Best Of Makeovers Bundle Part 78

Just as Glenda had described. The chairs, the music, and Jane, doing everything she could to find a home for the cats.

Something about the scene pulled at his heart. Maybe it was simply seeing her here like this-so at ease, so comfortable, in a way she never was with him. Or maybe it was the simple generosity of her spirit.

He couldn't help thinking of the many caseworkers who'd shuffled him through the system. None of them had shown the pa.s.sion and commitment Jane showed to these animals. He couldn't help wondering how different his life might have been if even one of them had.

And yet, watching her, he couldn't regret how his life had turned out. Despite his rocky beginning, he'd found a wonderful home with parents who had loved him. He'd found his place, not only in a family, but in the business world, as well.

As he thought of Forester+Blake he felt none of the restrictive panic he usually worked so hard to bury. Advertising might not have even been a profession he'd have chosen on his own, but he was starting to enjoy it, and it had brought him Jane.

In that instant, his relations.h.i.+p with Jane s.h.i.+fted from a business liability-a risk he couldn't resist taking despite his best intentions-to the greatest a.s.set he had.

His relations.h.i.+p with Jane was only a bad idea if it didn't work out. But why wouldn't it work out?

It wasn't as if he was going to fire her. Even if he had to lay off some employees, she'd always have a job-her creative brilliance guaranteed that.

Observing her as she moved from cage to cage to check on the cats, he felt-with deep-in-his-gut certainty-that he could love Jane. That he could spend the rest of his life with her, trying to make her happy.

She cared about these forgotten and abandoned animals. Cared about their quality of life and whether or not they found homes. The care she gave to them and to the people who'd come here showed him more of her beauty than a hundred pieces of revealing lingerie. Her actions here told him more about her pa.s.sion than a hundred romantic encounters.

Put quite simply, she loved the unlovable. Cared for that which no one else wanted. And if he was very lucky, she might come to care for him, as well.

With the couple settling in with the cat, she finally turned and glanced in his direction. Instantly, she stiffened. Her smile faded and her hand went to smooth her hair.

In that instant he realized Jane was like two separate women. One was gorgeous, s.e.xy, and wild in bed, but she never relaxed, never laughed, never had fun. The other was less of a knockout, but she was relaxed and natural. The relaxed Jane was the one he wanted to have a relations.h.i.+p with. The one he could imagine marrying some day.

The bad news was, he was sleeping with the wrong Jane.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

"W-WHAT are you doing here?" Jane asked as she crossed the room to where Reid stood.

She fidgeted with the hem of her s.h.i.+rt as she asked the question. As he watched her, it occurred to him that she was nervous enough as it was. If she knew he'd followed her here, it might freak her out.

So he held up his approved application from Glenda. "I came here to adopt a pet."

"You want to adopt a pet?" she asked suspiciously.

"I had Glenda approve my application," he pointed out.

"Glenda?" Jane asked sarcastically. "You're on a f-first-name basis with her?"

"Sure. She was quite talkative."

Jane's eyebrows shot up in disbelief. She shook her head. "In five years, all I've gotten out of her is disapproving grunts. Five minutes with you and you're her bosom buddy."

"She said you volunteer here a lot."

Jane ducked her head, a faint blush moving across her cheek. "I...sure, usually."

A portable CD player sat on one of the cages, playing the soft tunes of Norah Jones. A nice slow song that would encourage people to linger.

"So that's why you couldn't meet me today?" He moved closer to her, ostensibly to hear her over the music. "Why didn't you say so?"

"One of the reasons. I-" She broke off, her nervousness making her fidgety. She moved a step closer to him and said in a low voice, "I didn't think y-you and I had the kind of relations.h.i.+p where we shared that kind of thing."

Yeah, he didn't think so, either. But he wanted that to change.

However, he was pretty sure she wasn't ready to hear that. So he turned his attention to the cages lining the walls. "So, what kind of cat do you think I should get? Or should I get a dog? I've always thought of myself as more of a dog person."

"You want a dog? Seriously?"

"Sure. Why not?"

"You know, dogs are more work than cats."

"You think I'm afraid of work?" he teased.

