Cat and Mouse

By AJ Chase

For Katherine Stapleton, being a shape-shifter isn't nearly as glamorous as the novels and movies make it out to be. It isn't all raw, animalistic sex and superhuman physical prowess. There's also the hairballs.

Kitty has spent her entire life being a less-than-perfect were-cat. She can't control her animal changes, so she decides to excel at matters human. After a decade of worldly successes, she's back home for her ten-year high school reunion. Yet, she feels just as insignificant as she did back in school--except with Sam Philmore, a fellow D.C. lawyer and past classmate. And her former secret crush. In just three days Kitty gets the bad memories, the good times, the bitter truth, and a mouthful of one very sexy man who just happens to be a mouse sometimes...

• Language: English
• Publisher: AJ Chase
• Release date: Jul 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476316321

AJ Chase

AJ Chase lives in the desert southwest with her husband, who is good at everything but she loves him anyway, and three children who are amazingly smart and evil for things so little and cute. She divides her time between making mac and cheese before digging ground Pop-Tart out of the carpet, and writing romantic comedies and romantic suspense. Under another name she also writes series mysteries. She has a weakness for things that make her laugh and dead bodies. Not necessarily together.

Book preview

Cat

And

Mouse

By

AJ Chase

Copyright

2008

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All Rights Reserved

Chapter 1

The only thing worse than being outright tortured is going to a class reunion. Go ahead. Try and tell me it isn’t true. It had been ten years since I’d graduated from West Collingwood High School in West Collingwood, Nevada. You know, the little town where you stop for gas on your way into Vegas?

I’d graduated, gone to college, gone to more college, and become a virtual goddess in my field. Yet, here stood I, derailed at the mere word reunion, shoving myself into a dress that defied the imagination while my sister Gretchen watched on.

I’d wanted to stay in a hotel. The only way a situation like this—forced intimacy with people about whom I still had mixed feelings—could be made worse was by throwing in my family. But, of course, as soon as they heard I was coming to town there was no dissuading them. I would be spending three days in the warm bosom of my family.

Honestly Kitty, didn’t they have one size bigger? Gretchen sat on my old bed, thumbing through a fashion magazine and eating corn chips.

It’s supposed to be tight, and do you have a mission to personally destroy what’s left of my self-confidence before I wander into a potentially horrible situation?

Gretchen shrugged. I don’t have to. I just want to.

My sister takes after my mother’s side of the family. She’s a sleek, rude Siamese. I take after my father. A mongrel orange tabby who always needs a trim. I suppose you probably think I’m being literary here and using creative analogies, comparing cats to people’s personalities. Sadly I’m not. I’m being literal not literary.

See, I’m a cat.

No, not all the time. Just a couple of nights a week when I need to shake the stress off. Okay, fine. I can’t control it, all right. Gretchen can. She changes at will for any reason that catches her fancy.

You know, being a shape-shifter isn’t nearly as glamorous as the novels and movies make it out to be. It isn’t all raw, animalistic sex and superhuman physical prowess. There’s also the hairballs.

In fact, little of it plays out the way it does in the movies. For one, there are hardly any were-wolves. The majority of those guys got taken out years ago, and believe me it doesn’t require a silver bullet. For the most part what you’ve got left are shifters like me. I’ve known were-lizards, three were-mice, and I went to college with a were-otter. After he changed all he did was lie on his back and do cute little things with his hands.

It’s so not a glamorous life.

And whenever I came back to this childhood bedroom I never felt anything but the suffocating disapproval of my mother for not being a very good cat. I don’t actually care for mice. I don’t like being a cat. And my kind takes it into the bedroom in cat form, if you know what I mean.

God save me. Never in a million years.

I’d rather be single forever, which my mother thinks is my inevitable fate. I don’t think my father cares. About now, he’s probably wishing his life span ran as short as most cats. After all, he married my mother and dogs aren’t the only animal race with bitches.

I smoothed down the front of my black, vintage evening dress. Form fitting and sleek, with a black belt and an A-line skirt, I loved it, and it made me feel confident. Well, it had before Gretchen had come along anyway.

I’ve gotta go. See you later, I shouted behind me on my way out the door.

Gretchen waved indifferently. Try not to make too big a fool of yourself.

What a sister.

Outside, the night seemed almost poignantly beautiful. The kind where my people could enjoy sitting on fences and meowing loudly. Just getting close to dark, the temperature was amazingly comfortable for May. Our first class activity would be a dinner in Vegas at a theme hotel in the middle of a giant synthetic waterfall.

Since I’d flown in from D.C. and the rental place had been cleaned out save for gas-guzzling SUV’s, I was relegated to driving Gretchen’s low-slung, ridiculous convertible. Gretchen had gotten it from her would-be mate Lucian, our pride’s alpha. She liked putting him off and occasionally making him fight other toms for her. But we all knew in the end she would marry him.

I had agreed to meet my best friend from high school, Jeanette, in front of the hotel. A regular old human, Jeanette had always been another thorn in my parents’ side.

Jeanette and her husband Joe were already there waiting for me when I gave my keys to the acne-scarred teenage attendant. As seemed to be her way, Jeanette was about nineteen months pregnant. Joe stood beside her, looking adorably awkward in a black suit, which had obviously not been tailored.

She grabbed my hands. Oh, Kitty, I’m so excited you’re here. We left the kids with my mother. Jeanette glanced at the convertible. Wow, that’s some car. Environmental lawyers must do all right for themselves. Joe moved around his wife