That room was off-limits from now on. He'd buy a new desk and have it moved into his bedroom.
So exhausted he could hardly breathe, he climbed the stairs and stumbled to his bedroom. No lights. Too bright for his weary eyes.
His shin cracked against something heavy and knocked him off balance. He cursed as his hand shot out to break his fall and scraped across...whatever he'd tripped over.
Snick. Light flooded the dark room via the lamp on his bedside table.
"Are you okay?" Daniella asked.
His head snapped up in shock. "What are you doing here? Why are you in my bed?"
His wife, hair swept back in a ponytail and heavy lidded with sleep, regarded him calmly from beneath the covers of his bed. "It's my bed, too, now. I moved into your room. If you'd come home occasionally, you might have known I rearranged the furniture."
The throb in his shin rivaled the sudden throb in his temples. "I didn't... You ca-" He sucked in a fortifying breath. "You had no right to do that."
She studied him for a moment, her face contemplative and breathtakingly beautiful in its devoid-of-makeup state. "You said I should think of this as my home. Anything I wanted to change, you'd be willing to discuss."
"Exactly. Discuss."
The firm cross of her arms said she'd gladly have done so, if he hadn't been hiding out at the office.
"You're bleeding." She threw the covers back, slipped out of bed and crossed the room to take his hand, murmuring over the shallow cut.
As she was wearing a pair of plaid pants cinched low on her slim hips and a skintight tank top that left her midriff bare, a little blood was the least of his problems.
"And you're cold," he muttered and tore his gaze from the hard peaks beneath the tank top, which scarcely contained dark, delicious-looking nipples.
Too late. Heat shuddered through his groin, tightening his pants uncomfortably. Couldn't she find some clothes that she wasn't in danger of bursting out of? Like a suit of armor, perhaps?
"I'll be fine." She tugged on his hand, flipping the long ponytail over her shoulder. "Come into the bathroom. Let me put a bandage on this cut."
"It's not that bad. Go back to bed. I'll sleep somewhere else." As if he had a prayer of sleep tonight.
Adrenaline coursed through his veins. Muscles strained to reach for her, to yank on the bow under her navel and let those plaid pants pool around her ankles. One tiny step and he could have her in his arms.
He tried to pull away but she clamped down on his hand, surprisingly strong for someone so sensuously built.
"Leo." Her brea**sts rose on a long sigh and under her breath she muttered something about him that sounded suspiciously uncomplimentary. "Please let me help you. It's my fault you're hurt."
It was her fault he had a hard-on the size of Dallas. But it was not her fault that he'd been avoiding her and thus didn't know the layout of his own bedroom any longer. "Fine."
He followed her into the bathroom, noting the addition of a multitude of mysterious girly accoutrements, and decided he preferred remaining ignorant of their purposes.
Daniella fussed over him, washing his cut and patting it dry. In bare feet, she was shorter than he was used to. Normally she had no trouble looking him in the eye when she wore her architecturally impossible and undeniably sexy heels. He hadn't realized how much he liked that.
Or how much he'd also like this slighter, attentive Daniella who took care of him. Fatigue washed over him, muddling his thoughts, and he forgot for a second why it wasn't a good idea to share a bed with her.
"All better." She patted his hand and bent to put the box of bandages under the sink, pulling her pajama pants tight across her rear, four inches from his blistering erection. He closed his eyes.
"About the room sharing," he began.
She brushed his sensitive flesh and his lids flew up. He'd swayed toward her, inadvertently. She glanced up to meet his gaze in the mirror. The incongruity between her state of undress and his buttoned-up suit shouldn't have been so erotic. But it was.
"Are you going to read me the riot act?" she asked, her eyes enormous and guileless and soft. "Or consider the possibilities?"
"Which are?" The second it was out of his mouth, he wished he could take it back. Foggy brain and half-dressed wife did not make for good conversation elements.
"You work a hundred hours a week. Our paths will never cross unless we do it here." She gestured toward the bedroom. "This way, we'll both get what we want."
In the bright bathroom light, the semitransparent tank top left nothing to the imagination. Of course, he already knew what her bare breast looked like and the longer she stood there with the dark circles of her nipp**les straining against the fabric, the more he wanted to see them both, but this time with no interruptions.
"What do you think I want?"
"You want me." She turned to face him. "All the benefits without the effort, or so you say. I don't believe you. If you wanted that, my dress wouldn't have stayed zipped for longer than five seconds after dinner. Sharing a bedroom offers you a chance to figure out why you let me walk away. It won't infringe on your work hours and it gives me a chance to forge the friendship I want. Before we become physically involved."
That cleared the fog in a hurry. "What are you saying, that you'll be like a roommate?"
"You sound disappointed." Her eyebrows rose in challenge. "Would you like to make me a better offer?"
Oh, dear God. She should be negotiating his contracts, not his lawyer.
"You're driving me bananas. No. Worse than that." He squeezed the top of his head but his brain still felt as though she'd twirled it with a spaghetti fork. "What's worse than bananas?"
"Pomegranates," she said decisively. "They're harder to eat and don't taste as good."
He bit back a laugh. Yes, exactly. His incredibly perceptive wife drove him pomegranates. "That about covers it."
"Will you try it my way? Give it a week. Then if you still think sex will complicate our marriage too much, I'll move back to my bedroom. I promise I'll keep my hands to myself." To demonstrate, she laced her fingers over her sexy rear and he swore. She'd done that exact thing in one of his dreams. "If you'll promise the same."
His shin didn't hurt nearly as badly as his aching groin. "Are you seriously suggesting we share a bed platonically?"
"Seriously. Show me you think our marriage is worth it. Sharing a room is the only way we'll figure this out, unless you plan to work less. It's unorthodox, but being married to a workaholic has forced my creative hand, so to speak."
It was definitely creative, he'd give her that, and hit him where it hurt-right where all the guilt lived. If he wanted her to be happy in this marriage and stick with him, he had to prove it.
Her logic left him no good reason not to say yes. Except for the fact that it was insane.
Her seductive brown eyes sucked him in. "What are you going to do, Leo?"
Somehow, she made it sound as if he held all the cards. As if all he had to do was whisper a few romantic phrases in her ear and she'd be putty in his hands. If only it was that easy.
And then she shoved the knife in a little further. "Try it. What's the worst that can happen?"
He groaned as several sleepless nights in a row hit him like a freight train. "I'm certain we're about to find out."
Fatigue and a strong desire to avoid his wife's backup plan if he said no-that was his excuse for stripping down to a T-shirt and boxer shorts and getting into bed next to a woman who blinded him with lust by simply breathing. Whom he'd agreed not to touch.
Just to make her happy. Just for a few days. Just to prove he wasn't weak.
He fell into instant sleep.
* * *
Dannie woke in the morning quite pleased but quite uncomfortable from a night of clinging to the edge of the bed so she didn't accidentally roll over into Leo's half. Or into Leo.
She'd probably tortured him enough.
But her will wasn't as strong as she thought, not when her husband lay mere feet away, within touching distance, breathing deeply in sleep. The alarm on his phone had beeped, like, an hour ago, but hadn't produced so much as a twitch out of Leo. Who was she to wake him when he obviously needed to sleep? A good wife ensured her husband was well rested.