“We’re talking life or death here.”

“Exactly. And you seem to forget that he’s not the only one whose life is at stake.”

“These transplant surgeries are safe. They do thousands of them every year.”

Noah wanted to argue but stopped himself. She didn’t need him putting more pressure on her than she was already putting on herself.

Instead, he dragged a hand from the steering wheel and covered the tangle of hers on her lap. “How can I help?”

Her relief was a living, breathing thing in the car. “Will you come with me?”

“Of course.”

Alexis didn’t respond. With her free hand, she turned on their favorite satellite radio station, and they rode the rest of the way like that.

Music doing the talking. Saying the things he couldn’t.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Beefcake was nowhere to be seen when they walked back into her house. Noah helped her carry leftovers to the kitchen.

A red leash on the counter caught his attention. He picked it up. “What’s this?”

“A cat harness. For Beefcake.”

“A cat harness?”

“The vet said he needs more exercise, but I don’t think I should let him out anymore, so I got him this leash thing to take him for walks.”

“You’re going to take Beefcake for walks?”

“I think he’ll like it.”

She said it with the kind of innocence with which children swear they heard reindeer on the roof on Christmas Eve. Alexis had a mile-wide naive streak about Beefcake. If she only knew the number of dead things that cat had dropped at Noah’s feet over the past year . . .

She didn’t know, though, because Noah always got rid of the evidence before she could find out. “Have you tried to put it on him yet?”

“Not yet. I need to figure it out. Want to help?”

He eyed it skeptically. He had no idea how the contraption was supposed to work, but he knew with one hundred percent certainty if it involved Beefcake, it was going to end badly.

Alexis called out to the cat in her singsongy way. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.”

A yowling noise in the hallway behind him made the air catch in Noah’s lungs. He swallowed and turned around. Beefcake stood a few feet away. “Here he is,” he rasped.

Lexa brushed past him. Beefcake glared at Noah through slitted eyes as Lexa cradled him to her chest and walked back to the kitchen.

“How about if I hold him while you put the harness on him?” she said.

It was the worst idea he’d ever heard, but he wasn’t going to disappoint Lexa. He picked up the harness from where she’d left it on the table and approached woman and beast slowly.

A low growly noise was coming from Beefcake’s chest. It was the closest thing he ever got to purring.

“I think we’re supposed to wrap it around him and snap it across his belly before we do the leg part,” Alexis said, turning and turning the cat over in her arms.

Noah gulped and held out the harness. He met Beefcake’s eyes and saw his own murder flash through them. Carefully, Noah draped the harness on Beefcake’s back.

Nothing happened.

Alexis lifted Beefcake higher so Noah could reach under and—he froze as the cat stopped purring. Everyone knew a cat’s belly was the danger zone. But this cat especially. Noah had made the mistake of trying to pet him there exactly once.

“He’s okay,” Alexis said. “Can you snap it closed?”

Noah winced instinctively as he reached beneath Beefcake and located both ends of the straps. Holding his breath again, Noah gingerly connected the two ends with a quiet but firm snap.

Beefcake barely moved.

“Awww, look! He likes it.” Alexis scratched Beefcake’s ears and made lovey-dovey noises at him. “You really are such a good boy.”

A really good boy were words that had never, ever been spoken about Beefcake.

“Now what?” Noah asked.

“Now I think we loop the other part around each leg.”

Noah did the engineering in his head and decided the plans were flawed from the design stage. Because there was no way Beefcake was going to willingly put his legs through the holes of that thing.

As if reading his mind, Beefcake bared his claws.

The rest happened in slow motion.

Beefcake made a noise like a rabid raccoon and went full Crouching Tiger. He lifted his back legs, planted them in the center of Noah’s chest, and dug in. Before Noah could even register the fact that he’d just been impaled, Beefcake shoved off and flew from Lexa’s hands.

Noah clutched his chest and fell backward as Alexis gasped. “Beefcake, no!”

Dear God, he’d been stabbed. Noah collapsed against the wall, hand covering his heart. Or what was left of it. He was afraid to pull his hand away because he’d likely find it covered in blood.

“Oh my God, did he hurt you?” Alexis asked, running toward him.

“I’m fine.” Noah’s voice registered high enough to summon bats.

