“Get dressed,” he said instead.
“I beg your pardon?”
She was using that same indignant tone from the elevator. Whatis your problem?
Well, part of his problem was that he had no idea how to start a conversation with her. His brain still felt full of the four a.m. pitch-darkness. His body was still disoriented from the chaotic hours the trip here had required.
Michael, he thought desperately, and grabbed hold of the memory of this morning. The knock on his own door. His best friend’s pale, shocked face. The stunned, disbelieving note to his voice as he’d told Griffin everything.
He reset himself this time.
“I need to talk to you about Michael and Emily. And what happened last night.”
Impossibly, her eyebrows lowered a little further. “What do you mean, what happened last night?”
“When you were out with Emily.”
“Nothing happened when I was out with Emily. We had dinner and came back here, all together.” Something panicked crossed her face. “Is she okay? I walked her and Rosie to their rooms.”
“She’s fine,” Griff said.
He almost asked,Who walked you to yours?but that was a stupid question to ask of a woman who opened her hotel room door when there was no peephole. In fact, it was a stupid question to ask of a woman who had absolutely no sense—judging by the fact that she was attending this wedding in the first place—of self-preservation.
“If she was fine you wouldn’t be here. What is going on?”
He didn’t want to talk about this while she was in a bathrobe. Her door was open enough that he could see part of the unmade bed over her shoulder. Her room was very small. He would not be comfortable in there, not that it mattered. He would never have occasion to be in her room.
“Hel-lo?” she said, clearly frustrated.
Well, he wasmorefrustrated. With her, specifically.
“Emily told Michael she’s having doubts,” he said, pitching his voice low. In addition to not having peepholes, these doors were not very soundproof. Last night, when he finally came back to his room, he thought he could hear every step that went by in the hallways. He hadn’t been able to fall asleep, of course. When Michael knocked, Griff had only been dozing, his mind hazy with fatigue but his body—still shot through with pain—not quitting even for a second. He maybe should have stayed out walking for longer, but he’d been so tired.
Layla stared at him. “When?”
“When what?”
“Whendid she tell him that?”
He ground his molars together. Had he not made that clear already?
“Last night. After your dinner.”
He could admit she looked genuinely confused. A blankness to her face that did not, for once, look like a practiced effort.
“I don’t—we had a nice dinner,” she said.
He could see her mind running in the background, sifting through memories. His own mind couldn’t help a crude, invented mimicry: He wondered if the restaurant was candlelit. If the folds of her skirt touched the floor when she sat. If she left lipstick behind on her glass. If sheactuallysmiled, at any point.
What was hethinking?
This time difference was killing him; not sleeping was killing him. Being away from home, away from his things, out of his routine was—
No.
No, this morning with Michael was killing him.
“You said something to her.” He could hear the frustration in his voice, mostly at himself, but he didn’t care if she thought it was all directed at her. “She told Michael it was something you said.”
