Melt for You

Okay, “goddess” is a stretch, but I’m trying to think positive. The internet is bursting with examples of the power of mind over matter in achieving your goals, and who am I to question the word of someone named SkinnyGirl69 who claims to have lost half her body weight in a month from following a simple diet of eating nothing but air?

So, basically, I’m going on a crash diet composed of breathing. If I don’t drop dead, I’ll definitely be thin by Christmas. Seems like a reasonable risk to me.

I didn’t see Michael again for the rest of the day, and I was way too chicken to go into the executive office area to say good-bye. Plus, I thought our conversation ended on such a fantastic note there was really nothing that could top it. And the danger of me ruining it all was very real, so I slunk out before fate could decide I’d had enough fun and topple the building with a rogue earthquake.

I’m unlocking my apartment door when a booming voice from behind me makes me jump.

“Where’s my pie, lass?”

Gah. It’s him. Over my shoulder, I send Cameron an icy glare that would make Portia proud. “As you can see, I literally just got home. I don’t have a magical pie-producing handbag.”

“Excuses, excuses! Next you’ll be tellin’ me they ran out of food at the store!”

I turn around and blast him with the full measure of my dislike, shot from my eyeballs like a hail of bullets. “Some people have to work for a living, okay? I haven’t had a chance to go to the grocery store to get the stuff for your dang . . .” I’m about to continue, but this is when I notice his latest fashion choice, and I’m left speechless once again.

After a moment during which he simply grins at me, I regain my senses. “Are you wearing . . . tights?”

“What, these?” He makes spokesmodel hands at his muscular legs, which are clad in a pair of nuclear yellow, stretchy, shiny things that appear to be sprayed on from ankles to hips, leaving nothing to the imagination. Every ripple and bulge are highlighted—especially the bulge in his crotch.

It’s inhumanly large. I’m certain he’s stuffed an elephant’s trunk into his pants.

“Eyes up top, darlin’,” he drawls, catching me staring.

I’m so mortified, I’d like to kill myself. Instead, I turn around and unlock my front door. I push it open and am about to slam it shut behind me, but Cameron flattens his big paw over it and pushes it back.

“Now, now, no need to be shy.” Laughter warms his voice. “I already know how bad you’ve got it for me, lass. And no, these aren’t tights. They’re runner’s compression leggings.”

Compression? Ha! They’re not compressing anything!

“Please get your hand off my door.” I say that with my gaze pinned on the ceiling so my eyeballs don’t do any wandering off on their own. They simply can’t be trusted.

“I’ll get my hand off your door when you tell me what time supper is. I really want that pie of yours, darlin’.”

I growl at the innuendo in his voice, which I’m certain is the way he talks to every female who crosses his path. The pig.

“Don’t call me darling! And stop talking about my shepherd’s pie like it’s my pie pie!”

From my peripheral vision, I see his brows shoot up. “Your pie pie?” He bats his lashes, the picture of innocence. “I have no idea what you mean. I’m just tryin’ to find out when I can expect somethin’ you promised me.” As if on cue, his stomach grumbles. He points to it. “You see? I’m starvin’, lass!” Then he grins and slaps his hand on his abdomen, which doesn’t budge even the tiniest bit because the man has 0 percent body fat.

“Rr-ow!”

We look down to see Mr. Bingley curling himself around Cameron’s ankles like a furry little boa constrictor. His purr is so loud it sounds as if someone started an engine.

“Who do we have here?” Cam smiles at Mr. Bingley, who beams up at him and rubs his face on Cam’s shiny yellow shin.

I hope he unsheathes his claws and puts a few snags in that stupid fabric. “That’s Mr. Bingley.”

Cam picks up the cat, flips him onto his back, and cradles him in his arms like a baby. I’m about to protest that he’s doing it wrong, but the dumb cat has closed his eyes and started to purr even more loudly, his fluffy orange tail swishing in delight against Cam’s stomach.

As I stare in astonishment, Cam scratches under Mr. Bingley’s chin. “You must’ve done something really bad to get yourself named after a Jane Austen character, mate.”

Now I’m beyond astonished. I’m floored. The Mountain knows who Mr. Bingley is? And here I thought hell officially froze over hours ago!

“What?” says Cam to me, not looking up from the cat. “You thought I was all beauty and no brains, darlin’?”

I produce an unladylike snort. “More like all ego and no manners.”

He glances up at me from under his lashes and sends me a lazy smile. “So you’re not denyin’ you think I’m beautiful.”

My eye roll is extravagant. “You’re depriving some poor village of its idiot. Can I have my cat back now?”

“When I get my pie, you get the cat.” He turns around and swaggers back across the hall with Mr. Bingley in his arms, kicking the door shut just as I lunge for it.

“McGregor!” Furious, I pound on his door with my fist. “Give me my cat back right this minute!”

From behind the closed door comes a low chuckle and the clack of a dead bolt turning. “Your pie for your pussy, sweetheart.” Two seconds later, rap music comes on at full volume, thundering through the walls, cutting off any hope of further conversation.

I stare at his door, fuming, grateful for once that poor Mr. Bingley is deaf so he doesn’t have to hear the blistering foul language in the lyrics. A part of me marvels at the audacity of this Cameron McGregor person and how he can work in not one but two euphemisms for my vagina in a six-word sentence, while another part of me wants to tear the door clear off its hinges and beat him to a pulp with it.

The bastard stole my cat!

I holler at the top of my lungs, “If he comes back with a single hair out of place, I’ll kick your tights-wearing butt!”

I could swear under the boom of bass there’s laughter.

Never in the long and storied history of shepherd’s pie has one been assembled faster.

I set a land speed record to and from the corner market, my shoes leaving smoke and the sound of peeling rubber in their wake. I chop vegetables like a madwoman, sauté ground lamb as if someone is holding a gun to my head, curse at the pot of water until it finally gives in and comes to a boil from sheer terror. I abuse the potatoes so badly in my hurry to mash them, I almost overdo it and end up with a gluey mess but salvage them just in time by calming myself with a jumbo glass of wine, guzzled with the gusto of an addict at the start of an epic bender.

After that I’m calm—well, calm is a relative term when comparing a total mental breakdown to mere crippling anxiety—and am able to finish the dish and get it into the oven without chopping off any of my fingers or suffering a life-threatening cardiac event.

Which is when I realize that in my haste, I never turned the oven on.

“I’m going to kill him,” I tell the empty kitchen. “If Mr. Bingley is even a little miffed when he comes home, Cameron McGregor is going to die.”