could just check the information and sign there, I’ll make sure your room is ready for you.”
Kate felt a jolt. “Ah…room?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Brett closed his fingers around her elbow, but she ignored the warning squeeze.
“One…room?
“Yes, ma’am.” The young man’s eyes flickered uncertainly to Brett.
“Two rooms,” she said firmly.
Brett’s fingers tightened even more. “Excuse us for a sec,” he told the clerk, and dragged Kate away from the desk.
She yanked her arm out of his grip. “I am not sharing a room with you,” she said flatly. “I don’t know what you think I was suggesting when I told you I was coming to Bos—”
“I’m not gonna jump your bones the second we’re alone in a hotel room, so get over it.”
Her cheeks felt on fire. “I am not sharing a room with you.”
“Then you can take your pretty behind back to Grandview. It’s August, Kate. Look around you. This place is crawling with people. You think I like the idea of sharing a room with you? Trust me. It wasn’t my first choice.”
“Then…get…a…suite.”
“How can you be a therapist when you don’t listen to a word anyone says? This place is booked as damn solid as the plane was.”
She spun on her heel and strode back to the desk. “Could we get a two-bedroom suite, instead?” She reached for her purse and her credit card.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Larson. We don’t have anything available this week at all. There’s a conference here, you see. Podiatrists.” He shrugged apologetically, but Kate had stopped listening after being called Mrs. Larson.
Her brain simply shut off.
“If I see you pull out that bloody credit card, I’m gonna cut it in half,” Brett murmured above her ear as he signed the registration form and pushed it back toward the clerk.
He palmed the narrow key card folder the clerk handed him and tugged Kate through the lobby toward the bank of elevators. Painfully aware of the looks they were receiving from the bellman who was carrying their few pieces of luggage, Kate waited until they were alone in their room.
Their room.
“Mrs. Larson?” She hissed the second the bellman pocketed his tip and shut the door behind him. “You registered us as Mr. and Mrs. Larson?” Her voice rose.
She watched Brett set his briefcase on the desk with extraordinary care. “Calm down.”
“No! I won’t calm down.” How could she when the very notion of sharing a room with him was sending her nerves into shock. “What on earth possessed you? One room?” She turned and waved her arm at the room. “There’s only one bed!”
“Quit acting like an outraged virgin,” he said wearily. “It’s a king-size bed. I can sure as hell control myself. Can’t you?”
She pressed her hand to her forehead. “This is a nightmare.”
“Then go home,” he said flatly. “Because I guarantee you, Kate, I don’t need this.”
And he didn’t need her. He never had.
“I just— I don’t want to share a room. That’s all. I’m used to my privacy.”
“Yeah. That’s why you live in Stockwell Mansion with your brothers and their new wives and families.”
“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”
“And acting outraged and high and mighty is pretty damn tiring, too.” He turned away from her, striding toward the wide bay windows at the end of the spacious room. He shoved his hands through his hair, looking very much like he wanted to tear it out by the roots.
“Less than twelve hours,” he muttered. “This case is gonna kill me.”
“I’ll find another room. If not in this hotel, then another. We drove by a half dozen on this street alone.”
“No.” He pushed open the glass doors and stepped out onto the small balcony that afforded the same view of the park as the hotel’s entry.
She followed him. “I’m a grown woman, Brett Larson. What I decide to do and where I decide to stay is up to me.”
“Not if it interferes with my case. And if you’re so grown, start acting like it. We’re here to work. I registered us as a couple for a reason, and if you’d stop overreacting for a second, I’d tell you about it.”
The more reasonable he became, the more agitated she felt. “Shall I remind you that the only reason you have a case is because you’re working for my family?” It was unconscionable. She knew it the moment the words left her lips.
His hard gaze settled on her face. There was no anger in his eyes. They were as deeply, darkly brown as they ever were—so dark she could barely discern the pupils. “That’s it,” he said evenly and turned back into the room.
“Brett. No. Wait. I’m sor—”
He’d picked up his briefcase and his suitcase and walked out of the hotel room, closing the door quietly behind him.
She stared in disbelief, then ran to the door and yanked it open, darting out into the wide, plushly carpeted hallway after him. All she saw, however, was the elevator doors sliding closed.
Dismay engulfed her. What had she done? Messed things up, but good, that’s what. She went back into the room and snatched up her purse and the folder with the room key in it, then ran back out to the elevator.
She caught up with him only because he was waiting for a cab. Probably to take him back to the airport where he’d fly home to Texas and tell her brothers just what they could do with their case.
“Brett.” She caught his arm. “I’m sorry.”
He just watched her, his expression impassive.
“I am.” She felt the muscles in his arm flex and she yanked back her hand, twisting it with her other around the strap of her purse. “Please, don’t go. I shouldn’t have said what I did. I acted…badly. Whatever rules you set, I’ll follow.”
His lips twisted. “That dog won’t run, Katy. I know you too well.” He stepped forward, reaching for the door of the cab that had just pulled to a halt at the curb.
“My brothers will never forgive me if I blow this!”
“Yeah, they will,” he countered blandly. “They’ve always spoiled you rotten.”
“I’m not spoiled.”
His eyebrow rose.
“Okay, so they did. A little,” she said hurriedly. “But you can’t just leave me here, like this.”
“Why not? Like you said, you’re a grown woman. You’re free to come and go wherever, whenever you please. Find your mother yourself.” Then he climbed in the cab and a second later, drove away.
She stood there, staring stupidly after him.
“Mrs. Larson?”
She frowned, turning toward the doorman. “What?”
“Are you all right, ma’am?”
“I…yes.” She managed a smile. Just fine and dandy, except I’m not really Mrs. Larson, and I’ve managed to alienate the one man my brothers had complete faith in.
She couldn’t continue standing on the curb without attracting even more attention from the doorman, so she went back inside the hotel. But heading to the elevator and going up to that empty room with the king-size bed was more than she