Page 114 of Daddy By Design

Nolan shook his head.

I picked up the carrier. “It’s okay, Gizmo, the big grumpy beasty Nolan will love having you. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

He had a tote bag with treats, food, and toys over one arm and the litter box in his hand. Pretty sure his face was set in stone at this point.

Gizmo was just what he needed, I was sure of it.

TWENTY-THREE

I didn’t want a woman in my life, and I sure as shit didn’t want a cat.

And here I was.

As I’d feared, setting up the spicy cat in my actual house was a lesson in patience. Which wasn’t something I had in abundance on a good day, let alone one when I hadn’t slept in my own bed. Unfortunately, I’d also gotten one of the best nights of rest in her too soft bed.

That was the part I hated most.

Bonus punch was I’d actually enjoyed waking up to watch her getting ready for the day.

I’d never lived with a woman other than family in all my thirty-five years. And my parents had been the definition of dysfunctional. Yet I evened out the more I was around this woman. She drove me crazy, but she also was endlessly fascinating. Her brain worked on warp speed, and her sense of humor lightened the mood between us nine times out of ten.

But then she pushed and poked at me. Asking questions I didn’t want to answer or think about. It was far easier to stay away from people and concentrate on the house.

Now I had a cat slinking around my space, sniffing in every corner.

“He’s not going to piss on everything, is he?”

“What?” She shot me an offended look. “My cat does not go out of his box. He’s a gentleman.”

“Sure he is.” I crossed the room to the scaffolding and plucked him off the platform and put him back on the floor.

I’d rigged up the scaffolding for the inspector to look over the windows, but also for me. I’d needed to get precise measurements for the diagram I was putting together for the glass artist I was interested in. Now I had to prove the house was a good fit for him. He had a waiting list, but he was known to let projects jump the line if they were interesting enough.

Charlie Tarrow was also a craggy older dude and did whatever the hell he wanted.

Something I envied on a level I didn’t want to own up to.

She gestured to the scaffolding. “Tell me you aren’t trying to work on those windows yourself.”

“I prefer workmanship, not ego when it comes to this house, Hellcat. I know when I’m in over my head.”

“Would have been better to realize that before you destroyed the porch.”

And there was the poke. “We’re not going there.”

She gave me a not-so-innocent shrug. “Then what’s with the scaffolding?”

I pulled my notebook out of the dusty bookcase by the window. “For this.”Nerves skittered up my spine as I handed it over. Sketching was something that I’d done since I was five, but I didn’t generally share them with people. It was one of the reasons I used to use a chalkboard, so they never saw the light of day. This was the second time I’d offered one up to her.

She took it and slowly flipped through the crinkly pages. It was an old, bound sketchbook that I’d had since before the accident. It had been waterlogged from the rescue when they’d used a water saw to tear apart my sculpture to get me free. It was also one of the few things I hadn’t been able to cast off into my storage locker.

She glanced up at me. “Nolan, these are...”

“They’re shit, I know.”

“What? No.” She walked over to me to show me the front window I’d sketched during the week. “This is amazing. It would change the front of the house quite a bit, but this...” She tapped her finger on the center of the circular stained glass I’d envisioned. It was a typical six petal design but instead of a geometric circle at the center, I’d drawn an owl. “Where did you come up with this?”

I scrubbed my palm over my thigh. “I saw the owl in the stained glass in Harriette’s room.”

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