Cat's Lair

  "Honest isn't the same thing as arrogant, Cat," he pointed out.

  "First, I'm going to bang my head on the wall and then drink the rest of my coffee and then make food. I think you're making my blood sugar drop to zero. Either that or you're just making my head crazy. Either way, I need food. You want some?"

  "Absolutely. I'm always ready for food. You getting takeout?"

  She gave him a look that should have fried him on the spot, but he didn't seem in the least fazed by it. "Commencing head banging," she said, and walked over to the wall.

  He burst out laughing. "Woman, you bang your head on that wall and I'm coming down off this ladder and you won't like what happens after that."

  It was a threat, one she didn't understand, so she ignored it and went straight to the kitchen. She loved her kitchen. The only thing it lacked was a view, but if she wanted a view while she cooked, she could sneak glances at Ridley while he worked. She liked the sound of his laughter, and more, she liked the fact that she could make him laugh.

  She didn't want him there because it was dangerous for him, but still, she wanted him there because she was lonely and needed to laugh with someone. She took a deep breath and let it out. She was careful. Very careful. Rafe hadn't found her yet, and that just might mean she'd finally figured out how to keep him from finding her. She would never be able to live out in the open, but she was happy and if she let herself have a friend or two, maybe it would work out.

  She closed her ears to the voice that told her she was being naive and it wasn't fair to put good people in danger. She was so lonely she hurt with every breath she took. She hadn't realized just how lonely until Malcom had offered her his warehouse. She'd been so suspicious of his motives, but he'd been kind to her when she needed it the most. Kind when she was totally vulnerable. He hadn't ever once said or done anything to indicate he had a motive beyond that--beyond simple kindness.

  She hadn't known that existed until Malcom had come along. She didn't know kind people. She didn't know what to do with them. She found herself smiling as she fixed breakfast, every now and then sneaking a peek at Ridley's very nice behind encased in snug-fitting blue jeans.

  Ridley worked hard and fast, meticulously though, adjusting each camera exactly the way he wanted it, so that every single corner of the warehouse was exposed with the exception of her bedroom and the bathroom. He didn't talk anymore, leaving her free to concentrate on her cooking. She loved cooking.

  That had been one of the few things she'd been allowed to do and she'd poured herself into learning. She'd excelled to the point that eventually Rafe preferred her meals to the ones his chef fixed. He hadn't ever told her that, but he had fired the chef and one of his men came to her every morning and asked for a list of things she wanted from the grocery store.

  She had used the money she saved on a security system to buy a very nice espresso machine yesterday, one of the better ones she could work with to make Ridley his favorite drink. Right now, she wanted espresso with the beignets she'd made to go along with their breakfast.

  "Come eat," she called, without looking up. She was nervous. Really nervous. This was important to her, the one thing besides making coffee she thought she was good at and she wanted Ridley to think she was good at it too.

  She didn't want him to see her nerves. She tried to be casual as if it didn't matter when she served the Creole red beans under two poached eggs topped with hollandaise sauce. She grilled Andouille sausages and spicy hash browns. The espresso was perfect and the beignets were hot out of the frying oil.

  She sat in the chair opposite Ridley's, so nervous she had to twist her hands together in her lap as he sat down. She watched him though. She couldn't help it. His eyes moved over the food and came back to her face.

  "Kitten." He breathed his nickname for her.

  She had started out hating that name, but now, the way he said it, she loved it.

  "You can cook."

  "Well, yes. But you'd better try it. I hope you like spicy."

  He ate several bites of the egg and red beans, his gaze still on her face. "My God, woman, I need to marry you. Who taught you to cook like this? You're too young to have gone to school for it. Your mom is a cook?"

  She closed her eyes and looked down at her hands. It was an innocent question. He liked her food and anyone--anyone--would ask the same question.

  "My mother never cooked a day in her life," she blurted out. Her hand actually went to her mouth, pushed against her lips hard. What was wrong with her? That was definitely letting him in. She'd never once said a word to anyone about her mother. Her mother was off limits. Ridley had cast some terrible spell over her and she didn't know what she was doing or saying around him half the time.

