Page 50 of Parallel

He shakes his head, pulling onto the street. “That’s okay. I know exactly where we cango.”

A few minutes later we pull up to the valet stand in front of the FourSeasons.

I flinch. A room here will be a fortune. Six hundred? More? And I’ll have to pay for two. I briefly think of all the things I could have paid for with that much money. It’s half the mortgage. And how the hell am I going to explain this to Jeff? I can’t. There’s just noway.

“Nick,” I breathe. “I think this place might be a little out of my pricerange.”

He does a double take. “You actually thought I’d let you pay forthis?”

“Of course I did,” I tell him, frowning. “You’ve already done way too much. I’m sure we can find something more reasonablenearby.”

He hands the valet his key and tucks his head, trying hard not to laugh. “Quinn, you’re not paying. I think you remember the starving-resident version of me from London. That’s no longer thecase.”

“But…”

“Stop,” he says. “Consider it payback for the honeymoon in Paris during which I apparently never let you leave theroom.”

With that, he places his hand at the small of my back and leads me to the registration desk. He asks for two rooms and the bright smile on the clerk’s face fades a little. “You don’t have a reservation?” she asks. I’d have thought this was obvious, but apparently not. She goes on the computer and makes a sad face when she looks back at us. “We’re pretty much sold out. There are three rooms available but two of them aren’t cleaned yet. I can get you in a one-bedroom suite if that will work? It has a fold-outcouch.”

Nick and I exchange a glance. It’s less than ideal for both of us. “Is that okay?” he asks quietly. “I can take thecouch.”

“I’ll take the couch,” Iargue.

“No, you won’t,” he says, turning back to the clerk and handing her a credit card. She begins ringing us up. “I promise it’ll be every bit as boring as our honeymoon apparently was,” he adds under hisbreath.

The clerk hands Nick our key cards. “Can we assist you with any bags thisevening?”

I feel my cheeks turning pink—even though we asked for two rooms, showing up here with no luggage hascheaterswritten all over it. “No bags,” Nick says casually. “We got out of a show and decided we’d rather not drive back to D.C. thislate.”

We head toward the elevators. “You sound like you check into hotels with strangers all the time,” Imutter.

He raises a brow. “And you soundjealous.”

“You wish,” I reply, though he’s absolutely correct. I am painfully jealous of any woman who has ever checked into a hotel with Nick Reilly. I wasn’t the first and I won’t be the last, and that fact bothers me more than I care toadmit.

* * *

The suite hastwo double beds with plush white duvets and a mountain of piIlows. I eye them longingly as I help him open the sofa bed, which is pretty much the opposite of plush. It also has loose Cheerios inside it, which makes my stomach turn abit.

“We need to ask housekeeping for sheets,” I say. “Go to bed. I’ll call down there and wait out here forthem.”

He laughs wearily. “Quinn, you’re not sleeping in this shittybed.”

I pull my hair back into a ponytail with my hands and let it fall again. “You can’t sleep out here. This bed isn’t as long as you are, even if you sleepdiagonally.”

His arms fold across his chest. “You are absolutely not sleeping on this thing. I spent many nights as a resident napping in a supply closet. This is luxurious bycontrast.”

“And you came home afterward totally wiped out and miserable,” I counter, before I realize I don’tactuallyknow this. I sigh heavily. “Look, this is stupid. There are two beds. You take one and I’ll take the other, unless this is some kind of ethicsthing.”

He flinches. “I’m pretty sure I fucked that up the minute I agreed we could stay in the samesuite.”

Shit. My life is a disaster but am I making his one too? He’ll probably need to lie to his girlfriend about this. And what are the consequences if it gets back to his boss? “Are you going to get in trouble forthis?”

“It’s fine,” he says. “Don’t start feeling guilty. This was my idea, remember? Look, you were right. There are two beds. And I was a perfect gentleman the night I stayed in your room at the hospital,right?”

I have a sudden vision of him stretched out on a bed—naked from the waist up, only a sheet covering the rest—asking me to admit he’d been a gentleman the night before. I also remember how badly I wanted to suggest he stop being one. My breath comes in a single shallow burst. “Yes,” I whisper. “You were a perfectgentleman.”

“Do you want to take a shower?” he asks. My eyes widen and he bites down on a grin. “Alone, I mean. Do you want to go showeralone, behind a lockeddoor?”

---