All the Feels (Spoiler Alert #2)(77)

She did. Heaven help them both.

The clerk changed their reservation, and she smiled at them as she handed over their keycards. “Third floor, all the way at the end of the hall. Please let me know if we can be of further assistance.”

“We will. Thank you so much for your help.” With one last dazzling smile, Alex straightened and grasped the handle of his suitcase. “Good night.”

Lauren offered a polite nod and took hold of her own luggage.

As they walked to the elevator, he reached for her free hand. “How do you feel about ordering room service and eating out on the balcony?”

Unaccountably nervous, she stared at the patterned carpet underfoot. “Sounds good.”

As soon as he pushed the call button, the elevator doors opened, and they stepped inside. When the doors slid closed again, he turned to face her, their fingers still intertwined.

“You know,” he said conversationally, “if you were to worry—even for one moment—that I’d pressure you to do anything you didn’t want, I’m just warning you now that I’d be hurt and angry, and I’d probably compose an epic poem about the wrong done to me. Or at least write a sulky limerick.”

She huffed out an amused breath. “You once tried to bully me into a sushi-eating contest, if I remember correctly.”

“I was concerned your diet was seaweed deficient.” Somehow, he kept a straight face. “That doesn’t count.”

“Bullshit,” she said, and he clutched his chest and gasped in faux shock at her language. “Alex, I know what you’re trying to tell me. It’s sweet, but it’s not necessary. I want to—” The elevator doors opened on their floor, and she lowered her voice to a whisper. “I want to do things with you. It’s just … been a while.”

His firm grip on her hand led her out of the elevator and down the hall. “For me too, Wren. But we have all the time in the world.”

Anyone who called gray eyes chilly had never seen his.

Right now, she couldn’t imagine ever being cold again.





23


“SHIT, WREN,” ALEX SAID THROUGH A MOUTHFUL OF THE hotel’s signature gourmet pizza, and scrolled down his YouTube page. “I already have over two hundred thousand views and six thousand comments on my first clip, with more coming in all the time. Same with the other videos.”

From what he could tell, the views and comments had trickled in slowly at first … until Carah responded to his clips on her various social media accounts and threatened to nut-punch him—“Also my main sasquatch-hunting tactic”—the next time he encountered her geriatric ass.

Apparently, she’d dedicated her next video to him, and it involved eating testicles. Hopefully not human, but he didn’t know for sure.

“The Fans of the Gates blog called your videos ‘irresistibly charming.’ And I think”—Wren paused and tapped something on her phone—“yes, Celebrity magazine picked up the story too. They posted something an hour ago. Apparently, you’re ‘predictably but delightfully unfiltered, and exactly the blast of effortless cool needed in these hot summer months.’”

She made a gagging sound.

Totally rude. Utterly delightful.

He grinned at her and tickled her ribs until she giggled, the sound ringing through the cool night air. “Incomparable Harpy Energy there, Wren. But I thought you didn’t vanity search?”

“Not for myself.” With a wave of her short, broad hand, she flicked the notion aside, as if it were that easy to resist finding out what everyone thought of you. “I figured you’d want to know how various media sites were reacting, though.”

The addendum remained unspoken: And I wanted to see it before you did, in case it was bad, and I needed to talk you down from doing something dumb.

Which … okay, fair.

“In the YouTube comments, there’s a lot of speculation about my talented camerawoman and travel companion.” A sidelong glance didn’t reveal any signs of tension at that news. No hunched shoulders. No furrowed brow. “Apparently our chemistry is magical.”

The corners of her mouth tipped upward before she took another bite of her own pizza.

A fourth slice beckoned him, and he answered the summons. “Anyway, they want to know if you’re my girlf—”

His phone chimed. A FaceTime call from his mother, which he couldn’t ignore.

He put down his pizza. “I’m sorry, Wren, but I need to take this. It’ll be five minutes. Ten, tops.”

When he got to his feet, she smiled at him, entirely unoffended. To give her a few minutes of peace and quiet while she ate, he headed for the living room, then tapped his screen to answer the call.

“Hey, Mom,” he said as he slid open the balcony door. “How are—”

Then he saw her face. Specifically, the dark bruises surrounding her swollen left eye.

Absolute horror staggered him, landing like a punch to the diaphragm. “Mom. What—”

“I had a bike accident, Alex. Just a bike accident.” She was speaking loudly and clearly and calmly, and he could barely understand a word. “I hit a patch of gravel and went down, but I’m fine. I went to the doctor, and I’m fine. But I wanted you to know as soon as possible, so you wouldn’t …”