“Sir is not a pet,” I said.
He blinked at me. “Sir?”
“That’s his name.” I smiled. “Because he looks like a little gentleman wearing a tux.”
Nick heaved a deep sigh. “I knew you named him and that makes him a pet.”
I shook my head. “No, that just gives him an identity. It’d be rude to call him ‘cat,’ you know, like ‘landlord’ or ‘tenant.’ ”
I saw his lips twitch and took it as a solid point scored.
“Do you feed him?” he asked.
“Occasionally.” Truly, it had been every night this week, but I felt this was extraneous information.
“Does he sleep in your house?”
“He’s a cat,” I said.
“Your point?” Again, one of his eyebrows rose higher than the other. That should not be such a hot look on a man, and yet it totally was.
I turned away, checking out a huge freestanding apparatus. It had all sorts of cables and weights. I glanced at him over my shoulder and said, “Cats sleep everywhere.”
“Making that a yes, he sleeps in your house,” he said. He was about to press his point but I interrupted.
“But he comes and goes as he pleases,” I said. “Meaning he’s more of a guest than a pet.”
“Because you leave your door open at night.” He said this with a look of incredulity as if even he couldn’t believe what he was saying.
“Just a crack,” I said. I held my hands up so they were about four inches apart.
He shook his head. “Annabelle, we’re in the middle of a city of one and a half million people. You can’t sleep with your door open. It’s dangerous.”
“We have walls and a gate,” I argued. “Who is going to scale that?”
“Never mind scale it, they could slip in behind you when you’re coming home, which someone did the other night,” he said. “Which is another thing I wanted to talk to you about.”
I felt the blood drain out of my face. “Someone slipped in behind me? Did they break in? Was there a robbery? Is everyone okay? Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “You didn’t even leave a note!”
He looked away, giving me my first glance of his profile. Even from that angle, he was ridiculously handsome with a straight nose, stubborn chin, and soft light brown curls that tumbled over his forehead in waves.
“It doesn’t matter. It was taken care of,” he said.
“How?” I asked.
He looked back at me with a frown. “What do you mean?”
“How was it taken care of? Did you chop them up into little bits and use them as fertilizer?”
He blinked. “That’s dark.”
“Sorry, I’ve been watching a lot of crime shows,” I said.
“And yet you don’t lock your door at night.” He clapped a hand to his forehead.
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. His overly dramatic look made me smile. When he met my gaze, he smiled in return.
“Because Sir isn’t a pet, I don’t have a litter box,” I said. “I have to leave the door open for him so he can go about his business and not mess up the house.”
“You’re not going to shut your door, are you?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“You could leave a window open,” he suggested. Then he made a confused face as if he couldn’t believe he’d just said such a thing.
“They all have screens,” I said.
He was quiet, watching me while I moved around the room. There was a heat in his gaze, and I saw him study my face as well as my body. His look was appreciative, as if he was fully aware of me without being impolite, and it made my insides hum in response.
“All right.” He drew the word out with obvious reluctance. “We’ll have to come to some sort of arrangement.”
“Yes!” I jumped, almost as high as Soph would have, and clapped. I stepped forward to—I don’t know, go hug him?—but my skirt got caught on the rack of weights. It yanked me backward and I fell against the shelf. Hard. I hit it just right, in the center of my back, enough to knock the wind out of me, and I landed on the shelves in a heap, which sent the entire structure crashing to the ground with me.
“Annabelle!”
I was fighting so hard to regain my balance and avoid getting crushed by the free weights, I barely registered my name being called. One massive arm swept into the rolling avalanche of dumbbells and plucked me out. My head was covered by a thickly muscled arm and there was a horrific tearing sound as the fabric of my skirt gave way. I clenched my eyes shut, preparing for impact, and instead found myself rolled across the floor, landing in a heap on a mat with Nick Daire on top of me, protecting my body with his.
When the horrific sounds of weights smashing into the floor stopped, I slowly opened my eyes. And there he was. His face hovered over mine. A frown marred his forehead, but it was the first time I could really see his eyes. They were a pretty hazel, velvet brown surrounded by leaf green, and they made me think of a dewy morning hike in the thick of a forest.
“Are you all right?” he asked. He braced himself up on one elbow while he stared down at me, running his free hand over my body in a perfunctory way that was obviously looking for damage but was still devastatingly sexy.
I sucked in a breath. “Yeah, I’m okay.” I flopped against the mat and gestured at the weights. “I’m so sorry about that.”
“Don’t worry about it.” His gaze met and held mine. Our faces were only inches apart, our bodies pressed length to length. We were both breathing heavily. The urge to wrap my arms around his neck and pull him close and kiss him was so strong that I could feel the itch in my fingers just like when I saw something I wanted to paint.
Nick reached up and brushed back the hank of hair that had fallen over my right eye. His touch was gentle despite the obvious strength of his hands. I shivered. A smile ticked up one corner of his mouth as if he was registering my response and was happy about it.
“Do you always make this much of an impression?” he asked.
My throat was tight. I shrugged, which pushed my front against his sweat-soaked tank top in the most delicious way. It occurred to me that I’d be okay with lying here all day, I wasn’t positive but I might have purred louder than Sir at the thought.
“All right, let’s get you up and make sure you’re not hurt,” he said.
Noooooo. Mercifully, I only yelled this in my head.