Desire by Design - By Paula Altenburg Page 0,37

things they can’t buy in bulk locally. They always stay here. She’ll never believe you’re a roommate.”

Matt was getting tired of her worrying that people might think there was something going on between them. He was considered quite a catch—by everyone but Eve.

Patience, he reminded himself. And lots of it. Let her come to him.

“I can move back into the hotel for a few days,” he said, just to torment her. He’d probably go to Toronto, but he was curious how she planned to handle this before he gave her an out.

“At three hundred dollars a night?” She tightened the belt on her robe. “I don’t think so. I’ll sleep on the sofa. My parents will sleep in my bed.”

“If anyone sleeps on the sofa, it should be me,” Matt said. Then he wondered why he was offering to sleep on her sofa. It was two feet too short for him.

Eve measured him with her eyes, apparently coming to the same conclusion.

“We’ll share your bedroom,” she decided, looking less than enthusiastic but prepared to suffer. “I’ll set up an air mattress on the floor for myself. It’s either that or you stay with Bob.”

As much as Matt liked the idea of sharing a room with her, he didn’t think he could enjoy it with her parents a few feet away. Having lain awake at night listening to her sheets rustling when she moved and the small, breathy noises she made when she slept, he knew how thin the walls were.

“What will your parents think about you sharing your room with a man they’ve never met?” he asked, mostly because testing her problem-solving skills was proving entertaining.

“The same thing they’ll think if you sleep on the sofa, only that we’re being more honest about it,” she said. “There’s nothing I can say to my mother that will convince her you’re a roommate, so let her think what she wants. We might as well be comfortable. I’m not a teenager anymore. I quit worrying about what she thought a long time ago.”

Which meant she really hadn’t. Matt wondered what there was between Eve and her mother that made her so testy over the thought of such a short visit.

He wondered, too, who she thought was going to be comfortable with the sleeping arrangements she’d suggested, because it wouldn’t be him. Judging by the expression on her face, it wouldn’t be her, either.

No, sharing a room was out of the question. He’d definitely take that trip back to Toronto he’d been putting off, but he’d wait until after her parents arrived to tell her about it. Matt smiled to himself.

Let Eve spend the next two weeks worrying about having to share a bedroom with him. She’d been causing him plenty of sleepless nights already, and he anticipated more to come.

Chapter Eight

Eve rubbed her temples and stared out of her tiny office window overlooking the parking lot. Matt had dropped her off that morning, as he had every other day during the past two weeks when he’d needed to borrow her car, then gone home to wait for a delivery.

The meeting Bob had arranged with City Council was set for eleven o’clock, and Matt’s drafting department in Toronto was sending the preliminary blueprints by priority post—for plans he wouldn’t let her see beforehand, although he’d assured her over and over that he’d taken her notes into consideration and that she’d love the design.

He refused, however, to share it with her. She was willing to bet that it was because he wanted her to see the reaction of other people first before she started in with her list of complaints.

Maybe he was coming to know her a little too well.

If he’d truly taken her notes into consideration, then the least she could do was give his design a fair chance. But she wasn’t going to get her hopes up. She was getting to know him better, too, and he had expensive tastes. His shampoo cost more than hers. Not that she had any right to judge how he spent his own money, but their ideas of fiscal restraint appeared to be vastly different. She wanted to get this meeting over with so she could get started on the budget.

Again.

To top it all off, her parents were due to arrive in the morning. There went her weekend.

The view of the parking lot didn’t help the headache slamming behind her eyelids. She sat up straighter in her chair, all but pressing her nose against the pane of