“It did.” She looked up at Joel. “Thanks for the concern, but it’s not needed.”
“If you really think that, you haven’t learned your lesson from Grant,” Joel clipped.
Her cat snarled and lashed out with her claws. The way the feline saw it, Joel had relinquished his rights to her; he had no business interfering in her life. But Mila saw his interference for what it was—a subconscious drive to shield her, one that his instincts wouldn’t allow him to ignore. His intention wasn’t to hurt her. “You’re back to lecturing me again.”
His mouth tightened. “I just wish you were as protective of yourself as the people who care for you are.” With that parting shot, he left.
Mila sighed, and her cat’s hackles lowered. She needed to start locking the freaking break room door. Feeling Dominic’s eyes on her, she stood. “Come on, let’s get you sorted.” Soon enough, she had him caped and reclining in her chair with a warm, moist towel over his face.
As she browsed the shaving products on the shelves, Evander sidled up to her and asked, “Have you taken Lothario up on his offer of ‘fun’ yet?”
“I heard that,” said Dominic, his words muffled by the towel.
Mila tossed Evander a glare. “I told you, I’m not interested in being another notch on his bedpost.”
“I heard that too,” Dominic muttered.
“Well, we weren’t whispering.” Mila swiped off the towel, ignoring his chuckle, and patted his face and neck dry. As she applied a light coating of preshave oil, a low, contented growl rumbled out of him. Her cat kind of liked it.
“You smell good,” he said, his voice pitched low.
“Thanks, I do try.”
He chuckled. “Do you and Joel have some kind of history?”
At the mere mention of him, her cat’s mood plummeted. “No. He’s just a friend.”
“He’s very possessive of you.”
“Protective,” she corrected, grabbing a tub of shaving cream. “He’s mated—you must have sensed it.”
“I did. That doesn’t mean he can’t still have lingering feelings for someone he was once involved with.”
“There has never been anything between me and Joel other than friendship.”
Dominic watched her closely as she used a little shaving brush to apply the cream. She was telling the truth. And yet she wasn’t. He didn’t quite get it. Wondered if maybe she’d once tried to push for more than friendship with Joel before he mated and then had gotten her heart broken. “Your cat doesn’t like having him around. I sensed her tension. Did he hurt you somehow? Reject you?”
She gave him a curious look. “I never had you down as nosy.”
He shrugged. “What can I say? You intrigue me.”
“Hmm. Right. I want to leave the shaving cream on for at least a minute.”
Before she could walk off and busy herself elsewhere to escape the conversation, he grabbed her hand. “Fine. I’ll drop the Joel thing. Besides, I have a question: Should we take a bottle of wine or something with us to dinner tonight?”
Her brows snapped together. “You can’t be serious about going.”
“I was invited.”
“Only because my parents plan to use you in their little bid to keep me here.”
“Your mother promised me Prague Cake, Mila. Now it’s true that I don’t know what that is, but you can’t go wrong with cake in my experience. I’m not about to miss out on it just because I make you nervous.”
She pulled her hand from his and planted it on her hip. “You do not make me nervous. You make me want to slap you.”
Wrestling back a smile, Dominic said, “Hey, it’s okay. You make me nervous too. That’s why I get so shy around you. When you look at me all predatorily like that, it makes me feel like a baby gazelle about to get devoured by a lioness.”
She crossed her eyes. “I don’t know whether to laugh or finally give you that slap.”
“As long as I’m deep inside you while you’re slapping me around, I don’t mind. It’ll make it feel all forbidden and wrong.”
She scrubbed a hand down her face, determined not to laugh. “We are not having sex, and you are not coming with me tonight.”
“Oh, I’ll be coming with you in multiple ways,” he said with a wicked smile. “You know, I’ve never done dinner with the parents before.”
“We’re not a couple.”
“No, but if you go along with it instead of fighting me on going to dinner, they’ll think we just might become a couple. If, however, you don’t turn up with me