When he got out, Hattie was still at the sink fucking around with her hair, but now she was doing it with Cleo sitting on the bathroom counter, tail swishing, staring at her in fascination.

Axl didn’t question that.

He understood a fascination with Hattie’s curls.

But when he reached for a towel, Cleo remembered nothing fascinated her. And doing so, she tossed him a look, jumped down, and Axl stopped and stared as she ran her body along the backs of Hattie’s legs as she strutted out.

“Jesus, what’d you do to my cat?” he asked.

“Well, as she’s a girl,” Hattie told the mirror, “and I’m a girl, I realized the best way to win any girl over was to offer her girl time.” She stopped fucking with her hair and turned fully to him. “In other words, I took some time with Cleo, and she and I had a chat which was mostly me chatting, and Cleo snarfing down a bowl of tuna.”

“In short, you bribed her with food.”

“Totally.”

Axl chuckled.

Hattie leaned a hip against the basin and watched him towel off.

“Babe, it’ll take me five minutes to dress and we need to be out the door in five minutes. I don’t have time to fuck you which means we don’t have any for you to change your mind seven more times about your dress, or your shoes, or—”

“I got it, I got it,” she said, whirled, her skirt flew, and she was out the door.

He seriously wished he had that twenty minutes he’d wanted to have before they needed to leave when he walked from the hall, dressed in jeans and a white button-down, his shoes in his hand, to see Hattie rise from the bed wearing a pair of high-heeled yellow sandals with a thin ankle strap, a little gold at her throat and wrist, and a sheen of gloss on her lips.

He’d woken her up to fuck her that morning before he had to get up and shower, then leave.

With Sly at the door to take duty, he’d left her in his bed.

That fuck, officially, wore off the minute he saw her in those shoes with that lip gloss.

Now he was wishing even more than he did before—and he wanted this visit out of the way, but he’d never been looking forward to it—that he hadn’t caved when his mother pushed for this dinner.

He beat back the need to at the very least kiss her, and hard, which he knew would lead to them both wanting other things, which in turn would mean his resolve would buckle, and he got on with putting on his shoes.

She grabbed her purse. He grabbed her hand.

And at the door to the garage, he called, “Later, Cleo.”

Nothing.

“Later, shmoochmagooch,” Hattie called.

A distant meow.

“Shmoochmagooch?” he asked.