Melt for You (Slow Burn #2)(13)

He glances up at me from under his lashes and sends me a lazy smile. “So you’re not denyin’ you think I’m beautiful.”

My eye roll is extravagant. “You’re depriving some poor village of its idiot. Can I have my cat back now?”

“When I get my pie, you get the cat.” He turns around and swaggers back across the hall with Mr. Bingley in his arms, kicking the door shut just as I lunge for it.

“McGregor!” Furious, I pound on his door with my fist. “Give me my cat back right this minute!”

From behind the closed door comes a low chuckle and the clack of a dead bolt turning. “Your pie for your pussy, sweetheart.” Two seconds later, rap music comes on at full volume, thundering through the walls, cutting off any hope of further conversation.

I stare at his door, fuming, grateful for once that poor Mr. Bingley is deaf so he doesn’t have to hear the blistering foul language in the lyrics. A part of me marvels at the audacity of this Cameron McGregor person and how he can work in not one but two euphemisms for my vagina in a six-word sentence, while another part of me wants to tear the door clear off its hinges and beat him to a pulp with it.

The bastard stole my cat!

I holler at the top of my lungs, “If he comes back with a single hair out of place, I’ll kick your tights-wearing butt!”

I could swear under the boom of bass there’s laughter.




Never in the long and storied history of shepherd’s pie has one been assembled faster.

I set a land speed record to and from the corner market, my shoes leaving smoke and the sound of peeling rubber in their wake. I chop vegetables like a madwoman, sauté ground lamb as if someone is holding a gun to my head, curse at the pot of water until it finally gives in and comes to a boil from sheer terror. I abuse the potatoes so badly in my hurry to mash them, I almost overdo it and end up with a gluey mess but salvage them just in time by calming myself with a jumbo glass of wine, guzzled with the gusto of an addict at the start of an epic bender.

After that I’m calm—well, calm is a relative term when comparing a total mental breakdown to mere crippling anxiety—and am able to finish the dish and get it into the oven without chopping off any of my fingers or suffering a life-threatening cardiac event.

Which is when I realize that in my haste, I never turned the oven on.

“I’m going to kill him,” I tell the empty kitchen. “If Mr. Bingley is even a little miffed when he comes home, Cameron McGregor is going to die.”

I crank up the dial on the oven, then head over to McGregor’s and pound on the door. I’m regretting leaving my chef’s knife in the kitchen when he opens up.

He’s changed from the yellow stretchy leggings into a pair of faded jeans but still isn’t wearing anything else. I wonder if the man owns shirts. And why does he have to be so muscular? It’s distracting!

“Where is he?” I demand, craning my neck to try to look around his broad shoulders.

“Where’s my pie?”

“In the oven.”

He cocks one eyebrow and stares at me.

“It has to bake! It takes time! You’ll have your stupid shepherd’s pie in half an hour for God’s sake!”

He sends me a saccharine smile. “So that’s when you’ll have your cat.”

He makes a move to shut the door but is unable to as I throw my full weight against it. I knock him out of the way and barge into the apartment, calling Mr. Bingley’s name, knowing he won’t be able to hear me but unable to stop myself in my panic that I’m two steps away from finding a dead pile of fur on the floor with a beer bottle shoved down its poor throat.

“Mr. Bingley! Mr. Bing—”

I stop short at the bedroom door. There in the middle of the bed is the cat, curled up and sleeping peacefully, the stupid yellow tights wound around him like a security blanket.

“He’s a real lover, that one.” Cameron stands behind me in the hallway. I can tell from his tone he’s trying not to laugh. “Practically had to peel him off me so I could take a shower. Never had a cat take a likin’ to me so fast. Takes after his mum, I guess.”

I refuse to let him bait me, so I don’t answer. Instead, I go to the bed and pick up Mr. Bingley, careful not to touch the yellow tights. When I turn around, Cameron is blocking the doorway, his arms folded over his chest. He shakes his head.

“Now I know you don’t think you’re leavin’ with that cat, lass, seein’ as how I don’t have a shepherd’s pie in my hands.”

“Your obsession with that particular food is pathological, you know that?”

“It’s just that . . . pie is my favorite thing in the world.” He pulls his lips between his teeth, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter.

“Ugh. Keep talking—maybe someday you’ll say something intelligent.”

He throws his head back and laughs, loud and long, while I stand and stare at him and Mr. Bingley tries to wriggle out of my arms to get back to the bed.

“Okay, comedian,” he says, still chuckling. “New deal. We’re goin’ over to your place while we wait for my pie to finish bakin’.” He turns and strolls away, waving a hand dismissively over his shoulder when I holler at him that we don’t have a deal, and he’s not welcome in my apartment.