been gone? It doesn’t even look like the same room.”
I bend my knees in a quick curtsy. “That’s the other thing this hairdo says: home decorator extraordinaire.”
Actually, I didn’t do much of the real work. I had one set of movers come by at ten a.m. to haul away all the bedroom furniture that was in here. At eleven a.m., Colin’s antique desk was delivered. After forty-five minutes of me freeing the damn thing from the miles and miles of bubble wrap it was wrapped in, the second set of movers arrived with the rest of the office furniture: an ergonomic desk chair, a couple of navy wingback chairs, an end table, copper bar cart, bookshelf, an antique globe, and even a Ficus.
I check my watch. We have an hour until Gordon Price gets here for the home interview, and the butterflies I’ve kept at bay all day by staying busy with changing my bedroom into a home office start to flutter.
I blow out a breath. “Okay. I just need to put some actual books on the bookshelf, and I think we’re ready. Well, as ready as we’ll ever be.”
“You’re sure your head’s okay?” Colin asks, coming to crouch beside me at the bookcase, helping me move the pile of books from the floor to the bookshelves.
“Positive,” I say, since the pain’s receded almost entirely. “Just a bump.”
He glances down at the book in his hand and turns it around so I can see the cover. The Modern Woman’s Guide to Leadership. “Don’t recall this one being in my collection.”
“Some of the books have to be mine,” I point out. “I’m supposed to live here too, and I can assure you, I wouldn’t be touching your Edgar Allan Poe collection. It’ll be weird if the room is entirely masculine, with only your stuff.”
“Is that why there’s a pink glittery stapler on my desk?”
“Our desk,” I say, patting his knee and standing. “For the rest of the afternoon, it’s our desk. Our office. Our home.” I look him over. “You should change into something more comfortable.”
He lifts his eyebrows.
“Relax. I’m not trying to get in your pants. You look like you just came from the office.”
“I did just come from the office. Something Gordon will likely understand since he set up the meeting for three p.m. on a Thursday.”
“Still, shouldn’t we look a little more … domestic?”
“Which means what? Levis and slippers?”
“If I took the time to make my beastly hair pin straight,” I say, pointing at my head, “the least you can do is ditch the jacket and tie.”
“Fine.”
He heads into the bedroom, and I take one last look at the office. Not bad—I can practically picture Colin behind the antique desk working, maybe the two of us reading side-by-side in the chairs, my legs draped casually over his knees …
I hope Gordon Price can picture it too.
The stack of mail looks a little too neat, so I pick it up and then drop it down again, letting envelopes and catalogs scatter a little, as though one of us tossed it there as an afterthought, the way a normal couple might.
I turn on the lamp and leave the room, going into the bedroom. Our bedroom. Because convincing Gordon Price that we sleep in the same bed is sort of a no-brainer if we want him to think we’re trying to make this marriage work.
Hence the quick transformation of the second bedroom from guest room to office.
I’ve known all week what was coming, but I realize now that the idea of sharing a bedroom with Colin is different from actually seeing it in practice. Or maybe I just haven’t let myself think about how intimate it would be. It’s a little strange to see my water bottle and Kindle on one nightstand and his glasses case and book on the other.
Then there’s my razor in his shower. Our toothbrushes side by side in his bathroom.
“Charlotte?” he calls from the closet.
“Hmm?”
I go to the walk-in closet where he’s standing with his hand on his hips. “What’s all this?”
“My clothes,” I say, pointing out the obvious. “It’d be sort of a giveaway if I had all my clothes in the second bedroom closet.”
“True. But why is it so—”
“Lived in?” I say.
“Messy.”
“Well, believe it or not, some people have a wardrobe containing more than two colors.”
“Don’t you have a system?”
I blink. “A system? For a closet?”
He gestures at the haphazardly hung clothes. “To organize them in some way. Color? Season? Fabric.”
“No, dear. I don’t