Presents for Kitten

By Jessi Hammond

Kitten will never grow up. Seriously injured in a car crash when he was three, he is literally a six-year-old in a seventeen-year-old body.

Casey has lived with him and his grandfather, Dave, for the last six years, after Dave rescued her from her broken home in the city.

Dave and Kitten are the family Casey never had.

Now her family is in danger, and Casey's the only one who's worked it out – and the only one who can save them…

A thrilling Christmas suspense story about the power of love and family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kincaid Publishing
• Release date: Dec 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215016947

Book preview

About this book

Kitten will never grow up. Seriously injured in a car crash when he was three, he is literally a six-year-old in a seventeen-year-old body.

Casey has lived with him and his grandfather, Dave, for the last six years, after Dave rescued her from her broken home in the city.

Dave and Kitten are the family Casey never had.

Now her family is in danger, and Casey’s the only one who’s worked it out – and the only one who can save them…

A thrilling Christmas suspense story about the power of love and family.

Presents for Kitten

One

Casey parked her little green Corolla outside Dave’s place and got out, pulling in a deep breath before she closed the door. The tang of fresh, salty air hit her lungs, so different to the stale, warm Brisbane smog. Here the air was alive, dancing above the waves, tossing little eddies of sand around on the beach that began twenty metres from Dave’s back door. The wash of the waves blended into the brisk wind off the sea, tossing Casey’s long ponytail over her shoulder.

Homesickness pulled at her heart, just like it always did when she came back to visit during university holidays, loosening muscles tight from navigating the crowds and bustle of the big city. Angel Bay was home to her, Dave’s house the only place that had been safe during a childhood she wished she could forget.

When she was younger, the city was all she knew. And for a time when she was eleven, when she’d been chased out of the house by her mother’s new boyfriend, the streets had been home, a group of street kids her family, until the cops caught up with her. Three times they caught her, three times Child Protective Services sent her back to Mum’s place.

The fourth time she’d finally remembered Dave, remembered him giving her his number at Dad’s funeral, telling her to ring if she needed help.

Dave wasn’t family, but he was as close as. Mum and Dad had divorced when Casey was two, and Dad used to bring her up here for school holidays and Christmas every year. He’d book the same little holiday house, just two houses away from Dave’s, and they’d spend their days doing pretty much whatever Casey wanted to.

Which, when she was little, was playing on the beach and making sandcastles. As she’d grown, Dad introduced her to hiking, to turtle-watching, to koala-watching. She’d learned to swim here, found a life-long friend in Kitten, who was two years younger than she was and would never grow up, and a just-for-holidays grandfather in Dave.

Miracle of miracles, she’d kept Dave’s number.

And Dave had come through