Chapter 13 #2
Cali laughed. “Hence the name. Well, at least the foreman approved. I mean, I’ve always believed that your cat finds you, not the other way …” Her voice trailed off. “Shit.”
Ethan’s mouth twitched, betraying his amusement. Cali took a swig of her wine.
“Anyway, she’s the best. She adapts really quickly each time we move. What about you?” Ethan asked. “Any other … uh … felines before Max?”
“Clever,” Cali commended him. “I’ll have to remember that one.
No, he’s not the first.” Her stomach dropped a little at the thought of her Charley girl.
“My other … feline had been with me since high school. Her name was Charley. Tabby, with the most beautiful green eyes I’d ever seen.
She lived to 16. Actually, my grandma found her here, in Autumn Ridge, at this house!
But she had too many pets of her own. So I drove down, and the minute our eyes met, I knew Charley was going to be mine.
My grandma thought so, too.” Cali’s eyes got a little misty then.
“She’d curl up on my arm each night, nose to nose as we fell asleep.
My best friend. I still miss her.” She walked over to Max and gave him a squeeze, trying to calm the wave of grief before it drowned her.
Ethan’s expression softened, the teasing gone from his face. “She found you here, huh? Guess that makes this place even more special. And it sounds like she was lucky,” he said quietly, “to find someone who saw her like that.”
Cali was on the edge of something. Maybe it was the wine. She didn’t plan on getting to know him like this tonight. How was this supposed to be light and fun and flirtatious if she started crying? She was ruining the whole plan. She sat at the high top again and wiped at the edge of her eye.
Ethan was already making his way over to her with a speared, browned mushroom. He blew on it before offering it to her. “Chef needs a second opinion.”
She leaned forward, lips brushing the tines as she took it in, some of her red lipstick lingering on the silver. “Perfect,” she said. She licked a drop of butter from her lip.
Ethan’s eyes flickered for a moment, as if he’d short-circuited. As if he wished he’d been the butter. As if he’d have licked the butter off her lips if she’d just asked him.
“I’ve been thinking of getting another cat,” Cali said offhandedly. “You know, to keep Max company?”
He froze, then dropped his head between his hands. “Cali …”
“I said it again, didn’t I?”
He nodded, and they both burst into laughter. “Drink up, Jacobs. But not too hard,” he advised, his voice softening again. “I’d hate for you to be too dizzy to enjoy the main course.” There was something almost devilish about the way he said it. “Your turn to ask me something.”
As the meal simmered, they talked and teased in circles—about music, about the town, about how that word cat somehow blurted from each of their mouths at least once every ten minutes.
Ethan’s laughter came easily, rumbling through the narrow kitchen, and Cali’s tension loosened every time it did.
As the sauce thickened, the lamplight got hazy, the room softened with steam and candlelight, and the scent of thyme and butter curled around them.
By the time the timer buzzed, she couldn’t tell whether her cheeks were flushed from the wine or from him.
The pot finally settled into a low bubble, so had she, comfortably, beside him at the table. The coq au vin was warm and filling and fall-apart tender. The perfect autumn dish.
As he ate, Cali noticed Ethan’s tattoo sleeve was a collage of small, interlocking images—a compass, a hammer, several drawings that looked like cats.
Not random, she realized now. He lifted his fork as he ate, and her eyes followed the motion, the way his tendons pulled tight, the edge of ink curling just past his elbow.
The design shifted as he flexed, and she had the ridiculous urge to reach out and smooth her palm over the lines.
Then she remembered the one she’d seen on his back that first day they both tried to catch Max.
“Tell me about the cat tattoo on your back,” she blurted suddenly, cheeks flushed.
The question caught him off guard, as if he hadn’t expected her to remember what he looked like half naked. He laughed, low and deep. “That’s another sip. You’re terrible at this.”
She hadn’t even realized. “You distracted me,” she accused.
He shook his head. “I didn’t say a word. Especially not the word.”
“You didn’t have to. The food. The company. I’m officially distracted.”
His knees grazed against hers beneath the table, accidentally at first. Then, when she didn’t draw hers back, they stayed pressed together. It was as if her whole body leaned toward his without her permission.
“That’s a tattoo of Remy, my first cat, before Catsby. He was a runt and scared of everything.” Ethan smiled to himself, remembering. “He thought the safest place was on my shoulder, so that’s always where he stayed. From the moment I got home, he climbed up there. He even stayed while I cooked.”
