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“I didn’t attack you.” He flicked off the light, plunging the room into darkness. The insensitive jerk had even turned off the bathroom light.
She heard the whoosh of slid
ing denim as he pulled off his jeans. She went up on her knees. “You’re not sleeping here.”
“It’s my room, and this is the only bed with sheets.”
“A bed I’m already occupying.”
“And now you have company.” He crawled in.
She took a deep breath and reminded herself he had too big an ego to attack her. If she scrambled around in the dark for another place to sleep, she’d look like a wuss. Show no weakness. “You stay on your side,” she warned him, “or you won’t like the consequences.”
“Going to hit me with your tuffet, Miss Muffet?”
She had no idea what he was talking about.
The smell of toothpaste, skin, and the leather upholstery of a very expensive car drifted toward her. He should have smelled like liquor. A grief-stricken man coming home at two o’clock in the morning should be drunk. His bare leg brushed her thigh. She stiffened.
“Why do you have your jeans on?” he said.
“Because my luggage was in your car.”
“Yeah, right. You kept them on because you were afraid the boogeyman would get you. What a chickenshit.”
“Sticks and stones.”
“That’s mature.”
“Like you’re not all about seventh grade,” she retorted.
“At least I don’t have to sleep with the lights on.”
“You might have second thoughts about that when the bats start flying out of the chimney.”
“Bats?” He grew still.
“A colony.”
“You’re a bat expert?”
“I heard them rustling around. Making bat noises.”
“I don’t believe you.” He was a crossways bed sleeper, and his knee poked her calf. Unaccountably, she’d begun to relax.
“I might as well sleep with a damn mummy,” he grumbled.
“They’re staying on.”
“Don’t think I couldn’t get them off you if I put my mind to it. Thirty seconds max, and they’d be gone. Unfortunately for you, I’m off my game tonight.”
He shouldn’t be thinking about sex when his mother was dying. Her opinion of him plummeted. “Shut up and go to sleep.”
“Your loss.”
The wind picked up outside. A friendly branch tapped at the window. As his breathing grew deep and regular, slivers of moonlight crept across the old wooden floors, and the chimney gave a contented sigh. He stayed on his side of the bed. She stayed on hers.
For a while…
