I shook my head. “No, that just gives him an identity. It’d be rude to call him ‘cat,’ you know, like ‘landlord’ or ‘tenant.’ ”

I saw his lips twitch and took it as a solid point scored.

“Do you feed him?” he asked.

“Occasionally.” Truly, it had been every night this week, but I felt this was extraneous information.

“Does he sleep in your house?”

“He’s a cat,” I said.

“Your point?” Again, one of his eyebrows rose higher than the other. That should not be such a hot look on a man, and yet it totally was.

I turned away, checking out a huge freestanding apparatus. It had all sorts of cables and weights. I glanced at him over my shoulder and said, “Cats sleep everywhere.”

“Making that a yes, he sleeps in your house,” he said. He was about to press his point but I interrupted.

“But he comes and goes as he pleases,” I said. “Meaning he’s more of a guest than a pet.”

“Because you leave your door open at night.” He said this with a look of incredulity as if even he couldn’t believe what he was saying.

“Just a crack,” I said. I held my hands up so they were about four inches apart.

He shook his head. “Annabelle, we’re in the middle of a city of one and a half million people. You can’t sleep with your door open. It’s dangerous.”

“We have walls and a gate,” I argued. “Who is going to scale that?”

“Never mind scale it, they could slip in behind you when you’re coming home, which someone did the other night,” he said. “Which is another thing I wanted to talk to you about.”

I felt the blood drain out of my face. “Someone slipped in behind me? Did they break in? Was there a robbery? Is everyone okay? Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “You didn’t even leave a note!”

He looked away, giving me my first glance of his profile. Even from that angle, he was ridiculously handsome with a straight nose, stubborn chin, and soft light brown curls that tumbled over his forehead in waves.

“It doesn’t matter. It was taken care of,” he said.

“How?” I asked.

He looked back at me with a frown. “What do you mean?”

“How was it taken care of? Did you chop them up into little bits and use them as fertilizer?”

He blinked. “That’s dark.”

“Sorry, I’ve been watching a lot of crime shows,” I said.

“And yet you don’t lock your door at night.” He clapped a hand to his forehead.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. His overly dramatic look made me smile. When he met my gaze, he smiled in return.