“Do you like it?”
He sighed and looked at her again. “No.”
“No?” She hadn’t been expecting that. Tori loved Autre. She’d been smitten with more than Josh when she’d come to Louisiana. And it had taken about a day.
“No.” He didn’t elaborate.
“Why not?”
“I was living in D.C. before this. Working at the National Zoo. I was working with endangered tigers. Now I’m in a tiny town in Louisiana taking care of goats.” He rolled his eyes.
Paige studied him. Okay, that sounded kind of sucky. Autre was probably a step down for a guy who had worked with tigers in Washington D.C.
“What happened?” she asked. She knew there was some issue with a donor but she’d love to know more of the details.
“I yelled at the wife of one of our biggest donors.” Griffin’s eyes were back on the TV, and he took another drink of beer.
“Why?” Paige asked.
“Because she was being an entitled bitch.”
Paige could accept that. Entitled bitches needed to be yelled at.
“And they fired you?”
“I don’t know how to braid hair.”
Paige blinked at him. “What?”
Griffin looked over. “If you’re looking for a best friend, I thought I’d tell you that I don’t know how to braid hair or paint toenails.”
She arched a brow. “First, that’s what you think grown women do with their girlfriends?”
He shrugged. “I don’t really care. Just making a point.”
“Right. Second, I’m trying to be friendly. Since, we’re going to be living together for the next few months.”
“And will you be wanting to sit around and talk about our feelings every night during those months? Because I’m going to have to adjust my work hours. And buy something stronger than beer.”
“You’re a real charmer.”
“So I’ve been told.”
7
“Good thing you’re nice to my cats,” Paige told Griffin after a moment.
“Cats are easy. People who aren’t nice to them are dicks.”
“Even big cats? They’re easy too?”
“A hell of a lot easier than people,” he said.
Well, that was a no-brainer.
“So what can we talk about if not our feelings?” Paige rolled her eyes. They hadn’t been talking about feelings, exactly. Plus, she wasn’t really a touchy-feely-spill-her-guts girl either. Griffin needed to chill.
“Basketball,” Griffin said. He finished off his beer and set the empty bottle on the end table. “Football. Hockey.”
“We can’t even talk about tigers?” she asked. “Or other cats? I’m a huge fan. I’ve got eighteen more back in Iowa.”
He looked over at her, his eyebrows up now. “Oh.”
She knew exactly what he was thinking. “I foster and run an adoption center. And a cat café. That’s also a yoga studio.”
“Uh-huh.”
She frowned. “What’s that mean?”
“It means you have a lot of cats.”
“You like cats,” she protested. “What’s wrong with having a lot of them?”
“I like hamburgers too,” he said. “But I don’t have twenty-three at once.”
“Hamburgers and cats are not the same things.”
“It’s excessive,” he said simply.
“But…” It was excessive. She was helping the cats. She got them fixed, so they didn’t keep having more kittens, and she found them good homes to go to.
“Well, I prefer animals to people a lot of the time, too.”
Griffin just gave her a nod and focused on the TV again.
She studied him. He was very good-looking. Like really good-looking. Dark, shaggy hair, dark eyes, scruff on his jaw, muscled arms, one that had a tattoo stretching from under the sleeve of his t-shirt to his elbow. He was in good shape. He wore the t-shirt with a pair of athletic pants. His stomach was flat, and his legs muscled, his bare feet were long.
He had a don’t-give-a-shit attitude practically emanating in waves though.
“So what’s so fascinating about tigers?”
She did think tigers were fascinating. All big cats. All cats, period. But she wanted him to talk more. Mostly because it bugged her that he didn’t want to. She supposed she got that contrariness from hanging out with cats all the time.
“Nothing.”
She rolled her eyes. “You just dedicated your professional life to them because you couldn’t think of anything else?”
“Yep.”
That’s how it was going to be, huh? He wasn’t going to engage.
“Goats are pretty cute.”
He just made a harrumphing noise at that.
She grinned. “What about the otters? Mitch told me there are otters. They’re cute.”
“Water weasels,” Griffin said.
“Okay, it’s official. You’re definitely a grump. No one doesn’t think otters are cute.”
“They’re noisy. And little beggars. And have sharp teeth.”
Paige laughed. “Tigers have sharp teeth.”
He made that harrumph sound again.
Paige sat just smiling, watching him pet her cats. Yeah, he might be grumpy, but a guy who liked cats wasn’t all bad. She liked him even if he didn’t want her to.
“What about lions and panthers and stuff?” she asked after a couple of minutes.
He sighed. He’d probably thought she was done talking.
Her life was full of people who wanted to talk to her all the time. Wanted to know what she was thinking and feeling. She was here in part to get away from that. Why couldn’t she just leave Griffin alone?
“What about them?”
“You like them too?”
“Yeah.”
One-word answers were going to drive her nuts. “What do you like about them?”
“Everything.”
Right. She sighed. And wondered where Mitch was. He liked to talk.
Of course, he liked to talk about feelings and being crazy about her. Which was really nice on the one hand. On the other, it made just hanging out here complicated and made her think maybe she shouldn’t stay for seven months.
It also made her kind of want to stay longer than seven months.
She should enjoy her time with Griffin. Her quiet time with Griffin. She focused on the game he was watching. Tim jumped up on her lap, and she smiled, rubbing him behind the ears in the way he loved. The cat settled on her lap, and she and Griffin watched the rest of the first half of the game without a word.
Not one. Not a single word.
Paige spent a lot of time alone in her own apartment and didn’t miss human conversation, but it was different when there was a person sitting right there. She’d never met anyone who could sit for thirty minutes straight with another person and not say one single thing.
Griffin should be her new favorite person.
But she was pretty sure that as long as Mitch Landry was around, there was no way any other guy was going to even come close.
By the time Mitch did come in through the back door, all five cats had found a new human to adore. Even Fred, who had finally come out of the cupboard. All of them were on or near Griffin.