“Impressive.”
“It was more than that. He was like your Charley. Special. One of a kind. He was my soul cat.”
“What happened to him?”
“He got kidney disease. We tried fluids and a special diet for a while, but eventually that’s what took him. Heart-wrenching. Would not recommend it. As if any of us has a choice.”
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I know what that’s like, when they’re gone but still everywhere you look.”
Their eyes met, and something warm flickered between them. All she wanted was for the air in the room to keep buzzing like this—but without the sadness. So she reached for her wine and said, “Okay, new game, please. Time for something lighter before I cry into my coq au vin.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “I have a few ideas.” He grinned while dragging his fork through his plate of nearly-eaten coq au vin.
Cali bit her lower lip. Ethan rubbed the back of his neck.
“Let’s make it a little more interesting,” he suggested. “Forget Word Trap. New game: Truth or Kiss.”
Before she had a chance to protest, he reached a hand across the table and touched the gray streak above her forehead, twirling it through his fingers. “Tell me about this. Is it dyed that way on purpose or …?” His voice trailed off.
She swallowed hard and tucked some hair behind her ear. She tried to laugh it off with “Oh, that’s just trauma.” But his closeness and the rising heat, despite open windows, was already making her blush.
“Trauma?” he asked.
“Wait,” she said. “Isn’t it my turn to ask you a question now?”
“Nope. No vague answers. You can’t leave me hanging like that. What do you mean by ‘trauma’?”
“Corporate trauma,” she said finally, swirling her wine.
“You know. Endless deadlines. Too many all-hands meetings and not enough hands to actually help. People getting promoted for surviving the Misery Olympics. Until one morning—poof!—hello, gray hair. That’s why I got into library sciences. But I still have the battle scar.”
Ethan tilted his head, studying her. “I think it’s pretty,” he offered. That made her laugh, but something fluttered low in her chest. “Okay. Your turn.”
Her mind swirled like the last few velvety sips at the bottom of her wine glass. “Okay. I’ve got one. Truth or kiss?”
“Truth.”
“You told me, at the fall festival, how you got used to not feeling tied down. But you’re an adult now. You can make your own choices. What are you running from?” Her eyes narrowed, daring him.
He hesitated, smile fading for just a second. Then his broad shoulders shrugged. “Maybe I’ve been running from everything that’s not this.” The silence that followed was confusing, electric. He leaned in again and brushed his fingertips along her wrist. “Your turn. Truth or kiss?”
“Truth,” she replied, almost defiantly.
“What would your friends say if they knew I’d come over to cook for you tonight?”
She thought of Minka, of the way she’d cheered Cali on, of how this didn’t have to mean anything more than what it was in this exact moment—the building heat and tension and messiness to come.
Everything she’d fought against. “They’d probably say I finally did something reckless and fun.
Not exactly words people associate with me. ”
“Reckless?”
“Yeah, taking a chance on a guy who’ll be gone by the end of the year.”
His expression floundered a moment then recovered, a flicker of amusement crossing his face. It was as if her answer confused and intrigued him just as much as his answer had confused and intrigued her.
Touché, Cali thought.
Then she went for it. Hard. “Your turn. When did you first notice me? The story I’m telling myself is you sat outside of Minka’s every morning, long before I ever noticed you. You’d sip your coffee, pretend to read a book or scroll your phone, but really you were waiting until I looked your way.”
Ethan got up from the table and walked the few steps around to her. For a moment, she thought he’d collect her glass or reach for her plate. But instead, he braced one hand on the table beside her hip, the other at her jaw, and kissed her like he’d been wanting to do that for weeks.
His mouth was warm and tasted faintly of wine, the kiss deliberate, unhurried. Not a way to dodge her question, but a way to answer her.
When he finally pulled back, he stole her plate from the table and walked it to the sink to wash it, as though that kiss hadn’t just rearranged the air between them.
She felt heady and drunk but not inebriated.
More like high on the thought of what could happen next.
What might happen. What she wanted to happen.
His rough voice echoed from across the kitchen. “And how many times have you thought about us kissing like that since you finally looked my way?”
God, he was good. Ridiculously good. He had her in the palm of his hand. And Cali thought how this teasing, this verbal back-and-forth, this matching of wit might be the hottest foreplay she’d ever experienced.