“Sure. But it also includes me eatin’ over here.”

I’m dumbfounded. “Here? Why here?”

He takes a moment to answer, then says with a bland expression, “I like your cat.”

I narrow my eyes and watch him idly scratch Mr. Bingley behind his ears. “Won’t that interfere with your naked poker parties and standing door sex with strangers?”

Amusement flickers in his eyes. “No, I’ll just move those to the mornin’s.”

I can tell he’s baiting me, which he seems to really love, so I keep my expression as bland as his and ignore it. “So to clarify, the deal is seven home-cooked meals, which you eat here, in exchange for payment on the roses and no loud music.”

He inclines his head, smiling slightly, which makes me suspicious.

“And that’s it?”

“I can throw in a daily viewin’ of the family jewels if you like.”

His voice is rich with suppressed laughter, and I want to hurl the meat loaf pan at his head. “No, thank you. But it occurs to me that we should discuss exactly how long it will take you to eat your meals here.”

He arches his brows. “You want a time limit, lass? That’s a trifle insultin’.”

“I just want to make sure you don’t end up sleeping on my couch.”

“What if you invite me to?”

I throw my hands in the air. “McGregor, honestly!”

“It’s a legitimate question. I’ve been told I’m irresistible often enough to believe it. You could very well wind up throwin’ yourself at me, darlin’, and then where would we be? Just clarifyin’, like you said.”

I close my eyes, inhale a slow, deep breath, and run my hands over my hair. When I open my eyes again, I find Cameron grinning at me.

I say, “Twenty minutes a night.”

The grin doesn’t budge. “I’m not a competitive eater, lass, you can’t expect me to shovel an entire pie down my throat in less than half an hour.”

“Fine. Thirty minutes.”

“One hour.”

“Forty-five minutes.”

He assesses the look on my face, my clenched fists, and my general impersonation of a stick of dynamite with a lit fuse and relents. “Forty-five minutes. Deal.”

I feel as if I’ve just negotiated peace in the Middle East. “Deal. Now sit there, and try not to be annoying while I make dinner.”

Low chuckling comes from behind me as I turn and head to the refrigerator again. I’m busy for several minutes—getting the ingredients together, mincing red bell peppers, blending moistened oats with the meat—until I feel a presence behind me and turn.

I let out a scream when I find Cameron standing not two feet away, watching me. “Jesus! You scared me half to death! What’re you doing?”

“Did you forget I was here, lass? Is your attention span that short?”

He’s laughing at me again, mirth shining in his eyes as his lips curl up at the outer edges. I yank a wooden spoon from a ceramic crock on the counter and slap his shoulder with it. “Get over there! Go sit down at the table, and stop looming!”

“Christ, you’re bossy,” he grouses, but he says it with warmth in his voice, so I can tell he actually likes it. Which works out well for both of us, because I can see a lot of beatings in his future if he keeps this up.

He lowers himself to a chair at my kitchen table, taking up all the space in the room in that irritating way he has. I throw a dish towel at him, which hits him in the face.

“Can you please cover yourself?”

“With this?” He holds the dish towel up to his broad torso. It covers about a quarter of it. When I frown, he chuckles. “Is the sight of my manly bare chest distracting you, sweetheart?”

I groan, rolling my eyes. “Forty-five minutes of this every night and I’ll go insane.”

“Aye. With lust.”

“Oh. My. God.”

“You can just call me Cam, darlin’. Though it’s accurate, God seems a wee bit formal.”

I make a sound of exasperation that contains a lot of snarling fricatives and go back to assembling the meat loaf.

Cam is quiet until I put the loaf into the oven and set the timer. Then he says, “So. Pretty boy. Tell me.”

The thought of Michael’s expression when he looked at the roses on my desk brings a smile to my face. I wash my hands in the sink, dry them, then lean against the counter with my arms folded over my chest and meet Cam’s gaze. “It was brilliant. He came over first thing in the morning to see about the chair he ordered me, and there’s this huge bouquet on my—”

“What chair?”

I’m startled by the force of his question. “Oh. He thought my office chair was broken because I was being my usual clumsy self and . . .” The way Cam’s face darkens when I call myself clumsy makes me quickly rewind. “I mean, he thought my chair was broken and ordered me another one.”

“This was before he saw the roses?”

“Yeah. This was during the conversation I had with him on Sunday, when I found out he was getting divorced.”

“When you say he thought it was broken, that makes it sound like it wasn’t actually broken.”

“It wasn’t. It’s hard to explain without getting you mad, because I’ll have to describe what happened, and honestly I don’t see any way around that without mentioning that I’m clumsy.”

Cam gazes at me steadily. “Huh.”

“What d’you mean, ‘huh’?”

“There’s two parts to it.”

“There’s two parts to a one-syllable word?”

“To the explanation.”

“Why do I feel like I should be sitting for this?”

Cam motions to the chair across from him, which I sink into, weirdly nervous about what he might say.

Drumming his fingers on the table, Cam says, “Part one is the interestin’ fact that pretty boy ordered you a new office chair.”

I chew my lip with worry. “Why is that interesting?”

“Interestin’ that he noticed. Interestin’ that he took the initiative. Interestin’ that he made it happen so fast. Interestin’ that he dropped by to make sure it was done. All of it made even more interestin’ because you’re of the opinion he doesn’t know you exist.”

I lean forward, my eyes wide. “That’s what I thought!”

“What did he do when he saw the flowers?”

“He sort of . . . glared at them, like he wanted to throw them away.”

A muscle flexes in Cam’s jaw, but he’s silent.

“What’s part two?”

“That you care if I get mad when you’re too hard on yourself.”

I wave that away because I want to get back to Michael. “So, what do you think it all means?”

“I think it means he likes you.”

Though I’m thrilled by the possibility that what he’s saying might be true, I know it’s not reality. “Much as I’d love to believe that, I can’t.”

“Maybe you should take my word for it, lass.”

“This from the man wearing nothing but a plaid skirt who insists I’m desperate to have his babies.”

Cam’s smile comes on slow and heated. “Aye. And what bonny wee bairns they’d be, too. Pretty little devils with their mum’s salty tongue.”