The Wells Brothers: Luke by Angela Verdenius Page B

swear as tiny claws raked across his hand.
    “Don’t let her go!”  Elspeth
grabbed the box.  “Luke, hold on!”
    Hoy hell on a hot day, his hands
were being ripped to shreds!  Luke found himself trying to hold a squirming,
wildly fighting kitten as she bit and clawed at him.
    “Don’t let her go!” Mikki
frantically tried to get a grip on the kitten as well.  “Don’t you dare let her
go!”
    Like that was going to happen when
those claws were caught in his t-shirt, tiny pin pricks poking through to his
abdomen followed by scratches as the kitten tried to get a foothold on his
chest.
    “Jesus!” he yelled.  “Someone do
something !”
    “Here!”  Elspeth’s hand caught the
kitten’s scruff, pulled upwards and the kitten went limp for a few seconds.  It
was all she needed to pull it free and drop it into the box she held in her
other hand, quickly closing the lid and holding it shut.
    Panting, they all stood in a semi
circle.  Luke’s hands were bleeding, his abdomen felt like it was scoured to
hell and back, Mikki’s impressive bosom was heaving and several curls had escaped
her braid to bob around her flushed cheeks.
    “Wonderful!”  Elspeth beamed.  “We
got her!”
    The box was jiggling around in her
hand as the kitten inside went ape-shit.
    “It’s frightened, poor thing,”
Mikki said.
    “We need to get her to a vet.” 
Elspeth’s gaze fell on Luke’s hands.  “Oh, Luke, you poor thing!”
    Following her horrified gaze,
Mikki’s eyes widened.  “Oh no.”  Reaching out, she laid her palms under his,
holding his hands up so she could see better.
    It was a surprisingly gentle hold,
her palms warm and dry against his.
    Didn’t make up for the stinging of
the scratches, though.
    “Here.”  Elspeth made to hand Mikki
the box.  “You hold this and I’ll get us fast to the hospital.”
    That brought him out of his stunned
daze at the sudden, totally unexpected happenings.  No freaking way was he
going to let this mad woman drive.  Never mind the hospital, they could take
him straight to the morgue because if he had to rely on her driving once more
he’d stroke out, never mind bleeding out from the scratches and a couple of
bites.
    Time to take control of this
disaster.  “Elspeth, you sit in back with the kitten, seeing as you have such a
secure hold on it.”  Luke strode around the front of the SUV.
    “You shouldn’t drive with your
hands like that,” she fretted.
    “Mikki, get in the front.  We’re
going.”
    “I really don’t think he should
drive,” Elspeth confided to Mikki as she got into the backseat and pulled on
the seatbelt before taking the box from her niece and settling it on her lap.
    Getting into the driver’s seat,
Luke glared at Mikki.  “In.  Now.”
    The kitten chose that moment to
have another anxiety attack, sending the box jiggling once more and taking
Elspeth’s attention as it meowed and clawed at the inside of the box.
    Mikki shot Luke a wary glance.
    He stabbed a bleeding finger at
her then at the passenger seat.  If that redhead dared to argue after what she
and her madcap aunt had put him through again-
    Before the thought could finish,
she quickly shut the back door, scrambled into the passenger seat and buckled
up.
    Taking a deep breath, he reached
for the automatic stick shift.
    “Um…maybe you should dab off some
of that blood?” Mikki suggested.
    Clenching his jaw, he put the car
in ‘drive’ and after carefully checking the road behind him - unlike some
certain eccentric widows - he pulled out into the lane.
    “Or not,” Mikki muttered.
    He couldn’t trust himself to look
at her.  He couldn’t believe it, he just couldn’t.  First he was kneed in the
balls, then his skin was practically raked off his hands and his belly, well
hell, he was probably half disembowelled by that furry clawed fiend in the
box.  What the hell had he done to deserve all this?
    “Can you imagine?” Elspeth was
completely oblivious