A SEAL's Surrender. Tawny Weber

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      Before she could explain the psychological makeup of Savannahs, there was a loud screech, then a crash boomed out from behind the women.

      Except for a teeth-clenching wince, Eden froze.

      Bev screamed.

      Cringing, they both pivoted toward the car.

      Eden had forgotten to set the parking brake.

      She and Bev stared at the tree-hugging vehicle in silence.

      Damn.

      “This is a bad week for cars around you,” Bev observed with a resigned sort of huff.

      Eden groaned. It was like she was a walking, talking accident waiting to happen.

      The car wasn’t new, or even in very good condition, but it’d been big enough for her to transport anything smaller than a horse, was paid for and had looked decent enough not to irritate wealthy potential clients.

      Now the passenger fender had formed an intimate relationship with a redwood.

      After staring at the car for a solid minute, Eden sighed and deliberately turned her back on it to walk the rest of the way across the street.

      “Aren’t you going to do something? Where are you going?” Bev hurried after her. When Eden stopped under a tree and peered through the leaves, then reached up to test the strength of one branch, the cheery blonde gaped. “You can’t be serious? You’re still going to try to rescue the cat?”

      “Why not? The car is already a mess—I might as well have something to show for it.” A safe, secured pet was a reasonable price to exchange for a molested fender. And maybe, if she was lucky, this could be her chance to bond with Paisley and get in Mrs. Carmichael’s good graces.

      “Paisley,” Eden called in a cajoling tone. The cat, perched high on a maple branch, stopped its upward bounce to toss Eden a disdainful look. “C’mere, pretty kitty.”

      “Why don’t we just call Mrs. Carmichael and tell her we saw her cat. She can come get it herself,” Bev suggested when her stilettos slid on the dirt bank. “And give us a ride while she’s at it.”

      “Sure, a sixty-year-old woman needs to be climbing a tree after her cat,” Eden dismissed, her own stubby-heeled Mary Janes not slipping at all—girls who tended to trip over their own feet wore stilettos at great risk—as she made her way around the base of the maple.

      After a few more calls, a few snarky remarks from Bev and another dismissive look from the cat, Eden sighed. She looked up the road, then down, to make sure no cars were coming. She only climbed trees once in a blue moon, but somehow she always managed to get busted.

      “You’re lookout,” she told Bev. She glanced down at her pretty blue cotton dress, then tugged the back of the pleated skirt forward between her thighs, tucking it into the wide black belt. “There, modesty intact.”

      “There, fashion destroyed,” Bev said, shaking her head in dismay. “If anyone asks, I tried to talk you out of this. I pointed out the likelihood of you falling, of you breaking yet another bone or something horrible happening to your hair.”

      Eden’s fingers combed through the thick swath of heavy brown hair at her shoulders and gave Bev a confused look. “My hair?”

      “I think it’s the only thing you haven’t messed up so far. It’s due.”

      Eden grimaced, then shrugged. Bev was probably right. Some people might lament their fate, others would spend hours in therapy. She figured that by simply accepting that she was a little accident prone, she was not only ahead of the game in terms of dealing with emergencies—because after all, she created at least one a month—but she was saving a fortune on psychiatric fees.

      “Watch for cars,” she warned again, reaching up to grab the closest branch.

      “What do I do if I see one? Whistle? Throw myself across the driver’s window to hide their view?”

      There might be a few drawbacks to having a BFF with a smart mouth, Eden decided as she levered her body onto the first branch.

      “Just give me enough warning so I can hide,” she said as she gained her balance and slowly stood upright to reach for another limb.

      With Bev’s voice droning in the background, covering everything from the fact that she’d never learned to climb a tree to the insanity of grown women acting like squirrels, Eden scurried higher.

      A minute later, she was one branch away from Paisley.

      “Hi, sweet kitty,” she said in a soft singsong voice. “Are you up here playing Queen of the Jungle? You should be—you look like royalty.”

      She kept the soothing tone going, her outstretched fingers in constant motion to get the cat’s attention.

      It worked. After a few seconds and a cautious sniff, the exotic white cat was nudging her broad forehead against Eden’s knuckles.

      “Oh, aren’t you sweet.”

      Unable to resist, Eden gave herself a moment to cuddle and pet the pretty cat before tucking her under one arm and slowly lowering herself until her butt met the branch. Like scooting down a rickety ladder, she went one branch at a time, with plenty of cuddling in between. Finally she was close enough to hand the cat to Bev.

      “Why don’t you put her in the car,” Eden instructed, her belly flat against a wide limb that was about six feet from the ground. “Crack the windows, and there’s a bottle of water and portable pet dish in the trunk. If you’ll sit with her, she’ll probably drink a little.”

      Despite her earlier opinion that the cat might be evil, Bev didn’t hesitate to reach out and cuddle the gray-spotted feline. Paisley gave a meow of protest, and threw an injured look toward Eden, but didn’t try to escape. Eden waited until her friend and the cat were safely inside the car, treats and water dispensed, before she lowered herself to the next branch.

      There. She smiled her relief. Almost down.

      It was the smile that did it, she figured.

      Because she went from enjoying an easy descent to being suddenly trapped in the space of a heartbeat. Like an anchor, something held tight, so she couldn’t move.

      Breathless, Eden twisted to see what was wrong.

      Then scowled when she saw that the strap of her shoe was caught on a branch. Eden tugged. The shoe stuck. She tried to slip it off, but the branch was too rough, scratching painfully against the soft flesh of her instep.

      A minute later she added cursing to the mix.

      “Haven’t we been here before?” a husky voice asked.

      Oh, hell. Eden froze. She hadn’t even heard a car. Please, oh, please, let him be talking to someone else.

      “That is Eden up there, right?” the voice asked.

      Double hell.

      She СКАЧАТЬ