Page 42 of The Cajun Doctor

“What? No! Max is a guy.” Isn’t he?

“Boy, you studyin’ ta be a half-wit?”

Daniel leaned down to check, and, yep, a bunch of little nipples. Some kitty! And if pregnant, it was clearly not this cat’s first ball game.

“Max? More like Maxine,” Tante Lulu chuckled.

Samantha must have known when she gave him this gift that it would keep on giving. “I’ll kill her. I swear I will.”

Aaron was bent over, laughing.

“I got good news,” Tante Lulu announced, sinking down into a chair and cooling herself off with her Richard Simmons fan. Back and forth, Daniel was treated to the exercise nut’s smiling face. “I jist got off the phone with Aunt Mel.”

He and Aaron sat up straight, then said, “Uh-oh!” Since when did Tante Lulu know Aunt Mel, or know her well enough to call her “Aunt”?

“Aunt Mel is thinkin’ ’bout movin’ ta Loo-zee-anna.”

Well, that wasn’t so bad. He and Daniel had known Aunt Mel was lonely since their mother had died and they’d moved here. Oh, my God! It just occurred to Daniel that Aunt Mel was the person Tante Lulu was considering to run an animal rescue operation from their house.

“She and I are gonna be best buddies.”

Aaron choked on his beer.

“If she comes, she’ll bring her Barry Manilow collection. She’ll stay in the big house, of course.”

Daniel tried to keep a straight face as Aaron went bug-eyed with shock, his lifestyle not being conducive to a chaperone.

“You two are the first to know,” she announced, pausing as if hearing a drum roll in her head. “I’m thinkin’ ’bout turnin’ gay.”

Did the old bat even know what a homosexual was? “Gay as in happy, or gay as in . . . ?”

“Gay as in less-bean, idjit.”

Chapter Nine

Unexpected company . . .

When Samantha returned home that evening, it was barely five p.m., but the motion detector lights were on in the backyard. She pulled into the detached garage at the end of the yard, by the alley, and pulled out her cell phone with the 911 number at the ready.

She wasn’t really worried. One of the animals had probably tripped the sensor again. Even though she’d locked them inside, sometimes one of them banged against a window or glass door, which triggered the sensitive security system. Still, it was best to be safe. She picked up the metal bat she kept in the backseat.

If it was Nick, she’d enjoy whopping his lying, two-timing, greedy ass.

As for burglars, the sound of Axel barking like a maniac, as he was now, announcing her arrival, was enough to give any creep second thoughts. If that didn’t work, Clarence, her cockatoo, kept squawking “Holy shit!”

When she emerged carefully from the garage, it wasn’t her ex-husband or a trespasser she found, though. It was her stepbrother Angus. Well, stepbrother-by-marriage, actually, since Angus was the son of her father’s third wife, Darla, by a previous husband. No blood relative. Angus huddled against the building, in the shadows under the overhang, along with a pregnant, young woman sitting on the ground, leaning against him, legs extended. Her feet were bare. A pair of white sneakers sat on the ground beside her. They’d probably been pinching her, by the looks of her swollen feet and ankles.

Samantha hadn’t seen Angus in more than a year, and he wasn’t looking so good. Even in the shadows, she could see that he was very thin. His blond hair was disheveled, and he wore a rumpled T-shirt and dirty jeans with a pair of old Nikes. Angus had to be at least twenty-five by now, but he looked about fifteen with his boyish features. Growing up, people always said he looked like Opie on that old Andy Griffith show. He still did, somewhat. An older Opie.

They’d never been close, because of the age difference and the fact that they’d been raised in different homes. Plus, Angus had been a geek with a superiority complex, even from a young age, considering the rest of mankind subpar to his intellect. Which was probably true when it came to anything electronic. Angus had built his own computer when he was only ten years old, and he bought every techie toy on the market the minute they became available.

Despite his skinny, geeky appearance, Angus had a line of tiny gold rings up the side of both ears, along with an eyebrow piercing, something he’d started doing as a teenager, rebelling against his inner Opie. And his arms were still covered with those old tattoos that had practically given his mother a heart attack. Rebel without a cause, Samantha had always said.

“Jeez, Angus, you should have warned me you were coming. I could have hurt you.” She held the bat out for emphasis.

“Sorry, Sam. I didn’t know where else to go.” He held his side as he stood up and groaned. He must have been sitting for a long time. She noticed that he had a leather laptop bag over his shoulder, with an iPad and several other electronic devices peeking from a side flap. A cell phone was clipped to his belt. Some things never changed.

“What are you doing back here?”