Chapter 26

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Jigsaw

Two glowing green eyes greet me the next morning. Staring down at me from the top of the headboard.

"How'd you get in here?" I whisper to Gretel.

"Mrrraor." She leaps onto my chest.

"You're graceful but not light." I scoop her into my arms and sit up. Her body vibrates and she butts my chin with her head, purring like the engine of a Honda Rebel.

I glance over at Margot. Sound asleep.

"Don't wake her," I whisper to Gretel.

"Mrrrp." She purrs even louder and adds a sharp chittering noise.

Still holding the cat, I slide out of bed and walk to the door. It's open just enough for Gretel to slip through. I know Margot closed it last night.

"Did you do that?" I ask the cat. Apparently, I'm a person who talks to cats now.

Gretel tilts her head and purrs louder. If a cat can look smug, it's this one.

"You'd be terrifying if you had thumbs." I tuck her under one arm and step out of the bedroom, quietly closing the door so Gretel doesn't return to wake Margot.

I set the cat on the floor outside the bedroom, and she streaks down the hallway to the bathroom. "That's where I'm headed, you little demon."

She's perched on the sink when I get there.

"I'm not a fan of having an audience." I pick her up and set her outside the door, then close it in her face.

"Mrrraor." Scratch. Scratch.

Christ, I haven't felt this much pressure to pee as fast as possible since I was a kid at summer camp.

Mid-stream, the door clicks open. Gretel leaps onto the edge of the counter and stares at me.

I side-eye her. "You're very rude."

When I'm finished, I turn the tap on to wash my hands, but Gretel sticks her face under the stream instead.

"Is that what you wanted? You're thirsty?"

She continues slurping at the water. After a few seconds, I nudge her out of the way and wash my hands. She flicks her paw through the water, batting droplets at me.

"I thought cats didn't like water?" I shut off the tap and pick her up off the sink, tucking her under one arm again. She doesn't seem to mind being carried around like a sack of apples.

As we approach the room next to Margot's bedroom, Gretel wriggles and I set her down. The door's ajar and she streaks through the narrow opening. I step inside. It's shadowy, so I search for a switch and find a complicated panel near the door.

Bright, white light floods the room. The walls and ceiling are a soothing, dark charcoal gray—almost black with white trim. A gray built-in unit lines one wall. The front seems to have one large door with a handle at the bottom. On each side there are tall shelves with glass doors. The bottom has several rows of drawers. I step closer to the shelves. DVDs. Ah, an entertainment center. She does have a television after all. I touch the handle of the center door and pull. It slowly and silently slides upward, kind of like a garage door. A large, flat-screen television fills most of the space. Underneath, different electronic equipment.

"Mrrrawr."

I flick my gaze to Gretel who's strutting along a wide, padded window ledge like she's showing me her favorite feature of the room. Obviously, it was made for her to look outside. Black blinds are rolled all the way to the top so as not to obstruct Gretel's view. Under the ledge, there's a feeding station and one of those kitty water-fountain things.

"You have your own water fountain, and you still followed me into the bathroom?" I run my hand over Gretel's back and rub my fingers behind her ears.

She purrs and dances back and forth, rubbing her face on my hand over and over. When she's done marking me, she sprints along the ledge like it's an airplane runway and leaps into the air. My gaze follows as she lands on the high platform of a carpeted cat tower in the corner, next to a black, leather love seat. Margot's created quite a little theater room /cat habitat. No wonder Gretel spends so much time in here.

"I thought you'd left." Margot's morning-husky voice stirs my dick.

I turn and she's still wearing that adorably sexy sleep set. "Nope. Ms. Stealthy up there broke into the bedroom. I woke up to her staring down at me like a little gargoyle."

"Oh. She knows how to pop the doors open." She laughs, making her braless tits jiggle. "Sorry."

My mouth waters.

"Mrrrawr." Gretel leaps onto the couch, then the floor, where she scurries over to Margot and twirls around her legs—in what I'm starting to think is her "feed me" dance.

"I, uh, overslept a little." She gestures toward her bedroom. "I need to get dressed. I have a family coming in at nine."

Damn. I had a few other things in mind. "Yeah, okay. I gotta get downstate and start packing."

"How much can you really take on your bike?"

"You'd be surprised. But someone will be driving a van or a truck to haul extra shit."

Her eyes spark with interest. "Who drives it?"

I need to get closer to her. "A prospect usually or someone else affiliated with the club. If it's a big family run, the girls will sometimes take an SUV with the kids."

"So the old ladies don't always have to ride on the back?"

Why's she asking? My chest tightens. Is she asking because she thinks that because she doesn't ride, that's a deal-breaker for me?

"No one has to do anything they don't want to. Most of them do, though." I snort with laughter. "Heidi says after a few hours in the car with the kids, she's ready to ride. So, they'll take turns and stuff. Or we went down to Virginia last Christmas and the girls rode in Trinity's Jeep the whole way—Shelby said it was too cold to ride." I shrug. "We make it work."

I want to ask her why she's so curious, why it matters so much to her.

But I'm also afraid of the answer.