Stray for You (Rainbow Rescue Cat Café #3)

Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Cameron

I STROKE TUX’S SLEEK black fur, which is nearly a match for my own hair. His back rises, his tail going up as he paces along the counter of the coffee bar. He dances back and forth before me, demanding extra pets.

I’m fine providing them. There’s nothing else to do right now. Rainbow Rescue Cat Café lies quiet around me. One patron sips a coffee while typing on her laptop. Most of the cats are sleeping somewhere around the café, a few lounging in the window seats bathed in mid-day sunlight and others hanging off the big cat tree that dominates the center of the café. My single patron hasn’t needed me since she got her drink. There isn’t even a yoga class going on on the other side of the café. It’s the peak of the lull, and I am happy to entertain Tux, and myself, during it.

He flops onto the counter, not caring about the hair he gets everywhere, and presents his soft white belly to me, the very same belly that earned him his name. He’s all black except for this strip of belly fur, making him look like a little man in a fancy tuxedo.

“Mom would love you,” I murmur at him as he rumbles.

We always said we’d get a pet after we moved out here and settled in, but “settling in” has taken longer than either of us assumed. We came here after I graduated from university. At first, we lived together, but it quickly got awkward for a man in his early twenties to be living with his mother. She moved in with Aunt Mary, and I found a little one-bedroom apartment in the same town. We’re still close together, and I still see her at least once a week for dinner, but I have my own space.

Not that I make much use of it. When I’m not at the café I’m usually at practice or a show with my band. My opportunities for dating are limited to people who watched me on stage and inexplicably want to buy me a drink. I won’t say it never happens, but I also wouldn’t call it dating. It gets the job done. Let’s leave it at that.

Things are settling down now, however, so maybe it’s a good time to bring up the pet thing. A cat like Tux could live with mom and Aunt Mary, or with me. Of course, if we got a cat, it wouldn’t be Tux. He’s far too friendly and sweet. Someone is going to adopt him away from the café before I can scoop him up.

I’ll enjoy his company for now, while I’m bored as hell at the café during a lull. I pet him with one hand and tap at my phone with the other, pulling up the notes tab where I started jotting down song lyrics recently. I don’t write many of our band’s songs. Erin, the lead singer, mostly takes care of that, but it’s been a while since we’ve had any new material, and I got struck with sudden inspiration the other day.

I met you at the…

No, that doesn’t sound right. It’s not very romantic to meet someone at the deli and fall for them. It needs to be bigger, better.

I met you in my dreams.

Gag. That’s the lyric to half a dozen songs, and I can’t stand any of them. Sure, I’m dialing up the emotions for the sake of building a fantasy, but it doesn’t have to go so far it makes me want to vomit.

I sigh. I don’t know what possessed me to start writing a love song, but since my initial burst of inspiration, I’ve made almost zero progress on it. Maybe I was wrong to follow the muse this time. This kind of stuff isn’t for me. I’ve never been a romantic guy. The couple times I’ve dated, it was nice and all, but I never believed I was going to be with the guy forever.

If fate is kind, she’ll bring us back together.

That sounds like the kind of line I’d hear in a movie, but I don’t hate it as much as I should. Maybe there’s something there.

I’m still fussing with it when the doors of the café open. (Two doors separate us from an entry hall. It means that if a cat slips out of one door, we can catch them when they reach the second, still closed, door. None of them have outsmarted the system yet.)

I look up, pasting on a smile on reflex…

And instantly harden it into a scowl.

“What are you doing here?” I say before I can stop myself.

“Is that any way to greet a paying customer?”

The man who strides into the café is tall and blond, with dazzling blue eyes and a smile nearly as bright. He’s trim and handsome in a perfectly tailored suit and shiny black shoes. His face is clean-shaven. He sweeps the café with a glance, and though his smile doesn’t so much as flicker, I can feel him judging it as beneath him.

This time, I have to speak between clenched teeth. “Julian, what the hell are you doing here?”

Julian God damn Brooks steps toward the coffee bar like a shade stepping out of my nightmares and into my life.

“Can a guy want a coffee?” he says.

“No. Not you. Not here.”

“I heard this place was great,” he says. “And the atmosphere can’t be beat.”

He strokes Tux, who, infuriatingly enough, soaks up the attention and purrs even louder.

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” I say. “You live on the East Coast. I was never supposed to see you again.”

Julian puts a hand to his chest in mock affront. “Is that any way to greet your long lost brother?”

“You are not my—”

“Details,” Julian says, batting aside my usual refrain with a casual wave. “Our moms aren’t dating, but family is forever, Cam.”

