“Bliss,” she said with her mouth full. “So hungry.”
He popped a nugget into his mouth, flipping through the channels. He stopped when he found the original Ghostbusters playing.
“Seen this before?” he asked.
She laughed. “About a million times. It’s one of Rob’s favorites.”
They settled in, eating as they enjoyed the last half hour of the movie, watching the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man ravage downtown New York.
Once it was over, Grayson threw his trash away, then disposed of hers. “You want the bathroom first?”
She nodded, biting her lower lip as she rose and grabbed her small overnight bag, hoping Grayson didn’t notice her hands trembling. If she’d known sharing a room was part of the deal, she would have packed a hell of a lot differently.
Actually, scratch that. If she’d known about sharing this room, she would have told Lark hell no to the swap and stuck to her guns.
Locking herself in the bathroom, she placed her palms on the sink, her head bowed as she attempted to draw in several deep, calming breaths. She was only half successful.
When she lifted her face to the mirror, she saw exactly what she expected. Her hair was slightly wild after too many hours of being whipped around in the breeze. Her cheeks were flushed—partially from the sun and partially from her current nervousness—and the dark circles under her eyes rivaled Grayson’s.
“You can do this,” she whispered to her image, wishing she believed those words.
After five minutes of simply staring at herself, she decided it was time to stop stalling. She stripped off her clothing, pulled her hair up in a ponytail, and stepped into the shower. She quickly scrubbed off the stickiness of a day’s worth of sweat and spilled wine. She would take another shower in the morning and wash her hair then. She was simply too tired to do that tonight.
Turning off the water, she dried herself, then pulled out the only thing she’d packed to sleep in. There was no way she could sleep in the clean jeans she’d brought for tomorrow.
Well, she could, but she was trying not to look like a complete basket case in front of Grayson.
Finishing up quickly, she stiffened her spine and opened the door.
Grayson glanced over from the television, smirking when she walked back into the bedroom. “Is that a nightgown?”
She scowled. “Of course not. Only ninety-year-old grannies wear nightgowns. This is a sleep shirt,” she said, her lips twitching. Mainly because what she was wearing definitely skirted the line between an oversized T-shirt and a nightgown.
“Oh, of course,” he said, waving his hand. “I stand corrected. I should have seen the difference immediately.”
She giggled, then gave him back the word he’d lobbed at her a couple times today. “Smart-ass.”
Grayson tugged her ponytail playfully as he rose, grabbed his bag, and walked into the bathroom.
While the TV was still on, the volume was low enough that Wren could listen to Grayson’s progression, basically hear him doing everything she’d just done.
Showering, brushing his teeth, flushing the toilet.
Sounds that were common enough, but incredibly intimate in this setting.
While she waited for him, she shifted a couple of the pillows, building a barrier down the middle of the king-sized bed. It was completely juvenile, but she decided to make a joke of it, Lark-style.
The problem was, Wren didn’t find a damn thing funny about the pillow wall. Instead, it was offering her a modicum of comfort.
When Grayson emerged, she was relieved to see he’d donned a clean T-shirt with his lounge pants. God help her if he’d come out shirtless. He started to turn the bathroom light off, but there was only so far Wren could push herself tonight, and sleeping in a dark bedroom, in bed with a man, was a hard limit for her.
“Can you leave the light on?” she asked. “And the door cracked.”
“Afraid of the dark?” His question was clearly a tease, so she responded as if he hadn’t just hit the nail on the head.
“Want to be able to find my way there in the middle of the night if I need to.”
Grayson seemed to accept that answer, doing as she requested, then he snorted when he saw the pillows positioned between his side of the bed and hers.
