But he just goes on talking. “Second, the hotel is fully booked for the show.” He stretches out one arm and then tucks his hand behind his head again. “So you’re stuck with me.”
The hotel is full. No rooms available. I’m stuck in a room with a pig shifter and a single bed.
I squeeze the handle of my suitcase tightly before releasing it. Okay. This may be the only hotel in Farrowville, but surely thereare hotels within relatively easy driving distance. I could let Grayson have this room and find something a half hour, forty-five minutes away. I pull out my phone and do a quick search. There has to be something?—
Hell’s bells, Jensen. You’re on the trail of the deadliest magical criminal in a lifetime and you’re fretting over sharing a room with your partner?
I sigh. Cressida—or at least the version of her in my head—is right. I’ve done a lot in the name of the job. I’ve gone on multi-day stakeouts. I’ve slept on the floor of a van while my partner took her shift. I’ve literally crawled through a sewer to make an arrest.
Although that turned out to have not been necessary, now that I think about it.
Regardless, this is my job, one that I love and that, despite recent evidence to the contrary, I’m actually pretty good at. I can handle a few nights crashing on the floor of my hotel room.
“Fine,” I say, putting my phone away. “You take the bed. I’ll take the floor.”
A slow smile spreads across Grayson’s face, making my stupid, desperate body flush in response.
The man’s a pig, Olive, I tell myself.Literally, a pig.
“I’m just going to…” I trail off, waving one hand toward the bathroom. Dragging my suitcase in behind me, I close the door, relieved to have a little bit of space. I look in the mirror, sighing over the unruly mass of brown hair caught in the act of trying to flee my head.
Me too, hair. Me too.
Turning away, I strip down and turn the shower on, letting the water stay relatively cool. A cold shower is probably what I need at the moment. I step in, and even though the water is cold enough to make me shiver, it doesn’t quite manage to wash away the warmth I felt when Grayson did that stupid sexy smile.
He’s your partner. And a pig.
That’s it. When I finish this assignment and capture The Witch, I’m going to let my colleagues fix me up with someone. Someone nice and a little boring, someone I don’t work with, someone who doesn’t regularly shift into a pig named Petunia.
With that decided, I rush through my cold shower and turn off the water. Drying myself off quickly with a towel thin enough to see light through, I pull on the pink-and-white striped flannel pajamas I’d imagined myself lounging around the room alone in and push open the door.
Grayson is still there, that sexy set of shoulders still visible above the edge of the bedspread. “Feel better?” he asks.
“Not really.” I carry my suitcase out and stow it beside the dresser, then walk to the far side of the bed and grab the pillow.
“You’re really going to sleep on the floor?”
“Are you offering to take the floor instead?”
“Nope.”
“Then yes.” I drop the pillow at my feet and grab the edge of the bedspread. “I’m taking this.”
“Pretty sure you don’t want to do that.”
“Pretty sure I do.”
He rolls onto his side, his head propped up on one arm, the bedspread falling to his waist. “I may or may not have anything on under here.”
I drop the edge of the coverlet like it burned my hand. “Ground rule one—you have to wear clothes in here.”
He studies my face. “You don’t seem to have a problem with the fact that I’m naked in my pig form.”
“That’s your pig form. It’s different.”
He adjusts the bedspread over his hip. “Why?”
“Because it is,” I say through gritted teeth. “How do you not get that?”
