I rub my jaw. “She should be on a beach somewhere. I’ve tried to convince her to retire. But she doesn’t have a family of her own.I’mher family. I offered to hire another housekeeper, told her she can retire at the mansion, that it will always be her home if she wants. Hell, the south wing of the house is neverused. But she refuses to ease up. Says she’d be bored to death not doing anything.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed you didn’t notice.” There’s a little line between her eyebrows that shows when she’s thinking hard, which means it’s usually there.
I love that line. I want to trace it with my finger. Over the years, I’ve memorized her many different expressions. I love them all. Her frowns of concentration and even her frowns of frustration. And when she smiles, she steals my breath. Her mouth turns soft and generous. Her nose crinkles. Her eyes dance. It overtakes her whole face.
A crack of thunder snaps me out of my trance.
Her gaze shifts up to mine.
“Oh, um. Wow. It’s really storming out there.” She sounds breathless. “That’s not good.”
“Why?” I ask, distracted.
“The ceiling in my living room leaks during a hard rain,” she explains. “They’ve never been able to fix it.”
“You’re not on the top floor. Why would that even happen?”
She shrugs. “Something called an inter-floor leak.” Another crack of thunder sounds. “I hope it doesn’t…”
And that’s when it starts raining. Indoors.
CHAPTER 25
Emma
I slam the closet door,my arms filled with every pillow I own, and place them like a divider down my bed, as if it’s the parting of the Red Sea.
Water analogies seem apt in this situation.
A flooding situation.Because, of course, the worst leak my living room ceiling has ever had happens when Sebastian is here to witness it. Together, we cleaned up the mess, and the drip-drip-drip has thankfully started to slow down.
But it caused me to fall prey to theOnly One Bedscenario. As Sadie and I are enthusiastic consumers of rom-com movies, I know the trope well.
And I know how it often ends, which is what’s making me so agitated.
Sebastian sits on my bed. His denim-clad legs are stretched out across it.
He’s removed his shirt, and his chest and abs are heart-stoppingly attractive.
I open a wicker chest and pull out an extra comforter, the one Sadie uses when she stays over.
“Don’t look so pleased.” I throw the spare blanket at him. “I can’t believe I’m letting you stay here.Why won’t you just go home?” I don’t wail the question. But it’s not far off.
“It’s not my fault that your apartment is a biohazard with a Niagara Falls-sized leak in the ceiling right above the sofa, where I’d planned on sleeping,” he says. “If you’d come back to my house, we’d have separate rooms, withdrybeds.”
I make a growling noise, wishing I had more pillows to throw at him, and stalk over to my side. I try not to mess up the divider I created as I carefully slip under the covers.
“Mybed is dry. It’s the sofa that’s not. And I should still make you sleep on it, regardless, since you’re too stubborn togo home,” I grumble.
While my heartbeat is going wild at just the thought of being in bed with Sebastian, he doesn’t seem affected at all. Whereas I haven’t hooked up with a guy since… I do the sad math in my head. It’s been long enough that I don’t want to admit the unfortunate number.
I turn to him.
“You’re cute. With your braid, you look like one of those girls who always sit in the front row of class and raise their hands at every question.”
I turn off my bedside lamp. “And I’ll bet you were the slacker in the back, cracking jokes, who had every girl in love with them.”
“See, I totally would have been that guy. It’s such a waste I never went to school. But you forget I had a tutor my whole life,” he says, spreading the duvet across him and rolling to face me and the pillow divider.
