“I get it.” He set his book on the nightstand. “But why are you here?”

He already knew. But he prayed it wasn’t true. Because if she had to spend the night in this room with him, he wasn’t sure he could control the outcome.

She stared at him like he was a Neanderthal, thick-skulled and dense. Despite the formidable expression he thought he wore, she moved right around to the other side of his bed, kicking off her slippers and unfastening her robe. Making herself at home.

Turns out, underneath she had on a T-shirt that said KISS MY CUPCAKE.

He was doomed.

“I have to stay here tonight,” she announced as she crawled into his bed.

That made him look above his reading glasses at her. “Have to is strong language, Countess.”

“Juliet already suspects things,” Tessa said in her don’t-you-get-it voice. “She saw a bunch of my stuff in that bedroom downstairs, and I told her the house has no closet space so I commandeered that room for my clothes.”

“Did she believe you?”

“I think so, but she’d never believe it if she caught me sleeping on the couch. And there’s something else… She keeps asking me things. Like she knows something’s not right. So I couldn’t take a chance.” He must’ve still looked incredulous because she said, slowly and patiently, “Married people sleep together.”

“Oh, okay,” he said, starting to turn down the sheets. He made sure to toss her a wolfish grin. “Well, in that case, I’m happy to oblige.”

For that, he got a pillow tossed at him. It smelled like her shampoo.

“I said sleep,” she groaned. But he thought he saw her mouth turn up a little. “Do you have a sleeping bag?”

“Nope.”

“Extra blanket?”

“Nope.”

“I don’t suppose you’re feeling chivalrous?”

“As in, ‘No, no, please, let me take the floor’? Not at all. Chivalry is dead. I’m all about equality.”

“Okay, fine. I’m exhausted, and I won’t take up much space.”

“Don’t you think we need to talk about what happened in the garden?”

“No.”

“No as in, absolutely not?”

“No as in, never. Again. We just got…carried away by that ridiculous competition.”

“You mean the which-country-is-better competition? And here I thought Italy won.”

She waved her hand in the air. “Things like that are bound to happen when two adults live closely together like this. And I don’t do casual. We shouldn’t let the pretending get to us, you know?”

“Says the woman before she climbs into the man’s bed.”

She looked like she wished she had something else to throw at him. “Leo, I don’t know where else to go.”