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“What?” He frowns. “What cat?”

“The one who ran out in front of you. Didn’t you see her?”

He lets out an amused huff. “I was too busy watching you run out in front of me.” He looks around. “There’s no cat here.”

“Oh.” I frown. “I should look for her. She must have escaped from her home.”

This time when he brings his gaze back to mine, there’s an expression on his face that tells me he thinks I’ve lost any semblance of sanity. “Why do you think she escaped?”

I widen my eyes. “Because cats with collars don’t usually go running around outside in a big city, do they?”

He runs his hand through his hair, and it catches the sunlight. “Of course they do.”

“No they don’t. Pet cats stay in the house. Or the apartment. Whatever.”

The hint of a smile catches his face. “Are you talking about house cats?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Most cats here aren’t house cats,” he says. “They’re free to wander.”

“You let your pets roam the city streets?” I ask, horrified. “What if they get hit by a car?”

This time he starts to laugh. And damn it, he has little crinkles at the corners of his eyes. I’m a sucker for those. “We let humans roam the streets, too,” he says pointedly, looking between me and his car.

Touché.

“I’m thinking you’re American,” he says, tipping his head to the side.

“I am,” I tell him. I look over at my suitcases, abandoned on the sidewalk. “I just arrived.”

“I never would’ve guessed.”

Oh, so now he’s being an ass. A pretty one, but still an ass.

“Where are you heading?” he asks me.

“Huh?”

“I assume you’re not walking around Covent Garden with your luggage and a disappearing cat just for the fun of it.”

I shake my head. “No. I’m heading for my hotel.”

He tips his head to the side. “Which one?”

“The Hunt.” Take that, dude. Yeah, I’m bougie enough to stay in a thousand-dollar a night hotel.

He doesn’t need to know it’s just for one night. Or that I’m not, strictly speaking, paying for it.

“Okay. Let me call them, they can collect your bags.” He pulls his phone from his pocket. His car is pretty much abandoned in the middle of the road, the driver’s door flung wide open like he ran like a bat out of hell out of it.

“It’s fine, I can manage.” I go to walk out of the road, but before I can reach them, he grabs my wrist.

And I get goosebumps. Oh god, maybe I really did die. This is all the last of the electrical pulses in my brain trying to give me a cheap thrill before they fade to nothing. For good.

“You’re staying at The Hunt. They pay people to carry your bags up for you.” The way he looks at me is so intense, it takes my breath away. It’s like he can feel it too. This weird, incessant buzz that’s impossible to ignore.

He lifts the phone and murmurs into it, like whoever’s on the other line was waiting for him to speak. “What’s your name?” he asks me.