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“Aren’t you a little love bug?” she crooned as she scratched beneath my cat’s chin.
Nora was too adorable for words, her arms full of my cat as she took in the living room/kitchen/dining room area with open interest. It was all one giant room with a big blue and black granite countertop dividing the living space from the kitchen. With the curtains open on either end, the warm sunlight brightened the area and made it one of my favorite places in my house.
Gesturing to the kitchen I said, “Help yourself to anything you want to eat or drink while I shower. There’s a coffee maker on the counter, and the cups are in the cupboard to the right of the sink. Remote is on the table by the gray chair, watch whatever you want. Or there’s a balcony out back you can hang out on as well.”
“Your place is really nice,” she said in a soft voice. “Um, do you mind if I use your phone? I want to call my roommate and let her know where I am.”
Mentally chastising myself for not thinking to offer, I nodded. “Of course. It’s in the kitchen by the microwave. My mom insists I have a landline. She doesn’t trust cell phones.”
“Doesn’t trust them?”
I nodded at her puzzled look. “Yeah. My mom is kinda…wacky.”
She grinned. “Aren’t all moms?”
“Yeahhhh,” I drawled out as I headed for the stairs that would take me up to the bedrooms. “Anyway, I’m gonna go get washed up.”
“Thank you,” Nora said as she hefted Tia up over her shoulder, my cat rubbing her face against the side of Nora’s head as she no doubt purred her furry butt off. “You know, for everything. You really saved my bacon today.”
The strongest urge to cross the room and kiss her filled me, but I managed to rein myself in and jogged up the stairs as I said, “My pleasure, Nora.”
Chapter 2
Nora
I ogled Tyler’s tight, rounded ass and muscled calves as he quickly went up the stairs, my body clenching as I gazed at him until his feet disappeared.
Pressing my hand to my belly, I blew out a long breath and whispered to Tia, “Holy crap. Your Daddy is hot.”
Tia, the big fluffy ball of love, jumped out of my arms as I walked into the kitchen, landing on the sparkling clean counter with a thump.
Giving her a stern look, I said, “You’d better be allowed on the counters, Missy. I don’t want to get fussed at by your owner for breaking the rules.”
Tia lifted her tail, then proceeded to sit down and clean her foot while giving me a snooty look.
Okay, evidently cats were allowed on the counters.
Laughing to myself, I passed a blue and red glass bowl of fruit and found a phone on the countertop next to the microwave. A series of framed photos artfully arranged over the round white breakfast table nearby drew my gaze. Ignoring the phone for the moment, I walked through the quiet house, looking at the many photos Tyler had hung there. He was obviously well loved and had lots of friends and family. In a few pictures, he posed with other men in police uniforms, his expression so serious, it was almost scary looking. His sun-bleached light brown hair was shorter in the image, the cutting edge of his jaw hard, and his blue eyes almost icy as they stared into the camera. The look on his face said he meant business, and I found it incredibly attractive.
The small flame of desire that had begun to flicker in my belly as I walked with Tyler blazed to life again, and I cursed my fascination with big, scary looking men who were usually bad news. One of my girlfriends described my taste in men as ‘future convicts,’ and I couldn’t argue with her. Especially not now, with my ex-boyfriend cooling his heels in an Oklahoma prison for having stolen close to a million dollars from his clients. And to think, he’d been one of my most socially acceptable boyfriends. No tattoos or piercings, clean cut and good looking, he had a great job and a good life—at least on the surface. While he pretended to be a successful financier who doted on me in public, he mentally tortured me in private. Memories of not knowing up from down, of living in constant fear of sparking his temper, of having to endure his cutting words banged at the mental prison where I kept them locked away.
My desire cooled in an instant, and I turned away from the wall of strangers and found the phone on the counter with renewed determination.
No, I didn’t need the complication of a man in my life right now.
Picking up the phone, I leaned against the cool, rounded edge of the countertop and looked out the window and down into the small stone walkway lined with flowering plants running between Tyler’s house and his neighbors. This was a nice place, way out of my budget, but the kind of home I could maybe afford in a few years. I was good at my job, dedicated and hardworking, and unlike my past boyfriends, I was a rule follower and overachiever. If I busted my butt, I could probably get a home like this in ten, maybe fifteen, years.
