Can't Touch This (Can't Touch This #1)

Even Polly had been distracted and not answering me in complete sentences all day.

I’d stepped into a twilight zone and couldn’t find my way out of it.

Driving myself home, I nursed a small amount of self-pity and decided to confront just how much I loved him and how much I missed him when we weren’t together.

We’d been together for three months and every night apart was a wasted night in my opinion. The lease on my crappy apartment was due to expire next weekend, and as much as I needed to renew it so I had somewhere to live, I desperately wanted Ryder to offer me to move in with him.

The house was almost finished, and the renovation had come along fantastically. When I wasn’t operating on small critters or helping Ryder feed hundreds of dogs, I was up a ladder with a paintbrush, dancing along to some rock n’ roll while Ryder barked commands about my painting technique being all wrong.

Those late nights, by the time we crawled into bed with paint in our hair and dust on our skin, were some of the best of my life.

Polly was a frequent visitor, and Rupert video-chatted often now he was back on the road.

We’d even advertised for a full-time vet to join Tales of Tails and struck gold last week with an experienced woman called Stefani who’d been overseas working at a wild cat rehabilitation centre in Madagascar. She was from Thorn River and needed to return because her parents were sick.

She would start next week and Polly and I were beyond ready to share the workload and even offered to sell one third of the company and make her a co-owner if she enjoyed working with us.

Everything was looking up.

Yet Ryder and I hadn’t taken any further step in our relationship.

Nursing my sudden loneliness and silent phone, I parked and climbed up the steps to my second-floor apartment.

Fumbling for my keys, I let myself in and slammed to a stop.

Holy crap!

I’ve been robbed.

I moved forward in a daze, eyeing the space on the threadbare carpet where my hand-me-down couch used to rest, mourning the loss of my TV, and hating the fact the robbers had even taken my lemon daisy curtains.

Who does such a thing?

Then horror struck.

There was no welcome bell from Barb’s collar; no marmalade fur as Visa tore around the corner to say hello.

Just emptiness.

No…

No, no, no!

“Visa, Barb?” Racing through my furnitureless apartment, I froze in an equally empty bedroom. My chest of drawers, my small array of clothes hanging in the wardrobe—

Everything was gone.

Including my beloved Chinese Crested and opinionated pussy.

Police.

Have to call the police!

Darting past the bathroom, a box caught my eye. The box of tampons.

They’d taken everything but those? What sort of criminals were these?

My eyes shot to the mirror where my reflection was blurred with mint swirls. Someone had deliberately defaced my mirror with a toothpaste explosion.