“Good morning,” he whispered against her mouth.
She stared at him and then narrowed her gaze. “Do you hear that?”
He cocked his head. “Hear what?”
She slid out from between him and the door and went hands on hips, staring around her room. Her gaze landed on the blanket that had slid to the very bottom of her bed, balled up. There was a suspicious lump under that blanket.
And it was . . . purring.
“Cat?”
The lump stopped moving.
“I know it’s you,” Jane said. “I can hear you purring.”
The purring stopped.
“Oh my God.” She pulled the blanket back from the bed and Cat blinked her gray eyes up at Jane lazily. Innocently. “Don’t even try,” she said. “We’ve agreed that mi casa es su casa, but my bed is my bed.”
Cat just stared at her.
“I mean it. You’re nocturnal. The other night you batted my hair in the middle of the night. You stole my pillow. You knocked things off my shelves . . .”
Cat’s expression was boredom personified.
“We agreed you’d sleep on the floor,” Jane said. “A point that we negotiated at two A.M. and was finally agreed on by both parties.”
Cat began to wash her face.
Levi smiled. “Marches to her own beat, huh?”
She choked out a laugh. “That describes both of my current bedmates.”
“And are you comparing me to your cat?”
“Well, she does remind me of you,” she pointed out. “Confident. Pushing. And then there are those gray eyes . . .”
Levi scratched the cat’s back, then along the side of her face and under her chin, and the thing actually rolled her eyes in ecstasy. The man smiled. “There are some similarities. But I’d say she’s more like you than me.”
Jane crossed her arms. “Oh, do tell.”
“She lets me pet her on her terms, allowing a little friendship and affection—not too much, of course—and then goes back to her life.”
Jane narrowed her eyes.
Levi smiled.
The cat looked back and forth between them until, with a last flick of her tail and a sniff, she jumped down and padded out the door.
“Humph,” Jane said, and Levi laughed and kissed her again. “Later, babe.”
She nodded, but struck dumb by his kiss, she didn’t move. And why did that keep happening? Shouldn’t she be used to their chemistry by now?
He grinned. “Cute. But you need to get going, remember?”
“Huh?”
“Your grandpa. Breakfast.”
When he was this close to her, the only thing she thought about was getting hot and bothered with him. As if he could hear her thoughts, his hand brushed up her side, skimming the outer swell of her breast before palming her neck so his thumb could play with her lower lip. A rush of desire shot southward and she went hot all over. Damn. She pointed at him. “You do that on purpose.”
“Feel free to get back at me any time.”
She was still smiling ten minutes later when she pulled into the Stovetop Diner parking lot. Even after all the time she’d spent with Levi, she still wanted more. A lot more.
Because it is real . . .
Since that thought gave her heart palpitations, she looked around. She’d beaten her grandpa here, which was unusual, since she knew for a fact he was usually halfway through a meal by now.