After he left the bar, I had spent the rest of my shift contemplating my actions from the moment Tate arrived.

I wondered, this early in our relationship, if I should be running across the bar in front of our customers (and Bubba and Twyla), throwing myself in his arms and necking with him. That said a lot, maybe more than I wanted it to say. Granted Tate seemed to appreciate it but I wondered if I should be playing it cooler. Running through a bar and launching yourself at your new boyfriend like he’d just returned from war, not like you’d been separated a few weeks, was far from cool.

I also wondered, since Tate brought that out in me, the desire to throw myself at him in front of an audience and the ability to do it without thinking, why, minutes later, I was, as Tate put it, showing him the edge of my tongue. Tate seemed to draw that out of me too.

This was, I decided, because he was not like any other man I’d met.

Brad got his way nearly all the time but he didn’t do it like Tate did it. Brad controlled my emotions. I’d realized of late that Brad had insidiously planted that seed that I was less than him and lucky to have him and, for some fool reason, I nourished that seed. Brad had done what he wanted when he wanted and I fell in line because I was terrified of losing him or not living up to the false gloriousness that I had thought was him.

Tate did anything he wanted too and expected me to put up with it or give into it. This was annoying. I was all for Tate being a macho man, badass, bounty hunting biker because all that was immensely attractive but I’d spent more than ten years being in the control of a man. I wasn’t looking for that kind of thing again no matter what form it came in.

That said, as Caroline noted, Brad thought he was all that and wasn’t but Tate was. No man liked a bitchy, nagging, argumentative shrew and, I would guess, definitely not a man like Tate. If I didn’t cool that too, maybe I’d turn him off and lose him.

So I was at a loss, thinking I should be both harder to get and easier to deal with. I needed to sort myself out, I just didn’t know how. What I knew was Tate was who he was and that was unlikely to change and most of it I liked so I didn’t want to do anything to mess it up.

I stopped chewing on this in my head when Tate turned into a long drive. This drive ran the length of a long house that was built into a hill, it’s first floor raised and it’s ground floor tucked into the hill, the windows only two or three feet from the ground. It fit cozy in a clearing of trees. It ended in a two car garage and had a deck that ran high the length of its front at the first floor but it jutted out to a kind of balcony on the end.

Tate drove around the side and parked the bike. I hopped off and he swung his leg off, alighting in front of me. He opened the leather bag on the side of his bike where he’d stowed my stuff, tagged my small bag, grabbed my hand and led me to the side door of the garage. He dropped my hand to unlock the door then took it again to lead me through the garage, where his dusty Explorer was parked in the middle of the big space, to the side door of the house.

He pushed open the door and led me into a mudroom that was so big, you could fit a couch and TV in there. There was a window through which I could see a patio out back and the hill had been terraced. There were wildflowers, some perennials but those had been planted haphazard, they obviously weren’t tended and I doubted Tate planted them (and wondered who did). In the mudroom there were two big alcoves with hooks that were full of stuff. Jeans jackets, leather jackets, canvas weatherproof parkas. On the floor I saw that Tate not only owned one pair of black motorcycle boots but around fifty. There were also muddy work boots, a pair of dusty cowboy boots shoved in a corner and there was a mess of running shoes in different states of newness from totally battered and falling apart to brand spanking.

Tate didn’t give me much of a chance to look around before he was pulling me through the room. I saw a doorway that led down some stairs and about three feet beside that we went through another opening. This one led to a hall. As we walked through, to the left I saw a utility room that was the utility room to end all utility rooms. It was awesome. It was better than Brad and my utility room in Horizon Summit which I thought was a danged fine utility room. I might not have liked my house but my utility room was the bomb. Tate’s had a big washer and dryer, side by side. A long, deep counter opposite it. Hooks on the walls. Doors to a big built-in cupboard. A deep bowled utility sink.

Tate tugged me further down the hall and the space opened up into a kitchen and beyond that was even more open space, a dining area feeding to the side into a living room.

He dropped my hand when we entered a big, u-shaped kitchen with a middle island and I stopped but he kept moving into the dining area.

I looked around.

He needed new appliances. His range, fridge and the front of his dishwasher were almond colored and probably worked fine but they were far from new. His cabinets were great, a glossy, lovely, warm, honey-colored wood that I couldn’t place and there were tons of them. The countertops, I noticed, were battered and needed to be replaced. But there was a big, wide, rectangular island in the middle that was covered with well-used butcher block top and it was phenomenal.

I stopped looking around when I heard a soft “mew” and I looked toward Tate to see he was crouched. He straightened and turned to me.

I froze and stared.

Tatum Jackson, ex-pro football player, ex-cop, now bartender/bounty hunter, tall, beautiful and more man than I’d ever experienced in my life was standing on the edge of his kitchen holding a cat.

And it wasn’t just any cat and he wasn’t just holding it. He was cradling it. It was white with big splotches of tiger-striped ginger. Its hair wasn’t long or short but in between and it looked thick and soft. It was not small but not large, kind of petite and, no other word for it, dainty. What struck me most were the cat’s eyes, which were just as ginger as its tiger splotches and downright striking.

Tatum Jackson owned a beautiful, dainty cat. He did not own a German Shepherd or a Rottweiler. He owned a dainty cat.

And he cradled it, the cat’s lower body resting on his forearm, the cat’s tail gliding across his bicep, the cat’s front paws straddling Tate’s wrist and the cat’s head resting in Tate’s big hand. It was purring loudly because Tate’s fingers were giving it scratches and I understood that, I purred in my way too when Tate’s fingers were in my hair.

My eyes went from the cat to Tate as he walked back into the kitchen, still holding the animal.