The Perfect Match. Kimberly Cates

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ already rejected? For heaven’s sake, why?

      A question impossible to answer in a way her mother could understand.

      Because I feel right inside when I’m placing rescue pets, and in vet school I felt wrong…

      Rowena should have saved her breath. Article number one in the Brown Family Constitution was “logic above all,” mere instinct far too messy. “Rowena’s Voodoo,” her younger sister Ariel called it. Even now, pushing twenty-five, she still made “woo woo” sound effects to tease.

      Rowena tossed the drape over the parrot’s cage in an effort to throw Elvis into a make-believe night, hoping that the wily bird would settle down, fall asleep and be blessedly silent.

      Not that she had much hope that her ruse would work. Could you arrest a bird for profanity? Public indecency? Corrupting the innocence of a minor? Maybe she’d ask the good deputy, if she were ever unfortunate enough to run into him again.

      Her mind filled with eyes that flashed, dark and angry, when she’d told him missing the appointment was no big deal. Talk about overreacting! And yet, didn’t it stand to reason that anyone who worked in law enforcement was bound to be a control freak? At least on some level. And it seemed that the needle on Lawless’ irritation meter jumped right off the charts where Rowena was concerned.

      Guilt itched as she remembered the way he had chewed her out, describing Miss Marigold’s despair over her broken treasures. Rowena’s next-door neighbor had been heartbroken. Rowena had been hosing off some cage trays at the back of the shop the night of Clancy’s Great Scone Raid when she had seen the sixty-year-old woman carrying out a big box of something that clinked as she moved. Before Clancy’s escapade, Rowena might have plopped down the hose and hurried over to help, even if the lady did tend to look bug-eyed with alarm every time Rowena said hello.

      But this time, Rowena had just stood rooted to the spot as Miss Marigold hauled her burden to where the garbage would be picked up the next morning. The older woman had been weeping, her nose chafed Rudolph-red, her eyes all swollen behind cat’s-eye glasses she’d probably bought sometime during the 1960s.

      Rowena had tried to apologize, her stomach as knotted as her garden hose. But before she could get out more than a few words, Miss Marigold had dropped her box with a horrific crash and fled back into the rear entrance of the tea shop, as if Rowena had set an attack dog snapping at her heels.

      Rowena had crossed to where the box lay off-kilter on one side. A china tea spout decorated with a motif of peacock feathers lay in the gravel, a teapot lid with a finial shaped like a cat a few feet beyond. Rowena stooped to pick each up, amazed at the delicate work.

      She stared down into the box. Lawless had been right about one thing. Even if she did pay for the damages, it wouldn’t matter. She’d never be able to piece her neighbor’s treasures together again.

      She’d lifted Miss Marigold’s box into her arms, holding it for a long time, not knowing exactly what to do with it. But somehow in spite of the wreckage she couldn’t leave the broken china for the garbage man to take. Instead she’d stuck it in her back room.

      And what are you going to do, oh brilliant one? Wave your hands and say abracadabra? Cast some magical spell that would make the teapots whole again? Now, that would be a gift she’d be grateful to have at the moment.

      The school bell rang in the distance, bringing Rowena back to the moment at hand. A parade of delighted faces, kids jabbering and laughing and cajoling their parents to come into the shop just to take a look. She’d done her best to make Open Arms irresistible, and it seemed where Whitewater’s children were concerned she’d succeeded.

      At least with all of them except one.

      Rowena turned away from the parrot’s cage and glimpsed an all too familiar small figure scowling into the store’s front window. Yes. Her crabby ghost was back again, hovering under the rainbow-striped awning, a few feet away from the door the kid had never once entered. Mousy brown hair was swept into a ponytail, exposing sharp drawn features. Her brow crinkled in aggravation, the folds of a duckling-yellow slicker gleaming from the rain.

      The first time Rowena had seen the nine-or-so-year-old girl she’d assumed that the kid’s disgruntled expression was due to the glare reflecting off the window into the child’s eyes. But today there wasn’t a sunbeam for miles and those eyes behind round silver wire glasses still glared into the shop’s interior as if something about the place frustrated her beyond bearing.

      Rowena had tried to imagine what could possibly have displeased the child, but she’d been so busy working the kinks out of the shop’s layout that she’d pushed her questions to the back of her mind. But today, the ghost finally shoved Rowena’s curiosity right over the edge.

      In spite of the awning’s shelter, the child was trying to keep an adult-sized purple umbrella over her head while she wrestled with a book the size of a dictionary. That was one serious piece of literature, Rowena thought. Wasn’t that monstrosity of a volume a little much for a fourth grader to handle? Surely her ghost couldn’t be reading something that advanced, even if the kid was one of those pint-sized geniuses that made the newspapers now and then.

      All business under the wavering shelter of the umbrella, the girl balanced the volume between the pet shop’s window ledge and her tummy and opened the book to one of about a dozen pages marked with scraps of orange construction paper.

      Rowena watched the child study what must be pictures of some kind, then raise those too-solemn eyes to peer intently back into the pet shop interior. Frowning in obvious frustration, the disgruntled little girl plunged on to the next marked page, studying the book again. The poor little thing was going to put herself in traction wrestling with a volume that heavy.

      Rowena glanced around her store and, finding it empty for the moment, ducked outside. A gust of wind sprinkled her left side with rain, her orange linen tunic sticking in chill, damp patches to her arm. But the little scowler was so intent on whatever she was reading she didn’t even notice anyone approach. Rowena couldn’t help but be amused by the way the kid screwed her face up in fearsome concentration.

      “Hi, there,” Rowena said.

      The child jumped as if Rowena had just yelled “boo,” the book starting to tumble from her small hands. Rowena made a quick grab for the volume, nearly throwing her back out in her effort to keep the thing from landing in the rain puddle below.

      “Whew, that was close,” Rowena said, eyeing the murky pool that covered the bottom inch or so of the girl’s green sneakers. The poor kid’s feet must be soaked.

      Stubbornly silent, the child looked up at Rowena with eyes a woodsy color, somewhere between green and brown. Rowena might have been tempted to laugh out loud if she weren’t sure she’d wound the soggy little soul’s dignity. Instead, she tried to lighten the mood.

      “You know, you keep scrunching your face like that, it’s going to freeze that way.”

      “Grownups always say that. But I never saw a single person’s face freeze. Even the principal’s and he looks grumpy all the time.”

      Smiling to herself at the girl’s cranky response, Rowena glanced down at the volume in her hands. “This is some book you’ve got here. It’s almost as big as you are.”

      “That’s an exaggeration.” The five-syllable word came so naturally from the child’s mouth Rowena stared. “If СКАЧАТЬ