She eyed him dubiously. “Yes.”
“And I would imagine rent takes up a large part of your income.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” she acknowledged with obvious reluctance.
“So how much would you save if you lived with me?” He tried to keep the need to demand she live with him immediately out of his voice because, obviously, that wouldn’t help.
But even so, if he thought about it too much, his uneasiness with the whole situation intensified. The safety of the child and Marisa would be of paramount concern to him, and if they were living somewhere else that concern would be impossible to manage. He would have to check out the child’s room, make sure everything was safe. And he knew that he’d have to do it each time he went in there. Even if he didn’t, the urge to check would sit in his mind like a splinter, an ache that wouldn’t go away.
Of course having Marisa living with him would make hiding his OCD behaviors extremely difficult, but what other choice did he have? He couldn’t tell her. He hated explaining the OCD to people because invariably they didn’t understand the compulsions he managed. No one ever had, not even his parents. They’d thought he was crazy and, despite the fact that he was a successful CEO of a successful financial institution, they still did.
The only person who’d ever understood him was Joseph, who had the same kinds of issues with his ADHD.
She continued to frown at him, blue eyes narrowed, nibbling on a fingernail, processing his question.
He really didn’t like that expression in her eyes, though. It reminded him of the look people used to give him when he’d been a kid. His teachers. His parents. Looking at him as if he was crazy. It had made him ashamed of his condition. Made him want to hide the behaviors so no one would know.
“Okay, so I’d probably save a lot. But you’re going to have to give me some thinking space here,” Marisa said after a moment. “I mean, we don’t know if I’ll stay pregnant. Miscarriages can happen.”
A strange pain caught in his chest, an odd panic. “That is not going to happen,” he said, as if saying it would make it so. “But I think you should move in with me as soon as possible just in case.”
Her frown deepened. “Are you serious? I’m not moving in with you right now, Luke. I barely know you. You’re going to have to give me some time to think about things first.”
He’d known this would be difficult for her. Hell, it was difficult for him. But he had a responsibility to his child and a condition to hide. And this was the best solution.
“You can give me your decision tomorrow,” he said, having to force out the words because, God, how was he going to handle his need to check on her when she was living in a different house? Having him turn up on her doorstep every day would make her pretty damn suspicious pretty damn quickly.
“Tomorrow?” She rolled her eyes. “You mean I get a whole eight hours to figure out the course of my entire life? That’s so incredibly generous of you.”
“It’s not the course of your entire life. You get to do all the things you want to do except you’ll be living with me.”
Marisa snorted. “What about work? There’s that little matter of you being my boss and the ‘no workplace relationships’ rule, which, FYI, is going to need serious revisiting if I move in with you.”
He shifted uncomfortably on the seat, aware that this was another problem he’d have to find a solution for. “Perhaps we could find a potential workaround.”
“You’re going to have to.” She gave him a pointed look. “And before you say it, I’m not quitting, nor am I going to marry you, so you can forget about either of those as potential ‘workarounds.’”
He hadn’t been thinking about it but now that she mentioned it…
Marriage. A family…
Normality of a kind he’d always thought he didn’t want, because none of that kind of normality worked with the OCD. And yet…
“Perhaps we should,” he said, trying to think it through logically because he didn’t understand the strange mix of emotions that went along with it. “It would give the child a secure home. And marriage would certainly be a solution to the work problem.”
“It was a joke, Luke. I wasn’t serious.”
“But it makes a certain amount of logical sense.” Not to mention appealing to his sense of order. Of course, again, he’d have to be totally on top of the OCD in order to keep that a secret, but he hadn’t had a bad episode for a while now. He could make it work, he was sure of it.
Her mouth dropped open. “Logical sense? To marry someone you don’t like?”