Page 71 of Earned Husband

CHAPTER 30

DEJA

Colin had been in Cairo for two weeks now. Two weeks that’d been a blur of business meetings, engagement rituals, and family dinners that lasted well into the night.

I’d barely seen him, even forced to sleep on the opposite side of the house from my almost-fiancé. He wasn’t even on the same story as me, downstairs while I was in my suite upstairs.

I honestly hadn’t thought that it would get to me, but it was driving me crazy. Everyone was talking like we were practically married, but at the same time, they were treating us like getting within three feet of one another without supervision would bring about the collapse of civilization.

It shouldn’t have been possible that I could miss him this much while we were living in the same house, but I swore we’d had more contact when we’d been across an ocean from each other. I seriously didn’t know how much more of it I could take.

I sat cross-legged in the middle of my bed, rotating another bottle design on my tablet before deleting the entire neck section. The White Water Lily fall launch had only been last week, but I’d thrown myself into work all over again, hoping it would distract me from how much I just wanted to spend time with the man I was marrying.

Colin’s gray eyes haunted my dreams. My fingers physically ached when I saw him these days, desperate to run them through his hair. After being so close to him that night next to the Nile, I’d been fantasizing every waking moment about what it might feel like to have his trim, hard body against my own.

It was getting to the point where the yearning was making me feel slightly insane. I was actually longing. For a man.

I shook my head at myself and refocused on the bottle. I’d spent the month Colin had been in Chicago sourcing botanicals for our winter collection and my bedroom was now covered in samples, dried flowers, scent strips, and paint swatches.

With inspiration all around me, the bottle should’ve come as naturally as breathing. They always did. Once I was in the zone, there was no stopping me, but I just wasn’t getting there with this one.

Eventually, I canned the entire sketch and started over, deciding that winter deserved cleaner lines than what I’d had before. But a knock at my door instantly broke the tiny shred of concentration I’d managed to grab hold of. My mother walked in before I’d said a word, simply opening the door as if there was no way she might be interrupting something.

She stepped carefully around the boxes and fabric samples littering my floor, smiling like she no longer even noticed that my bedroom looked like an artist’s studio after a tornado had ripped through it.

“Have you started packing yet, darling?” she asked gently, stopping at the foot of my bed and wrapping her delicate fingers around the ornate frame. “We’re leaving for our vacation house this afternoon.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m almost done.”

“Nanna will have your father skinned alive if we’re late.”

“True.” I set my tablet aside and glanced up at her. “Don’t worry. I’m packed. I know we can’t keep her waiting. I’m just trying to find a direction to go in with this bottle.”

“I’ll send someone up to collect your things.” She reached over to straighten a throw pillow that had already been straight. “Are you okay? You seem a little, well, not okay.”

I sighed. “I guess I’m just tired.”

“Of?”

“All of this,” I said, throwing my hands out to my sides as the frustration I’d been keeping bottled up finally started bubbling out. It was weird, but it didn’t seem to matter how old I got, when I was talking to my mother, everything always just came tumbling out. “Colin has been here for half a month and I’ve had enough.”

“Of him? But he seems so nice.”

“No.” I scoffed. “The exact opposite. I’m tired of not even having five minutes alone with the man.”

Mom folded her arms, her expression soft and understanding. “I know it’s hard, but it will get easier soon.”

“It just feels backwards,” I said, sliding off the bed and striding over to my window, but not even the sight of the water cascading from the fountains eased the tension from my shoulders today. “Dad has already given us his blessing. We’re pretty much engaged, but everyone is behaving like we’re sixteen.”

She sat down beside the sketches on my bed. “When Al-Khutbah is over, your engagement will be public and your father will be much more comfortable with the two of you spending time together in public.”

I frowned. “Why is it such a big deal, though? I’ve had boyfriends before and I’ve been out in public with them, and besides, I’m not even asking for a wild night out. All I want is to be able to spend some time with him away from everyone else.”

“I know, darling. I understand. But what you need to understand is that people are already talking.”

“About what?” I scoffed. “People are always talking. This isn’t any different.”

“It is, Deja,” she said quietly. “What they’re saying isn’t kind. They’re questioning his very presence here and our association with him.”