into the phone as he turned on the TV to catch the news. "I think I'll have to use the video camera though, to get the whole experience."
"If you do that, so help me, I'll beat you up!" she warned.
"Punish me all you want, my pretty kitty, so long as we kiss and make up afterwards."
"We'll talk about that when I get home," she said darkly.
"I'm looking forward to it," he teased. "Was your drive home from the airport safe?"
"Mmm," she answered, which for her meant yes. "It snowed another three inches today, but it's all supposed to melt by tomorrow night. You know it's supposed to rain and be nearly sixty tomorrow? Sixty degrees with six inches of snow on the ground! I'd say that was impossible if I didn't see it for myself!" He heard a little more sloshing. "I swear, the weather's gone all crazy."
"Global warming," Kit chuckled. "Jeffrey says it snowed because I came up there," he laughed.
"I guess so, Mister Freeze," she teased. "But if you make it cold down in Austin, I'm gonna skin you!"
He chuckled. "Think you'll get to sleep tonight?"
"Without you here? Dream on," she sighed. "But the smell of you in the bed might help a little. At least I won't feel like I'm all alone. I can bury my face in the pillow and smell you and pretend you're with me."
"Just don't let the pretend me take my place," he asked. "I'd have a lot of trouble competing with your invisible friend."
She laughed. "He'd be no competition with you in some ways," she teased. "But at least he's better looking."
"Oh, now that's a cheap shot," Kit chuckled. "You're just digging your hole deeper when it comes to my picture," he taunted. "You're descending from artful to tawdry."
"Tawdry? Tawdry!" she demanded.
"Oh, and who doesn't pant like a dog when I put my paws in the right places?"
"Watch it, buster," she called, but Kit could hear the play in her voice, something he could easily identify because he knew her so well. "Boys who can't keep their knees locked when they get kissed have no right to throw stones."
"You're just too much femme for me, my pretty kitty," he told her. "No boy could kiss you and stay upright afterwards."
"It's too bad I'll never find out if my power extends over other boys," she said lightly.
"I hope not," he laughed.
He missed her all over again that night. They again used the laptops and the videoconferencing program to see each other, but it didn't help him at all. He basically gave up on trying to sleep around three in the morning, and spent most of the time waiting for the sun to rise to work on the election project from home, knocking out quite a bit of what he could do on the internet. By sunrise, he had the candidates researched, information on how Texas ran its elections completely researched and organized, and a very thorough article completed on the national election rules and procedures, about the primary system, the conventions, the national election, and the electoral college. Once the sun came up, he decided to fulfill a promise to Jessie and went to Wal-Mart to look at full-body dryers. What he found there didn't fill him with much confidence, so he just went on to work a full two hours early.
He had nothing else to do, and if he didn't keep himself busy, he'd just pine for Jessie, and he knew it.
Barry and Lilly came in together about fifteen minutes before nine, and they popped their heads in his office. "You made coffee?" Barry asked.
"Yeah, in the pot," he answered, taking a sip of tea.
Lilly gave him a single look. "How long have you been here?"
"Since seven or so," he answered, which made her giggle.
"She comes home tomorrow," Lilly grinned with a wink.
"I keep telling myself that," he grunted.
"You got the bed all ready?" she said outrageously.
Kit chuckled. "To sleep, yeah. I didn't sleep at all last night. I just can't without her with me."
"You're doomed, bro," Barry teased. "She has you totally whipped."
"Which is exactly where he should be!" Lilly said, slapping Barry lightly on the shoulder. "Males are too dangerous and silly to go around without a femme to keep them in line."
"Only in your world," Barry teased.
"You two in the office today?" Kit asked.
Barry shook his head. "I have an interview with the department of state for Texas today," he answered. "It's the first framework for the election series coming up next month."
"Oh, I'll send all the Texas stuff to your Blackberry and computer, then," Kit said. "I finished up the Texas election process. That should give you something to go on."
"Nice," Barry smiled. "Go ahead and chuck it to me."
"I'm in the office today," Lilly told him. "I need to go through what I collected last night and update the website."
"Was surprised to see you in so early," Kit told her with a grin.
