Final Score

As he prepared to do battle with the tub, he heard what sounded like a baby crying.

He paused, thinking the noise had been awfully close, almost as if there was a baby inside the house. He stopped, listened carefully and heard the sad, plaintive cry again.

Dylan had been a firefighter too long to ignore any sound of distress. He jogged quickly through the house but no one was there.

Outside he ran. No one in the front. Around to the back. He heard the sound again. Louder now, and coming from above him.

Shading his eyes with his hand, he looked up. The tree was an old one, gnarled and solid, the cedar standing probably fifty feet tall. And halfway up a kitten was crying its heart out.

“Oh, no,” he said to himself. To the kitten he tried the positive approach. “Come on, kitty. You got up there. You can come down.”

The reply was an even more pathetic howl of distress.

He glanced around as though a neighbor might be outside, maybe with a ladder. But on a sunny Monday afternoon, Dylan seemed to be the only one around.

He tried calling to the cat again. No dice.

Then he ran into Cassie’s kitchen and found a can of tuna in her cupboards. He dug through her kitchen drawer and pulled out a can opener. Took a nice chunk of tuna on a saucer out to the cat to try and lure it out of the tree.

The cat only sounded more woebegone than ever.

At this point, Dylan had to accept the kitten was stuck in that tree.

Glad none of his colleagues or friends was around to laugh at him for being such a cliché, he put the tuna on the ground, rubbed his hands on his filthy jeans and pulled himself up to the first branch of the tree.

He’d been climbing trees as long as he’d been walking. The first time he’d fallen out of one his mother had claimed he must have nine lives. Lately she’d been warning him that he’d used most of them up.

It was sort of fun to climb a tree at the age of thirty-five. And it was giving a good stretch to the muscles that had been bent over doing grunt work at the house.

When he drew closer, he saw that the cat was very young. And very scared.

“You’re not going to scratch my eyes out, are you?” he asked when his face was level with the cat’s. In answer, the animal butted its small head against his hand.

He chuckled. “Okay, then.” He took a moment to scratch the kitten behind the ears until he heard it start to purr. Then, very gently, he scooped the small, warm body into one hand and lifted it toward his shoulder. A glimpse at the back end told him the animal was most likely a female. The cat caught right on and crawled up so she was hanging over his shoulder, digging in tight.

Dylan winced as tiny, sharp claws grabbed him through his thin T-shirt, but at least he had his hands free and the animal seemed to recognize that he was trying to save her.

“Going down,” he said, as though he were an elevator operator.

He shimmied down the tree, talking softly to the cat the whole way. He swung down from the lowest branch. “Hang on tight, now,” he said to his companion, and dropped down to the grass, one hand hanging onto his burden.

As he turned, he discovered he was no longer alone.

Cassie was standing in the backyard, staring at him. Obviously home early from work. And she’d brought her friend, Adam’s fiancée, Serena, with her.

“What on earth?” Cassie blinked at him.

He felt suddenly like a kid caught playing hooky. Instead of working on her house, she’d caught him climbing trees. He could feel bits of leaves in his hair, his clothes were even more filthy than they’d been earlier and he had a kitten hanging over his shoulder, claws so far into him he didn’t think she was ever letting go.

He decided to work on the most important thing first—getting the kitten disengaged from his flesh. With as much dignity as he could muster, he said to Cassie, “Could you pass me that tuna?”

The two women exchanged a glance that had a lot of suppressed humor in it, and he strongly suspected there was a certain gender mocking going on. Not that he could prove it, since neither of them said anything. Cassie picked up the saucer with the chunk of tuna on it and passed it over.

“Thank you.” He turned his back so the kitten’s head would face her. “Maybe you could try feeding the cat so she gets her claws out of my skin.”

“Ouch,” she said.

Then he heard her speak softly to the kitten. “It’s okay. I’ve got some yummy tuna for you, but you have to let go of Dylan first.” It was the sort of voice a mom would use with a toddler, but it worked fine. Or the smell of tuna did. He felt the claws release and then the small, warm body was lifted from his shoulder. When he turned around, the cat was already on the ground, happily chowing down.

He rubbed his chest with his knuckles and frowned at his new boss, who was looking distractingly hot in a skirt and heels that showed off shapely legs. “Don’t you know cats need time to get used to a new home? You can’t just let them out and leave them.”

Her eyes widened in surprise and he figured she’d made the dumb mistake of thinking that because she’d moved the cat she would settle right in. Big mistake. She was lucky the feline hadn’t hiked back to wherever she’d lived before.

“Your cat doesn’t even have a collar. What if she had wandered? Could have got lost.” The cat looked up from its empty plate then and meowed, as though in full agreement.

Cassie knelt down and patted the kitten’s head. She was obviously fond of her housemate.

Which made him continue, “I’m surprised you wouldn’t be a better pet owner, seeing as you work at the aquarium.”

She looked up at him, which made her eyes seem big. “I would if I owned a pet. But I don’t.”

He began to feel incredibly foolish. “You mean—”

“This isn’t my cat.”

He found two pairs of large eyes regarding him. “I, ah, I’m going to rip that tub out of the bathroom now,” he said, backing away.

* * *

AFTER DYLAN DISAPPEARED into the house, Cassie rose with the kitten in her arms. She looked at Serena and they both stifled giggles. Serena said, “Did we just witness a fireman rescuing a kitten from a tree?”

“Yep. And he looked awfully good doing it.”

“He looks good doing just about anything,” Serena agreed. “Too bad he can’t grow up.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did I tell you about Last Bachelor Standing?”

“I don’t think so. I’d have remembered.”

Serena shook her head. “Well, when the three boys—and I do mean boys—Adam, Dylan and Max, were all celebrating Adam’s thirty-fifth birthday back in February, every one of them was still single. They challenged each other to one of their stupid contests. They’ve known each other forever and have this strange compulsion to set up bets. This one was who would be the last bachelor standing.”

“You’ve got to be joking.”

Serena shook her head once more.

“Obviously, Adam didn’t win,” Cassie said, pointing to Serena’s engagement ring.