“I’ve been thinking about you a lot today,” Park was saying. “I wish you were here with me right now.”

Cooper snorted. “In your family manor? While you tell your traditional relatives all about how I’m Lady Macbeth-ing you into claiming key pack territory? With my arsenic allergy? Hard pass. I’m good here where only Boogie can judge me.”

“All right. Then I wish I were there, too. With you. Not the cat. The cat’s downstairs.”

“Is she?” Cooper asked, nonplussed. He realized he hadn’t seen Boogie since coming back inside when Park had called. A trickle of anxiety started down his throat. Had she followed him on to the porch somehow? She’d never shown an interest in nature before. But this was a new house, a new outside.

He abandoned his wine on the nightstand and went back downstairs, turning on all the lights. He searched her favorite lounging spots—only half listening to Park now and getting increasingly tense when he didn’t find her.

“Is something wrong?” Park was asking. “You sound off.”

Cooper flicked on the laundry room light. Finally. Boogie sat in a basket, nesting in a pile of Park’s clothes, looking supremely annoyed to be disturbed. Seemed like he wasn’t the only one missing their third musketeer.

Cooper scratched her head, relieved. “Just jumpy, I guess. Overtired.”

“I can think of one way to relax you.”

“Been there, drank that. What do you think I am, an amateur?”

Park sighed very gently, sounding almost disappointed.

“What? What’s the matter?” Cooper asked.

“Nothing,” Park said. “I’m just—I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.”

“Me too,” Cooper said, and the raw honesty in his own voice made his cheeks heat.

Soon after, they said their goodbyes and hung up. Cooper put the house to rest once more, went upstairs and got ready for bed. It was near embarrassing how much more settled he felt after talking to Park. His body was warm, relaxed and lingering on the edge of a tingling sort of awareness that could tip into simple excitement for Park’s return the next evening or into full-blown arousal, depending on which way he pushed it.

He stripped down, watching himself absently in the bedroom’s full-length mirror—a big brass-trimmed, freestanding antique that Park had brought with him from his old place so Cooper couldn’t even veto it on sight. That hadn’t stopped him from proclaiming the mirror was a cursed heirloom that would kill them in their sleep, of course, though secretly he’d grown a bit fond of it. At least it was ostentatious and useful.