My… my guest rooms? If he wasn’t so vivid in front of me, the scent of his sandalwood-scented body wash wafting gently into the air between us, and if he didn’t still look so disappointed in me, I’d assume I was still dreaming.
But…
“Here?” I asked, stupidly because he’d just made his point pretty damn clear.
He rolled his full lips together and scratched his sandy brown beard at the hinge of his jaw. “I’ve already missed six weeks. Don’t know how much more I’ll have to, don’t take that from me.”
The vulnerability in his stormy blue eyes was a stab to my heart. My hand went to my chest to rub away the pain, and as his gaze dropped, I let my hand fall.
He could undo me with a question and a look, and I wasn’t nearly coherent enough to deal with this.
“Um. Yeah. Of course.”
The first night I’d met Garrett, I’d crashed in his bed. We didn’t have sex that night, but instead, we’d stayed up until five in the morning, drunkenly laughing and talking about our families, our friends. We’d talked about his dreams to go pro, my plans after graduation to go to England. Basically, from thirty seconds after we met, we clicked. There’d never been an awkward moment between us until three months ago and now, it was all we had.
I didn’t know how to handle it.
“Do you want something to drink? Water? I don’t have alcohol…” my voice trailed off as he stripped out of his suit coat and tossed it over the back of the couch.
“I’m good.”
My hands knotted the belt at the waist. Without his suit coat on, his scarf opened at his throat, my brain struggled to function correctly. My hands had the instinctual urge to reach for him, settle my hands at his trim hips and rest my head against his chest for comfort.
Now, I fisted the knotted belt at my own waist and tried to hide the lust trickling through me and down my spine.
Garrett had always been all man. Brawnier, bolder, and bigger than most of the other guys on his team, he’d still grown over the years. And yet he was gentle and kind. His voice was always a quiet rumble that sent sparks of desire to my most private areas, and even now, as we stood on opposite sides of my living room, my nipples hardened beneath his shirt.
I forced my gaze up to meet his and saw the same torment in his eyes that had to be showing in mine.
Garrett swallowed, dragging my gaze to the opening at his throat and then cleared his throat. “You’re dead on your feet. Get some sleep and we’ll talk tomorrow.”
He came toward me, reaching around me at the last second to grab the handle of his suitcase. “Which room do you want me in?”
I had three extra rooms. One I used as an office. He could have either of the first two right off the living room.
“This way,” I mumbled. The last time Garrett had spent the night in my home, he’d been in my bed. I wasn’t sure he’d ever so much as seen inside my guest rooms. Now he was sleeping in one. It only solidified how far apart we were. I opened both doors and stayed in the hallway as he peeked inside the rooms. Both were plain, simply decorated with a couple small succulent plants and books I enjoyed on shelves and the top of the dressers. They were almost identical with oak headboards and furniture and cream bed coverings. Pops of green from the plants were the only colors.
“You can have either of these.”
“Got it.”
I stepped backward toward my bedroom, fighting the urge to cry and apologize for the thousandth time. “I, um, have some time off.” I’d planned on taking two weeks when I was going to go to Vegas. “I can take tomorrow off. I might have to do some work in the afternoon, but that way we could talk?”
His tongue peeked out at the corner of his mouth and he nodded. “Sounds good. Thanks.”
A yawn hit me, and I covered it with my hand. As I did, my hand got tangled in the belt at my waist, undoing it enough that my robe slipped down one shoulder.
Garrett’s gaze dropped, eyes narrowed and heated with a fire that singed me to my toes.
He made a sound, half laugh, half choking, and turned toward the door. “Nice shirt. Been wondering what happened to that.”
He disappeared into the room, shutting the door before I could say a thing, leaving me standing in the hallway, embarrassed, aroused, and so freaking tired I could fall asleep standing up.
“Good night,” I whispered to the empty hallway.
Feeling more alone than ever even though my favorite person in the world was only feet away from me, I turned and trudged back to my room.
He was here. That was a good sign, right?
Before my eyes opened in the morning, I rolled to my side and slapped my hands to the nightstand. I found the crinkling plastic of saltine crackers I kept there and popped one into my mouth. I’d learned early that if I ate before I ever sat up, I could at least get through my morning routine before my stomach rolled. I chewed slowly, one hand on my stomach, and then my eyes flew open.
Garrett was here.
How could I forget? Last night hit me with the force of a sudden burst of nausea and I sat up, flinging covers off my lap and threw my legs to the side of the bed. My stomach dipped and flipped and I grabbed another cracker, munching on it as I pushed out of bed and grabbed my cell phone from the charging station.
“Shit,” I muttered around my cracker and trudged toward my en suite bathroom. With my eyes barely open, my head pounding and my stomach threatening to revolt, it took me longer than necessary to type out a text to my boss, letting her know I wasn’t coming in.
Fortunately for me, Shawna Roberts was a mom of three, understood how difficult working during pregnancy could be, and had been more than supportive when I finally told her I was expecting and when I’d made plans to go to Vegas.
Hell, she might have been more disappointed than I was when I told her it hadn’t panned out the way I’d hoped.
But now? I lifted my head from my phone and glanced in the direction of the bedroom where Garrett had slept. Could it now?
No. I shook my head, flipped on my faucet tap and after setting down my phone, splashed my face with cold water and gave it a quick wash and layer of moisturizer.
None of that mattered now. Not with another woman in the picture. Garrett and I had never crossed those lines before and I wasn’t about to start now.
Hell, that was assuming it was even an option for me. Pretty ballsy considering how happy they looked together and how I’d treated him as of late.
“Crap on toast,” I muttered and dried off my hands. I’d have to see him at some point. We needed to talk, only now, considering how upset he was and how distant we were, I had no way of knowing how it’d go.
The only thing I was certain of was that I would never keep Garrett from this baby’s life. He’d have as much participation as he wanted and I would always help him make time for the tiny little peanut-sized ball of molecules who already seemed to make it entertaining to drive me crazy all day.
With a yawn, and in desperate need of my one cup of coffee I allowed, I headed back to my room where I threw on a pair of sweatpants and sweatshirt, tucking Garrett’s T-shirt I wore to bed beneath my pillow and flipping up the covers so it was made. Kind of.
As I opened my bedroom door, the scent of coffee hit me first, followed by something sweeter.