"Naturally. You have to be highly qualified to work here," said Blair Baby.

Probably, so why was she using that sneering tone of voice?

"The biggest qualification is a heart," the other female retorted. "So you shouldn't bother applying."

"Do I look like I need to work here?" snapped Blair Baby.

"I have no idea what you need," said the voice sweetly, "but you might consider therapy."

"Ho, boy," said Zach under his breath.

Blair emitted the human equivalent of a growl, then announced she was going to go wash the cut before it became infected, and stomped away on her skinny legs, her haunches jiggling.

Zach said to the other female, "Sorry, Merilee. She's, uh..."

"Yes, she is," said the Merilee person. "Really, you can't blame your cat for being upset. Most cats don't like to travel. It unnerves them. You have to kind of ease cats into a situation like this. After all, this is a strange place. That can be scary."

A human who understood? What a treasure!

"I can see that," said Zach.

Yeah, finally.

"I guess the hat wasn't such a good idea, either," said Zach.

"Right up there with me telling your girlfriend what I thought of her. I'm sorry."

"She'll get over it," said Zach. "Blair's a sport."

Here was a new word for Ambrose to add to his vocabulary. Sport: horrible human female.

Merilee squatted down and looked into the carrier. He regarded her with an air of wounded dignity befitting someone unjustly incarcerated.

He could tell right away that this woman understood his plight. She had kind eyes. And ... wait a minute. Was it possible?

"I'm sorry you're scared, sweetie," she said.

He looked closer. Yes, this was indeed the volunteer from the animal shelter. They had met in another life. She'd tried to save him when his owners banished him to the nasty place for scaring that stupid canary to death. Sentenced simply for behaving like a cat-grossly unfair! Merilee had gotten him featured as a pet of the week in the Angel Falls Bugle, but all to no avail. "Someone will want you," she'd a.s.sured him.

No one had, though. Was it any wonder Ambrose had turned bitter in his later lives and taken to torturing unfortunate beagles? A guy couldn't trust anyone, not even Merilee, who had failed to save him from destruction.

She opened the door and Ambrose braced for betrayal. Now she would pull him out and feed him to the Santa monster.

Much to his surprise, however, she merely dropped a couple of kitty treats in his carrier and then shut it again, saying, "There you go. You just relax and enjoy those."

Relax? Here on the floor right in the middle of a store that allowed people to bring in dogs? Right.

But the door to his carrier remained shut and the cougar stayed gone. When no one was looking Ambrose moved forward and sampled the cat treats. Delicious.

So Merilee was still a nice woman, trying to bring some goodness into dark places like this. Ambrose peered up to see Zach smiling at her. Obviously, he liked her. Surely these two good people should mate. They were bound to produce more good people.

Here came the cougar again, a paper towel pressed to her hand. Who invited her back? She grabbed Zach by the arm and said, "Let's go, Zach."

"Uh, thanks, Merilee," said Zach.

Then the cat carrier was airborne once more and they were leaving the store, and that was the end of pictures with Santa. Good.

Even better, Zach and the cougar were fighting.

"What were you thanking that clerk for? Did you hear how she talked to me?" Blair Baby ranted as they pulled away from Pet Palace.

"Did you hear yourself?" Zach retorted.

"That animal is feral."

"No, he's not. He was just p.i.s.sed," Zach snapped. "I told you putting the hat on him was a dumb idea."

You've got that right.

"Well, excuse me for trying to help," huffed Blair Baby.

Zach said nothing.

At last she let out a long sigh. "I'm sorry. You're right; it was a bad idea. Let's not fight over a silly cat."

Silly? This woman who just made a public fool of herself is calling me silly? I've seen birds with bigger brains.

"I'm not the one doing the fighting," said Zach.

She said nothing to that. Instead she came back with, "I guess you'll just have to snap a picture of him when he's sleeping. If you can get a shot that doesn't show his ragged ear you might find a home for him by Christmas."

By Christmas? So now the cougar had set a deadline for getting rid of him. How soon till Christmas? Zach's mother had stopped by the other day to remind Zach that Christmas was right around the corner. But which corner? How much time did Ambrose have to get back in Zach's good graces before the cougar found a way to make him disappear?

"It might not be so easy," said Zach.

"I'm beginning to suspect that you don't want to get rid of this cat," said Blair Baby.

Good. He shouldn't want to.

"I didn't say that."

Well then, say it now. What are you thinking?

"Look," said Zach, not sounding happy. "Can we forget about the cat?"

Forget about the cat? What a bad idea!

"Fine," she said, her brittle voice reminding Ambrose of a small, yappy dog.

Now there was fresh silence in the shiny black car, and it wasn't the cozy kind of silence Ambrose and Zach enjoyed when they were lounging on the couch in the evening.

At last the cougar spoke again. "I guess I'll just go home."

Good idea. Go home and stay there.

This time it was Zach who sighed. "No, don't do that. We'll drop off Tom, then we can go do something fun."

"All right. But I am not coming back to your stinky house," said the cougar.

Fine by me, thought Ambrose.

