Janet Evanovich - Wicked Appetite

Diesel followed me back to the kitchen. “I can get you a water heater, but I can’t solve your more serious issues. Unlike Wulf, I don’t have unlimited funds at my disposal. I don’t draw a salary on this job.”

“You work for free?”

Diesel got a soda from the fridge. “I have everything I need.” His eyes held mine for a beat. “Almost everything.”

Carl jumped from the counter to the floor and farted. So much for the sexy moment, I thought. Saved by monkey gas.

“Dude,” Diesel said to Carl. “You need to lay off the cheese.”

The phone rang. Diesel answered and passed it to me. “It’s your mother.”

Terrific. The one time in the history of the world Diesel answers my phone, and it has to be my mother.

“Who was that man?” my mother asked. “I thought I had the wrong number.”

“He’s just a friend.”

“Oh?”

“Not that kind of friend,” I told her.

“I have a wonderful surprise,” she said. “Your father was selected to attend a seminar on public transportation customer relations in Boston tomorrow, and he’s on his way. Lou Dribbet was supposed to go, but he passed a kidney stone last night and wasn’t up to flying. It was all very sudden.”

“Dad’s flying?”

“Actually, he’s landed. I tried calling your cell phone all day, but you weren’t picking up.”

“My cell phone died, and I haven’t gotten a new one yet.”

“Well, he’s on his way. He should be at your house any minute now. He’s so excited. He’s going to spend the night with you and go to the seminar hotel tomorrow.”

“What? No! Not a good idea.”

“Why not? You have a guest bedroom.”

“I haven’t got a bed in it.”

“He can sleep on the couch then. Goodness knows it won’t be the first time he’s had to sleep on the couch. Sometimes I can’t take the snoring. That man could wake the dead.”

The doorbell chimed, and I felt my heart constrict to the size of a raisin.

“I think Dad’s here,” I said to my mom. “I’ll talk to you later.”

I hung up and focused on Diesel. “You have to go.”

“No.”

“YES!” I grabbed him by the front of his shirt and got into his face. “My father is at the door. He’s spending the night here, and he’s not going to like that you sleep in my bed.”

“Tell him we’re engaged.”

“We’re not engaged. And even if we were, it wouldn’t be good enough.”

“So tell him we’re married.”

“That’s insane!” I said. “And besides, I don’t have a ring.”

“Tell him you lost it. Tell him it slipped off into the mixing bowl when you were making sticky buns and someone took it home and ate it.”

The bell rang a second time, and I hurried to get the door before my father was completely drenched. “I’m begging you,” I yelled to Diesel as I ran. “Sneak out the back way.”

My father is a big man. Six foot tall and chunky. The family joke is that if he wasn’t driving a bus, he could be pulling one. He’s as strong as an ox, but he’s the family softy, crying over sad movie endings, a sucker for puppies and kittens, buying mushy Valentine’s Day cards for my mom. He’s completely not the disciplinarian in my family, but he wouldn’t put up with a man in my bed if there wasn’t a ring on my finger.

I found him hunched on my front stoop, holding a small yellow umbrella in one hand and a suitcase in the other. His rental car was parked at the curb.

“For a minute there, I was afraid you weren’t home,” he said, leaving the umbrella outside, stepping in with his suitcase.

“I was in the kitchen, talking to mom.”

He looked around my living room. “This is nice. You’ve made a real home here. I only was in this house once, and it was over twenty years ago. I remember it as being fussy, with stuff crammed everywhere. Seems like it’s a little more lopsided now, but that’s how it is with these old houses, I guess.”

Cat strolled into the room and gave my father the once-over.

“I didn’t know you had a cat,” my father said. “What’s his name?”

“Cat 7143. Cat, for short.”

My father squinted at Cat. “He’s only got half a tail. And there’s something weird with his eye.”

“It’s glass.”

My father went blank-faced for a moment. “Is that Ophelia’s cat?”

“I don’t know. He came from the shelter.”

“If it’s Ophelia’s, he must be the oldest cat on the planet. Ophelia was telling us she had a one-eyed cat when we visited her, but no one ever saw it. We always figured she was making it up. And in the years before she died, she’d tell your grandmother crazy things about the cat. How the cat could read her mind. And that he was actually a ninja.”

Oh great, I thought. Just what I need… another mind reader in the house. I looked over at Cat, and I swear he looked back at me and winked. Okay, so I guess he could have just blinked his one good eye, but it seemed like a wink.

“You know what we should do?” I said to my dad. “We should go out for dinner. I know this bar that makes unbelievable wings.”

“No way. I sent you to cooking school. I want to see what you can do.”

“I haven’t got a lot in the house,” I told him.

“Do you have beer?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m a happy man. You can make me a sandwich, and we don’t have to go out in the rain. And there’s a game on tonight. I see you have a television.”

“Right.”

And I might have a big, strange guy in my kitchen. I hadn’t heard the back door open or close.

“There’s something I should tell you,” I said. “I don’t exactly live here alone.”

“I know,” he said, moving past me toward the kitchen. “You have a one-eyed cat.”

“Yeah, but there’s more.”

“More?” He stepped into the kitchen and stopped dead in his tracks. “Does your mother know about this?”

I sunk my teeth into my lower lip and followed behind him. “I can explain.”

“Your mother would have a heart attack if she knew you had a monkey in your kitchen.”

“That’s all? A monkey?” I peeked in and did a fast scan of the room. One monkey. No Diesel.

“That’s Carl,” I said to my father. “I’m taking care of him while the rescue organization finds him a real home.”

“What kind of monkey is he?” my father wanted to know. “His fur is all fluffy. He looks silly.”

Carl gave my father the finger, and my father’s eyebrows went all the way up to his hairline.

“He’s sensitive about his fur,” I said.

My father looked like he was working at squelching a grimace. “You’re sort of living in a loony bin.”

Yeah, I thought. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

An hour after my dad arrived, I had dinner on the dining room table. Steak, mashed potatoes, and green beans. And vanilla pudding for dessert.

“This is great,” my father said, taking his seat, shaking out his napkin. “I’m starved.”

Carl had followed us in and was standing on tiptoe, peeking over the edge of the table, surveying the food.

“He looks hungry,” my father said.

“He’s always hungry. He just ate enough junk food to feed half of China.”

“Maybe he needs green beans after all that junk food.”

Carl bobbed his head up and down. Yes, he needed green beans. He scurried into the kitchen and returned with a plate and silverware. He plunked the plate and silverware down on the table, climbed onto a chair, and sat erect on his haunches. He could barely see over the table. He jumped down, ran into the living room, and came back with a throw pillow. He carefully placed the throw pillow on his chair and climbed on board. Now he was just right for the table.