Page 96 of To Catch a Latte Thick as Thieves

“Men who wear smiley-faced boxers should beware of being pantsed in public,” she said.

“Huh?” Jared’s laughter abruptly ended.

“You heard me,” she said.

“You wouldn’t,” he protested.

“Keep laughing and you’ll just see,” she said.

A subdued Jared hung up the bedspread and switched off the TV.

“Good night...sonny boy,” he said with a barely muffled chuckle.

“Good night...smiley,” Cat answered with a snort.

3

Jared wanted to blametheir midnight shenanigans for his poor night’s sleep, but he knew that wasn’t it. It was his own fault. His own fault for agreeing to drive across country with a woman who made him laugh harder than anyone he’d ever known.

The sun was just lightening the sky when he rolled over and came nose to nose with Lucy. Her head rested on the spare pillow and her tail thumped on the mattress when his gaze met hers. Jared sighed. This was not the female he had pictured waking up with. A cold nose nuzzled his palm as soon as his feet hit the floor, and he glanced at the puppy through sore, sleep-deprived eyes.

“All right, I’ll take you, but you have to be quiet,” he whispered to the brown-eyed pooch.

Pulling on the jeans he’d tossed across his bed the night before, Jared stretched and tried to force the blood back into his limbs. Donning his T-shirt and sneakers with a hole in the toe, he led Lucy through the other half of the room, trying not to glance at the bed.

He failed. Cat was curled up in the fetal position with one hand supporting her chin. She looked cold. Jared pulled the remaining blanket off his bed and draped it on top of her. Her tousled hair splayed across the pillow, and her lashes nestled upon her cheeks. How the motel manager could confuse her gender was beyond Jared. She was one hundred percent Grade A female.

She looked as fragile as a buttercup, and Jared cursed himself for the lecherous part of him that wanted to crawl into bed with her. Thinking the dog wasn’t the only one who needed a leash, Jared swiftly clipped the puppy and led the way into the silent hallway. The door locked behind them, and Jared felt the tightness in his muscles ease as they left the motel in search of coffee.

Jared reentered the room with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and a rambunctious puppy in the other. The room was still dark. Cat had uncurled and lay flat on her stomach. Her heart-shaped fanny was outlined by the covers, and it took all of Jared’s resolve not to turn and run.

She shifted as soon as Lucy bounded up onto her bed. Jared placed the paper cup of coffee on the nightstand by her head and tried to escape before her ever-changing eyes found him. He was too late.

“Good morning,” she said as she stretched beneath the covers and ruffled Lucy’s ears. “Did you two have a nice walk?”

Jared glanced away from the curls that flopped over her forehead to the gaping neckline of her top, that offered him a shadowed view of her cleavage. He gulped.