"Not unless we stop by Hallmark and pick up some scented candles," she added. Now her voice was a purr. "Cinnamon, perhaps. Something ... spicy?" She reached a red-tipped hand across the seat toward Zach and started slithering it up his leg.

"Hey, now, I'm trying to drive," he protested, but Ambrose could tell it was halfhearted. Zach and the cougar were back on friendly terms.

This turn of events robbed Ambrose of the satisfaction he'd felt over his small victory in Pet Palace. Zach hadn't figured out what to do with him but the cougar had. She wanted him gone by Christmas. Gone where, he had no idea, but he did know one thing: the way his luck had been running it wouldn't be any place good. This did not bode well for his ninth life. It didn't bode well for Zach, either, who clearly needed Ambrose to save him from a fate worse than death by a cat door.

Ambrose shifted his paws under him and settled down to think. He was going to have to do something to fix this problem.

FIVE.

Back at the house Zach turned Tom loose with a stern reminder to use his cat door. "Litter boxes are like diapers, dude, and you're too old for diapers. Don't let me down."

If he and Blair came home and Tom had whizzed inside the house it wouldn't be pretty. Blair would be mad. Actually, so would Zach, and Tom would be a dead cat.

"Are you sure he knows to use his cat door?" asked Blair.

"He'd better," said Zach. The cat was becoming a problem.

That wasn't fair, he concluded as he trailed Blair around the Hallmark store, past rows of holiday wrapping paper, ribbons, and cards. For the most part the little guy was pretty easy to get along with as long as Zach remembered to feed him. And Tom didn't make scenes.

Which was more than Zach could say for Blair. He'd seen a whole side of her he'd never witnessed before, and it hadn't been pretty. The way she'd carried on at Pet Palace when Tom scratched her had made shoppers gawk and had set a three-alarm fire racing across Zach's cheeks.

Worst of all, though, had been the disgusted expression he'd seen on Merilee's face. He couldn't blame her. He'd been pretty disgusted, too, not just with the way Blair had treated Merilee but also with himself. He'd known the poor cat was scared the second he looked in the carrier. He should have left the store right then.

He sniffed the candle Blair held under his nose. "Yeah, that's nice."

She smiled. "Good. I'm getting it for you."

A candle, just what he'd always wanted. "I can get it myself," he said, reaching for it.

"Huh-uh. I want to." She danced out of range. "Think of it as a peace offering," she added, looking penitent.

She wanted to make up for the scene in Pet Palace. Now, that was sweet. It was times like this, when Blair was being cute and fun that he liked hanging out with her. Okay, so she'd been a bit of a drama queen back at the store, but maybe she had a right to be a little dramatic. After all, the cat did scratch her.

The candle purchased and bagged, she propelled him toward the door. Outside, though, she stopped to put her change in the Salvation Army bell-ringer's bucket.

"Thank you," said the man. "Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas to you, too," she said. "I never pa.s.s one of those buckets without putting in something," she informed Zach.

How could a guy stay mad at a woman when she did things like that?

"Now," she said briskly, "let's go get some dinner. And when we get back to the house I've got a surprise for you."

New lingerie? He grinned. "Okay."

But the surprise was nothing pleasant.

"A tree?" he said, staring at the gigantic cardboard box in the back of her SUV.

She nodded eagerly. "I found it on sale, fifty percent off. Merry Christmas early!"

"A tree," he repeated. And a fake one at that.

"And I've got the most gorgeous ornaments for it," she continued, grabbing a smaller box. "We can put it up tonight." She smiled at him. "Are you surprised?"

"Speechless." She was looking so pleased with herself, so ready to please him. How to tell her he didn't want the thing?

There was no way, of course, not without hurting her feelings. A tree in the bay window, and a wife and kids. He suddenly felt like all the air had been sucked from his lungs. In a desperate search for oxygen, he took a deep breath.

"You don't like it?"

He knew that expression. She was staring at him in disbelief, like he'd somehow betrayed her.

"No, no. It's just, well, I hadn't planned on a tree. I mean, what does a single guy need with a tree?"

"It'll give you Christmas spirit," said Blair.

"I don't know." Zach had pretty much lost his Christmas spirit. Watching your dad move out over Christmas break, getting dumped by your fiancee on Christmas Eve-little things like that tended to make a man lose his zest for the holidays.

"Trust me," Blair said. "It'll be gorgeous, and we'll have fun putting it up together, just you and me."

He swallowed his reluctance and nodded.

"Anyway, this is our first Christmas together and I wanted to give you something special, something significant."

Something significant? What was she expecting to get from him? He forced a smile and tried to breathe.

"Come on," she said eagerly. "Let's get it in the house and get started."

More like get it over with. Tom sat watching from a far corner, tail flicking back and forth, as they set up the lighted tree. Zach was feeling a little twitchy himself. "Now, before we start, let's set the mood," said Blair. Next thing he knew she'd set up his iPod to give them some background Christmas music, the scented candle she'd bought was burning, and they were tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the tree with silver garlands. Okay, this wasn't bad, kind of nice, actually.