  His gaze turned speculative as if he knew the subject was taboo. "So if not your mother, Cat, who? Where? Because this is superb."

  She shrugged and went with the truth. "I spent a lot of time hanging out in the kitchen and the chef was amazing." She didn't care if she was misleading him in a small way, making him think she'd had a chef growing up because her mother didn't cook. "I was fascinated and watched everything he did and how he did it. Eventually he allowed me to help and then sometimes cook the meal. I loved it."

  She pushed the heavy fall of hair from around her face, shoving it back over her shoulder. Heat flared in his eyes, turning them to a molten gold so bright she had to look away again. She managed to pick up her espresso without her hands shaking. She was shaking inside, so that was a particularly good feat.

  "You constantly amaze me. I've never had a better meal, or better coffee. Looking like you do, I'd think you'd just sit back and let everyone admire you, but no, you work out in the dojo and you're not there to pick up men."

  She smiled at him. "Newsflash, Ridley, the women at the dojo are there to learn how to defend themselves, not pick up men."

  "Newsflash right back at you, Kitten, most of them are there to pick up men. Have you watched them working out? Malcom has to tell them the same thing over and over. They don't condition. They don't practice, they just try to look good and bat their eyelashes. Most of them have all requested private lessons with me."

  She rolled her eyes at him. "Here's another newsflash for you, Ridley. Anyone with eyes can see you're good at self-defense, the katas and the sparring. So anyone who wants to seriously improve is going to try to score private lessons with you."

  "You didn't."

  That brought her head up. Her eyes met his and that was a terrible mistake. A really, really bad mistake. Heat moved through her. Not moved. Rushed like a fireball right through her veins and settled low in her body, until her feminine core pulsed with need. She let her breath out and took another sip of espresso.

  "I don't let people into my life. Especially not a man the rest of the world is going to notice."

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  She settled back in her chair, frowning at him, lifting her fork to gesture toward him. "Ridley, come on, you're gorgeous. You're the kind of man other men step aside for. Women can't take their eyes off of you. You have scars and tats and you move like sheer poetry. Everyone looks when you walk into a room. You have presence. I can't be walking around with that. So I'm not going to ask for private lessons even if you're the best there is. Besides"--she smirked at him--"I can't afford you."

  Ridley took another bite of the poached eggs covered in hollandaise sauce. She was killing him. She gave him compliments a woman should never give to a man without knowing if he was hers and she did it matter-of-factly, no flirting. She didn't think she was complimenting him, just stating a fact. All the while she did it, her unruly hair tumbled in sheets of waves like a waterfall. Her face was animated, her amazing cobalt blue eyes, so dark they were brilliant, seemed to hold the key to paradise. A man would want to look into her eyes, watch them change, haze over while he buried himself hard and deep inside of her.

  She was sexy without trying. Innocent without knowing she was. Lethal as hel
l to any man with eyes in his head. And scared out of her mind. Still, he was sitting across from her at her breakfast table, eating the most amazing breakfast of his life, and he was finding his way in. Slowly. Carefully. Feeling his way.

  "You don't need money to get private lessons, Kitten. Your food will always be enough for a fair exchange. Half the time I eat at a diner or out of a box. I'm no cook."

  "What are you? What do you do?"

  "Security." He shrugged, a casual roll of his shoulders. "Work for a company and we get sent out on different types of jobs."

  She frowned at him. He found her frown adorable but refrained from saying so.

  "Like the security sitting in an office building looking at computer monitors to make certain no one's stealing anything? That kind of security? Or the kind that puts you in the path of a bullet because you're guarding someone else."

  Catarina's blue eyes moved over his face, and his entire body tightened. Lethal as hell she was. His body was full and hard just from one look under her long sweeping lashes.

  "I do install systems once in a while," he admitted, "but I've never actually sat in front of a monitor in an office building."

  She slid her lips over her fork, a completely innocent gesture, but his groin throbbed in response. "So the take-a-bullet-for-someone-else kind of security."

