A Purrfect Romance Read Free Page B

way of culinary progress, but I just have to hear all about it. Forty minutes. No more. I promise.”
    “Well, okay. As long as we make it really quick. Just give me a half hour to shower and dress. And feed the cats.”
    “Half an hour, at the deli on Lexington and Sixty-Fifth. I can’t wait,” Marge repeated. Her enthusiasm bubbled right through the phone. “Oh, Bridey, I can’t get over how lucky you are!”
    “I know. I’m the luckiest girl in New York.”
    She hung up. In the silence, she let those words resonate in her head.
    The luckiest girl in New York.
    She blinked a couple of times, stretched once—lazily—and smiled into the sunlight that streamed through the windows. Then, as though taking her energy from the brilliance of the day, she threw back the covers and sprang out of bed.
    Silk and Satin were waiting for her outside the bedroom door, sniffing at her toes as she emerged and mewing hungrily around her bare feet, ready for their breakfast. They followed her impatiently through Henrietta’s sitting room and down the hall to a room off the kitchen that had formerly been the servants’ eating quarters but was now devoted entirely to the cats’ care and comfort. Their bowls were on the floor, along with their beds—pink for Silk and blue for Satin, to match their embroidered collars. While they rubbed their heads against her ankles, Bridey washed out the bowls, dried them with a paper towel, and refilled them with fresh water and the special dry cat food that was custom mixed just for them and stored in a large wooden bin. Their litter boxes were in a small bathroom off the cats’ dining room, and Bridey quickly cleaned them. These were her sole chores.
    “Okay, you guys,” she said. “You’re on your own now.”
    She left them to their breakfast and went to the sumptuous bathroom, all marble and mirrors, where she quickly showered and dressed in jeans, T-shirt, and flip-flops. She went through the apartment to the cloakroom just off the parquet-floored, mirror-paneled foyer. Her denim jacket, her lightweight raincoat and her one good topcoat looked lonely hanging on one of the two long, empty rods on which hundreds of hangers waited for the masses of visitors who no longer came. She grabbed the jacket in one hand in case the day turned chilly, slung her large tote bag over her shoulder, and headed for the door.
    “Be good, you two,” she called to Silk and Satin as she left. “I’ll bring you back a fish.”
    No empty promise. Later, as soon as she got organized, she’d be starting on her chapter entitled, Fish: Fast and Mostly Fat-Free , and her mind was already at work, mentally choosing and rejecting. Reluctantly, she’d have to omit one of her personal favorites, a Russian coulibiac .
    Even if I Americanized it , she was thinking, and substituted salmon for the eel, it’s still too complicated for my purposes. All those layers of fish and rice and mushrooms and sliced egg and bean thread, wrapped up in blinchiki and pastry dough. Too elaborate for this book—but I’ll definitely use it in the next one. She made a mental note to include coulibiac in her next book, which was already in the planning stage. It would be titled, The Guy Thing: For Men Only , and it would be a collection of recipes for the man who needs to have one specialty dish, some elaborate concoction, his very own signature dish to dazzle a date with.
    She opened the door, and her thoughts were instantly scattered.
    A large black dog of the retriever persuasion, trailing his leash, filled much of the hall and began instantly to sniff inquisitively at her.
    The dog’s owner, at the door to 12B, paused as the lock responded to his key, and he turned to glare at Bridey. She caught a glimpse of wavy black hair, fierce black eyes, and a very correct dark business suit under a lightweight raincoat. That, and a distinctly military bearing.
    “Scout! Come!”
    The man spoke sharply—angrily, in fact—and the dog