“Two beds.”
I whip my head in Colin’s direction, brows pulling together in absolute disbelief. “What?” I turn back to the friendly but bewildered looking hotel clerk. “One bed.”
I just staked my marital claim on him, for fuck’s sake. We are not sleeping in separate beds.
The hotel clerk looks at Colin for permission, pinching his credit card between her fingers.
“Fine,” he grumbles. “One bed.” I smile and give the young girl a happy nod.
I told Colin he should walk me in here in handcuffs and really raise some eyebrows, but he was against the idea.
Maybe next time.
He slings my bag over his shoulder, his much smaller bag gripped in his hand as he turns from the desk and heads out the lobby door, holding it open forme to pass.
“418,” he reminds me, lifting his chin in the direction of the exposed hallway. I walk ahead of him, trailing my finger along the wall of doors until we eventually hit the one that will be ours for the night. He presses the plastic card to the sensor until the light turns green and the lock clicks open.
I’ve been to Sunset Peak plenty of times, though I’ve never found the need to stay in a hotel before. The room is clean, the white sheets and comforter plush looking and crisply folded. It’s not my bed, but it’ll do for the night—especially because I’ll finally get to sleep next to the man who’s been frustratingly choosing the couch over me for three nights.
There’s a TV directly across from the bed, and a table in the corner by the window with two chairs pushed under it on either side. Colin sets our bags down and opens his laptop on the table. I cross to him to push it closed.
“No working.”
His eyes narrow, fingers steepling on the tabletop. “A man was just found murdered with Maeve’s name carved into his stomach.”
“And? What are you going to do about it from fifty miles away?”
He squeezes his jaw, but he acquiesces, making no attempt to reopen the computer on the desk.
“Besides,” I continue, moving to fall back onto the bed and fold my arms behind my head. “You’ve got the woman you’ve been stalking for a year all to yourself. Isn’t that more interesting than some dead guy?”
He huffs out a tense laugh, perhaps at my blunt reminder that he isn’t as upstanding as he portrays himself to be. His gaze moves to where my dress is riding up my thighs, and I instantly feel the warmth pooling between them under his suffocating stare. “Why two beds?” I ask him. His eyes snap back to mine, the dazzle in them sparking into a blaze as his pupils expand. He turns away from me, busying himself with irrelevant tasks at the table likemaking sure his laptop is positioned properly and unloading his bathroom items onto the surface, even though that’s not at all where they belong.
“I thought it would have been best,” he clips.
“For who?”
“It’s more professional,” he says, not exactly answering my question.
“I think we’re well past that, detective,” I whisper from the bed, and he freezes ever so momentarily before forcing himself to keep moving. He starts gathering his bathroom supplies from the table, carrying them toward the small, tiled space off the room.
His avoidance of me is frustrating. Infuriating, actually. I force myself to close my eyes and hold my breath, counting to five before pushing the hard breath out. I absorb the minimal patience the breathing exercise instills in me and scoot myself up the bed, watching from the pillow with my hands tucked behind my head as Colin focuses his frazzled energy on unpacking.
He silently empties his bag, hanging his outfit for tomorrow in the closet. The sound of him arranging and re-arranging his items on the counter echoes from the bathroom, and I lay quietly on the bed until he’s effectively run out of things to do and has to face the inevitable.
He moves toward me on the bed, lowering himself onto what I’ve decided is his side, and leans his head against the wall.
“Are you tired?” I ask, rolling onto my side to face him and tucking my hands under my face. I look up at him, at his long, dark lashes lightly closed. At his pink, plush lips relaxed and the stubble of a five o’clock shadow covering his sharp jaw lines. My gaze travels to his hands resting on his stomach, the one hand that he used tosubdueMax and the scabbed over cuts littering his pink knuckles.
“A bit. You?”
The sun has set beyond the drawn curtains over the window, and while it’s not nearly close to the time I’d typically retreat to my own bedroom, my mind is exhausted after all of the information Maeve laid out for me and allthe time I’ve spent worrying about her throughout the day, on top of the rush of nerves I felt thinking about meeting Colin’s mother tomorrow.
“A bit,” I parrot. I let a beat of silence surround us before asking, “Why a panda bear?”
His lips pull into a smile, and he lets out a groan, rolling his head in my direction. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”
“Are you kidding?” I sit up on the bed, turning to face him and folding my legs underneath me, mocking him only slightly when I puff up my body like a gorilla and say, “The big, bad Detective Colin Mills loves panda bears? Who woulda thought?”