A blush crept into her cheeks. "I didn't mean that. But they require more attention. They need to be walked and played with. If you're not at home enough, they get lonely."

"Not a problem."

"But you live in a condo. You don't even have a backyard."

"I live in a great neighborhood to take walks. I walk down to the bakery for breakfast most mornings as it is."

"Down to the bakery?"

Her voice sounded high and nervous. What had he said wrong?

He put his hand on her arm and she turned to face him. "Are you okay? You sound a little tense."

Her gaze flickered to his and then away to the dog kennels. Her words came out in a rush. "Of course I'm okay. Why wouldn't I be okay? I'm great. Here I am, helping you pick out a dog so that you can walk it down to the bakery for breakfast. It's great. Just perfect."

"Jane, you don't-"

"Did you know dogs live up to fifteen years, depending on breed and diet? I looked it up. That's a serious commitment."

She looked so adorably fl.u.s.tered it was all he could do not to pull her into his arms to soothe whatever was bothering her. But he knew where touching her would lead. So far their relations.h.i.+p had been so s.e.xual, he wanted to spend this time with her without having it devolve to that. Even if it killed him.

Still, he couldn't keep himself from stepping closer to her and brus.h.i.+ng a stray lock of her hair from her forehead. Once again he smelled the scent of apples on her. This time it didn't have to compete with her expensive perfume. He liked this scent-pure and uncomplicated as it was-better than her perfume.

"I think you might be surprised how much of a commitment guy I am."

Jane's eyes widened slightly. "Reid, I-"

"Excuse me, miss?"

Jane's head jerked in the direction of the two people sitting with the cat.

"We've made up our mind," the man said. The cat sat curled in a contented ball in the woman's lap. "We want to adopt this cat."

"Great. I'll be right there." Jane smiled stiffly, as if she were equally annoyed with the interruption. To him, she said, "Look around at some of the cats. And don't forget to disinfect y-your hands between cats. You can use the blue stuff from the hand pump on the w-wall or the bottle I brought that's there by the CD players-it smells better."

Before he could say anything else, she was back to helping the couple with the white cat. Unsure how long Jane would be distracted, he played with the tabby kitten for a few minutes before moving on. He picked up the bottle of hand sanitizer she'd left out and squirted a dollop onto his palm. As he rubbed his hands together, he caught a whiff of apples.

He glanced at the bottle. Yep. Country Apple. Another Jane mystery solved.

After setting down the bottle, he peered into the other occupied cat cages. At the far end, a silver and black tabby caught his eye.

As he approached her cage she let out a demanding meow and rubbed her cheek against the door to the cage. Tail in the air, she pranced the length of the cage, showing off her dramatic coloring and spots. She was the most striking cat he'd ever seen. But he'd lived in many foster homes with pets and he knew from a nasty experience with a long-haired Chihuahua that "striking" didn't always mean friendly.

As he bent to read the information card hanging from her cage, her name jumped out at him: Sasha.

The same name Jane had given him that first night on the roof. It couldn't be a coincidence. He glanced at Jane, but she was still busy talking to the couple.

Was this cat special to Jane? Did she feel as if she shared an emotional bond with the cat?

He opened the cage and reached inside to pet Sasha the cat.

For a few seconds, she allowed him to pet her behind the ears but then he tried to stroke her back. As if annoyed that he'd dared to push for more contact, she hissed and swatted at his hand.

He jerked his hand away and slammed the door shut. Okay, she was a bit of a b.i.t.c.h.

As he set the latch, Jane approached from behind him and asked, "What do you think of Sasha?"

Turning towards Jane, he was struck once again by how wholesome she looked dressed in jeans and a T-s.h.i.+rt. So unlike the s.e.x G.o.ddess of last night, yet somehow equally appealing.

As he studied her, he realized the delightfully fl.u.s.tered Jane of just a few minutes ago had disappeared. Something in her att.i.tude had s.h.i.+fted. Suddenly she was much more like the person he'd spent last night with.

Unsure what had brought about this change, he measured his words. "She's pretty," he said, then added on-for honesty's sake-"but a little temperamental."

