“ONE MINUTE, I WAS WAITING for Eric in the reception area at the title company so we could close on the townhouse and the next, he got off the elevator and told me he can’t do this.”
Eric would be the ex, Ty surmised.
“I thought he meant he didn’t have time right then because something…”
This was going to take more than a few minutes.
“…could have called me on my cell…”
Ty jiggled his beer bottle. Empty.
“…and he said ‘any of this.’ The house. The job. The wedding. It was too much. He felt pressured. How could he feel pressured?” She poked at her chest. “I was the one who ran around taking care of all the details. I met with the builder, I planned the wedding, I arranged for the movers. I even packed. All he had to do was show up!”
“Maybe that was the problem.” Ty made the mistake of saying.
Marlie’s eyes went huge.
He tried to explain, also a mistake. “Maybe he felt left out. Maybe he wanted to be more involved.” Even as he spoke, Ty knew he was saying the wrong thing. Besides, what guy wanted to be more involved in wedding plans?
Marlie’s response was to run up the stairs.
“Marlie!”
Hell. But only the first level. It was going to get worse. If she hadn’t told her own mother the details of Eric bailing out on her, that meant she probably hadn’t told anybody. She’d kept everything bottled inside for what? A couple of years? Tonight would be her first venting. It was going to be epic. He was looking at the fourth or even fifth level of hell for sure.
Ty set his empty bottle on the kitchen bar and followed Marlie upstairs all the way into her bedroom. He was going to drag the story out of her if it took all night. Then he’d have the fun of convincing her that It Was Over and time to move on with her life. If all went well, Marlie’d find another guy and hang around with him, and then Ty could finally, finally spend quality time with Axelle.
“Marlie—” And he broke off.
He’d never been in her bedroom. His room was down the hall to the left and there was no reason for him to go to her end. There was an unspoken understanding that they stayed out of each others’ bedrooms, and the most he’d seen of hers was a chair by the window if she’d left her door open.
So that was why he was hit with the full force of the bed. At first, he didn’t even realize it was her bed. The mattress was entirely enclosed in a ceiling-high, open-sided white box with a charcoal-gray interior and rounded corners. He moved closer and saw task lights, speakers and a control panel in the padded headboard. It extended upward to form a solid canopy housing a projector, and continued in one piece all the way down past the foot of the bed to the floor. The interior of the footboard was a screen that stretched the width of the bed.
He’d gone slack-jawed. “That’s…is that…?”
“The European media bed that was in all the magazines? Not exactly.” Marlie came to stand beside him. “I couldn’t afford the real thing, so I had this one made.”
Ty glanced at her. She sounded better. Calmer. His interest in the bed seemed a good distraction for the moment, so he checked out the upholstered interior and the headboard controls. “You designed this?”
“Not by myself. I talked to the carpenters who built the house and showed them pictures. I ended up bartering a website for the bed frame. And then the electrician got involved and he knew a man who installed sound systems and so on. It was a collaborative effort.”
“Wow.” Every guy’s fantasy bed. Ty had lived here a year and a half and had no idea something like this existed down the hall. Even more intriguing, he’d lived a year and a half with a woman who not only allowed the thing in her bedroom, she figured out a way to make it happen. He would never have picked Marlie for the type to have a techno bed. As far as he knew, she spent most of her time in her office, anyway. “Just wow,” he said, thinking Marlie had become a lot more interesting and that her ex was an idiot.
“The bed adjusts for when you want to watch the screen.” Marlie pressed a button on the control pad in the headboard and elevated the side nearest him.
“Each side has its own controls?” Did his voice actually crack?
She nodded. “Go ahead. Try it.”
Ty ignored the fact that he was climbing into Marlie’s bed and stretched out. His feet weren’t anywhere near the end of the mattress, which meant it was a custom size. “It’s comfortable,” he said, thinking of all the things he’d like to do in this bed.
“That’s the idea.”
“You’d think. But I’ve run across a lot of great-looking, uncomfortable furniture.” Ty ran his hands along the side of the mattress. “Good thing you didn’t skimp on the quality. This mattress has probably had quite a workout.” That didn’t sound right. “From watching movies and…stuff.”
Marlie’s eyes met his in one of her bland looks before she picked up a remote control. Curtains whirred across the sides, blocking the light, leaving Ty cocooned in total darkness. A moment later an ocean scene appeared on the screen.
The camera had filmed from a vantage point on the bow of a sailing ship. He heard the waves, the sails flapping in the wind, ropes creaking. Surround sound. Unbelievable. Ty half expected mist to shoot from the canopy ceiling to complete the experience.
What an escape. Imagine coming home to this bed after work. It would be like going on vacation every night.
Relaxing, he stared at the screen as the view bobbed up and down. Up and down. Up and—“Marlie?”
He heard laughter and the image disappeared.
“Getting seasick?” The curtains drew back and Marlie grinned down at him, taking him back in time.
Today we get to go on a hike! Mom packed our lunches—peanut butter, the smooth kind. Come on! Get out of bed, Ty! If we’re late, they’ll leave without us.
And he’d said, I don’t want to go on a stupid hike, even though he did, and I hate peanut butter, even though he didn’t.
Marlie had stopped grinning then, which was what he’d wanted. Why should she be happy if he wasn’t?
He didn’t want that now. A smiling Marlie was better than a crying Marlie. Smiling looked good on her, gave her a friendly, comfortable vibe. If she smiled more often, it wouldn’t take long for her to find another guy. “This is a seriously awesome bed,” he complimented her. “I don’t know why you’d ever leave.”
“Food?”
“Have it delivered.”
“Uh, the thing that happens after you eat food?”
Ty leaned over the side and checked the height of platform. “There’s room for a bedpan under here.”
“You’re talking about a chamber pot, but still ewww.”
He noticed something else while he was leaning over. “No way.” Pressing on a panel, he released the latch and opened the door of a small refrigerator. At the moment, it held a single bottle of no-name water and a lot of potential. He looked up at Marlie. “You are a goddess. Men everywhere should fall to their knees and worship you.”
Ty expected her grin to widen, not fade. “What?”
“This bed was my wedding gift to Eric,” she said, her voice flat.
Eric seriously annoyed him. “What was he, nuts? This is the greatest bed in the history of beds. How could he leave this bed?” Too late, Tyler realized how that sounded. “You. I meant how could he leave you.”
Her expression didn’t change. She wasn’t buying it.