"I called it early last night. I didn't feel like staying out after I checked out the new band playing down at the Quarry. They're called Acid, they're pretty good. That, and I have a lot of work to do on the Scene today. Lots of changes since the semester's almost over, the bars and clubs change their hours and lots of the music acts bug out. It'll take me most of the day to get everything updated on the site and hand in the new Scene section into Rick and Savid."
Kit managed to distract himself all day with work. He got a large piece of the project either knocked out or organized so he knew what order to do the rest of it, but it was going to take time. It was a huge project, and he'd have to do some polls and surveys on top of normal research. He'd probably get his part of it done before the wedding, but it'd be close. It was definitely going to dominate his time.
The wedding. It was only twenty-four days away. The rings were bought, the dress was bought, his tux was bought, and they were supposed to come down and do a final fitting on Thursday. They had an appointment on the fifth to get the marriage license blood test, and with that it was just a simple matter of handing in all the paperwork at the courthouse and getting the license. Jessie had to start getting the name change paperwork going after they had the license, so she'd have everything done before the actual wedding. Jessie wanted to walk into the church with her license already giving her name as Jessica Desdemona Vulpan, which was legal in Texas. The marriage license was all that was required, and they didn't put a marriage date on it. Spouses who changed their names could do so before the actual ceremony.
There was a knock at his door right about when he was about to pack it in and head out to the mall to look at dryers, and saw Sandy, Jeffrey, Sam, and Kevin. "Hey, we were gonna go out and wanted to see if you wanted to tag along," Sandy told him.
"Nah, I have to go to the mall and look at full body dryers," he answered. "I promised Jessie I'd get one."
"Ah, cool."
"I bought mine at J.C. Penny, and it's been pretty good," Kevin offered. "It's the Arixx model. It fits in the corner of my bedroom real nice."
Kit held up a printed page of full body dryers, features, dependability reviews, warranty options, and suggested retail prices. Arixx was one of three models that was circled on the sheet for consideration. Sandy looked at it, and laughed. "Shoulda known," she grinned.
"It's what I do for a living, silly chinchilla," Kit said mildly. "Think I don't know how to do it for myself?"
"I bet that car salesmen wet themselves when they see you coming, Kit," Kevin laughed.
"I haven't bought a car yet. When I do, I'll let you know," Kit chuckled.
After work, Kit hit the mall. He did take Kevin's suggestion of looking in J.C. Penny, and found the Arixx model that he'd circled on sale there at a price very close to what was suggested by his research. Two hundred dollars was a lot of money, but this was a justifiable expense, and besides, Jessie wanted one. He bought what he was after, a five foot tall corner model with a raised platform to keep the hot air off the carpet, took it home, and spent nearly two hours putting it together in the corner between the wall where the bed's headboard was and the wall that held the window. The unit was pretty comprehensive, having to be bolted to the wall and with a large base to give it stability. It had a long, wide central column from which drying ducts radiated to blow over the fur standing on the platform, and it was large enough to let him go through the motions of combing fur or drying with a towel while on the platform without banging his elbows on the unit. It had adjustable fan speeds and fully adjustable temperature, from cold to almost blisteringly hot, and what was most clever, it had a pressure switch in the floor that made it turn off if nobody was standing on it. With that nifty little feature, it could just be left on all the time and set to a comfortable level, and it would turn itself on whenever one stepped onto it.
Jessie would be very happy with it, he was sure.
The effort to put it together, coupled with the sleepless night, did its magic on Kit. He was exhausted when he finished the job, and crawled into bed around eight to rest, but actually fell asleep.
Kit was set to go to Bergstrom at seven, a full two hours before Jessie's plane was scheduled to arrive. She'd called him at three in the morning, but he'd already been awake. She was leaving Cincinnati at seven and was scheduled to arrive at ten after nine. They stayed on the phone until she left for the airport, and Kit was so keyed up waiting for her to get home that he couldn't stay still, couldn't even get any work done. He went for a jog around the neighborhood, took a shower, then used the new full body dryer and found it to be quite satisfactory. He then dressed and was on his way out the door, when Sandy and Sam pulled up into the parking lot. "Hey, you gonna go get her?" Sandy asked.
