“I used to live here. I moved after discovering winter is like the rest of the year but there is snow getting in the way of the construction. I was going to go insane. I went to Minnesota for a while after that, and from Minnesota, I tried Florida. Sunning myself on the beach was nice, but the weather was less than ideal, and the insurance is lethal when you actually expect them to fix your house once it gets assaulted by a hurricane. I lasted two hurricane seasons before I decided yearly rebuilds weren’t for me.”
“You had a beach house, didn’t you?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“At least tell me you evacuated.”
“Why would I evacuate?” He smirked at my glare. “I evacuated slightly inland. I’m a lion. I live for the thrill of the chase. My first hurricane, I rode it out as close to the water as I dared and enjoyed the show. I got a couple of scratches, but I emerged just fine. The second one, I went further inland, but it was a doozy, and I had to do a lot of rebuilding work on the house. The third one wiped the house right out, but I rebuilt it to be a lot tougher, so it survived the rest of the storms. I built it so well I made a hefty profit on the property when I got tired of fighting the weather and left.”
“You are a wealthy lion, apparently. I hadn’t known I was going gold digging when I went lion hunting. I’m a very naughty lynx. Who knew?”
“You, me, and anyone who knows you?”
I purred. “Except my family. They’re determined to believe I’m a pure innocent.”
“Judging from the hopelessness on your father’s face when he tried to explain to me how to secure grandkittens for himself, yes. I’m not sure he even believed, despite the tell-tale scents, you’re no longer a virgin. The way he was talking, he believes you’re still a virgin.”
“I love my daddy, but he’s an idiot. But that makes me really happy we didn’t indulge in his truck now. If we had, I might not have a daddy anymore, and that would make me so terribly sad.” Worse, it hadn’t occurred to me my family believed me to be that hopeless.
“Even if we had, I think your daddy thinks you are so pure, reclusive, and shy he would believe he’d imagined such a smell in his truck. I almost laughed in his face. It took everything in me not to laugh in his face while I got lectured over the delicate, fragile state of his daughter. He apologized to me. Repeatedly. Over your fragile and delicate state.”
I bit my lip, as I didn’t want to laugh at my father—or at Sebastian for having to put up with my father at his worst. “He couldn’t have possibly been talking about me.” When we got into the elevator, Sebastian pressed the button for the top floor. “How did we even get such a great room, anyway?”
“The CDC has on-going bookings in most cities for emergencies and work like this. They moved the folks in our room to an equally swanky place elsewhere in the city. In exchange for always leaving this room available for the CDC’s use, the hotel gets some significant reductions on their taxes and some favoritism with the government. And since it’s their room and we’re doing their dirty work, we aren’t being charged anything other than room service and the spa fees. Honestly, the only reason we’re paying for those is because I insisted, as I wanted to be the one gifting you with the luxuries. And after I got off the phone with them a little earlier today, I expect we won’t be paying anything, even though I protested and wanted to treat you to a good time.”
Once on our floor, I raised a brow and regarded Sebastian with interest. “All you have to do to treat me to a good time is take your clothes off.”
“How should we break it to your family that you’re neither pure nor innocent?”
“We could lure one of the assholes I have to kill off to the front yard and indulge in a murder. I can show them how I got my name.”
“It’s rude to kill people where kittens might see it, Harri.”
I huffed. “They’re lynx kittens. The only thing that scares those little devils is my face. And we’re fixing that. Within the next two weeks, if everything works out