Belling the Kat and Other Stories

By JL Merrow

Office worker Kat didn't think the statuesque Belle was her type ... until she saw her friend rocking a slinky satin bridesmaid's dress. Now Kat can't get the gorgeous image out of her head, but dare she risk losing Belle's friendship by trying for something more?

To add to her woes, ever since a close encounter of the feline kind, Kat's had an embarrassing little problem that keeps recurring. Surely someone as beautiful as Belle won't fall for a woman who occasionally sprouts whiskers ... and a tail!

This mini-collection also includes three more super-quick reads featuring women loving women: contemporary romance "Little Bit of Ivory," Japanese fairy tale "Ice Maiden," and the haunting "Dance With Me."

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Nov 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781646562107

JL Merrow

JL MERROW is that rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea. She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where she learned many things, chief amongst which was that she never wanted to see the inside of a lab ever again. Her one regret is that she never mastered the ability of punting one-handed whilst holding a glass of champagne.She writes across genres, with a preference for contemporary gay romance and mysteries, and is frequently accused of humour. Her novel Slam! won the 2013 Rainbow Award for Best LGBT Romantic Comedy, and her novella Muscling Through and novel Relief Valve were both EPIC Awards finalists.JL Merrow is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, International Thriller Writers, Verulam Writers and the UK GLBTQ Fiction Meet organising team.Find JL Merrow online at: www.jlmerrow.com, on Twitter as @jlmerrow, and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/jl.merrow

Book preview

Me

Belling the Kat

You’re doing it again, Kat. A little frown crinkled Belle’s high, dark forehead and her lush lips twisted in a sympathetic grimace.

I twisted around from where I’d been sitting on the counter in the Ladies, swinging my legs, and peered in the mirror. Yep, Belle was right. It was happening again. I mouthed a couple of curses at my not-quite-as-pale-as-usual reflection, and set to with the breathing exercises.

Calm: that’s the key. Or at any rate, that’s Belle’s latest theory.

She’s a good mate, Belle is. Always ready to drop work and have a natter, and any time I pop round to visit her in the house she shares with some mates from uni, she always has a tin of tuna or two in the cupboard. Which is a much more important quality in a friend than most people think, I’ve found. We work together—well, not together, together, but for the same firm of accountants. She’s in audit; I’m in tax, handily on her way down to the Ladies, which is where we were just then. Well, if smokers can have a ten-minute fag break in the morning and again in the afternoon, I don’t see why the rest of us can’t have a ten-minute pee-and-a-chat break every now and then, do you?

Belle sighed as she patted my arm. You’re going to have to do something about that, babe. What if it happens at your desk? Or worse, in a meeting?

Aaannnnnndd OUT two three, I said aloud. You can’t actually do breathing exercises while speaking, but I was trying to make a point. You know, given that this seems to be stress-related, I don’t think coming up with worst-case scenarios is really helping, do you?

You think that’s a worst-case scenario? What if it happens in the middle of Amie’s wedding? Belle’s