He was going to kill Gretchen Petty when he returned, that was for damn sure.
Five minutes later, he was dressed in his sleep pants and climbing into bed when there was a knock at the adjoining door. He tensed, alarm shooting through him, and headed to the door. “Maylee?” he called, worried. Had someone tried to break in again?
When he swung the door open, she was standing there, still in his shirt. A pillow was clutched to her chest, and she looked up at him, eyes red and shining with unshed tears.
“Can I . . .” She paused and gulped, then continued. “Can I come sleep with you?”
***
Lordamercy, but Griffin Verdi was a pretty man when he was in a state of undress.
Not that he wasn’t normally pretty, Maylee reasoned. In his jacketed suits and his proper ties, his hair slicked down so not a bit was untamed, he looked right nice. Of course, when he was all done up, he was also incredibly unapproachable. Now he was freshly showered, his hair wet and a bit messy, and he wore no shirt.
Which allowed her to gawk at all those muscles that a bookworm shouldn’t have.
Griffin had a real nice chest. Real nice. Broad, with strong, triangular shoulders that tapered down to a narrow waist. His chest was mostly smooth, and had a thin line of dark hair creeping up from his navel that she found rather fascinating. He also had a black skull tattoo with money sticking out of the eye sockets on one shoulder that surprised her—His Royal Stuffiness certainly hadn’t seemed like the tattoo type.
But she liked seeing it. It made him human. Like maybe he wasn’t quite so stiff and proper as she’d pegged him.
It was that tattoo that had given her the strength to knock on his door again after he’d gone back to bed. She’d hesitated, terrified he’d say no and then give her a verbal putdown to let her know what he thought of her suggestion. And in her rather shaky state of mind at the moment, it’d probably break her.
But at her ridiculous question, he hadn’t laughed, hadn’t mocked, or anything of that sort.
He’d simply opened his door a bit wider to let her in.
And Maylee felt so relieved that she could have kissed him. She didn’t, but she would have if he’d have been even the slightest bit receptive to something like that from a country girl like her.
“Thank you,” she murmured as she stepped into his room. She’d been here earlier, and she had been a bit agog at how much nicer his room was than hers. He had fancy couches and fancy tables and an enormous window with a balcony that would probably have an incredible view of the city. The window was shut, the curtains drawn. It was late and getting later by the minute.
He ran a hand through his messy, half-wet hair and glanced around the room. “I can take the couch. You can have the bed.”
Her eyes widened at his suggestion. Sir Stuffy was going to give up his bed for her? Immediately, Maylee felt guilty. That hadn’t been her intention. She’d simply been scared to stay alone, sure that she’d have nightmares about strange men jumping out of her closet with a camera. She looked over at his bed. It was enormous. “I thought we’d both sleep together.”
“Did you.” The two words were flat.
Maylee blushed. “Not like that. But look at this bed. It’s the size of my apartment back home. We can just put some pillows in between us and it’ll be right as rain. Kinda like camp. You know?”
Griffin simply stared at her.
“And that dinky little couch looks mighty uncomfortable,” she admitted. “Especially for a man your size.” Oh, lordamercy, now she was blushing again. Why had she said man your size? She was not going to look at his happy trail. She was not. “I mean, if anyone should take the couch, it should be me.”
The room fell silent. Griffin considered the bed, then her, then gestured at the pillow she was clutching. “Go get your pillows out of your room.”
She trotted back into it happily and grabbed all the pillows, then returned to Griffin.
He took them from her and tossed them onto the bed, making a barrier between them. “I’ll sleep on the right,” he said, the imperious note back in his voice. “It’s closer to the door.”
“Thank you,” she said softly.
“And I’m going to read for a while longer. I trust that won’t bother you?”
She shook her head. “I’m kinda too wound up to sleep. Mind if I get my knitting?”
He shrugged his shoulders and climbed into his side of the bed, grabbing his book and opening it back up again, ignoring her. This was perfect, really. If he was going to pretend like she wasn’t there, she wouldn’t feel so weird about asking to sleep with him.
Maylee bounded up from the bed and went to her room, grabbed her knitting, and scurried back into his room. For some reason, her own hotel room didn’t feel safe anymore, but the moment she walked through his door, she felt like she could relax. Breathing a happy sigh of relief, she bounded back into bed, dragged the blankets up around her, and then sat up, crossed her legs, and began to knit. The feel of the yarn and the needles was soothing to her, as were the repetitive motions. It allowed her to calm down and relax, and she began to chain her yarn with easy motions.
She glanced over at Griffin, but he was silent, reading a book with tons of tiny words on the page. Looked like heavy reading. Huh. Interesting that he was so smart when he didn’t have to be. She went back to her knitting.
A comfortable silence fell between them for a long time.
“Why are you afraid to sleep by yourself?”
Maylee glanced over, and was startled to see that he was looking in her direction. His thick book was flat on that divine chest, and his hair had dried into a light brown tousle that looked different now that it wasn’t slicked down by a pound of hair gel. He looked different. Younger. Easier to approach.
