Read Online Catch as Cat Can by Rita Mae Brown - Free Book Online

right up front, she was loath to relinquish her position. If the choice was between obscurity and showing her ass, Lottie bravely decided to show her ass.
    As the last band marched out of the parking lot, the black and red of Albemarle High, Harry hopped down from her perch.
    â€œMom's got a little tan. Looks good against her white T-shirt,”
Pewter noted as Harry removed her sweater with the day's warming. Pewter giggled, remembering the sight of Harry ironing her jeans and T-shirt.
    â€œNobody looks better in jeans than Harry,”
Tucker called out from behind her mother.
“I mean, if this fellow likes a fit body then he has to like Mom.”
    Mrs. Murphy loved her mother, but she realized that not all men like natural women. Many, attracted by artifice, want lots of hair, preferably blond, boobs pushed up to the max, long fingernails, expensive clothes, and perfect makeup. In a word, BoomBoom.
    Harry actually was a beautiful woman but she had no sense of it. High cheekbones accentuated wonderful facial bone structure. Her long black eyelashes drew attention to her soft brown eyes. She rarely wore lipstick on her full lips. Her hair, short and black, curled just above the nape of her neck. But one had to study Harry to recognize her beauty. A woman like BoomBoom hit one over the head with it.
    As Harry had no vanity she was able to concentrate on whomever she encountered. She didn't think she was pretty. She didn't worry about the impression she was making. Her focus was on the other person. This quality beguiled more men than her looks once they got around to really studying her. There was an innocence about her. It never occurred to her, not once, that she might be attractive to men. She had known her ex-husband since kindergarten. The art of flirting, of luring men, seemed irrelevant to her since she had always loved Fair. When he left her she assumed she'd never love again. She didn't launch into tirades about how awful men were, how they used women and dumped them, the usual cry of the abandoned female. Harry had seen women behave execrably toward men. As far as she was concerned one gender was as bad as the other.
    Fair's attempts to reconcile touched her. She truly loved him but now in quite a different way. At first she felt she could never trust him again. Lately, she thought maybe she could. He'd learned and she'd learned but the difficult part was that she didn't know if she'd feel romantic about him again. Certainly she could go to bed with him. She knew his body the way a blind woman knows Braille. However, that didn't constitute romantic desire.
    She didn't share these thoughts with Susan or Miranda. Harry kept her deepest thoughts to herself, sometimes asking the animals for their opinion.
    As Mrs. Murphy watched Harry approach the truck she felt the lightness in her step, the surge of energy that illuminated her human's face.
    â€œHow could Diego not like Mom . . . but is he good enough?”
Mrs. Murphy stretched.
“After all, we are better judges of character than humans. We need to check out this situation.”
    â€œYou're right and I should have thought of that straight off.”
Tucker felt guilty.
    â€œYou would have eventually.”
Mrs. Murphy hopped into the bed of the truck just as Diego, of average height and muscular, hopped out.
    â€œOh, balls,”
Pewter disagreed.
“One human is pretty much like any other. They make a big deal out of these tiny, tiny differences but as a species they're all cut from the same cloth.”
    â€œMother's better.”
Tucker defended Harry, whom she loved with all her heart.
    â€œThey do fuss over nits and nit-picking but I think they're very different from one another and that's their challenge. They are herd animals and they need one another to survive but they can't build communities to include everyone. It's a real mess. They don't understand their fundamental nature, which is to be part of the herd,”
Murphy