“Depends on what we’re going to talk about. If it’s you fucking around behind Edie’s back, I’m all ears.”
Bianca stared at him, hard. For a moment, the sweet, helpless facade pulled away and he got the distinct impression that she was pissed at him. Then she recovered, and gave her nose another touch with the tissue. “I’m not really sure what you want me to say to that—”
“The truth would be nice.”
“The truth is I didn’t do anything!” Bianca swiped at her eyes again, even though they didn’t seem all that wet to him. “It’s all a horrible misunderstanding.”
“Is it?”
“Yes! If Edie would just talk to me—”
“Did you sleep with Edie’s then-boyfriend?”
Again, the lash-fluttering blink. “That’s not—”
“Not what? Not the truth?”
Her lower lip stuck out. “Magnus, you’re judging me without hearing my part of the story.”
He made a grand gesture, then ruined it by sneezing. “Please,” he said, nose stuffed. “Tell me your part of the story and I’ll compare it with the truth.”
Her mouth opened, then shut again. “That’s not fair.”
“You know what’s not fair? Dragging me into your stupid little games and then fucking up the good thing I had with Edie. That’s what isn’t fair.”
“She won’t talk to me,” Bianca started again, and this time the tears seemed genuine. “She doesn’t want to speak to me at all.”
“Can you blame her? She trusted you. She trusted me, too, and look where it got her. A whole fuckton of betrayal.” He was so fucking pissed at Bianca. If he’d known the truth about what she was like, he’d have never agreed to deceive Edie. Never. “And as for people she wants to talk to, I’m not exactly high on that list, either. So you’re going to have to keep looking.”
She gave a fragile little tilt of her head, then sighed. “I’m just trying to bounce ideas off of you.”
Her words reminded him that he needed someone for that very thing, too. “I need help, too. You got a moment?”
Bianca licked her lips and her lashes fluttered. She leaned in, giving him a shot of her cleavage in the camera. “Of course I do. You can trust me.”
He’d sooner trust a fucking tarantula. “I need a big gesture.”
“Gesture like how?” She gave him one of those tiny, coy smiles. “You have big hands. Any gesture you do will be a big one.”
That fucking bitch. Was she flirting with him? Did she think that he was led by his dick like Levi was? “I mean when it comes to Edie. I need a big gesture to prove to her that I’m in love with her.”
“Oh, I’m not sure—”
He turned down the volume on her as she continued speaking and stared at her face for a moment, brainstorming. Then he went on. “Just buying her something won’t really prove to her that I care. Buying something is too easy for a guy like me. So it has to have meaning, and it has to have meaning to someone like Edie.” He rubbed his chin, thinking. “She loves her cats. She loves all cats. I’d love to do something that involved cats on a big scale that would show that I mean what I say, that I understand who she is and I love her. So it has to be big.” He leaned back in his chair and thought for a moment, as Bianca kept silently talking, a puzzled look on her face in the camera. “Finding homes for all of the old elderly cats at shelters was my initial thought, but I keep getting hung up on how to find them homes. It’s almost like I’d need to build another shelter, but getting people to come to it is the problem. I’m just the computer geek . . .” He paused, thoughts spiraling through his head.
An app. He could build an app of some kind that would advertise cats to be adopted. But how to draw people in? Make it a game, of course. “Of course,” he murmured aloud. “A crazy-cat-lady game. Draw in the user, then send them to the location that you want. If they’re anything like me, once they meet the cats, they’ll fall in love.”
And then he had it.
Magnus snapped his fingers. “Thanks for the help, Bianca.” He clicked off the Skype and switched windows, sending a message to an old programmer buddy that was a whiz with creating apps on the fly.
Project: Romancing His Cat Lady was underway.
***
Three weeks later
Edie flipped over a couch cushion, upsetting a lounging cat. Sneezy meowed at her, gave her an indignant look, and then hobbled away to the bed. She finished turning over the couch, then dug through the laundry basket full of dirty clothing. After that, she checked the nightstands, under the bed, and in the bathroom that Gretchen had designated as “hers” until she moved out.
No phone. Where was it?
Edie had been reading a book in her room, curled up with her cats, when she realized that the day had been awfully quiet, and she felt rather . . . down. Today was the first day that her phone hadn’t rung off the hook with calls and texts from Magnus, and she was feeling a little neglected.
Okay, a lot. Didn’t the man care that she was hurting? Or had he just given up because it was too hard to win Edie back?
And why did the thought of that hurt even more?
Of course, once the thought was in her head, she couldn’t let it go. Her book no longer held interest, and the cats lounging on her lap made her twitch instead of relax. So she’d reached for the normal place that she kept her phone . . . only to find it missing.
That had started the grand phone hunt.