Jane's lips turned down at the corners. Not in a frown, he decided, but in more of a wry smile. "That's the prerogative of a beautiful lady."

As if to reiterate Jane's point, the cat b.u.mped her silvery head against the bars of the cage and purred loudly to attract his attention.

"She's very aggressive," he said.

Jane's gaze dropped and-with just a hint of coyness in her voice-she asked, "You don't like that in a woman?"

Yes, he liked Jane when she was aggressive. But, honestly, he preferred her when she was...human.

Instead of answering, he turned the tables and said, "Tell me about Sasha."

The question seemed to take her aback and her confidence slipped a notch. Jane looked nervously from the cage that housed the gorgeous tabby, to Reid, and then back again. "Well," she began, stumbling for words. "Let's see. Sasha came to the shelter about a month ago. Her case w-worker thought she'd been abused, so she w-was sent to a foster house for-"

"Not the cat. Tell me why you introduced yourself to me as Sasha."

"Oh." She glanced nervously around, as if looking for a distraction, but they were alone now. So she focused all her attention on Sasha's cage. Poking her fingers through the bars, she scratched the cat on the chin. "It's because of my s-s-stutter. I get nervous speaking in front of others and my stutter gets w-worse."

She sounded so embarra.s.sed about it. As if she were revealing some deep, dark secret. Hoping to rea.s.sure her, he pointed out, "Speaking in public scares a lot of people. It's the most common phobia in the US."

She chuckled. "Maybe. But with a stutter, it's different. People think you're slow. Or stupid. You saw w-what I was like that day Teresa was called away from the Butler presentation. I couldn't even speak."

He thought back to that day-which now seemed so long ago-and tried to remember the trouble she'd had speaking in front of just him and Matt. People she knew. She'd looked terrified.

How much harder must it have been for her to speak in front of strangers? How much courage must it have taken for her to even volunteer to do the Butler presentation, all on her own?

"And yet when Teresa couldn't do the presentation, you did it for her." Her courage awed him. "You could have talked to me about it, or Matt. We could have had someone else do the presentation."

"And let you think I couldn't do my job? No w-way. Besides, my friend Dorothea convinced me she could help. That by pretending to be someone else, I could overcome my stutter. I know it sounds crazy, but it w-worked."

Actually, it didn't sound crazy at all. He'd heard rumors that a local newscaster used a similar method to overcome his stutter.

"And so you invented Sasha," he mused.

"Yes. Dorothea said to really feel in character I needed a costume. So she fixed my hair. Gave me the blonde highlights. She did my makeup and dressed me in different clothes, things I never w-w-would have worn on my own." Her voice turned wistful. "I almost believed I was someone else. A completely different person. Someone who could do presentations. Someone not afraid to be the center of attention."

Something in her voice reminded him of what she'd said the night before about her parents' divorce. How she'd coped by "slipping under the radar". And now that he thought about it, she was still doing it. She could give the presentation as Sasha because no one would see the real her.

"And that night on the rooftop you ran into me," he mused.

"Yes."

"And I didn't recognize you." All this confusion could have been avoided if only he'd recognized her.

But if he had, would she have had the courage to offer him half of her dinner? As Jane, would she have eaten with him, flirted with him, and kissed him until he'd nearly lost all control? Maybe not. Maybe he was lucky he hadn't recognized her there in the darkness.

"Why would you recognize me? You didn't even know who I was. I hadn't done anything to pique your interest before then."

Oh, if only she knew how wrong she was.

He laughed, and she snapped around so she could glare at him. "Well, I'm glad this amuses you."

"It doesn't," he said hastily. "Except that...did you honestly think that after working with you for five years, I had no idea who you were?"

"Do you honestly expect me to believe that you did?" She frowned, clearly annoyed by his obtuseness. "In all of those years, you'd never said more than fifteen to twenty words to me. Total."

"Because I knew I made you nervous. Not because I didn't know who you were." He let her consider that for a moment before saying, "Now, about that Sasha thing-"

"I guess that seems ridiculous to you, doesn't it?"

"Actually, no, it doesn't. It was a brilliant and brave solution to your problem. We all get nervous, Jane, feel insecure."