Page 127

“What makes you think you won’t?” she countered.

He pulled in his lips. “Fair enough.”

He looked around the room, clearly in search of another place to sit, but Winnie sighed. It was inevitable. She’d known it from the start.

“Come on.” She patted the bed beside her, the first movie preview being played across the screen. “You can sit here.”

He gave her a sidelong glance, clearly unsure if her offer was made in earnest.

“I don’t bite,” she said, patting the bed again. “Come on. You’re going to make me miss the movie.”

He sighed, taking a few steps forward. “I just don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“You won’t,” she stated truthfully. “There’s also no amount of pillows that we have that would make sleeping on that floor comfortable, so you can put that notion to bed, too.”

Dad would be horrified with Winnie’s suggestion.

“That is no way for a Knox to behave.”

But tonight, his opinion didn’t matter. Because she was just Winnie now, and she was more than fine sharing a king-sized bed with a man she trusted wholeheartedly.

She leaned back against the headboard, but Matthew merely remained where he stood. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean that you may as well sit here now because you’re also going to be sleeping here.”

“But we agreed to get the room on the premise that you would get the bed, and I would sleep on the floor,” Matthew pressed, another preview playing on the screen.

She waved her hand across the length of the bed. “This bed is huge, Matthew. We’re both adults. More importantly, we’re friends. We can share the bed and perfectly respect each other still.”

She’d never seen him so hesitant.

And she’d never liked him more.

“Look.” She gathered a few of the extra pillows on the bed, lining them down the center so they both had a good twin-sized bed each to themselves. “See? More than enough room. And now there’s a security barrier so you won’t be nervous.”

He looked slightly more at ease now, but still, he hesitated. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. I don’t want you to be dinged for another chair broken,” she teased. “And I definitely don’t want to listen to you complaining for the next few weeks about how the floor was so uncomfortable when I got to sleep on the bed.”

Finally, a smile cracked on his lips. “That does sound like something I would do.”

“I know.” The previews for the movie ended, and the “20th Century Fox” logo sounded weakly on the TV. “Come on, it’s starting.”

Matthew finally relented. “Fine. But you’d best keep your hands off of me. You may trust me, but I don’t know if I can trust you after that slap.”

She smiled. “Just don’t try to scare me again, and you’ll be fine.”

He grinned, then he finally climbed onto the bed.

The mattress shifted. Even though they still felt miles apart, the intimacy of the moment increased, making the room feel closer than it was, cozier than it was.

“Comfy, huh?” she asked, trying to play off her palpitating heart as nothing out of the ordinary.

“So much so that I feel like I’m sitting on a sea of clouds,” he returned.

She laughed, watching the screen as the tape created a line down the center of it.

“So what is this movie about?” she asked.