The faintest hint of amusement twitched the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, you’re definitely a cupcake.”
She recalled him using the term with her a few times. “Why do you keep calling me that?” she asked, right before she tossed all four tablets into her mouth and washed them down with most of the water, which tasted delicious sliding along her parched throat.
“Because you’re a lightweight and can’t handle your liquor.”
She couldn’t even be offended by his statement, because it was the truth.
He grabbed the mug from his end of the table and returned to the kitchen. “Want some coffee?” he asked as he refilled his own cup.
She wasn’t sure that coffee would help her hangover, but hopefully the caffeine would give her a much-needed jolt of energy to figure out her next plan of action. “Sure. With cream if you have it.”
He moved around the kitchen for a few minutes, and something to Samantha’s left caught her attention. She glanced over and found a gray-striped cat sitting on the nearby windowsill, lazily licking its paw and cleaning its face. At first she thought one of its eyes was closed, then realized that the socket had been sealed shut and the feline was missing an eye.
“Here you go,” he said, placing the mug down, along with a plate with dry toast on it. “You need something in your stomach.”
He sounded and acted as though he’d done this a time or two, or more. “Thank you…” Her words trailed off because they’d never been formally introduced. “I don’t even know your name.” Though he somehow knew hers, because he’d used it last night.
“It’s Clay.” He leaned back in his seat and took a drink of his steaming coffee. “Clay Kincaid.”
Kincaid matched the name of the place the cab driver had dropped her off at. “So, the bar is yours?”
“Yes.”
He wasn’t much of a conversationalist, but what did she expect? It wasn’t as though they had some kind of relationship and he’d invited her to spend the night. She picked at her toast and took small bites while searching for something to fill the awkward silence between them.
“How did your cat lose its eye?” she asked curiously.
“I found her behind the bar when she was just a kitten,” he said as he glanced at the feline with a fond smile. “She was scrawny as hell, full of fleas and mites and eating bugs to survive, and her left eye was badly infected. I’m not sure what caused the wound, but I took her to the vet, and they had no choice but to remove the eye and stitch it shut.”
The fact that this man had rescued such a helpless creature made Samantha even more infatuated with him. “And you kept her.”
“She needed a home.”
He shrugged as if it were no big deal, but she knew he could have taken the cat to a shelter and not spent the money on an expensive operation to save the weak and defenseless animal. But she was quickly coming to realize that Clay Kincaid was a man who took care of people, and things—just as he’d come to her rescue last night.
“What’s her name?” she asked, and took a drink of her coffee.
“Xena.”
Samantha grinned. “Because she’s a warrior?”
He nodded. “And a survivor.”
As if the cat knew they were talking about her, she jumped down from the windowsill and scampered over to Clay’s chair and meowed. Without hesitating, he reached down, scooped her up, and settled the feline on his lap. Xena rubbed up against his chest affectionately, and shamelessly head-butted his hand for him to pet her, which Clay did. Within seconds, the cat was purring contentedly.
Samantha ate the last of her toast as she watched Clay’s big, strong hand stroke along Xena’s spine in a slow, soft caress that made her jealous of the cat and made her wonder what it would feel like to have Clay’s palm sliding over her body and his fingers touching her so attentively. The seductive image in her mind made her shift restlessly in her seat, and she forced her thoughts to a much safer topic. Like apologizing for her uncharacteristic behavior the evening before.
She cleared her throat, which caused him to shift his attention from Xena to Samantha’s face. His dark gaze focused on her mouth longer than was polite or casual, then lifted to her eyes. There was enough heat in the depths of those brown orbs to tell her that this crazy fascination she felt toward him was mutual, even if he was better at keeping his attraction under control.
Samantha absently licked her bottom lip and spoke while she still had his attention. “Clay…I’m really sorry about last night.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Which part?”
She couldn’t tell if he was teasing or not, he was that good at keeping his emotions concealed. “All of it, but especially about getting sick, and you having to deal with me staying here at your place because I had nowhere else to go.”
He continued to pet Xena, who was now curled on his lap, with her furry tail wrapped around his wrist. “Where are you going to go this morning?”
“I…I don’t know,” she replied honestly. She hadn’t thought beyond leaving her parents’ estate and escaping their rules and expectations, and she didn’t feel any differently this morning. “But I’m not going back home.”