  He shrugged, concentrating on breathing.

  She shook her head. "You're nuts, you know. Taking bullets for other people is just plain nuts. Is that other person worth more than you are? No." That was firm. She leaned toward him, gesturing with her fork again. "The answer, Ridley, is no. They aren't. I don't care how rich they are or how famous. They aren't more important than you are. You have no business risking your life like that."

  "It pays well."

  She flipped her hair over her shoulder. "Now you're just trying to get a rise out of me." She sat back again and sipped at her espresso, watching him carefully over the rim of the mug.

  "Well. Yeah. I have to admit when you get all fired up with that attitude of yours, I'm a goner for you. That does it for me the way Zen does it for you."

  She burst out laughing. "Eat a beignet, Ridley, and your fantasies will really take off. They're better than my attitude."

  He found himself laughing with her. She was even more beautiful when she laughed. The sound was soft and musical, and her eyes lit up. Her perfect bow of a mouth drew his attention, and his fantasies turned totally erotic just sitting there at the breakfast table. He snagged a beignet. The sugary, doughy dessert was still warm, the taste mixing with the espresso in his mouth, and he knew he would never forget that moment, sitting across from her, laughing and eating the best meal of his life.

  No one had ever given him the kind of concern she had, worried about what he did for a living, and damn, she did it looking so beautiful his heart ached. She had pulled her legs up onto the chair and was sitting tailor fashion while she ate her breakfast. It was the first time he had ever seen her truly relaxed. She wasn't thinking about being scared. For those few minutes, he'd chased the shadows from her eyes, and he liked being the one who'd done it.

  He was older than she was, and he didn't settle down with women, but he'd had a lot of them. He'd never sat across with one of them having breakfast, so relaxed, and that was saying a lot. He didn't share breakfast with women. They used each other and then he left. Period. No sleeping in the same bed, no breakfast in the morning. He was gone.

  "Got to get back to work, but this was fantastic, Cat. I appreciate you going to all the trouble." He stood up and pushed back his chair.

  She tilted her head up toward his, her blue eyes moving over his face as if memorizing every detail. "Thanks, Ridley, for the security system. It really helps. You can't know how much."

  Her eyes were soft. Her perfect mouth smiled at him. Her gorgeous hair spilled around her like a waterfall of dark silk. His hand moved before he could think. He had no idea what possessed him, but he couldn't stop himself, and he was a man all about control and discipline. His fingers buried in all that silk and fisted there, tugging until her head was back. He leaned in and brushed a kiss across her mouth.

  His stomach rolled. His cock hardened. With one touch. One. Fucking. Touch. Electricity crackled and his pulse thundered in his ears. Lightning flashed through his veins so his blood ran hot.

  He stepped away and turned without another word, not looking at her face, not daring to. He might have just blown it big-time, but now he had her taste in his mouth and it was far sweeter and tastier than the beignet.

  Catarina closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to her trembling lips. He'd kissed her. Kissed her. She knew, to him, it was just a small gesture of thanks, or "you're welcome," depending. He probably hadn't felt anything at all. It wasn't like it was a real kiss, with mouths open and tongues involved. It was brief. Hardly there. But she didn't care. It was a kiss. And from Ridley. She could perv on that for months.

  She risked a glance and he was back installing cameras, so she rose and did the dishes, hugging the moment to herself. Their perfect moment. No one could ever take that away from her. Not even if everything went south and she was found and dragged back or killed, she would have that moment.

  She was wrong to be friends with him. To risk him. But maybe, if she was careful, she could keep the risk to a minimum.

  4

  "WE'RE going to have to hire some help if the crowds get any bigger," David announced.

  Catarina glanced up from behind the coffee machine. The crowd vying for coffee was three deep. She could speed up, but the machine couldn't. "I'm sorry, David, I can only work so fast," she told him.

  "No, this is good. I'm loving this," David said. "Your boyfriend's back."

