Page 9 of The Temporary Roomie: Extended Edition

“Everything okay?” Lucy asks him.

He nods and lets out a deep breath. “Yeah. I just might have to go into the hospital later tonight depending on how one of my patients progresses over the next hour.” Drew’s eyes lock with mine, and I hate that I’ve heard how tender he can be. I suddenly blush under his attention, which is so ridiculous I want to kick myself.

Drew crosses the room and sits down in the armchair directly behind me. He does it on purpose; I know it. There are plenty of other seating options in the room, but he chose the one hovering over my shoulder so he could breathe down my neck and rattle me.

Well, no rattling here, buddy. I’m easy as Sunday morning.

“Get your knee away from my back!” I snap over my shoulder. Okay, maybe not so much Sunday morning as Monday evening, stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

“Why? Is it bothering you, Jessica?” He doesn’t move his knee. He presses it more firmly against my shoulder blade. Not painfully, just with the purpose of reminding me that he’sthere.And just like that, the familiar Drew is back, and I hate him all over again.

“I mean it. Stop touching me.” My words are sharp little razors.

“I’m not touching you.You’retouchingme.I’d appreciate it if you’d remove your back from my knee.”

I whip my head around to pierce him with my eyes. “I was here first!”

He shrugs. “Well, I’m here now.”

“Children, please,” Cooper says, interjecting with a smile and a hand gesture toward Levi. “If you want to stay with us grown-ups, you’ll have to behave.”

“I have no problems with that,” I say, scratching the back of my head with my middle finger.

Drew leans closer, and his breath tickles my ear. “Real mature.”

“Get a mint.” For the record, though, he doesn’t need one. I think he must have chewed gum after dinner.Spearmint.I bite my lip, because it’s not fair. I know my breath smells like garlic-pizza-death while he’s a walking Winterfresh commercial. If he smiles and exhales, I’m sure a blast of icy-cool air will rush out in a puff. I want to drag it all into my lungs, but I force myself to take shallow, barely-life-sustaining breaths instead.

“I’m going to have to separate you two, aren’t I?” Lucy is giving us both themom eyes.Will they teach me that look in the hospital once I deliver?

Drew sits back in his seat, and neither of us says a thing. We’re both being so immature, but I don’t care. Drew makes me do irrational things, and apparently I have the same effect on him.

Our war of silence (less impressively known asquiet mouse) begins as Cooper tells Levi it’s time for bed and to give us all hugs. There’s a brief reprieve in hostility as the pudgy little dumpling wraps his arms around my neck and sparks my growing motherly instinct to cherish this hug forever. He then moves toward Drew, who reaches out quick as a snake and drags Levi up into his lap to tickle his nephew into oblivion. Levi squeals with laughter and Drew’s ferocious smile splinters my heart into pieces for two unbearable seconds. Then Cooper and Levi disappear down the hallway, and it’s just me, Drew, and Lucy again—immersed in stone-cold silence. I swivel around so I’m sitting adjacent to Drew and he can’t touch me anymore.

Lucy’s tender heart can’t stand this, so she groans loudly and sits forward on the couch. “Good grief. You two need to get over all this animosity. You’re both adults acting like two-year-olds. Does that not bother you guys at all?”

I don’t know, does it, Andrew?I blink, suck my cheeks in, and keep my laser beams focused on him. His blue eyes sparkle as he tips an eyebrow that says,You wanna answer that, Jessica?

So neither of us speak, and Lucy pulls out the big guns. “Fine. Then, Drew, maybe Jessie would like to know all about how you need a fake—”

“Don’t!” Drew breaks first, jutting his finger out to point at his sister.

I shift my shoulders so I’m sitting up nice and tall now while aiming a delighted smile at Drew. “What is this interesting news you’re keeping from me,Andy?” Oooh, he must really hate that name because his jaw flexes. I file that away underIMPORTANT.

“It’s nothing.” His voice is hard as granite.

Lucy shifts a little more toward the edge of her seat with a sigh. “And maybe you, Jessie, would like to tell Drew that you’re miserable here and would like to stay in his—”

“LA LA LA—nothing! Jessie would like nothing,” I say quickly, and Drew smirks.

Lucy throws up her hands and stands. “You two are unbearable to be around. I’m going to pour a glass of wine—don’t kill each other while I’m gone.”

“No promises,” Drew and I both say in non-adorable unison.

Lucy disappears into the kitchen but then promptly sticks her head back around the corner and, giving her best impression of an auctioneer, says in a fantastic rush of words, “Drew told his colleague he has a girlfriend even though he doesn’t, and now he needs a date to a gala!”

Drew’s eyes widen, and his cheeks burn red. I want to drink that blush up through a straw and savor it for the rest of my life. I bust up in an obnoxious laugh, pointing at him like I’m the sort of person who delights in giving wedgies.

“And Jessie wants to stay in your guest bedroom because she’s miserable here but is too prideful to admit it!”

---