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I bit my lip, wondering if I should offer to help.
His eyes narrowed on the move, his gaze flickering between my eyes and my lip.
“Just say it.” He sighed. “You’re going to tell me I should’ve known better than to date her in the first place, aren’t you?” He paused. “Technically, this is your fault, too.”
My mouth fell open. “My fault?”
He grimaced. “Yeah, your fault. I wouldn’t have even said yes to whatever it was that she was saying had you not come out in your tight fuckin’ pants and your stupid top that showed off your cute little belly overhang.”
“Belly overhang!” I cried. “I don’t have a belly overhang!”
Okay, so I did.
It wasn’t much.
But I had it.
Especially when I was wearing tight pants.
Then I really had it.
But he wasn’t supposed to point out that I had one! That was rude!
“Whatever you call it, it was sexy as hell, and you shouldn’t have been wearing it out of the house. But you did, and I was watching you, and I didn’t realize I’d agreed to a date until she got all excited and asked me when,” he grumbled.
I rolled my eyes, picked up my beer, and then gestured toward the stairs. “Let’s go up there and clean that up. Unless you think you can do it yourself.”
He looked at me for a long few moments before grunting something and going to talk to the other bartender. When he was done, he rounded the corner of the bar and then picked up my blazer before gesturing toward the stairs. “Let’s go.”
Seeing my clothes in his hand made me think dirty thoughts, so I chose to focus on the stairs instead of looking at his ass as he climbed the steps in front of me.
We made it to the door that led into his apartment, and he input a code into the door that unlocked it for him.
“I need one of those,” I murmured.
“You do,” he agreed. “I like mine.”
Then he was holding his apartment door open for me, and I was slipping past his big, muscly, delicious body to walk into his inner sanctum.
It was… bare.
There wasn’t a single thing in it.
In fact, from what I could see, there were four things total in the entire place.
A zero-gravity chair parked in front of a massive big screen television. A massive king-sized bed.
And a cat.
A cat that was sitting on his counter looking at us walk inside.
“You have a cat,” I said in surprise.
“I have a cat,” he agreed. “Kind of. I guess. I found it out in the alley out back. It comes in and out of my fire escape. Sometimes it’s here, sometimes it’s not.”
I found myself smiling as I walked over to the cat.
“Careful,” Trick warned. “He’s feral. Hasn’t had any shots.”
I slowly moved toward him.
He looked rough.
As I got closer, the rougher he became.
“He only has one eye,” I found myself saying.
“He only has one eye,” Trick confirmed as he moved around his apartment behind me. “I’m going to go take a shower. I’ll be back out in a minute.”
Then he left me alone with his cat.
His cat that had one eye, half a missing right ear, scars on his nose, and a crooked tail.
“You’re a sight,” I said to the cat. “You probably rule the neighborhood, don’t you?”
The cat’s tail flicked.
I wanted to pet him badly, but a memory from my childhood surfaced.
I’d been twelve when I thought that petting a stray cat would be a great idea. The only problem was that the stray cat hadn’t wanted to be petted, and I’d then gotten bitten for my troubles.
I’d, in fact, gotten bitten so bad that my mother had thought it would be best to get the bites checked out. Then, when I’d gotten there, the doctor had suggested that I get a few rabies shots in my wounds.
From then on, I’d never touched another stray anything.
I’d learned my lesson.
But I wanted to pet this particular guy pretty bad.
Anything that hung around Trick I was interested in.
But, alas, the cat that was a stray would not get a pet from me.
Not unless he was the one to make the move.
So, pulling myself away from the rough cat, I walked over to the window he’d indicated the cat climbed through, and grinned when I saw the little cat door he’d erected for it to enter at will.
That was cute.
And sweet.
I’d never have pictured Trick as being sweet like that.
The shower turned on, and a loud scream of pipes had me glancing at the walls where I could hear the racket coming from.
“Are you not worried that the pipes are going to burst?” I called out.
There was a muffled laugh from the direction of his bedroom, and I chose to think of that as ‘no, he wasn’t worried.’
Instead of worrying overly much on the state of his pipes, I went to the kitchen and stared at his counter.