  Catarina's head came up and she looked around Poetry Slam. It was crowded, but she knew she would always, always, know when Ridley was in a room, and he hadn't come in. They spent a lot of time together, mostly in her warehouse. His latest endeavor was tiling the shower and putting in plumbing.

  "I don't have a boyfriend," she denied.

  David took another order and then nudged her. "Seriously, Cat, his lovesick poems are getting hard to take. All that unrequited love pouring out for the world to see. You've got to put the man out of his misery and go out on a date with him."

  She took a breath. He wasn't talking about Ridley. Ridley came every night to walk her home, but he stayed in the corner after he ordered his coffee, reading. He made certain she was safe walking home, but he never acted interested in her publicly. And since that one brief kiss at breakfast, he hadn't made any other moves.

  He did spar with her a lot. She knew she was improving. He showed her all kinds of self-defense moves. He was an exacting teacher and he didn't like it if she messed up. He sometimes scowled at her, his golden eyes glittering with anger.

  That will get you dead if you don't do the move right. Pay attention to what you're doing, Cat. If your head isn't in the game, we can do this another day.

  He said that a lot. She always paid more attention and tried harder. She kept to her routine, working out on her own, running before work, going to the shooting range as often as she had the money for. She slept a lot easier with the security system. Ridley had placed the monitor right by her bed so when she activated the system, she could see each individual area the cameras covered. She could zoom in and she could record.

  Ridley always walked her home, and he never allowed her entry until he'd checked the place out first. She'd been a little uncomfortable with him going into her bedroom the first few times, but she'd gotten used to the way he was about protecting women. Clearly, it was just who he was. And she liked who he was.

  Twice he gave her a hard time because she'd left her safe open and the cash in plain sight. Both times he'd been concerned someone had been there, but she'd just forgotten that when she closed the door she had to bang it with her fist to get the stupid thing to close all the way. She'd found the safe in a thrift store and it was old and tir
ed. Still, it worked just fine for her.

  "Cat, don't go all silent on me," David cautioned. "I'm just trying to keep Bernard from getting his heart ripped out when the masses rise up and rip the microphone out of his hands."

  "Bernard?" Catarina handed David another drink, this one a simple mocha latte, one of the easier drinks those in the crowd asked for. "You think I'm going to go on a date with Bernard? Our main poet? He's supposed to be my mythical boyfriend?" She hissed it at David. "I don't date. Not ever. Are you crazy? He doesn't even notice me. My coffee yes, me no."

  David rang up two more orders and handed out the mocha latte before he rolled his eyes at her. "Who do you think all those love poems are written to? 'Ode to my Rina'? Is that not an indication?"

  If she didn't have such acute hearing she would never have been able to hear him over the buzz of the crowd. She glanced up again. Bernard was in line, second row back. He smiled at her and waggled his fingers. She flashed a smile back.

  "Seriously, he doesn't look like unrequited love is happening in his life, David. You've been in the romance section of the books again, haven't you?"

  He gave a little sniff and tossed three more orders at her. "You do not have a romantic bone in your body," he announced, and turned away from her, his nose in the air.

  She tried not to laugh. She didn't laugh at work, but really, David's little snits were hysterical, especially when he guessed incorrectly that someone was fixating on her. Bernard liked the spotlight, plain and simple. He loved writing his poetry and he wanted everyone to hear and admire him. As a rule, everyone did. He actually was quite good.

  She made a few more drinks, working fast, trying to clear the crowd when she felt the first tingling of her radar. Goose bumps rose on her arm. The curious itching beneath her skin came like a wave and receded. She took a breath and didn't make the mistake of looking up right away. Someone was watching her. She felt them. Not like the normal crowd, but someone interested in her.

  Alarm bells shrieked at her, but she breathed right through them. Over the years she'd acquired discipline and she used it, calmly making another drink and handing it off to David. He winked at her to show her he was over his annoyance with her. David didn't know how to hold a grudge and if he got irritable it was usually because he needed to eat something. If he got too bad, she left her post, marched around the counter to his side and tossed him a muffin. This wasn't one of those times.