a second.” She turned, moving to the door and jerking it open without checking to see who was on the other side. “Hi,” she said, trying to ignore the fluttering in her stomach when she came face-to-midchest with Colton.
He was so tall. It was borderline obscene. Tall and broad and extremely muscular. Utterly masculine, with just a few days growth of gold-tinted whiskers covering his square jaw. And it made her feel a little bit regretful that she didn’t have any memories about the interior of his pants.
No. No, she was not going to go there.
“I just came to see if you needed help with anything,” he said, stuffing his hands into his pockets.
“I’m fine,” she said, very aware of the fact that she didn’t have everything together at all.
“So, are you about ready?”
“I mean, I’m ready kind of. Mostly. Also, you didn’t have to come and pick me up.”
“Sorry, I’m a little rusty on the protocol of how exactly you help your fake wife move into your house for a temporary period of time.”
“Yeah,” she said, “we may have to pioneer that.”
“Do you need any help?”
Absurdly, she was ridiculously edgy about the idea of him coming into her house. Possibly because when all was said and done, she kind of wanted to go back to life as it had been before she had decided to make a Colton-sized mistake.
“No. I have it. Just wait there. You can sit in...” She didn’t really want him sitting in her porch chair, either. But denying him a spot to wait was a little bit shrewish. “You can sit in the chair,” she said finally.
“Okay,” he replied, looking rather like he thought she was insane.
Well, maybe she was. But he had married her. So, that didn’t say anything good about him.
“Just a—” She held up a finger. “Just a second.”
She slammed the door shut and turned back around, looking at her half-packed duffel bag. She picked it up, turning quickly into her bedroom, then grabbing some clothes that were hanging in the closet and stuffing them into the bag. They didn’t fit. She was going to have to get a suitcase.
Several suitcases, probably.
What had she been thinking? She had been thoroughly convinced that this was some kind of overnight trip, and she was going to pack a bag, and then she was going to return to her house as though nothing had happened. She was moving in with him. That was completely different. It was... Okay, now she felt like she was going crazy.
“I was tired of waiting out on the porch. I thought the entire point was that we minimize gossip.”
She turned around, starting when she saw him standing in the doorway. “I did not invite you in. I, in fact, did the opposite of that.”
“Do you really want people to start talking about how your husband was standing on the porch looking lonely only hours after your wedding?”
“That’s so dramatic,” she said, attempting to look less perturbed than she felt.
“You’re the one with a lot of concern about appearances.”
“You’re not...disinterested in appearances, yourself. I have to find a suitcase.”
“I thought you were almost ready.”
“Okay, let’s not stand around acting like you would be fully on top of the procedure for going about all of this. I admit, I was feeling a little shortsighted. Like, I was kind of thinking of packing an overnight bag. And then I realized that we’re going to be living together for a few months.”
She could have sworn that Colton paled slightly when she spoke the words. “More like a month and a half.”
“Semantics. But we have to stay together until after the election. And presumably you need some time to allow your mother to adjust... Or whatever it is exactly that you’re waiting for her to do.”
“I would like to avoid giving her a mental breakdown,” he said, sounding exasperated.
“Right. Well, I don’t really know your mother, so I don’t really understand the situation. But I do understand that it’s kind of complicated. But all that means is that it’s not going to be a quick weekend stay at your place. And maybe I was in denial about that.”
“It’s not that big of a deal,” he said, while his expression said something else entirely.
“No,” she said, “not at all. We just have to learn to coexist.” She opened up her closet and began to rummage around, digging in the bottom until she produced her suitcase, which she hadn’t used in years.
“How hard can it be?”
Neither of them spoke the obvious, which was that they had a difficult enough time coexisting when they lived in the same small town, let alone the same house.
“I’m sure it will be super easy,” she said, hefting her suitcase up onto the bed and throwing it open. “Super, super easy.” She continued muttering as she walked into the bathroom.
She looked around at all of her things. Her makeup, put away neatly in the dark purple case that she kept on the left-hand corner of the counter. Her flat iron, snapped into its sparkly holder, which kept it and its cord carefully contained. Then she turned and looked at the shower, at the carefully organized caddy that contained her shampoo, conditioner and oil treatments.
Everything was right where she wanted it to be. Organized exactly the way it made sense to her. She didn’t have to compromise. Didn’t have to modify herself to be different for anyone. Didn’t have to contort so that she wouldn’t be in the way.
Darn it, she liked having her own space. Needed it, even. And maybe she was being really, really dramatic about the fact that she was going to be sharing a house with somebody for a couple of months. Maybe.
“It’s a vacation,” she muttered, picking up her various items. “A vacation on a ranch. With a surly roommate that will maybe cook breakfast?”
She walked out of the bathroom, back into the bedroom, where Colton was still standing in the doorway, his arms crossed over his broad chest.
“I thought you came in to help me.”
“You didn’t give me a directive. Did you want me to just aimlessly go through your things and try to decide what you needed?”
She made a scoffing noise in the back of her throat. “Obviously not.”
Silence stretched between them, along with a thick band of tension that seemed to wrap itself around her, more specifically, her throat. She found it difficult to breathe all of a sudden. For some reason, the air seemed to reduce around them. For some reason, she was unbearably conscious of the scent of the soap that he used, and just how familiar it was.
It was a reminder. A reminder that—whether she remembered it or not—she had absolutely smelled it on his skin before. Her brain didn’t remember, but right now, her body seemed to.
“Do you have a food processor?” she asked, because talking about food processors seemed as good a method as any for diffusing the unwanted crackle of tension in the room.
“Of course.”
“There’s no of course about that. A lot of men wouldn’t have one.”
“Well, I have a housekeeper. She cooks a lot of my food.”
Lydia’s eyebrows shot up. “A housekeeper?”
“You feel a little less victimized now, don’t you?”
“No. Thoroughly victimized.” She added as many clothes as she could to her bag, followed by shoes.
“It isn’t like you can’t