"On the way now."
"Got room for two more? We'd like to go," Sam said.
"Sure, jump in," he said as he used the keychain remote to unlock his truck. "But mind she's not due in for like two hours. I just can't wait around here anymore."
"We figured, that's why we got here early," Sandy grinned as she locked her car. "I got shotgun!"
After they were on their way, he glanced back at Sam. "So, what do you think of Kevin?"
"I like him," she said without blinking. "I really like him. He's smart, kind, considerate, and charming. And I don't know if I should hit you or kiss you for playing matchmaker."
"Eh, I had a hunch," he told her. "I'm glad I was right. How was the date?"
"It was great until Sandy threw up outside the theater," Sam said, leaning over the front seat and giving the chinchilla a harsh look.
"It was the popcorn at the theater," she said with an embarrassed look. "The butter they used on it didn't agree with my tummy."
"Well, maybe she was giving the future doctor a little practice in front of Kevin," Kit said with a sly look at her.
"Oh, please," Sam sighed.
Sam and Sandy did do wonders for keeping him from going nuts while they waited at the airport. Sam had brought her laptop, and showed him a bunch of pictures of her family and the bar her dad owned in Florida. They spent nearly an hour in the little shopping mall and ate breakfast at Dunkin Donuts, then waited near the security gate when nine o'clock rolled around.
At nine fifteen, his phone rang. It was Jessie. "I'm in the terminal and on the way," she told him excitedly. "Where are you?"
"We're at the security gate. Sam and Sandy came too."
"Is Sheila here?"
"No, I haven't talked to her since Friday."
"Oh. See you in a few."
Kit paced outside the security gate, then his heart soared when he saw her. She ran into his arms and crushed him in a fierce hug, then they shared a long, lingering kiss. "Hello there, future Misses Vulpan," Kit cooed in her ear.
"Fancy meeting you here, Mister Vulpan," she teased in return, her fingers tracing over the scars on his back through his shirt and light jacket. "Hey guys, thanks for coming to pick me up!" Jessie called, hugging each of her friends in turn. "Now let's go get my suitcase and go home!" she declared as Kit took her carry-on bag from her and shouldered it.
"I hope you remember that Kit has poker today, Jessie," Sam reminded as they headed for baggage claim.
"Yeah, so that means that after we get back to the apartment, you two are booted," she grinned, which made Sandy laugh.
"Wherever did you go vestal virgin," Sandy teased.
"She met a guy," Jessie teased. "She thinks he's the best thing on Earth. She's going to marry him in twenty-three days, but she was more than willing to give him an advance on the fun parts of being married."
Sam and Sandy both erupted into laughter, but Kit just pulled her under his arm and squeezed her shoulder gently. "So, how did it go after I left?"
"Not bad," she answered. "Me and mom still had a few fights, but your visit really changed her. She was fighting over little things, not over the marriage itself."
"Well, I'm glad for that. Did your family make hotel reservations?"
"Yeah, all taken care of. They're staying at the Holiday Inn off thirty-five. It's only about two miles from the church."
"They flying or driving?"
"Flying. I promised them they could use my car while they're here."
"I'm looking forward to meeting that hunk of a brother of yours," Sandy said brightly.
"What, you're kicking Jeffrey to the curb already?" Sam asked archly.
"Oh, hell no. Jeffrey's fantastic, but Ben is just pure eye candy. I want see if he's as hunky in person as he is in pictures."
"You sooooo need a life," Sam grated.
Sam and Sandy said their goodbyes after they got home, and Kit hauled Jessie's suitcase into the bedroom. She followed him and squealed in delight when she saw the dryer in the corner. "You bought it, you bought it!" she said happily, colliding with him and driving him down onto the bed, kissing him exuberantly. "I love you, Kitstrom Lucas Vulpan!" she declared, then she noticed his wince. "Did I hurt your back?"
"My tail's kinked," he said with a grunt, pulling his tail out from under him and its uncomfortable position. "There, all better," he said, gripping her by her waist, near her sensitive spot. "Soooo, you want some breakfast?"
"Later," she said, driving him down to the bed and kissing him quite seriously.