Love Came Just in Time Read Free Page A

Murphy’s pond. Things floated by her, but she didn’t stick around to investigate. Pond scum was better left unexamined at close range. She swam to the bank and heaved herself out of the water. She rolled over onto her back and closed her eyes, content to be on terra firma, still breathing, still conscious.
    She had to get hold of herself. Life just wasn’t that bad. Lots of people had it worse. She could have had it worse. She could have married Brett and watched her closet space dwindle to nothing. She could have been fetching Mr. Schlessinger coffee until she was as personable as the cactus plants he kept on his windowsill. Life had given her the chance to start over. It would be very un-Garrett-like not to take the do-over and run like hell with it.
    She took a last deep breath. She needed to get up, find her car and go home. Maybe she’d stop at the Mini Mart and get a small snack. Something chocolate. Something very bad for her. Yes, that was the ticket. She sat up, pushed her hair out of her eyes and looked back over the pond, wondering just where she’d wound up.
    She froze.
    Then her jaw went slack.
    It seemed that the moon had come out. How nice. It illuminated the countryside quite well. She blinked. Then she rubbed her eyes.
    She wasn’t sitting on the bank of Murphy’s Pond. She was sitting on the bank of a moat.
    She looked to her left. What should have been the bridge over the narrow end of the pond, wasn’t. It looked like a drawbridge. She followed it across the water, then looked up. She blinked some more, but it didn’t help.
    All right, so maybe she had died and gone to hell. But she’d always assumed hell was very warm, what with all that fire and brimstone dotting the landscape. She definitely wasn’t warm and she definitely wasn’t looking at brimstone. She was looking at a castle.
    She groaned and flopped back onto the grass. Faint, damn it! she commanded herself.
    Shoot. It was that blasted Garrett constitution coming to the fore. Garretts never fainted. But did they lose their minds? Abby turned that thought over in her head for a few minutes. She didn’t know of anyone in the family having lost it. Lots of deaths of Garretts of grandparent vintage driving at unsafe speeds, skiing down unsafe hills, climbing up things better admired from a distance. But no incontinence, incapacity, or insanity.
    Meow.
    Abby sat up so fast, she saw stars. She put her hand to her head. Once the world had settled back down to normal rotation, she looked around frantically.
    â€œSir Sweetums?” Abby called.
    Meow, came the answer, to her left.
    Abby looked, then did a double take. “Sir Sweetums!” She jumped to her feet. “It’s you!”
    There, not twenty feet from her, sat her beloved Sir Maximillian Sweetums, staring at her with what could only be described as his dignified kitty look. He flicked his ears at her.
    Abby took a step forward, then froze. What did this mean? Surely Sir Sweetums hadn’t been packed off to hell. But she had the feeling he just couldn’t be alive. Did that mean she was dead, too?
    Without further ado, she pulled back and slapped herself smartly across the face.
    â€œYeouch!” she exclaimed, rubbing her cheek. Well, that answered a few questions. Though Sir Sweetums might have left his corporeal self behind, she certainly hadn’t.
    But, whatever his status, His Maximillianness was obviously in a hurry to be off somewhere. He gave her another meow, then hopped up on all fours, did a graceful leap to change his direction, and headed toward the drawbridge.
    â€œHey,” Abby said, “wait!”
    And Sir Sweetums, being himself, ignored her. That was the thing about cats; they had minds of their own.
    â€œSir Sweetums, wait!”
    The blasted cat was now on the drawbridge and heading straight for the castle.
    The castle?
    â€œI’ll deal with that later,” Abby promised