Downhome Darlin' & The Best Man Switch by Victoria Pade Page B

can’t stay here while I’m gone. Sorry.”
    It was seven-fifteen that evening, and he was just about ready to leave to pick up Abby to watch the sunset. He only needed to choose a shirt. And get rid of his houseguests.
    â€œCome on, you three little vixens. I’m not kiddin’ around. We’ve had a good time all afternoon, but that’s it for now.”
    He went into his walk-in closet and surveyed his options from among the shirts hanging there, wondering why it was so all-fired important to him to look good. He usually didn’t put much consideration into what he wore. Date or no date.
    But there was something special about this date. About this woman. Something that made him feel there was a higher standard to be met. A level of respectability he hadn’t dabbled in before.
    Strange to be feeling that way about a woman who’d gotten drunk in a bar and had to be taken home to his house because she couldn’t even tell him where she lived.
    But he didn’t doubt for a minute that had been a fluke for Abby Stanton.
    Nope. Watching her reaction to finding herself in his bed this morning, seeing her with her face scrubbed, talking to her, had only served to convince him that she was as wholesome as corn on the cob.
    And he’d bet everything he had that he wasn’t the kind of man who usually came calling on Miss Abby Stanton.
    He finally settled on a fire-engine-red Western-cut shirt. Maybe to warn her.
    â€œLady beware,” he muttered to himself as he slipped it on. “I’ve been around the block.”
    He was still standing in the closet, buttoning his shirt, when one of his houseguests attacked him from behind. She landed on his shoulder, lost her footing and tumbled forward. Quick reflexes allowed Cal to catch her, and the furry ball ended up hanging half inside, half outside his shirt.
    â€œCats are supposed to be surefooted,” he told the tiny tabby, holding her up to look her in the eye. “Now, where’re your sisters? You all are supposed to be barn cats, not house cats, remember?”
    He tucked her against his chest and held her there with one hand while he scanned the shelf from which she’d sprung. Wherever one of them was, the other two were likely not to be too far behind.
    Sure enough he spotted the other kittens—one perched atop the hatbox his newest Stetson had come in, and the other peeking at him from around the back of the box.
    â€œLook, girls, I know this has been home since your mama passed on givin’ birth to you and you think you can just take over in here. But my turn at playin’ mother cat is about up, and you three are old enough to stake out some territory of your own in the barn. Got that?” he lectured as he lifted down the peeking kitten and held her against his chest with the first one, then took the hatbox kitten down, too.
    While he cradled the first two in his left hand, he stared eye to eye with the hatbox kitten. “You’re the culprit, aren’t you?” he said to her. All three were nearly identical silver-gray in color. The two against his chest were hard to tell apart unless he turned them over to search for which of them had a white spot on her belly. But the hatbox kitten had one white ear. She was the mischief maker.
    â€œYou led the troops in here to hide, didn’t you?”
    The kitten licked his nose.
    â€œKisses are not gonna cut it, honey.”
    He stepped out of the closet and set all three cats on the bed while he finished buttoning his shirt and tucked it into his jeans.
    Good thing none of his brothers knew he was keeping kittens, he thought as he watched the trio rolling around on the mattress, playing with each other. There’d be no end of unmerciful razzing if any of the Ketchums got wind of it. Especially if they knew that most nights since he’d found the kittens trying to nuzzle up against their dead mother in his barn, it had been these