Cute, even.
She felt herself blushing, though she continued to knit, her needles moving. “You really want to know?”
“Would I have inquired if I didn’t?”
“You might if you were just being polite.”
He snorted. “I can assure you that I don’t ask people about themselves unless I’m interested.”
She supposed that was the case. “I guess I should be mighty flattered then, huh? And it’s nothing big, really. My apartment got broken into when I first moved to the city. I’d only been in New York a few days. I went on a job interview and when I came back, someone had broken in my door and gone through all my stuff.”
“Did you go to the police?”
“I went to my landlord,” she admitted, looping her yarn around one needle as she spoke. “He told me that since he was only charging me three dollars a square foot, I shouldn’t expect much. So I just had him fix the door and I got myself a baseball bat, but it was scary for the first few days.”
He was silent. She looked over from her knitting to see him frowning at her.
“What?” she asked.
“I don’t know what part of that story is the most ridiculous. I’m trying to decide.”
“I can’t help if I was scared,” she said defensively. “It was the first time I’d ever left home, and then someone came through and raided my stuff. It was rather alarming for a girl from Arkansas.”
“I would suppose so.” He sat up and leaned against the headboard. “That’s not the ridiculous part. You’re being charged three dollars a square foot?”
She nodded at her knitting. “It’s a room in Bushwick. No windows or anything, which makes me sad, but I’m told it’s quite a steal at $450 a month.”
“A flat in Bushwick, Brooklyn? That sounds horrific. I think my closet is larger than a hundred and fifty square feet.”
She laughed. “I don’t doubt that, Mr. Griffin.”
As she glanced over, he rubbed his chest idly. Oh, that bare chest with all those muscles. She needed to quit peeking over or she was likely to get herself into trouble.
“Just call me Griffin if we’re going to sit here in bed together,” he mused, rubbing his chest. “Feels weird otherwise. So you’re renting a hole of an apartment in a terrible part of the city. Does Hunter not pay you very well?”
Oh, dear. “Mr. Hunter pays me very nicely, sir. I just try to live frugally so I can send money home to Mama and them.”
“God, your language is appalling. Mama and them, indeed. That’s not English.”
“It is.”
“Really? Where in the grammar books do you suppose they cover ‘and them’? Who, pray tell, is ‘them’?”
“My sisters and my Nana and my Pepaw—”
He waved a hand. “You know what? I’m sorry I asked. Never mind. Please, continue with your horrific tale of woe.”
Maylee was silent. He was mocking her, wasn’t he? She couldn’t exactly tell him off, so she just said nothing at all.
He sighed and rubbed his face. “So you send money home? Why not get a job closer to where you were?”
“Mama wants me to be successful,” she said softly, and was surprised by the ache of homesickness that swelled in her. “She said all the truly successful, dynamic people live in the big city, and that I should go there. She said I was such a good daughter that I didn’t deserve to end up stuck in the backwoods with a bunch of hillbillies for the rest of my life.” Tears pricked Maylee’s eyes. She loved those “hillbillies” and would have stayed with them forever, if they’d have let her. “Plus, I have two younger sisters and I’m trying to set a good example for them, so I can’t come home with my tail tucked between my legs the first time someone breaks into my apartment, you know? I’m a Meriweather, and we don’t give up.”
“Two younger sisters? I shudder to think what their names are.”
Maylee giggled at his snotty tone. “One is Alabama, and the other is Dixie.”
“Dear God. Of course they are.”
“I’m the oldest, so I got the honor of being named after Nana and Pepaw. After that, my daddy sorta ran out of names, so he went with songs.”
“And what does your father do?”
She sobered and made a quick, sloppy sign of the cross. “Daddy died ten years ago.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” His snotty tone was gone and it kinda sounded like he meant it. “I lost my father at an early age, too.”
She looked over at him and put her knitting down, a bit surprised. “Oh?”
“When I was sixteen. Boating accident.”
She reached across the pillows and touched his arm to comfort him. “I’m sorry. It’s hard when you’re that age. I wish I’d been younger so I wouldn’t have so many memories.”
He looked surprised that she touched him, staring down at her hand.
Oh, had she messed up? “Sorry,” she said, drawing back. To lighten the mood, she added, “I promise to behave for our little slumber party.”
He snorted again.
“So what about your family?” she asked, picking her knitting back up again. “Are you the oldest?”
“Thank God I am not,” Griffin said. “I have an older brother, George. He is the official duke. Since I’m the younger son, I am a mere viscount.”
She blinked in surprise and looked over at him again. “Your brother is a duke?”
“My mother is the younger sister of the queen,” he admitted. “That’s the reason why we’re going to be hounded night and day while we’re here.”
“Oh. Wow.”
She had just asked to share the blankets with royalty. Lordamercy. No wonder he was so starchy all the time. He was probably appalled by her. Maylee swallowed hard. “I thought you were fancy, I just didn’t realize how fancy.”
He groaned. “Please, please, never refer to me as ‘fancy’ in front of anyone.”