“Move your hand,” she ordered. And just in case he wasn’t going to obey, she peeled his fingers away.

“Oh no,” she breathed. “You’re bleeding.”

Noah was afraid to look down, so he squinted and slowly dipped his chin.

Twin red splotches had soaked through his white T-shirt.

“We need to look at it. Cat scratches can get infected.”

“It’s not that bad.”

She nodded toward the hallway. “Go in the bathroom. I’ll be right there. We need to clean it.”

“Lexa—”

She pointed toward the door with a look that ended the argument. He trudged back to the bathroom, turned on the light, and shut the door halfway. Then he grabbed the collar of his shirt at the nape of his neck and pulled it over his head. Two inch-long cuts between his pecs oozed blood beneath the dark mat of hair.

He heard Alexis’s footsteps in the hallway, and suddenly the door swung open all the way. “There’s some washcloths under the sink— Oh.”

She stopped.

Stared.

Blinked.

Looked away quickly.

Circles of pink rose high on her cheeks. “Sorry. I . . . should have knocked.”

“It’s okay.” Noah stepped back to make room for her, his own face getting hot as he watched her open the cabinet beneath the sink. She grabbed a washcloth and a basket of first aid stuff. She turned around, looked at him and then away again.

Noah blinked and looked down at his naked chest.

Was she checking him out? No. That was ridiculous. The guys had planted too many fucking seeds in his head. It was just wishful thinking. But she’d stared so openly, so hotly, that his chest hair had damn near ignited.

She turned around and soaked the washcloth in hot water. Looking everywhere but at his eyes, she then pressed the fabric to the first scratch. He instinctively sucked in a breath. She yanked the towel back. “I’m sorry. Does it hurt?”

He cleared this throat. “It’s fine.”

“Maybe we should go to the ER.”

“For a cat scratch?”

“Cat scratches can be bad.”

“This one isn’t.”

“It’s pretty deep.”

“Lexa, I’m fine.”

She returned to her cleaning, every swipe of the fabric a creeping torture he’d never experienced before. But then she set the washcloth down and dabbed antibiotic cream on her fingers, and the torture began anew.

Because this time, she was touching him directly. Hot fingertips against his hot skin.

She looked up. “Does it hurt?”

He shook his head, amazed he could talk at all. “It’s fine.”

Except he wasn’t fine. He was nearly hyperventilating. Not from pain, at least not from the pain of the scratch. Her touch was like a branding iron against his naked skin.

God strike him down for the most inappropriate reaction of all time given everything she was going through, but the first thing he thought was how amazing it would be to feel her hands on other parts of him, and suddenly his groin got the misguided idea that now would be the perfect time to stand at attention. Fuck.

He jerked away from her. “That’s good.”

Alexis blinked up at him, cheeks growing pinker. “I’m sorry. I—I’ll get you a new shirt.”

* * *

* * *

Alexis escaped to her bedroom upstairs and sank to the edge of the bed. She pressed her hands to her eyes. Nope. Didn’t work. She could still see him.

Shirtless.

As in naked from the waist up.

As in trim hips encased in faded denim rising to a wide V of shoulders, bulging triceps, and toned pecs that played peekaboo beneath a layer of dark hair that gathered in the valley between before descending in a straight line down taut abs toward . . .

No. She wouldn’t think about the toward part.

Holy shit, how did she not know he looked like that under his comic book T-shirts? And double holy shit, she had just ogled her best friend, and he knew it.

“Lexa.”

She shot to her feet and turned toward his voice. He hovered in the doorway as if afraid to cross the threshold. In the play of light and shadow from the single lamp, his face was angular and sharp.

“You have a tattoo on your back,” she blurted.

“Yeah. Didn’t . . . Didn’t you know?”

“No.”

He took a tentative step into the room. “It’s the date of my dad’s death.”

Her eyes fell to the wide spread of his shoulders. And then farther down to the hard ridge of his collarbone, and farther still to the dark hair covering defined pecs and tight . . .

“Lexa . . .” His voice was strained. Maybe even embarrassed.

Crap. She’d just been busted again.

Alexis quickstepped to her closet, threw it open, and yanked a sweatshirt from a hanger. It was his. He’d given it to her last winter to wear when she spilled spaghetti sauce on herself. She’d never returned it, and he never asked for it back.