Then the girl started sneezing because she was allergic, and once Hallie got the cat back in her arms, he settled right down and went back to purring.
“Come sit down right next to little Hallie,” Hallie crooned, patting the floor beside her. “I want to see if he kicks your ass or not.”
There was something about her face when she was being a smartass. Hallie’s eyes almost twinkled, and he imagined that’s exactly what she’d looked like as a pain-in-the-ass little kid.
“He’s not going to kick my ass,” he proclaimed as he walked over and dropped to the floor beside her. “Because I won’t let him.”
“I’m going to go get some air,” Ruthie said.
Jack looked up at her, and the girl was so scrawny and childlike in her weirdness that he felt somehow protective of her. “Do you want me to go with you?”
She rolled her eyes. “Look at you, Prince Charming, so scared of a cat ass-whooping that you’re going to accompany me to the parking lot. Bugger off.”
“You bugger off, Ruthie,” he replied, which made her burst into her wildly out-of-control laughter as she exited the room.
“Oh, my God—she loves you, Jack,” Hallie said with a grin as she petted the beast. “I’ve never seen Ruthie so sweet to a guy before.”
He gave her side-eye and ran a hand over the cat’s back. “The first thing she said to me was ‘Your car is a symbol of everything that’s wrong with our world.’?”
Hallie laughed. “But then what did she say?”
“That at least it didn’t have fuckwit vanity plates . . . ?”
“See? That little aside means she forgives your capitalistic nature.”
“Oh, thank God.” He laughed, and over the smell of animal, he could smell her perfume. He wasn’t sure what she wore, but it always drifted into his awareness in the same way he could always sniff out barbecue when he walked into a restaurant.
“I can’t believe you have an Audi and a truck, by the way,” she said, her forehead crinkling. “You must be really good at landscraping.”
“Did you just say landscraping?”
She rolled her eyes and nodded. “I swear I’m sober.”
He reached out a hand and scratched the cat’s huge head. “I should hope so—it’s seven thirty in the morning.”
“Wanna hold him?”
“After witnessing Ruthie’s beatdown?” He looked at her upturned face and fought the urge to trace the line of freckles on her cheek. “No, thanks.”
“Chicken.”
“Listen,” Jack said, watching the cat watch him. “This guy knows that you are his. He has found his person. He doesn’t want to be handed off to someone else now that he’s met you.”
“Do you really think that?” she said, smiling like an overexcited toddler at Christmas.
“I do.”
“You think I’m his person?” she asked, her eyes on his. “That’s kind of beautiful, Marshall.”
He shrugged. “I know, I’m a beautiful fucking genius.”
That made her laugh and smack his arm. She said, “I suppose we should probably go to work now, huh?”
He stopped petting the cat and wondered if her building actually even allowed cats, or if she’d even thought to check. He said, “Probably.”
“If I pay you,” she said, climbing to her feet with ginormocat in her arms, “will you swing by here after work so I can take him home?”
He stood. “I guess, but only if you’re paying me.”
She gave him a look and said, “Add it to my tab.”
After she returned the cat and filled out all the paperwork, Hallie got a text from Ruthie as they exited the building.
“O-kay.” She read the message and shook her head as they walked toward the parking lot. “Ruthie says that she got bored and grabbed a ride home, and also that she’s throwing an adoption party for me and Purr Anthony Hopkitten this weekend.”
“You’re not seriously naming him that, are you?”
She grinned and shrugged. “I have a hard time telling Ruthie no.”
“You tell Ruthie that I already named him and you have a hard time telling me no.”
She gave him a snort-laugh. “What’s your name for him?”
He hit unlock and she pulled open the passenger door of his car. “Umm . . . Tigger.”
She got in the car and said, “I might not hate that,” before slamming the door closed.
When he got in and buckled his seat belt, she was grinning and looking at her phone. “Alex says he likes Ruthie’s name.”
Why did that make Jack want to steal her phone and toss it out the window?
“Sounds like Alex is a moron.”
She rolled her eyes and laughed. “You’re not getting the baseball, you jag.”
She texted Alex back as Jack drove his car a little too fast, and the way she grinned and made tiny noises frustrated the shit out of him. It was annoying. When he finally pulled up in front of her office, she looked up and said, “Wow, I can’t believe we’re here already.”
“Right?” he managed, irritated by how sucked into her phone she’d been.
“Well, thanks for this morning. I’m so excited to go back and get Tigger, if you’re still down.”
“Sure. What time do you get off?”
“Five, but whenever you can get here works. Also, would you mind if we swing by Target first, so I can buy things like cat litter and an adorable cat bed?”
“Let’s at least be honest with ourselves here,” he said, getting distracted by the curl of her eyelashes as she blinked and listened to him. “If we go to Target for cat stuff, you know we’ll end up leaving with a million other things, like, ten hours later.”
“I know,” she said, sounding excited as she opened her door. “I promise it’ll be fun. We’ll try on outlandish clothing and put on a fitting room fashion show.”
That was so her. He said, “That’s fun?”
“It will be when we do it.” She climbed out of the car, and once she was out, she leaned on the door and said, “Thanks for being so cool, Jackie boy.”
“See you at five, Piper.”
He was smiling as he pulled away, but when he met his sister, Olivia, for lunch a few hours later, he was not.
“So she texts me to tell me that Alex is going to take her to get the cat instead.”
“So?” Olivia looked at him like he wasn’t making any sense as she squirted ketchup onto her burger.
“So the guy is a total douchebag, and the whole reason I went this morning was because she didn’t want to take him.”
“So she changed her mind.” Livvie put the bun back on her burger. “Since when do you care about who your friends take with them when they get a cat?”
“I don’t care,” he said, annoyed that she didn’t get it. “I just think she might be rushing things with this guy.”
He explained to her their post-date Taco Hut routine, and how Hallie had ignored his text during their last one.
Olivia screwed up her face in that overdramatic duh expression she’d given him a thousand times when they were kids. “She’s finally found someone decent, who has real boyfriend potential, and you’re pissed?”
“I’m not pissed, Liv.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Really.”
“Really.” Jack stabbed his fork through his side salad and said, “I just want her to find someone better.”