Page 49 of Hired Husband

The guide dipped his chin in a nod and left us to it. Isaac gestured for me to go first. I walked in to find layered rugs covering the wooden floors and woven blankets folded neatly at the foot of a very large bed. It was beautiful, rustic, but luxurious in all the right ways.

Isaac followed my gaze at I stared at the only problem I could see with our upgraded lodgings. “There’s only one bed.”

“Yeah.” I glanced at him. “I guess it supposed to be only for people who are married and they probably prefer to sleep in the same bed.”

He looked around the tent for a minute like he was hoping he might just have missed the second bed on his first pass, but when that didn’t happen, he loosened the collar of his shirt and pulled it over his head with a tired sigh.

“I don’t know how people survive summers out here, but I’ve been dying to do that all night.” He twisted to hang the shirt over a rail near the foot of the bed, then studied our sleeping arrangements like he was still trying to figure something out.

Meanwhile, I was struggling not to study him. I knew men occasionally removed shirts because they were hot. It was a completely normal thing to do. Hell, I would have taken mine off if I could. All things considered, there was absolutely no reason for me to suddenly have forgotten how words worked, but here I was, not even remembering what they were.

“First things first,” he said. “Do your parents know we’re still out here?”

Thankfully, that was probably the one thing he could’ve asked that immediately yanked my brain back online. My parents. Right.

“My mom does,” I said, finally averting my gaze from his shirtless body to take in the decorative fabric pinned to the back wall of the tent. “I let her know we’d be traveling around today and not to wait up.”

“Does that mean she won’t worry?”

I shot him a smile over my shoulder. “No, but I’m almost twenty-eight years old. I’m not a delinquent teen anymore.”

Turning in a slow circle, I decided that our rustic little tent with its one bed would do just fine for the night. It really was gorgeous. A couple of thick candles flickered inside a lamp to illuminate the space, and with one side completely open this time of year, there was nothing but sand and desert for miles beyond.

When I finally looked back at Isaac, he’d already found an extra blanket and he was unfolding it beside the bed. I frowned. “What are you doing?”

“Making another bed,” he said, glancing up at me. “In case you’d already forgotten, they only gave us the one.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you have to sleep on the floor.”

“Who said I was going to be the one sleeping on the floor?” he joked. “It’s fine, Jasmine. I’ve slept in much worse places. I don’t mind.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a floor. A wooden floor. If you sleep on it, you won’t be able to move tomorrow.”

“It’s got a blanket over it.”

“It’s also got gravity.”

“Sure, but I generally get along well with gravity.” He winked and grabbed a pillow off the bed. “See, that’s all I need.”

I folded my arms and stared him down, my head shaking slowly from one side to the other. “Get in the bed, Isaac.”

“I don’t think that’s wise.”

“Why not? We’re both adults. I’m sure we can share a bed like normal people.”

He dropped the pillow on his makeshift bed and straightened up to his full height. “We’ve spent the whole night pretending to be married.”

“Exactly. We might as well keep doing it. Why draw an arbitrary line at sleeping in the same bed?”

“Arbitrary?”

“Yes. Arbitrary. Why is this different than holding hands or sitting next to each other?”

He stared at me, those blue eyes a silvery gold between the dark night and warm candlelight. “What makes it different is that it already feels weirdly intimate. Sleeping in the same bed takes that to a whole other level.”

“It’s just sleeping.”

“Yeah, but⁠—”