On a huff, I sat next to him. His smile was winning. “This had better be good. It takes me two tries to stand now and I hate wasting the effort.”
“You’re so dramatic.” He nipped in and pressed a kiss to my cheek, lingering when he was close to the corner of my mouth. Then he sighed before pulling back.
We still hadn’t done anything more than cuddle and kiss. We both wanted to—that was obvious whenever we spent more than a few minutes in close proximity—but he was respecting my boundaries and I … well, I didn’t quite know what I was doing. Keeping a bit of distance between us seemed like the smart move until I had a better understanding what our future would hold.
“What were we talking about again?” I asked when I realized my mind was wandering.
“How handsome I am,” he replied, not missing a beat.
I snorted. “What were we really talking about?”
He made a face. “I like how you pretend we couldn’t possibly be talking about what a good-looking guy I am. I mean … that’s a legitimate conversation.”
“And I’m sure that’s a conversation you have with your mirror on a daily basis,” I agreed. “Personally, I can’t spend more than five seconds on that conversation.”
“Ah.” Interest gleamed in his eyes as he bobbed his head. “That proves you do think about it, though.”
I rolled my eyes. “I have to be up in the boardroom in exactly ten minutes. My father has called a meeting, which means he’s up to something. As much as I would prefer playing flirty games with you, that’s not possible today.” I grabbed his cheek and gave it a good jiggle for emphasis. “Now, what do you want?”
He cupped my hand, grinned, and then slid his arm around my waist and tugged me closer. “I’ll help you stand,” he whispered, his lips brushing against my cheek and giving me a little thrill. “As for what I want to discuss, it’s this.” He pointed toward the catalog in front of him, only it wasn’t a catalog. It was a listing of all the suites in the hotel.
“What’s this?” He had my genuine attention now.
“Well, I was thinking.” He squirmed a bit but didn’t pull away from me. “This room right here is exactly like mine. It’s open, and in your section of the hotel.” If I wasn’t very much mistaken, his cheeks were starting to fill with color. “I thought maybe you could broach the subject of me moving to this room when you’re having your meeting today.”
I was caught off guard. “You want to move to a different room?”
“I want to move closer to you.”
“Because you can’t bear to be away from me?” I was going for a cheeky response but it fell flat. “You’ve been sleeping here even though we’re not doing … you know … for the past two weeks anyway.”
“I love it that you say ‘you know’ instead of sex, but whatever.” He shook his head. “I know it’s too soon for us to move in together.”
It was definitely too soon for that. “We don’t know if we’re compatible yet,” I hedged. Hurting his feelings was the last thing I wanted, but I had to be careful here. We couldn’t just roll into a relationship with no thought. We were having a baby. We had to be smart about this.
“That’s not actually my concern.” He shook his head. “I know we’re compatible. You’re skittish, though, and I don’t want to push you. The thing is, they’re hiring a new casino floor manager. She’ll be getting a room just like mine. The only other open one is this one.” He pointed on the map.
“Which just so happens to be three doors down from me,” I surmised.
“Yes. Now, we can’t live together yet. I get that. I’m not an idiot.”
I rolled my eyes. “Sometimes you’re an idiot.”
That only made him grin wider. “When Rexanne makes her debut on the world, she’s going to need a lot of care. Why build two nurseries when I can just move into this room? I’ll be close when you need me. We can even use parts of my room as storage.”
It was a practical suggestion. I was still mildly leery. “Aren’t you worried we’ll get annoyed with one another if we don’t have any buffer space?”
“No, but you’re obviously worried about that.” He hesitated, then sighed. “Never mind. It was a bad idea.”
“Wait.” I reached out to stop him from closing the room map. “I’m just trying to understand.”
“I want to be close, and I don’t know that I think moving the baby between nurseries is the way to go,” he replied. “She’ll be calmer in a space she knows belongs to her. You’re going to need time to nap, though. Why not, when it’s my shift, have me in your space and you can go to mine to take a nap? It will be like having more space, we’ll just have a few doors separating it.”
It wasn’t the worst idea I’d ever heard. “But what if…?” I trailed off. He was sick of me asking what we were going to do if this …thing… between us didn’t work out. I was kind of sick of bringing it up. The more time I spent with him, the more comfortable things were. “I guess I’m just afraid,” I admitted. “I’m sorry. I just … I’m so afraid I’m going to ruin this”
“You’re not going to ruin this. We’re going to be okay.”
“How can you be so sure?”
