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everyone with a passion and had taken weeks to warm to even Kayla’s careful attention. But Leon was purring like a flattered suitor within five minutes of setting eyes on Dyson. If anyone had told her such a thing would happen, she would have laughed and called them crazy.
    By the time Leon was struggling to get out of her arms, she was no longer worried that he would go after Dyson with his claws ready to kill. But she was still amazed when Dyson reached out to take the cat and Leon went willingly, settling against Dyson and putting his paws on his shoulder. Leon then proceeded to look around the room without a care in the world, enjoying the new sensation of height.
    “This is impossible,” Kayla said, and Dyson chuckled.
    “Nothing is impossible.”
    “But he hates people. All people.”
    “Maybe I’m not a person,” Dyson mused. “Maybe I’m an alien. He’s the only one who knows it.”
    “That would explain everything,” Kayla said with a grin.
    “Or maybe he just recognizes a kindred spirit,” he said, running his hand down the cat’s back. He whispered something Kayla couldn’t hear, and Leon started to purr even louder. Then he suddenly wanted down, and jumped from Dyson’s arms. He landed sprightly on his three legs, acting as though he had always been that way, and moved down the hallway.
    When he saw Mr. Marbles, he hissed. The dog looked at him blankly, used to the grouchy feline.
    Kayla laughed and shook her head. “That really was amazing,” she said. “He adored you. That’s just unheard of for Leon.”
    Dyson shrugged. “He knows I’m worth a chance,” he said.
    Kayla thought about that as she turned to Leon’s cage. She looked in at the litter and wrinkled her nose, getting busy with her work but thinking about what Dyson had said. Was he worth a chance? Leon had seen something in him, something good. So had Mr. Marbles. If there was anything in the world Kayla trusted, it was the instincts of animals. They seemed to know more about people than people often knew about themselves.
    The more Kayla got to know Dyson, the more she thought that perhaps the revelation of Leon’s adoration wasn’t the last surprise she would find.
    Getting to know him?
    Kayla realized that she had been thinking in terms of seeing him again after this. In fact, she was already dreading the moment when they would have to part, and she had toyed with the idea of inviting him to dinner with her. But she didn’t want to make him think she had time for a relationship.
    Besides that, she had too many issues in her past that made it very difficult to get to know anyone, much less someone like Dyson, who seemed to really like her. She would eventually have to explain why she kept her distance, and that wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have with anyone. It was something she would rather just keep to herself. Life was easier that way.
    Even though Kayla could list all of her reasons for wanting to keep her distance from Dyson, she couldn’t deny that he was interesting…and there was something about him that was mysterious. She found herself wanting to know the secrets that made him tick. But if she learned what his secrets were, didn’t that mean she would have to reveal her own?
    She really had to stop thinking about this.
    “If you want to help me out you can get more litter from the back,” she told him, but when she turned around she found him standing there with two litter bags already in hand.
    “I read your mind,” he said, flashing her that winning grin.
    “You certainly did,” she praised, but at the same time she blushed, hoping he couldn’t read all the thoughts that had just gone through her head.

Chapter Seven

    F our hours later Dyson was surprisingly tired from a full day of work. They had changed out all the litter boxes and walked all the dogs, cleaned out the kennels and laid down fresh blankets so the dogs would have a comfortable place to sleep. They had made sure all the