She’d been half expecting it—more than half—but it was still a crushing disappointment.“The HVAC guy didn’t show.”
“No, he showed.”Nash sat up with a wince, his hair flopping limply over his forehead.“He just couldn’t fix it.”
Bailey wanted to whine, but it wouldn’t do any good.Kicking off her shoes, she nudged them to the side and shut the door behind her.“What’d he say?”
“You want the good news or the bad news?”
“Hell.”She let her bag fall to the floor with a thump.“Give me the good news first.”
“The repair is covered by your service contract, so you’ll only have to pay for the part, which is a hundred bucks.”
Relief that she wasn’t looking at a repair bill in the thousands was huge.But… “What’s the bad news?”
“He has to order the part, and it might take two weeks to get it in.”
“You’re fucking kidding.”
He shook his head.“He said he’d put a rush on it, and he thinks it’ll only take two or three days.But they’ve been having issues with their supplier, so two weeks is worst-case scenario.”
She couldfeelthe whine building.“I can’t sleep in this heat for two more weeks.I was barely functional today.”
“I can sleep fine, I just can’t work,” he countered.“I sweated through two Zoom meetings today.I’m going to have to go into the office until the air conditioning gets fixed.”
“You cannot sleep fine,” she accused.“You tossed and turned all night last night.”
“That was because of you, not the heat.”He pushed to his feet.“I’m getting another beer.You want?”
“Yes, please,” she said weakly, and was glad he was already walking away and couldn’t see the way she’d sagged against the door because all the starch had gone out of her knees.
She’d managed to ignore the fact that he was mostly naked when he was sitting by concentrating on the bad news, but now that he was upright, all those muscles bunching and shifting in his legs and ass when he walked and in his arms when he opened the fridge and pulled out the beer, it was much harder to ignore.
And it wasn’t doing a damn thing to cool her down.
He walked back into the room, seemingly oblivious to her sudden distraction, and passed her a beer.She took it, doing her best to look normal and not lust-filled, and blurted out the first thing that came to mind.“What do you mean, you couldn’t sleep because of me?”
He just looked at her, his eyes what-the-fuck wide, and she blushed.“Oh.”
“Yeah.”He took a long pull of his beer.“We probably shouldn’t do that again.”
“Probably not,” she agreed.It had been frustrating, sleeping next to him, and if she was going to keep to her no-sex-till-the-bang rule, they definitely needed to keep to their separate beds.
But she’d also found it comforting.
“You should bring your mattress down here,” he suggested.
She jerked herself away from uncomfortable thoughts.“What?”
“Bring it down here,” he repeated, gesturing with his beer.“Move the couch back, or over, and put your mattress on the floor until the AC is fixed.”
“It would be cooler,” she allowed, then sighed.“But the thought of hauling it down here, then hauling it back up makes me want to cry.”
“I’ll help.”
She looked at him.“You would?”
“Of course I would.”His eyebrows jerked together in a scowl.“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know.Why are you mad?”