That wasn’t a word he’d ever used. It was a my world word. And something about him using it made my heart sigh.
To get my mind off that, I shared, “I like your house.”
His warm eyes got warmer and he gathered me closer but he kind of freaked me out when he did this at the same time he asked, “I would assume with the other me’s nefarious dealings, he could provide you with a grand home.”
“You would, uh…assume correctly,” I confirmed hesitantly.
“Is mine grander?” he queried.
At that, I got it.
It was Apollo wanting to give me better.
So I smiled and leaned into him. “Yeah, by, like, a lot.”
He smiled back, pulled me closer and murmured, “This pleases me.”
I felt all gushy because Apollo was pleased and I liked it when he was pleased.
Damn, I was fading fast. Fading into this world. Fading into him.
And I didn’t mind. Not even a little bit.
It was the fact I didn’t mind that freaked me.
That was, I didn’t mind until he announced, “As my home is agreeable to you, I’ll charge Loretta and Meeta with packing your things and we’ll move you here tomorrow morning.”
I forgot all about fading and blinked.
“What?”
“Tomorrow, we shall move you here. It’s not far to get to you, my dove, but it’ll be far better to take dinner with you here and go to bed with you, also here, which means I’ll wake here as well.”
Um…
Move in with him.
Tomorrow?
Was he nuts?
“Uh, Apollo, by tomorrow I will twice have done something crazy in front of your kids and once, hopefully, acted like a sane person though a dinner with them. That’s hardly time to move me in.”
“You will have met them. You will be getting to know them. Thus there will no longer be reasons for you to avoid them. You like my home. I see no purpose in us continuing our current arrangement.”
“It’s too soon,” I told him, by a miracle succeeding in not letting my voice rise in panic.
“Too soon?” he asked, clearly perplexed.
“Yes. Too soon for them. Too soon for you and me.”
“Maddie, how is it too soon?”
Yep. He was perplexed. And I was perplexed at how he could be.
I leaned back in his arms. “I’ve only”—I lifted my hands and did air quotation marks—“known you for a week. A week is way too soon to live together.”
“And how are we not living together now?” he asked. “We dine together. We go to bed together. We wake together.”