Page 5 of Love Walks In


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The cat stopped. His whiskers twitched. His yellow eyes gleamed. Aria gritted her teeth.

“You come here right now.” She clapped her hands sharply and raised her voice. “I work very hard to give you and your fellow feline brethren a nice place to live, and I do not appreciate being forced to race through the—”

A window slammed open right above her. “What the hell is going on out here?”

The deep male voice boomed like thunder. Aria’s heart jumped into her throat. Forcing an apologetic smile onto her lips, she straightened and looked up. Right into the scowling face of a man whose glare burned right into her.

She opened and closed her mouth. No words came out. Her heart raced.

“Well?” His black eyebrows snapped together over his intense dark eyes. He was still holding the window sash up, and the lifted position of his arms stretched his white dress shirt over impressively bulging biceps.

“What are you doing out here?” he barked.

“I…there’s a cat.” Trying to gather her scattered wits, she ran shaking hands over her dress. “Uh, I was just—”

“You were annoying the crap out of me is what you werejustdoing.”

Irritation stiffened Aria’s spine.

“I’m sorry, I didn’tmeanto annoy you.” She indicated Porkchop, who was still sitting at the corner of the inn, staring at the man as if he, too, were transfixed by his sheer potency. “I’m trying to save my cat.”

His mouth twisted sardonically. “Yourcat.”

“Myfelis catus, if you want the Latin term.”

He expelled an impatient breath, his scowl deepening. Letting go of the window sash, he raked a hand through his disheveled dark hair. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, revealing tanned forearms corded with muscle.

Good god.Who was he, this man whose glower ratcheted up his sexiness by about a thousand degrees?

And what was she doingfixatingon him when she still had to catch Porkchop? The rain was coming down harder.

“I apologize.” She drew her shoulders back and met his smoldering black eyes. “My cat escaped and made his way here, for some reason. I’m trying to catch him.”

He shot a glare at the animal, who was still staring and twitching his tail. “Given his size, it doesn’t look as if catching him should be that hard.”

Aria frowned, stung by the dig about Porkchop’s weight. “I’ll thank you not to insult my cat.”

“You named him Porkchop.”

“I didn’t name him. And heison a metabolic feline weight management program.”

“Maybe that’s why he ran away.”

“I know this doesn’tlookplausible, but he’s led me on a wild goose chase…or maybe I should say a wild cat chase…” She chuckled at the joke. Glowering Stranger did not. “Anyway, my point is that despite his girth, Porkchop can run pretty darned fast.”

He turned his scowl on to her. An oddly pleasurable shiver raced down her spine, which made no sense. Before she could move, or even think, he hefted himself over the window sill and landed onto the ground in front of her.

Aria’s breath stopped. Like, stopped, right in the middle of her chest.

In addition to being dangerously sexy, he was alsobig—well over six feet with wide shoulders and a broad chest that was no doubt a landscape of hard muscles. With him standing right in front of her, she practically felt the power and energy coiling through every millimeter of his body.

The garden lights cast shadows over his strong features, emphasizing the cut-glass lines of his jaw and cheekbones, his thick-lashed eyes, and a beautifully shaped mouth that looked as if it were made to do dirty things to a woman.

Parting her lips, Aria forced air into her lungs before she started getting dizzy.

“If you’ll step aside, I’ll get my cat.” She managed to sound both haughty and cool, even though her blood was hot and her heart pounding.

“Been real successful at that so far, haven’t you?” Arching an eyebrow, he turned toward Porkchop.

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