Page 106 of The Bodyguard's Fall

A laugh bubbled out of me. “They’re sweats. I’m following all the rules.”

“When you wear sweats that say the word ‘juicy’ on the butt, the rules mean nothing to you.”

“Why were you looking?”

He paused. “We’re still married. I’m gonna look.”

My toes curled slightly at his admission. “Good to know.”

“What year is it? Why do you even have sweats that say that?”

A laugh sputtered out of me while I covered my face with my hands. “It was a joke between me, Reese, and Ari. We all found the same pair once at a thrift store. How could anyone resist that?”

He seethed out a breath. “Exactly.”

Though I couldn’t see him, my head turned toward his soft, almost annoyed voice. “What?”

“Nothing.”

We grew quiet. The only sound was the fan swirling overhead. I liked having him here. The knowledge that we shared the same space brought me an inordinate amount of comfort. Not only because of Leroy, but because…there was something so cozy and warm about being married. And I wasn’t even really married, but I felt like I was getting a taste of it all. Going from a me to a we. That thought felt dangerous. But now, I was wide awake and hating how lonely this big dumb bed felt. Sleep would be hard to come by tonight.

From somewhere below me, Tate cleared his throat. “We still haven’t watched one of your movies…”

He left the end of his sentence with a question mark. He baited, cast his line, and caught me, hook, line, and sinking heart.

“Is this a hint? Mr. Annulment Line?”

“Just stating a fact. You’re the one reading into it.”

Alone on my big empty bed, I smiled.

“That’s a very interesting fact,” I said.

“I thought so.”

I bit my lip, unable to contain my grin. He was waiting for me. But I had to calm my racing, wildly beating heart first.

“I could pull one up on my laptop right now, if you wanted.”

Before I could blink, Tate was up and out of his bed. He grabbed my laptop from the desk and moved in beside me. We fixed our pillows just right, and soon, we were lying next to each other on our bed, my first co-written murder mystery, A Novel Way to Die, pulled up on the screen.

I hadn’t seen this movie since I’d attended the small, low-budget red carpet ceremony my company put on for the writers and actors and their families. I’d forgotten how cheesy it was. In my self-righteous stand against romance, I’d forgotten there could be a heavy amount of cheese everywhere. Maybe all genres have cheese and some predictability, even in a genre that’s supposed to be full of surprises.

“How are you handling the lack of profanity?” I asked midway through the movie.

“I’m replacing all the words with my own in my head.”

I laughed, my attention once again turning to the part where the investigators slipped in the trail of blood from the body they’d yet to find.

“Will you lean up for a sec?” Tate asked in my ear.

“Hmm?”

“Your pillow needs fixed.”

I leaned forward, only to watch as he pushed the pillow off to the side and replaced it with his arm.

When I looked at him in question, he only smiled.