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“What are you doing?” a deep voice behind me says, clearly suspicious.
I whirl around and pull the door closed, blocking Liam’s view into the room. “N-nothing.”
He narrows his eyes. “Just hanging out in the hallway for fun then?”
I wince. Better to rip off the band aid. “Okay, we may have a teeny tiny problem…”
“How tiny?”
“Um, this tiny.” I swing open the door.
Liam draws in a breath. Swears.
I remember his “what girlfriend” classic playboy comment, and try not to be offended. He’s clearly not too attached to commitment, so why is the idea of sharing a bed with me this repulsive?
“It’s fine,” I insist. For some reason, I’m hellbent on proving a point at this moment. Grumpy, suited fake boyfriends bring out the worst in me. “It’s… I’ll, um, sleep in the shower.”
Liam lifts his eyes heavenward, like he is very, very done with both me and this entire situation. “How do you expect to accomplish that?”
“I’m sure I read somewhere that humans can sleep standing up,” I say, still on my stubborn streak. “Or wait, was that dolphins? Never mind. Dolphins can’t stand, they have tails…”
Oh, my gosh.Stop talking, Annie!
My nerves have clearly gotten the better of me, because my mouth is moving at an alarming speed, but I have zero control of the words coming out.
Finally, I manage to lock up my motor mouth and step into the room. Liam follows me with a decidedly concerned look in his dark eyes. Dark, totally captivating eyes that are probably evaluating me as clinically insane.
He sighs deeply as he closes the door behind us, and I wonder what he’s thinking.
“Dolphins sleep with one eye open, you know.”
I tilt my head, surprised both by this information, and by Liam volunteering it at will. “Really?”
“To ward off predators. They rest one hemisphere of their brain at a time.”
For some reason, the fact that he knows this cheers me. “What other fantastically useless facts do you know about dolphins?” I ask curiously.
Liam shoots me a dark glare and his mouth closes like a trap.
Whoops. Obviously touched another nerve there. You just wouldn’t expect a tall, broody, businessman-type with disarmingly gorgeous eyes to have a random assortment of dolphin facts. But I’m here for it.
Or… maybe I’m not. What if he has a weird dolphin fetish—like in that show where people marry their cars and/or the Eiffel Tower?
Nope. That’s too weird a thought to have about someone when you’re about to sleep next to them.
I survey the dinky room again, coming to terms with the terrible reality that our options are for the two of us to share the bed, or that I camp out in the hallway for the night. And those carpets were covered in dubious sticky brown stains. I’d rather not risk my health sleeping out there, and I couldn’t ask him to do it either.
Although, judging by his suit, he likely has much better health insurance than I do (which is none… at least for the next three months, when my probation at my new job ends).
“Guess we’re doing this.” Liam gives the brightly-patterned bedspread a glance, reading my mind.
I know it’s the wrong thing to say, but something about his Grumpypants expression triggers my motor mouth anyway. “Do you always sound so excited when you take a woman to bed?”
He shoots me a look. It’s not friendly or smiley or jokey, but maybe, there’s a brief hint of amusement. “No. Then again, I’d never attempt to seduce a woman in a place as disgusting as this.”
I laugh. “That checks out. You seem more Ritz Carlton than Motel 6.”
Legs must be living the high life.
