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“No. I’m too tired to eat.”
It was around four-thirty a.m. and neither of them had slept at all last night, not to mention the week before had been so busy they’d only caught a few hours of shuteye a night. Before taking a shower, Maxi had mentioned that she wanted to be back at the hospital when Dr. Shaw did his rounds at ten. If they went to bed now she’d only get a few hours of sleep before she wanted to be back.
“Alright, let’s get you to bed.” He started walking towards her but stopped cold when he saw the strange expression on her face.
Why was she looking at him like…?
Oh shit.He hadn’t meant to say it like that.
“I didn’t mean…I’m going to show you to my room and then take the couch.” He had a three-bedroom house, but one room was an office and one was a gym.
He didn’t entertain much.
“Oh…I wasn’t…I didn’t…okay,” she stammered, fumbling over her words as a flush rose up on her face.
He hadn’t fed her, but he was still responsible for putting some color on her cheeks and that made him really happy.
It wasn’t really the best time to tell her that she was fucking adorable, but he was having a hard time keeping that information to himself. He was having a hard time keeping a lot of information to himself. Like the fact that he was pretty damn sure that he’d fallen in love with her this past week. Or more in love. He was almost positive that ship had sailed years ago and he’d just been pretending the S.S. Heart was still docked at Never Gonna Happen Port.
When things weren’t so crazy, he planned on telling her. He had no idea how she was going to take the news. If she would be happy and fall into his arms, or if she’d shut him down like she had every other time he’d hit on her over the years. But, as soon as her life settled down he was going to find out.
And until that happened he was sticking with his plan to show her how he felt. Starting with putting her to bed. He crossed the distance between them and easily picked her up in his arms, the way a groom would carry his bride over the threshold.
She gasped as her arms wrapped around his neck. “What are you doing?”
“You’re tired so I’m taking you to bed.” He made his way down the hall to his bedroom.
“I’m not too tired to walk,” she protested weakly even as her arms tightened their hold.
“Maybe, maybe not,” he teased.
She smiled as her aqua gaze peeked up at him through a bed of thick, dark lashes. Just like the end of the cartoons he used to watch as a kid where a circle of black got smaller and smaller until it was the size of a pinpoint, his world narrowed so that all he saw was her smile. He knew, then and there, that if he could keep putting that smile on her face, he was the luckiest bastard in the world.
When he reached his bed, he set her down gently beside it and lifted his comforter. “In you go.”
“Are you planning on tucking me in?” Her left brow rose.
He winked. “I’m a full service bodyguard.”
“Wow. Does that line usually work?” she asked as she crawled onto the mattress and lay down.
He covered her with the comforter. “I have a beautiful woman in my bed, so I think that’s your answer.”
“Goodnight,” she said sleepily as she snuggled against the pillow. “And don’t be mad but thank you, for everything.”
Without weighing whether or not it was the right thing to do, he leaned down and kissed her on her forehead before wishing her a soft, “Goodnight.”
He stood back up and was about to ask her if she wanted him to leave the bathroom light on when he felt her fingers wrap around his wrist.
“I don’t want to be alone,” she blurted out. “It’s hard for me to sleep in new places under normal circumstances, but with everything going on I know I’d lay here and my mind would just keep running—”
“Yes,” he answered simply.
She didn’t need to explain, he’d do anything for her. Not that this was any kind of a hardship. He’d happily sleep next her tonight, tomorrow night, and…forever. Since the night they’d spent on the couch, he’d tossed and turned and it wasn’t just from sexual frustration. He’d wanted to hold her, to feel her against him.
After stripping off his shirt he turned off the light on the nightstand before moving next to her. He lay on top of the blanket, because his brain knew that nothing was going to happen, but his body wasn’t totally convinced. It didn’t help his case when she rolled over and laid her head on his bare chest.
He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her closer to him.
“Do you really think he’s going to be okay?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah, I do. He’s too stubborn not to be.”
She chuckled a little before once again growing serious. “He needs to slow down. He’s not going to be happy about that.”
“I know,” he agreed. “We’ll figure it out.”
She tucked herself even closer to him and unable to resist, he kissed the top of her head. After a few minutes, her breathing pattern slowed as her body relaxed against him. As he closed his eyes he was reminded again that when everything else in the world felt wrong, this was the one thing that felt right. Maxi in his arms. She was his right.
