Her expression was placid, her voice soft and even. "I wasn’t thinking about anything... My forehead just hurts a little..."
Hearing this, Seth Quinn rubbed her forehead even more gently and sighed. "You silly girl."
Hearing the doting tone in his low voice, Clara instinctively pushed his hand away.
’How much of his kindness could be real? Isn’t he just trying to coax into bed for *that*?’
Seth Quinn watched her push his hand away. He froze for a second, then his gaze turned cold.
Ignoring him, Clara sat up straight in bed and asked, "How did you get in?"
’I’m sure I locked the door.’
Seth Quinn shifted, standing up and leaning back against the desk. He crossed his arms, propped one ankle on the other knee, and raised an eyebrow at her. "I had the hotel staff open the door, of course."
Clara was aghast. "You could have just knocked for !" she protested. "Why did you have the staff open the door? Sneaking in so quietly... Are you trying to scare to death?"
’And pawing at my face... Pervert!’
Seth sneered. "If you’d answered the door, do you think I would have gone to the trouble of getting the staff?"
He’d been knocking for ages with no response. Worried that sothing had happened to her, he had frantically gone to get the staff to open the door.
When he’d entered, he’d found her lying perfectly still on the bed. As he drew closer, he saw her brow was furrowed and her lashes were fluttering restlessly. He thought she was sick, so he’d reached out to feel her forehead and check for a fever.
He never expected to startle her like that.
’Still, it was a relief she wasn’t sick.’
When she’d hit her head and whimpered about how much it hurt, his heart had completely lted, aching for her.
So what was with this sudden cold shoulder?
"Huh? Was I asleep?" Clara instinctively glanced at the ti. More than twenty minutes had passed since she’d co upstairs. She really had fallen asleep.
’So all that thinking I thought I was doing while I was awake... it was all just a dream.’
"...Well, even if I was asleep, you could have just knocked louder, couldn’t you?" Too embarrassed to admit she’d been sleeping so soundly she hadn’t heard him, she decided to just be stubborn.
Feeling like she was throwing his genuine concern back in his face, Seth Quinn’s temper flared, and a curse slipped out.
"You were fucking sleeping like a dead pig! It wouldn’t have mattered how loud I knocked. I fucking thought you were sick in here, so I did you a favor and got the staff. But I guess my good intentions were wasted!"
Having been called a "dead pig" for the first ti in her life, Clara automatically tuned out the rest of his tirade. Her face flushed crimson and, craning her neck, she glared at him. "You’re the dead pig! Your whole family are dead pigs!"
Seth let out a short, angry laugh, amused that she’d latched onto that one phrase. He gave her a humorless smile and said bluntly, "My ’whole family’ includes you now!"
"..."
"Why aren’t you downstairs eating? What did you co up here for?" Unable to win the argunt, Clara gave up and changed the subject, her tone sharp.
Seth was rendered speechless. ’What does she think I ca up here for? I ca because she’d been gone for so long and I was worried about her. Isn’t that obvious?’
She didn’t want their relationship to be public, and to respect that, he’d had to make up an excuse and carefully sneak away from everyone just to check on her.
Too bad she didn’t seem to realize any of that.
Or perhaps it wasn’t that she couldn’t figure it out. He feared it was that she simply...
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