Next thing I knew, he’d thrown himself around the kitchen island and into my arms, pressing up on the balls of his feet to kiss me. “Thank you,” he whispered.
I shook my head. “I didn’t?—”
“Yes, you did,” he insisted. ”You... you took care of him. You took care ofme.”
My chest rumbled, and it took me a second to realize I was purring. “Maybe I’m just in the mood to take care of you,” I muttered, bending down for another kiss. “How would you feel about putting the coffee on pause?”
His cheeks had turned that warm, coral pink I loved so much. “We can do that.”
When I dragged him in close, he hopped up. It was the easiest thing in the world to catch him.
The best thing in the world, to carry him back to bed and prove that I had every intention of taking care of his every need.
CHAPTER 23
LANDON
Istumbled into the warehouse about ten minutes late, because the server guy had dragged me aside to shove his personal laptop into my hands and give me a list of complaints that amounted to “it’s old and it’s slowing down, fix it.”
The laptop wasn’t just old, it was ancient, in laptop terms. The thing had to weigh ten pounds, and I was convinced it was going to be less a matter of fixing it than replacing it with something that had been created in the last decade.
Funny how even tech people could sometimes get overly attached to things that were past their use-by date.
Julia made a weird, warbly high-pitched noise as I came into the room, and no one looked at me, which was... weird.
“Something wrong?” I asked, still distractedly trying to juggle my own bag and the oversized heavy laptop.
Then I noticed my desk.
My desk, that had a cup of coffee and a little paper bag on it.
My desk, that smelled, ever so faintly, of Dean.
“Turns out panthers are just like house cats,” Victor murmured, to titters from everyone else.
I lifted a brow at him, and he flushed and ducked his head. “I mean, um...”
“He means your kitty cat left a dead bird on your desk for you,” Julia interrupted, fearless as usual, giving me an insouciant grin. “He wants to make sure you’re taken care of and all that jazz.”
“It’s sweet,” Victor mumbled. “Less scary than werewolf courting.”
Which was fair, I’d seen enough werewolf courting to know that it was all very dramatic and overwhelming. I preferred to have a coffee left on my desk than someone buying me a house without asking my input, and then being horrified when I said it wasn’t the neighborhood I wanted to live in.
People called cats prima donnas, but at least we weren’t quite as melodramatic as werewolves.
I dumped the laptop on the corner of my desk and gave my coffee a sniff. Perfect cappuccino. And in the bag, an almond croissant.
Since Dean had started making his own time for his career, he’d been pleasantly surprised. Local places were still giving him the credit he’d built up over his years in the band, but now that he didn’t have to schedule around everyone else’s jobs and lives and plans, he was steadily booking more work than he’d ever had before.
He was hesitating, because he wasn’t in music for fame, but he was even starting to get music executives sniffing around at his shows because of his surge in popularity.
My boyfriend, the musical genius.
Who left breakfast on my desk.
I smiled, and took a sip of my coffee. Yes, things were looking up quite nicely.
I flipped my own laptop open, checking through my morning emails, to find one from my mother sitting there in my Crescent account.
