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It was a future he wanted to entangle with his own.
Two weeks passed. During the day, Michael showed up to Abby’s place to fix the damage around the property and sneak glances at her, and during the night, Abby cooked him dinner and they ate together, talking and laughing about anything and everything.
She was writing a new book, he’d learned, but she was being secretive about what it was about. By the way she looked at him while he worked, and how her cheeks sometimes flushed red afterward, Michael was pretty sure he knew.
It made him puff with pride.
Abby wasn’t a tiger, but that didn’t mean she didn’t feel the bond between them. Michael was sure that bond was manifesting in her writing. The more she opened up to him over dinner, and the more he got to know her, the better he thought the connection was for her.
Being beautiful and smart wasn’t enough to keep up Abby’s confidence. Michael had learned that she had self-image issues, and that she doubted herself more often than she should.
Dating him, he liked to think, would help her.
And he was going to
make sure she knew exactly what she meant to him.
That night, Michael was going to make his move.
It was edging on five, and after a long day at work, Michael was ready to throw in the towel. The porch was in need of some small cosmetic repairs, and he’d been working on getting it back into shape. Abby was seated across the way on one of the wicker chairs, typing like mad. Her fingers stopped when the old phone inside the house rang.
“I’ll be right back,” Abby said. She set her laptop down on the chair and entered the cabin to answer the phone. While she did, Michael decided to call it quits for the day. He wiped the sweat from his brow with his arm, then made his way to where Abby had been sitting to peek at what she’d been writing.
Mitchel Gage, the main male character, was in the middle of pinning Britney Coleman to the wall, their lips close, and…
The sound of footsteps snapped him back to reality, and Abby emerged from inside the house and walked over, one eyebrow raised.
“Were you just reading what I wrote?” she asked.
“And if I was?” Michael replied with a grin.
“I’d probably be embarrassed.” Abby laughed. “It’s um, not exactly the kind of writing you share with your family and friends, you know?”
“Good, then.” Michael drew closer, and the atmosphere grew thick between them with sudden chemistry. “Because I don’t like to consider myself either of those.”
He leaned so close, but right as Abby’s lips parted and she started to close her eyes, the crunch of gravel beneath the wheels of a vehicle distracted them.
Jason’s car made its way up the driveway.
“The call was from Tiffany,” Abby explained. “She. . .um, she wanted to come talk.”
“With Jason?”
“They’ve been seeing each other for a little while now,” Abby said with a shrug. “Isn’t he your roommate? You didn’t know?”
Michael had been too busy in the woods at night, exercising the tiger and working out its frustrations over having found a mate it couldn’t have, to pay much attention to Jason’s love life.
All Michael could do was shrug. “We’re roommates, but we don’t spend every waking minute together.”
“I know.” Abby’s eyes sparkled. “You spend an awful lot of them with me.”
The affection and appreciation in her voice inflated Michael’s confidence. He knew that if he moved now—or soon, thanks to their guests—that Abby would be his.
But before that could happen, he was going to have to deal with their unexpected visitors. With any luck, they wouldn’t stay all that long.
They’d better not stay that long, he corrected himself.
Michael wasn’t sure the tiger within him could wait.
