Before We Kiss (Fool's Gold #14)

“You are so hard to track down. Do you have your cell phone off? It’s Larissa, by the way.”


“Oh, hi. My cell shouldn’t be off.” She checked it and, sure enough, it was on Mute. Her last meeting had been the previous day, so it had been off since then. “Sorry, I must have forgotten to turn it back on.” She saw she had several messages, including one from Sam.

Seeing his name made her both happy and sad. If he was calling to say he’d been the biggest jerk this side of the Mississippi, then she was all for it. Otherwise, she had nothing to say to him. At least not for now.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“I need help,” Larissa told her. “This is bigger than my usual crisis. Jack is going to help because he always does, but it’s bigger than Jack. Taryn said you’d be the one to know how to fix everything.”

“That’s a lot to expect of anyone,” Dellina said, not sure if she would be pleased or give Taryn a stern talking-to. “What is the problem?”

“A cat rescue group in Sacramento needs help. There’s a hoarding situation. An old lady has about fifty or sixty cats in a small house. The local shelters don’t have capacity right now. So I need to find that many carriers and volunteers to caravan to Sacramento and pick them up. Then they have to be accessed, seen by a vet and fostered until they can be adopted.”

Dellina blinked. “Okay, so this is big. Let me think. We can probably put, what, three carriers in each car. Maybe four. So we need about fifteen vehicles. Sixty carriers.” She was already making notes.

“Give me ten minutes and I’ll call you back.”

“Thanks.”

Dellina immediately called the local vet’s office. Two minutes later Cameron McKenzie was on the phone. She explained what was happening.

“Sixty cats?” he said, sounding surprised. “That’s a lot. I have a half dozen high school kids who get their volunteer credits working with the animals here. They can help with assessments and treatment. Hopefully not all the animals will be sick. I also know several families who will be willing to foster cats. You’ll need carriers. I have ten you can borrow. Check with Max out at K9Rx. Some of the therapy dogs are small. You can probably borrow those carriers. I don’t know where you’ll get the rest.”

“I’m calling the mayor’s new assistant,” Dellina told him. “And activating the phone tree. That will get us carriers and volunteers. I’ll keep in touch, Cameron, and let you know when we’re on our way back.”

Dellina’s next call was to Bailey, who took down the relevant information and promised to activate the phone tree. Dellina set up the rendezvous for two hours from now, in the convention center parking lot, then hung up and called Larissa back.

“Here’s where we are,” she said. “We’ll be ready to go by eleven.”

* * *

BY TEN-THIRTY, Dellina was forced to call in reinforcements. Not only were people bringing pet carriers, they were arriving with cat beds, food, toys and offers to foster. Larissa was collecting names and numbers of those willing to take in a cat or two until a permanent home could be found. Fayrene and Ryan arrived with his large truck. He loaded the food and other paraphernalia into the bed. Larissa said to take it all to Jack’s house. She would sort it there, later. Dellina briefly wondered how Jack felt about that sort of thing, but decided that wasn’t anything she could worry about now. Not when she had to distribute the growing number of carriers to the volunteers willing to go back and forth to Sacramento.

Taryn and Angel pulled up in his SUV. Taryn had exchanged her designer suit for designer jeans and a silk shirt. She walked over.

“Angel says we can take six crates by using the third-row seats,” she said. “Kenny’s coming, too. He drives a big Mercedes, so put him down for four. Larissa and Jack will take three, but she’s probably already told you that.”

“She has,” Dellina said, noting the information, then waiting breathlessly for a report on how Sam would be helping.

What Taryn said instead was, “We can’t believe how you’re all jumping in to help her with one of her crazy projects. We’re all used to it, but this is new for the town.”

Dellina drew her eyebrows together. “Why wouldn’t we help? We have pets in need. Of course we’ll be there.”

Taryn stunned her by pulling her into a hug. “I love this town so much,” she said as she hung on. “It’s magical.”

Dellina hugged her back. “We have our issues, but usually it’s not being afraid to do the right thing. And I wouldn’t get too excited about it. Once we rescue these sixty cats, we have to find homes for them.”

Taryn shuddered slightly. “You mean like take a cat? Don’t they shed?”

Angel came up and put his arm around her. “That’s my girl. Thinking with her closet.”

“I wear a lot of suede. Do you know what cat hair would do to that?”

Larissa came up and grinned. “There are hairless cats. Maybe we’ll find one of those.”