took a bite of the eggs and bacon in a recyclable container he was balancing on one hand. “I can wear whatever I want.” He peered at the boxes the movers were unloading in the hall.
“What the hell? You can’t bring all this stuff!”
“It’s just temporary,” I reminded him. “They’re getting the shots they need, then all my stuff is going back home. I don’t want your cooties all over it.”
“Cooties?” Chris said, not moving as I pushed past him, my arm grazing that muscular chest. “What are you, twelve?”
“You don’t shower. You turned up smelling like a beer hall at our wedding. You’re probably crawling with cooties.”
“I absolutely shower. That was a one-off occurrence. Shit, I showered this morning after I exercised. Smell me,” he ordered.
“I’m not smelling you,” I said as I set my camera equipment down carefully on the couch in the living room and turned to begin unpacking a box.
“Smell me,” he insisted, leaning forward and sticking his head under my nose. I got a whiff of clean masculine scent and a slight woodsy undertone.
“You smell fine.”
“I smell amazing,” Chris corrected. He set down the empty breakfast container and opened the box closest to him. “Let’s see, is this the lingerie and sex-toy box?”
“No, it’s not.” My face reddened even though I was a grown woman, damn it, and yes, I owned bras and underwear!
“Nope, it’s…” He frowned. “A giant stuffed shrimp? Is this some sort of fetish? I specifically wrote in the questionnaire that I did not want crazy girls.” He waved the pink-and-white plushie at me.
“They’re adorable food pillows,” I said, grabbing it back from him.
Chris was horrified. “Why?” he said, turning back to the box. “Who needs a giant stuffed avocado and a stuffed—what is this, roadkill?”
“It’s sushi. And those are plushie onion rings.”
“I don’t want those here. I have an aesthetic! I paid a lot of money to have my penthouse exactly how I want it.”
Ignoring him, I gathered up all the pillows. There were other things I needed to do today, such as edit the four thousand photographs I took at yesterday’s wedding. My plan was to unpack then move onto the next task. If I worked hard on the photos, maybe I would be able to carve out an hour to work on my coffee-table book.
I headed down the hall, arms stuffed with pillows.
“No wonder you felt you had to stoop to marrying some guy you never met,” Chris continued, following me down the wide hallways decorated with expensive-looking contemporary art pieces. I poked my head into the various rooms I passed. Each was impeccably decorated with luxurious wallpaper and windows that let in sunlight and gave expansive views over the harbor.
“You invite any guy into your bedroom and have him confronted with a decapitated shrimp plushie, he is turning around and going somewhere else.”
“I did not ask for your commentary, Mister ‘I’m going to pretend to be broke and lie due to my paranoia and mommy issues.’”
“I don’t have mommy issues,” Chris insisted, springing in front of me suddenly. I bounced off of him.
“And women are gold diggers, and they’re after my money.”
“I’m not,” I retorted. “You couldn’t pay me to spend the rest of my life with you.”
Chris glared at me. “If you aren’t after my money, why are you wandering around my house poking your nose in everything?”
I glared at him over the tops of my stuffed food plushies. “I’m trying to find the bedroom so I can put these there.”
“I don’t want these things in my room,” he said flatly as I stepped around him and tried the next door. It looked like a master suite; it was literally twice the size of the apartment I shared with Gran. It also smelled like Chris—that same woodsy clean scent that I wanted to wrap around me like a blanket.
Instead I dumped the plushies on his enormous bed.
14
Chris
Grace dumped the pillows on my bed in a cloud of princess colors and floral-smelling perfume.
“Your bedroom is down the hall,” I told her.
“I have other things to do with my time than spend all day fighting with you about where my stuff is going. Gunnar needs some shots. I need to work on editing photos. You clearly don’t have anything better to do with your time than wandering around shirtless and complaining,” she said, arranging the pillows on my bed. “Me and my stuff are out of here tomorrow, and until that time, you’re just going to have to put