Page 67 of Guardian Daddy

“Is that a popular culture reference?”

“Wait. You’ve never heard of Get Smart?”

“Um, no. I don’t watch a lot of television. I’m sorry.”

“It’s nothing you need to apologize for,” he replied firmly. He hated how she seemed to automatically assume that she’d done something wrong. That she had to apologize. “Just like you didn’t have to apologize before. In Get Smart, they have a cone of silence. It’s about this inept secret agent. Anyway, the cone comes down to stop their conversations from being heard.”

“Oh. Right.”

“I’ll have to figure out how to get some episodes of the show so you can watch it with me. What I’m trying to say is that we can treat this closet like a cone of silence. Whatever you say to me in here stays between the two of us.”

“I like that idea.”

So did he.

Ethan knew that he shouldn’t be holding her like this.

And yet there was no way he could tear himself away.

You’ve made a mess out of all of this. Explain it to her.

“What just happened, baby? Can you tell me?” he asked.

“I was upset.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s awful not knowing what happened. I wake up and I have no idea that anything has gone on. Sometimes, I come back into myself directly after and Rhodes tells me what has happened. Other times, I wake up and then I learn that I had a night terror. I stopped . . . I stopped doing this for ages, but then there was the break-in. I’m not sure why I had a night terror last night. Or why I regress afterward.”

“Maybe you regress because you feel safer in that headspace. Perhaps because it was a good time in your life.”

“Back before my parents died,” she whispered. “My therapist thought that too. She thought . . .”

“She thought what?” he prompted.

“Nothing.”

Ethan wanted to push her. But he knew that he risked her pulling back, so he held his tongue.

“I understand why you’re upset. Not remembering must be awful. But there is nothing for you to worry about. All you did was scream. Rhodes said you have night terrors. And when you woke up, you wanted Lady and ice cream. I helped you get ice cream, maybe lectured you a bit on not eating dinner, and then you went back to bed to eat your ice cream while we waited for Rhodes. The only thing that’s possibly slightly inappropriate is that I was only wearing boxers.”

“Oh. You were wearing just boxers?”

Was that a slight note of wistfulness in her voice? Or was he imagining that?

“Yeah.” Shit. If he was going to be fully honest. “The fact that I was half-undressed spurred you on to try to remove your clothes.”

She tensed again. Fuck. Shit.

“But you didn’t!” he said quickly. “You didn’t take anything off. I didn’t see anything.”

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “That’s mortifying. I wouldn’t normally do that.”

“Sweetheart, I know that.” Part of him kind of wished she would . . . No! What was he thinking?

He would never risk someone else seeing her like that.

And they didn’t have that sort of relationship, so it wasn’t right for him to see her like that either.

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