Reaching down, she petted the invading feline behind its ears. “Hello, little one. Are you Ruth’s kitty?” She loved animals. She always had, but for now she didn’t have any pets of her own. Scooping the larger-than-average cat into her arms, she rubbed it under its chin.
The cat continued purring as if the world had given it a gift from the animal gods. “Oh, you are a sweet widdle one, yes, you are. I bet Unkie Mark loves to spend time with you while Ruth’s away.” She hummed softly as she sat down. Tags jingled somewhere underneath all that fur. Picking them up she read aloud, “Sophie. What a pretty widdle name.”
Suddenly Sophie hissed and darted away. Jennifer stopped moving for a moment. What sounded like scratching came from the front door. It’d only been a few weeks since she moved into the building, but stories of break-ins abounded. Not only that, recently there had been a string of burglaries in the buildings near the diner. The patrons talked about it daily. Thinking about the streets outside, Jennifer’s heart filled the empty spaces in her mouth, making it impossible to scream. All that snow. A squad car might not make it through right now, and that left the residents of her building even more vulnerable than they otherwise might have been.
As the doorknob jiggled, goosebumps slid up Jennifer’s arms. Hair on the back of her neck stood at attention. Her fingers tingled as her gaze traveled from the doorknob up to the unlatched chain. “Oh, God,” she whispered. Dashing from the couch she managed to lock the chain and throw her body against the door just as it started to push open. Her voice broke through as she screamed, “MARK! HELP! Please! Someone’s breaking into the apartment!”
Chapter Three
“Jennifer, I’m right here,” he called wearily through the door.
“Mark?”
“I’m here.”
She threw open the door. “Mark! I thought somebody was breaking in...”
“I know. I caught that part.”
“Oh. Wait, where have you been? I thought you were asleep in Ruth’s room.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “If I had known you were gone, I would have been worried sick!”
The corners of his mouth lifted into a smile at her logic, or maybe it was the way her bottom lip pouted out as she admonished him. She couldn’t help it; that lip just seemed to fly out on its own whenever it pleased.
His gaze trailed down to that lip, lingered long enough to melt most of the snow, then made its way back up to her eyes. He focused on her question. “Sophie got out last night. I went to look for her and found someone unconscious in the alley. I ended up staying the night working in the hospital.”
Jennifer’s heart skipped a beat.
“Sophie?” She wanted to say something about the cat being fine, but then her eyes were drawn to his too-dark jeans. The way his pant legs dripped water all over the floor. “Why are you so wet?”
“Have you looked outside today?”
“It’s very snowy...oh. But didn’t you have your car...oh! You couldn’t have driven it in the snow. You walked back all the way from the hospital?” Her voice rose in an alarming manner.
He nodded his head, unzipped his pants and tugged at the legs to pull them from his body.
“Mark! What are you doing?” The alarmed voice came back for a second round.
Her eyes widened as the pants pulled his boxer shorts down just a little, showing the dip of dark hair below his navel. He tugged them back up and then let the pants fall with a plop onto the floor. “These are too wet to walk through the apartment in. Could you get me a towel?”
Jennifer turned her head, but not before she saw those sexy legs of his. Her first impressions of him from the night before came back in full force. Those soccer player thighs dotted sparsely with just the right amount of almost-black hair. That cologne in the hallway that smelled so exotic and masculine. She could swear that smell had permeated into her own clothes. And every female fiber of her body felt envious of those boxer shorts, the way they hugged against his hard thighs.
I can’t believe I’m thinking about that right now. Other men had turned her on over the years, but none made her feel quite as tingly as she felt around Mark. Just seeing that exposed part of his abdomen a few minutes ago had sent warmth flowing from the tingly top of her scalp to naughty places she’d almost forgotten.
She ducked away, headed into the bathroom to grab a towel. By the time she got back into the front room, his shirt had come off, as well. Oh, Lord! It was like Chip-n-Dales right in the middle of Ruth’s pink living room. That thought made her smile and she had to struggle not to jump into his strong, strong, strong-looking arms. This time there was no white t-shirt to keep her wondering. With his well-built chest and oh-so-lickable arms, Mark was definitely all man.