Page 52 of The Temporary Bride

Tristan comes to stand beside me, his gaze following mine. “They do.” He shoots me a sidelong glance, arching a brow. “You picked well, for a house you’d never seen.”

“I knew your place had an ocean view,” I admit. “That was enough.”

He looks at me, and I can’t fully read his expression in the low light before he says, “Come on. I’ll show you to our bedroom.”

Butterflies erupt in my stomach at those words.

“Um, maybe I should sleep in one of the guest bedrooms,” I suggest, clearing my throat.

He stops walking and looks back at me. “I don’t have a guest bedroom.”

I stare at him. We are standing in a house that is, conservatively, four thousand square feet. “Are you serious?”

“I can give you the tour,” he offers, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

The tour takes about fifteen minutes and is deeply irritating. He takes me through room after room, each one beautiful and thoughtfully designed and conspicuously empty of any sleeping surface. A library that makes me slow down despite myself, all dark wood shelving and leather spines. A sitting room with a view of the garden and a fireplace that looks like it actually gets used. A home office, two guest rooms, a gym, a media room. All of it beautiful. None of it containing a bed.

But there are marks on the carpet. Indentations in several rooms where furniture legs used to rest. Pale rectangles on the walls of one room where something large clearly hung until very recently. In one of the larger rooms, there’s even a slight difference in the paint color along one wall where a headboard must have sat for years.

I stop in the middle of this last room and turn around.

“You removed them,” I blurt incredulously. “You actually took out all the beds.”

He shrugs with that infuriating, barely-there amusement. “I made some adjustments.”

“You removed the fucking beds, Tristan. From all of the rooms. On purpose.”

“I told you what kind of marriage this was going to be.”

My breath catches in my throat. I open my mouth and then close it, momentarily stunned speechless. The audacity of what he did is almost impressive, or it would be if it didn’t make my blood boil.

As if he can sense all the arguments forming on my tongue—likely sprinkled with a liberal number of curse words—Tristan takes a step closer, his expression softening just enough to make me hesitate.

“If this is going to work, Chloe,” he murmurs, “we have to stop running. You can’t keep hiding from me.”

My resolve wavers, just for a second. I hate that he’s right. I hate that a part of me—some deep, buried part—is less upset about this than I want to be.

“Fine,” I bite out, keeping a hint of ice in my voice. “But don’t think for a second that this means anything.”

He smiles again, but it’s different this time, almost as if he knows I’m fighting with myself as much as I’m fighting with him. “Of course.”

I roll my eyes, but there’s no conviction left in the gesture. Instead, I turn away, feeling his gaze on my back as I walk toward the one place I swore I’d never go.

His room. Our room.

The bedroom is large and uncluttered, lined with the same floor-to-ceiling windows as the rest of the house, a dim ocean view filling the entire far wall. A massive king-sized bed takes center stage, draped with expensive-looking bedding.

So that’s why it smells like the sea in here, I think to myself. He leaves the windows open.

Come to think of it, beneath the scent of his cologne, I can almost always pick up traces of the salty ocean whenever I breathe deeply around Tristan.

My things are already here. I can see the edge of my clothes through the open closet door, hanging alongside his, my dresses next to his suits. My skincare is on the en suite bathroom counter, lined up on the marble in the order I use them, which means someone who helped move my things in paid attention to that detail, or Tristan told them to.

As we move around the bedroom preparing for bed, an undeniable awkwardness settles between us. Tristan’s presence looms large in the room, and I find myself acutely aware of every small movement and gesture.

I try to focus on the simple task of getting ready to sleep, but his proximity affects me in ways that make even the simplest actions feel like a monumental effort. The seaside air is thick with anticipation, each moment stretching out uncomfortably as we navigate around each other, careful not to brush too closely.

At the sight of myself in his bathroom mirror—my makeup still intact, my dress every bit as jaw-dropping as it was earlier—I jolt slightly in surprise. Over the course of the house tour and the sleeping negotiations with Tristan, I somehow forgot that I was still in my wedding gown.