He thought of Layla Bailey’s cheeks turning pink in the sunlight.
No. He thought of the promise he’d made to himself while sitting beside Michael: If she couldn’t fix this alone, he’d find a way to fix it with her.
And that’s what he’d need to do now.
“Let’s get out of this fucking hallway,” he said abruptly. “This hotel.”
She blinked up at him with her big, muddy-brown eyes, and he watched as her lips rolled inward, her throat moving in a heavy swallow. He did not think getting out of the hotel was such a terrible idea, but he supposed she had reason to be nervous about going to a second location with him. Fine, they could go back to that courtyard with the terrible chairs, or—
“Okay,” she said.
He hoped she wouldn’t notice him letting out—very, very slowly—the breath he’d been holding. But just in case, to cover his bases, he thought it would be wise to distract her.
“Sun came out,” he said curtly, turning to make his way down the hall. “You’ll probably need sunglasses.”
* * *
He waitedfor her in front of the hotel, trying not to pace for fear of further disturbing the doorman, who was a starer of the “showing disgust” variety. Normally, Griff took that sort of thing as an opportunity to be defiant, even scary, but he figured the doorman could be a good first test of the daytime Griffin he was trying to be.
So instead, he simply stood what he thought was a few polite steps down from the hotel’s wide, sleek glass doors, staring across the street at a building that looked much more like it belonged here, based on what he’d seen of this city so far. That cream-gray stone, shutters flanking old, tall paned windows, each with ironwork railings, and beneath them all, two huge arched and paneled entry doors painted a rich dark blue, a brass knob right in the middle of both.
He was thinking about how that was the sort of door that actually deserved a doorman when she stepped up beside him.
“Hello,” she said. Businesslike, which he guessed was better, for him personally, than doctor-like.
He turned to look at her, felt a stupid degree of satisfaction that she’d taken his advice about the sunglasses, though he thought they were a little big for her face. He couldn’t even see all of her eyebrows.
Not that he needed to see much of her face.
The sunglasses were a blessing, to be honest.
She had a purse over her shoulder but nothing else—not the hot chocolate or the little bag of croissants.
“Did you eat?” he said, for no good reason. Except that twice this morning, he and this woman had been in the presence of French pastries, which no one ever stopped going on about, and he hadn’t seen her have one. He hadn’t, either, but his body still felttoo jet-lagged and outside-of-time for food. It wasn’t the same for him.
“I’m not hungry,” she said.
He nodded in the direction that he’d walked this morning on his way to meet Michael. There’s no way she wasn’t hungry. “There’s a bunch of cafés down that way.”
He was just beingpolite.
“I don’t want to go sit in a café like this.”
He looked her over, bottom to top, grateful that he’d stopped first in his room and had his own eyes covered now. She was wearing the same thing she’d had on earlier. Sneakers and wide-legged black pants and a white button-up that looked a little wrinkled, but otherwise normal.
“Like what?”
“I’m not…dressed.”
He stared. Not in disgust, obviously. More in bewilderment. In fact she was maximally dressed. This morning he’d seen her in a robe, for Christ’s sake. And last night he’d been able to see a glimpse of her collarbones. Her slim, muscular calves in that skirt, flexed in the heels she wore.
Maximally dressed was also a blessing.
“Let’s go this way,” she said, and then marched right past him, in the opposite direction he’d suggested.
He had to hustle to catch up, his leg smarting ominously with the quick movement.
She crossed the street at a diagonal, one hand clutched around the strap of her bag, her strides long and purposeful, avoiding random puddles, occasional dog waste. On account of the sunglasses, he couldn’t tell if she was taking much in around her, but there was no way she’d seen those big doors. He thought she would’ve at leastpaused if she had. There was no arguing that they were interesting, especially compared to the hotel ones.
