funnier before they’d realised they were sharing a room. A room with only one bed.
The worst part was she couldn’t even blame Melissa. No, this was a full mea culpa Laurel mess. She was the one who had stupidly seized Dan’s offer at the last minute and dragged him into this charade. He probably hadn’t even been serious when he’d suggested it in the car. It had probably been a joke that she’d taken way too seriously and jumped on because she’d felt worthless in the face of Coral wearing her engagement ring.
One moment of ring-based madness, and now here they were.
‘I’m really sorry about this,’ she said as the lift doors shut and the lobby of Morwen Hall disappeared from view. At least here, in the privacy of the lift, they both knew the whole situation was a sham.
Dan stepped away from her, his hand dropping from her waist for almost the first time since they’d arrived. Her middle felt cold without it there.
‘It’s not your fault,’ he said, not looking at her, obviously knowing that it totally was.
Instead, he seemed to be staring at their wobbly, muted reflections in the brushed steel of the doors. They looked hazy—indistinct blobs of colour on the metal. Which wasn’t far off how she felt right now—as if she wasn’t as sharp or as focused as the rest of the guests arriving for the wedding.
They all knew exactly who they were, what they were portraying. All Laurel knew was that she’d let herself get carried away with a pretence that was about to come back and bite her.
‘Eloise means well,’ she tried, not wanting Dan to spend the week blaming her friend, either. ‘I suspect Melissa was just trying to make things difficult....’
‘Seems to me that’s what Melissa does best,’ Dan said.
‘Well, sometimes,’ Laurel agreed. ‘Most of the time. Possibly all of it.’
‘And she’s going to be my sister-in-law.’ He sighed.
‘You don’t sound thrilled about that.’
Or was it just sharing a room with her he wasn’t looking forward to? How was she supposed to know? She’d only known the man a couple of hours. Hardly enough to get a good mind-reading trick going.
‘I just don’t want Riley to make a big mistake.’
‘Marrying Melissa, you mean?’
A cold feeling snaked down through Laurel’s body. Was Dan planning on persuading Riley to call off the wedding? Because that kind of thing really didn’t tend to get the wedding planner any repeat business, even if it wasn’t her fault.
Dan flashed her a smile. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure everything will be fine. I’m just...interested to meet her, that’s all.’
‘Right...’ Laurel said, unconvinced.
Was this why he’d suggested the whole fake relationship thing in the first place? She’d known he had an ulterior motive—that was one of many reasons she’d turned him down. And then she’d panicked and forgotten all those reasons.
This was why she didn’t do impulsive. It always ended badly.
Well, if Dan thought that Melissa was a bad choice for Riley, Laurel would just have to prove otherwise. Hard as it was to imagine trying to persuade someone that Melissa was a good person, apparently that was now the latest task on her wedding planner to-do list. Great—because that wasn’t long enough already.
‘So, tell me about your room.’ Dan turned towards her, sharp blue eyes watching her face instead of their reflections now. ‘For instance is it a suite, with multiple bedrooms and a stuffed mini-bar?’
‘It has a mini-bar.’
‘And bedrooms?’
‘Bedroom. Singular.’
‘Two beds?’
Laurel winced, and Dan turned away with a sigh just as the lift doors parted again, opening onto Laurel’s floor.
‘Sorry,’ she said, leading him out into the corridor.
‘I’ll cope.’
‘I’m sure you will.’ Big, strong stuntman like him—he’d be fine anywhere. It wasn’t him she was worried about.
What was the protocol for this? Laurel wondered as she slipped her key card into the door and pushed it open. He was the guest—did that mean she had to give him the bed? In fairness, she’d probably fit better on the tiny sofa than he would. But on the other hand it was her room... No. He was the one doing her a favour, pretending to find her attractive and worthwhile in front of her family. He probably deserved the bed.
It was just that it was a really comfy bed.
Dropping her key card on the tiny dressing table, Laurel moved across the room to the window, staring back at Dan, looming in the doorway. He was too big for her room—that was all there was to it. It had been the perfect room for just her—queen-sized bed with a soothing sage-coloured satin quilt, white dressing table with carved legs, a small but perfectly formed bathroom with rolltop bath...even the dove-grey wing-back chair by the window was perfect for one.
One her. Not her plus one oversized, muscular stuntman.
Dan looked out of place in Morwen Hall to start with: his leather jacket was too rough, his boots too scuffed, his jeans...well, his jeans fitted him pretty much perfectly but, much as she liked them, they didn’t exactly fit the refined Gothic elegance of the wedding venue. But if he was too...too much for Morwen Hall, he overwhelmed her little room entirely.
Who was she kidding? He overwhelmed her.
‘So...um...how are we going to do this?’ she asked, watching as he took in the room. Their bedroom. There was no end to the weirdness of that. ‘The sharing a room thing, I mean. As opposed to the faking a relationship thing. Which, now that I come to mention it, is next on my how-to list, actually. But first... You know... We should probably figure out the room thing.’
‘The room thing...’ Dan echoed, still looking around him. ‘Right.’ Then, dropping the bag of wedding favours onto the dressing table, he moved through the bedroom, exploring the bathroom, pressing down on the bed to test the mattress, then yanking open the mini-bar door and pulling out a bottle of beer.
‘So the plan is drink until we don’t care which one of us sleeps on the sofa?’ Laurel asked cautiously.
Maybe she should have found out a few more things about her supposed boyfriend before she’d started this charade. Like whether or not he tended to solve all his problems with alcohol. That would have been useful information about someone she now had to share a room with.
‘We’re sharing the bed,’ Dan said, dropping to sit on the edge of the satin quilt.
Laurel’s heart stuttered in her chest.
‘Sharing. Like...both of us in it at the same time?’
Her horror must have shown on her face, because he rolled his eyes.
‘Nothing to worry about, Princess. I’m not going to besmirch your honour, or whatever it is you’re imagining right now.’
‘I wasn’t...’ She tailed off before she had to explain that it wasn’t his besmirching she was worried about. It was how she was going to keep her hands from exploring those muscles...
‘We’ll share the bed because it’s big enough and it’s stupid not to,’ Dan went on, oblivious to her inner muscle dilemma. ‘This week is going to be deadly enough without a chronic backache from sleeping on that thing.’ He nodded towards the chaise longue, shoehorned in under the second window at the side of the bed. ‘Apart from that...the bathroom has a door that locks, and we’re going to be out doing wedding stuff most of the time we’re here anyway. Especially you—you’re organising the whole thing, remember? How much time did you really expect to spend in this room before