She looked at the bag then at me. Her throat bobbed when she swallowed, and she whispered, “How much do I owe you?”

I shook my head, pushing the bag closer to her. “Nothing. You’re doing a good thing taking him in. I paid for it.”

Hannah folded her arms across her chest and looked around the room. At anywhere other than where I was standing—or that was how it felt.

“You can thank me, you know, but I won’t take it personally if you don’t.”

She sighed. “Thank you. I really appreciate it. You didn’t have to do that.”

“There. See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” I grinned, then knelt down and opened the cat box, letting Lucifer out.

“It wasn’t, but we’re still not talking about the texts.” She bent down and gave Lucifer some love before she stood back up and dove her hand into one of the grocery bags. “I mean it, Isaac. I don’t want to talk about it.”

I took a page out of her book and sighed, putting my hands in my pockets. “I get that, I do. But we can’t just ignore the fact that it happened. We either need to draw a line so we can move forward, whichever way that is.”

She put a packet of spiral pasta on the island and looked at me with one eyebrow quirked. “What do you mean by that? I assumed we’d agree to never talk about it again.”

“You aren’t curious at all?”

“Curious about what?”

“How much ice you need to make a bucket of margaritas?” I drawled, smirking when she shot me a dark look. “What do you think I’m talking about?”

“Wow. You weren’t this much of an ass in the texts.”

“Well, I didn’t have time. Apparently, I was too busy texting you about slapping your ass.”

Her cheeks flushed again. “Can we not?” She practically dug her head in the grocery bag and pulled out a bag of cat biscuits.

At the sound of the biscuits rattling, Lucifer’s head perked up and a loud, pleading meow interrupted the conversation.

Hannah peered down at him. “I highly doubt you’re hungry, mister.”

“Actually, he probably is. Either that, or he’s been unnecessarily harassing my vet techs all day for extra food. He’s a little flirt.”

She side-eyed me as she grabbed a stainless-steel bowl. “He’s obviously spent a lot of time with you today, then.”

I laughed, finally pulling my hands out of my pockets. “Nope. He’s been in the back charming my vet techs, like I said.”

“You said ‘unnecessarily harassing.’” She put the bowl down and moved before Lucifer could use her foot as a chair. “That is not the same as charming.”

“You don’t have much experience with cats, do you?”

“What on Earth does that have to do with this? On no universe are charming and harassment even remotely the same.”

I sighed. “You have a lot to learn about cats.”

“I don’t need to learn anything about cats. He’s not my kitten.”