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He hugged me, and I felt his chest shake with laughter as he pictured it again. I laughed too. It was funny. We were still chuckling about it when we made our way into the bathroom.
He stood in the doorway, waiting for me while I ran warm water on a towel. I went to him with it and wiped the side of his face. I held it there for a second to let it soak up the blood, and Beau reached up and touched me. I kept my eyes trained on his wound, but I was highly aware of the tender touch of his thumb on the backside of my arm.
"There's a scratch," I said, inspecting the area.
"It's no big deal," he assured me.
I pulled back and inspected the scrape which had virtually erased now that it was clean. A bead of blood pooled again, and dabbed it with a dry section of towel. "It's small, so it'll stop in a second. I can get a bandage, but I don't know if you want that on your face while—"
"It's really fine," he said, touching my arm again.
I set down the towel and went to him, gently hugging him, relishing in his presence.
"I'll go get your computer plugged back in," he said after a few seconds. "So we can finish up with those guys."
"How long are you here?" I asked, feeling desperate to stay in the bathroom with him and never leave his arms.
"All week," he said. "Till you go back."
"Really?" I squeezed him, feeling more relief than I had ever felt. My day, my week, my life just got a whole lot better.
Chapter 18
It was an hour or later when we finished our call to Japan. A lot had happened in that hour, and we had just disconnected and were finally alone.
I stared at Beau, unblinking.
I had held it together for the meeting, but it felt so nice to relax and be alone with him. I smiled and took a deep breath as I let my shoulders slump. We were both sitting in chairs, and he pulled me onto his lap. I went to him easily.
"Hi," I said, sitting on the edge of his knee and turning to look at him.
"I was wondering if you had a boyfriend," he said, tucking my hair behind my ear and causing me to smile.
"Sometimes I have a fake one," I said. I pulled back and studied him. "I think you even helped me with that one time," I added, making a face, playing dumb like I barely recalled it. "Yeah, remember when you pretended to be my boyfriend that time?"
"No, I don't remember that," he said shaking his head and regarding me with a serious expression. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
We were clearly messing around, but our tone was completely serious. "Remember? We ran into each other that night when we saw Sam Wells. You were there by yourself, and I was having trouble with that guy who—"
"Nope," he said, cutting me off.
"Nope, what?" I asked. staring at him.
"I definitely don't remember some guy trying to talk to you, and I also don't recall faking anything."
He was still being lighthearted, but I replied, "We weren't faking, huh?"
Beau knew my tone had changed, and his face broke into a smile as he shook his head. "I don't think we were, Holland. I think we were lying to ourselves that we were faking it." He reached out and put his hand on my knee in a possessive gesture.
I was on his lap and his hand was on my leg, but it still felt proper. Okay, proper was a bad word to describe how I felt right then when all I really wanted was to throw myself at him. I was exercising a great deal of restraint to sit lightly on the edge of his lap. I had a pack of strong mints on my desk and I reached over and ate one of them and gave one to Beau.
"I'm still shaken," I said after I chewed it.
"Me too. My mom has texted me ten times asking how it went. She said they ate and saved us some."
"Were they all in on this?"
"Yes," he said. "There's no way I could have pulled it off with that window with the curtains and everything. Uncle Max painted that whole wall to look like my hotel room."
