“What’s wrong with letting him have a short visit? He stays a few days and gets bored. Then we get him out of here so we can get on with our work and lives. And that includes a certain very important interview coming up. It’ll be fine.”
Her gaze on me, if possible, had hardened even more. “You do realize that they think our marriage is for real, right?”
I shrugged. “Well, so does my family.”
She blinked again as if I were some kind of idiot. “Which means that if they’re sleeping over, we’ll need to be sleeping in the same room. In the same bed.” She pointed to my bed as if to emphasize her point.
My eyes followed where she pointed, to my perfectly made-up bed. Which, to be honest, hadn’t had a woman in it in a very long time. The last woman I’d dated, over a year before, had only wanted sleepovers at her house, which I’d rarely done as I didn’t like them. Since the divorce I never had anyone overnight at my house.
But now Kat would have to do just that. Since, through my own stupidity, I’d graduated us from playacting only for work and special occasions to now playacting twenty-four-seven.
Since there was absolutely nothing that could be labeled “playacting” between us the night before, on the piano, that was leading me to a big danger zone. I blinked, staring at the bed, then I turned back to her and took a deep breath.
“I, uh, think we can manage that for a night or two.”
She snorted. “Until a night or two turns into a week or a month. You don’t know my brother. He’s like kudzu—hard to get rid of and turns up everywhere.”
I glanced at the bed again, trying hard to put out of my mind how she’d felt and tasted under my hands and tongue the night before. The sound of her coming, deep throaty moans and a high-pitched squeak when she arched her back. Shit.
The bed was big but not big enough to avoid what I didn’t really want to avoid. I craved her gorgeous, lush body pressed up against me in sleep. I wanted to inhale the coconut scent of her hair splayed across my pillow. Suddenly I wondered if she slept in skimpy negligees or sexy lingerie. It would be out of character for her but… once I pictured it, I could not unpicture it.
Damn it to hell. What had I gotten myself into?
Her pointer finger tapped at her mouth as she was obviously thinking and had no idea the dirty turn my own thoughts had taken. “Maybe we can have fumigators show up in a few days or something.”
I laughed. “Fumigators to get rid of unwanted family members. If that’s not already a business, it should be. They’d make a killing.”
“Or we could always just move.”
“Hmm.” My mind was racing, trying to find a way to get out of us sharing the bed in here. I had no real ideas. There wasn’t enough room on the floor to throw down an air mattress and I only had two, which presumably would go to our guests.
Maybe a sleeping bag? On the hardwood floor that would suck big-time. I’d be walking around like an eighty-year-old man after only a night or two of that.
I ran a hand through my hair. “Okay, you can sleep in here but… I have rules.”
She blew out a breath and folded her arms across her chest, which, of course, tightened her shirt right around those perfect boobs of hers. That delectable chest that I still hadn’t gotten a chance to touch, fitting those breasts into the palms of my hands, the soft—fuck.
“Of course you have rules. Why wouldn’t you? We had rules for when we got married—”
“—And you broke the most important one about keeping it secret—”
She scowled but continued to talk over me. “Rules for me living here, which, I might add, I’ve kept every one of them. You are the one who invited them to stay and put us in this latest predicament.”
I shook my head. “We need rules, especially now.” I didn’t need to add that we could hardly afford another slip-up like last night. That had been completely my slip-up, but still. The rules were more for me than for her, obviously.
“We both need to be fully clothed in bed. Top and bottom. No sexy negligees.”
Her cinnamon brow shot up. “Shit, I was hoping you’d be wearing something in black lace with