Awk-Weird (Ice Knights, #2)(25)

Getting up slowly, Cole kept his voice soft. “Here, kitty, kitty.” He tiptoed over to the chair, feeling every bit like some inept cartoon villain. “I just want to see what you’ve managed to mangle, you sneaky little shit.”

Okay, it wasn’t the nicest thing to say, but it wasn’t like the kitten could understand. It was all about the baby-talk tone he’d made sure to use. He peeked around the corner of the chair, ready to reach out and snatch the kitten, but the devil feline wasn’t there.

He let out a deep breath and straightened up. What was worse than trying to sweet-talk a cat? Trying to sweet-talk nothing but air. He glanced up at the ceiling and shook his head. “You are an idiot, Phillips.”

“I mean, I’m not gonna disagree,” a man said, “but is there a specific reason this time?”

Cole whirled around, not even close to as skillfully as the cat had.

Petrov stood in his hallway holding what at one point in time had been a half dozen squares of toilet paper but now looked like someone had tried to turn it into streamers. Well, that was one question answered—what had been stuck to Kahn’s paw—but not the other two in his head.

“What are you doing here and why are you holding those?” he asked.

“I picked the toilet paper up starting outside the front door and followed it here like some kind of TP bread trail,” Petrov said. “Honestly, I figured it had to be a sign that your clean-freak ass had finally cracked.”

“It was the cat.”

Petrov’s eyebrows practically disappeared into his hairline. “There’s a cat here?”

He nodded, marching toward Tess’s room. “Her cat.”

“There’s a dirty joke in there somewhere.” And he was chuckling about it as they made their way down the hall.

“Shut up, Petrov.”

Mercifully, he did, but that didn’t mean he hung back as Cole followed the shredded Charmin to the partially open door of Tess’s room. Once there, he hesitated, his hand hovering over the knob. All he had to do was nudge it open the rest of the way. She’d done the same thing to him and he’d been inside and asleep. She was at work. He was on the trail of that darn cat. That made it okay, right?

“You gonna stare or go in?” Petrov asked.

A man had to have boundaries.

No shotgun weddings. No getting it on together again. No wandering into her room and imagining her in there like some kind of creeper—which he was not. He’d barely thought about how she looked naked and spread out on a bed, her eyes half closed with pleasure, since she’d moved in.

Fuck.

He was a creeper.

“It’s her room,” he said. Reminder? Mantra? Plea? Yeah, it was pretty much all of that.

He was ready to walk away when Kahn let out a pitiful mewl.

Hell’s Favorite Minion was probably trapped. He could’ve fallen into the toilet. That would serve the little shit right.

Cole had half a second of epic levels of satisfaction before guilt scratched at the back of his neck and his conscience whispered that Kahn might need help.

Letting out a groan he felt all the way down to the soles of his feet, Cole pushed Tess’s door open wide and walked in. It smelled like her, flowery and light and cheerful, but that was the only sign that she was living there and would be for at least the next few weeks. The bone-colored comforter was pulled up with the matching cream and tan pillows on top. The walls—like in the rest of the house—were eggshell. The only thing that stuck out was Tess’s brightly colored suitcase.

Well, that and the river of toilet paper running from the bathroom to the barely open door of the walk-in closet. A tiny paw slid out from underneath the door followed by a pathetic meow.

“Serves you right for taking blades to the toilet paper,” Cole said as he swung the door open.

Kahn dashed out and used those spikes of his to climb straight up his jeans and T-shirt until the damn thing was close enough to rub the top of his fuzzy head against Cole’s jaw.

Petrov shot him a smug grin. “I thought you didn’t like cats…or dogs…or anything with fur or scales or feathers.”

He grimaced as the kitten settled on his shoulder. “I don’t.”

Petrov didn’t even have the decency to pretend not to laugh at that. “Whatever you say.” Then he turned and looked around the room. “This is Tess’s room?” He glanced into the empty closet. “She’s not staying here?”

“Yeah, she is.”

The other man crossed his arms over his chest and gave him a hard look. “And she’s staying for longer than a weekend?”

“Two weeks at least.”

“Then why is the closet empty?” he asked, the question being very much not a question. “That’s not what chicks do. What’s the deal with your lady not unpacking?”

“My lady?” He pet Kahn, not really meaning to but needing to do something with his hands—always his tell when he was trying to deflect. “What are you, a hundred?”

Petrov rolled his eyes. “Answer the question, Phillips.”

“It’s only been a few days,” Cole said, the words sounding like a lame excuse even as they came out of his mouth. “Maybe she likes to wait.”

He let out a snort of disbelief. “Unlikely.”