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“Nice cat,” I noted.

Abigail smiled. “He’ll warm up to you. I’ll take that for you.” Abigail reached for my bag. It plunked to the floor like an anchor. “Geez, what’s in this thing? Is your groomsman suit made of fireproof metal?”

“No, but you’re close.” I kneeled down, unzipped the bag, and pulled out a small fire extinguisher. “I wasn’t sure if you had one of these.”

Abigail held the red extinguisher in her arms, looking unimpressed. “What’s the opposite of someone being full of surprises?”

That didn’t sound like a compliment, but there was still a small smile playing around the edges of Abigail’s lips. And why did I keep staring at her lips? “You don’t have one, do you?” I asked, nodding to the extinguisher.

“I don’t because I don’t need one. I’d have to actually cook food to risk a kitchen fire. But thanks.” She set it down in the corner of her living room.

“Fires don’t just start in the kitchen. There are other hazards, you know.”

“Suchas?”

I pointed to her jasmine-scented white candle burning on her coffee table. The flame flickered in a pool of melted wax. “Unattended candles.”

“Yeah, right. It’s in a glass jar. You know how many times I leave them burning by accident?”

Most people never thought about fire until it happened to them. And I knew Abigail. The woman thought she was untouchable—or at least that’s how she behaved. “You should really stop doing that.”

“Yes, sir, Fire Marshal Rex.” Abigail saluted me with a kind of cheerful insolence that went straight to my cock. I cleared my throat and shifted, grabbing my duffel back from her and slinging it over my shoulder.

Abigail and I hadn’t spent that much time together without Gabe around, and I was realizing that his presence had acted like a big, impenetrable buffer to my wayward thoughts. Right now, with Abigail’s fresh mouth and the impertinent way she pushed back against everything I did, I needed that buffer more than ever.

As she made a show of blowing out her candle, I watched the way her jeans hugged the generous curve of her ass. I thought about how much I’d like to kiss the sass right off that mouth. Or have those manicured nails scraping down my back while she finally gave in and let me please her.

I blinked.

I’d made a mistake. A whole series of mistakes, actually. I never should’ve asked Abigail to do this for me.

“C’mon, I’ll show you to the spare room.”

Her words snapped me back to the present moment. “Spare room? Abigail, we’re supposed to be together.”

“And?”

“And, Donny and Blair will be around. Don’t you think it’ll look off if I’m not sleeping in your room with you?”

“You are way more demanding than I remembered, Rex Montgomery,” she pronounced.

I must’ve been distracted by the haughty arch of her brow and the way that tight, white T-shirt hugged her frame because what came out of my mouth in response was, “Baby, you’ve got no idea.”

Abigail blinked a few times in quick succession, her cheeks flushing pink. She recovered quickly, clicking her tongue as she waved me toward the rickety staircase covered in old, worn carpet. “Fine,” she said. “You can take the floor.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, trundling up the steps behind her. She opened her bedroom door and stepped aside to let me through. It was tidier than I imagined. I had never gone into Abigail’s teenage bedroom, not because I wasn’t invited, but because there were so many clothes everywhere I couldn’t see the floor.

“You see.” She pointed to her bed. “Room for one. As you’ve invited yourself into my home like some sort of stray dog, you can take the floor.” She pointed to the circular rug in the middle of the room and gave me a cold, insolent smile.

I was discovering I liked the shape of all of Abigail’s smiles. I wanted to kiss this one off her mouth too.

Instead, I glanced at the bed. “Why do you have a full-size bed? You’re a grown woman.”

She tucked her arms and popped her hip. “Listen, I got the house, but the ex got the king bed in the divorce.”

“So why not buy another one?”

“Circumstantial, Rex. Single people don’t need huge beds.”