Cam. No one but him calls me that. I never liked it, always insisted on people using my full name. Not that he has ever heeded a single complaint or request I’ve made in all of our long, unfortunate acquaintance.

“We were never family,” I say. “We never will be family. Even if our moms actually got married, I would never be your family.”

“So hostile. I’m trying to be friendly, you know.”

“What are you doing here? How did you know I’d be here?”

Julian’s smile curls in a way I recognize all too well, even after all these years. “How do you know I’m here for you? Maybe I’m visiting Henry.”

Henry. Fuck. Of course it was Henry. Henry, who loves everyone, who never met a stranger who didn’t become a friend, who couldn’t hate someone even with a knife to his throat. Did Julian use Henry to find me? That’s absurd, and yet I wouldn’t put it past this guy. Since we met in high school, his favorite hobby, at least to my eyes, has been tormenting me. Whether it was calling me his brother or bothering me during class or, apparently, chasing me all the way across the country, Julian Brooks has never let up.

“Do not get Henry involved in this,” I say. “Besides, he isn’t even here. And if you’ve been talking to him, you had to know that.”

Julian shrugs, unconcerned. “He’ll be here soon enough. Why shouldn’t I arrive a little early to greet my favorite big brother?”

“I’m not—”

“You’re making it sound like I coerced Henry into something nefarious, but I assure you that’s not the case. I’ve kept in touch with him, which you’d know if you’d just asked him about it — or answered any of my texts.”

“You haven’t messaged me in years.”

“I didn’t want to bother you.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” I snarl.

Julian acts like he doesn’t hear me, even though we’re leaning over the coffee bar toward each other. I straighten up when I notice myself doing it. The last thing I need is to get closer to Julian than absolutely necessary.

“Anyway, I’ll take…” Julian says, “oh, how about your black cat mocha, to match this little guy?”

He pets Tux some more, even bending his head down so Tux can butt against him. It would almost be cute if I didn’t despise this man down to my bones. He never did anything but make my — and my mother’s — life harder. It’s one thing to bother me, but you don’t mess with my mom and get away with it. After Dad left us, things were hard, and the way Julian acted while our moms dated didn’t help. It made everything awkward. I could see it in my mom’s eyes. She tried to smooth it over, but I couldn’t set my anger aside. All my mom wanted was a little bit of happiness after Dad shattered her life, and Julian couldn’t let her have it.

I’ve never forgiven him for that.

And I’m definitely not letting him hurt her ever again.

I make his coffee. I have no choice in the matter. A paying customer is a paying customer. But I’d be lying if I said I don’t think about spitting in the drink in the brief moment when my back is to Julian. I don’t, mostly for fear that he’d somehow turn that into innuendo and I’d commit a first-degree murder here in the shop.

Julian pays and takes his drink. He lingers at the counter and sips it right in front of me, moaning way more than any coffee deserves.

“You have gotten really good at this,” he says. “I’ll have to come here every day during my trip. It’s a bit of a hike from Seattle, but it’s worth it for this top tier service.”

“What trip? What are you talking about?” Do I sound frantic? I feel frantic.

“I’m here on business. I didn’t put on a suit to impress you, you know. There’s a sales conference downtown. Lots of vapid smiles on beautiful faces. Lots of tech guys. But we do get a break for lunch in the afternoon. Maybe I’ll spend it up here.”

“Don’t even think about it. Tripp Lake is not worth that drive.”

“It is when the company is paying for my rental car and gas,” Julian says. “Besides, how many more chances am I going to get to see you?”

“Hopefully none,” I say.

For half a second, something like actual hurt flashes across his face. It’s there and gone so quickly that I doubt I even saw it. Why would Julian care? I’ve never liked him. He knows I’ve never liked him. We’ve always been like this, bickering incessantly. It’s not like he actually cares about me, otherwise he would have treated me and Mom better when he had the chance.

He opens his mouth, presumably to say something shitty and snarky, but then the café doors open again. Henry barrels in, his smile as bright as Julian’s, except in that Henry’s is genuine and warm and Julian’s is the smile of a snake. Julian leaves his coffee forgotten on the bar in order to hug Henry, and I use the distraction to slip away. Technically, I’m on the clock and Henry’s shift doesn’t start for a few more minutes, but if I don’t leave now this is going to turn into a crime scene.

“I’ll see you soon, Cam,” Julian calls after me in a sing-song.

I don’t know what that means. Perhaps he really will come here every day. But the twist in my stomach suggests some more nefarious implications, implications I don’t want to think about right now.

If I have to see Julian Brooks again, I’m not sure what I’ll do, but it won’t be good.