Bliss.
She slid onto a barstool while Linx unloaded his refrigerator onto the center island of the kitchen. He tossed a head of lettuce in his hands like it was a volleyball. Gibson hopped up on the barstool next to her, eyeballing the counter.
“Don’t do it, Gibs.” Linx pointed to him with the head of lettuce. “Gotta wipe your paws before you go wandering on the counters.”
Gibson hopped over to Becca’s lap instead, settling in and turning on his purr motor.
Linx went to assembling a couple of sandwiches with the cutlets, cheese, lettuce, tomato. The guy obviously took sandwich art as seriously as he took his music. And his cat.
“How do you feel about Europe?” he asked.
Becca didn’t look up from where she gave Gibson her attention. “I like Europe.”
Gibson was apparently tired of this conversation because he hopped off of her lap and disappeared around the corner to the living where C-SPAN still blared.
“Great. When should we leave?” he asked. The question should have been funny, but there was no humor in the word. “Is your passport up to date? We could go tomorrow. Ditch my family,” he continued.
Um. No. A trip to Europe was not light. Not light at all.
“What about Gibson?” she asked, apparently channeling Courtney.
“We can take him with us.” Linx added a top layer of bread to the sandwich and cut it in half with a butter knife.
She couldn’t be entirely sure because she’d never traveled with a feline, but, “I don’t think you can just take pets with you overseas. Don’t they have to go through a process with quarantining and vet checks?”
Hadn’t celebrities gotten into trouble with that before?
“Damn, there’s so much I don’t know about pet ownership.” He slid the finished sandwich across the island to her. “They need to write a book about it.”
“Would you read that book?” Becca asked, before digging into the art that was her dinner.
Linx tugged his lips to the side. “Probably not.”
Holy crapola, like everything else he did, Linx’s sandwich was phenomenal. “This is fantastic.”
He grinned. Clearly, he already knew that. “Thanks.”
“Gibson can stay here. Courtney owes me. I’ll ask her nicely to watch him. If she says no, I’ll ask Tanner or Mach to do it.”
Becca shook her head. “Leaving town when your family just arrived wouldn’t be very nice.”
“But it would be fun.” He finished slicing his dinner in half and bit into it.
They ate in silence. With anyone else, the silence would’ve been awkward. With Linx, the normalcy of it was refreshing. She dug this. Linx’s mattresses. Linx’s sandwiches.
Linx.
All of him.
He could sell this service to cruise ship passengers and make a fortune.
“Besides—” The word rumbled across his vocal cords like a great lyric to a song. “—I’m not feeling like I should be very nice tonight. A nice man would not have the intentions I have for you.”
She gulped. “What, exactly, are your intentions?”
Yay, he had intentions for her. She had a hunch they’d be her brand of dirty.
He paused, set down his unfinished sandwich, and locked his gaze on hers. “You’re going to yell my name. In my bed.”
