“It is,” I confirm, trying to sound nonchalant.
I fail.
“You didn’t say you were sharing an office with him for four weeks.”
I want to say you didn’t ask, but I’m trying not to be bitchy for the next five minutes, so I shrug. He looks back at the picture like he’s got a question that he doesn’t quite want to ask.
“That’s Olivia,” I say, still not nonchalant. “They’re dating.”
“I see.”
“She’s very nice.”
“I’m sure.”
“She’s twenty-four and works in real estate.”
“He cheat on you with her?”
I sigh and look out the window, because I knew we’d get here but was hoping we wouldn’t.
“Not just her,” I admit, and it doesn’t feel quite as bad to say aloud as I expected.
“Goddamn bastard,” Silas says, and my eyebrows go up. The picture goes back on the desk, face-down. “And now he’s gonna be in your office for a month?”
“It’s his job to integrate newly acquired concerns into the B&L corporate culture,” I say. “I’m a bonus.”
Silas gives me a long, studied look, and it’s not sexual but it’s not platonic, either. It’s assessing. Considering. Curious. I look at him until he meets my eyes again, half a smile on his lips.
“If I had to spend a month in an office with a woman I wronged I don’t think I’d call it a bonus,” he finally says. “Especially if you were the woman.”
“Thank you,” I say, the words so sharp they’ve got blades. “But you’re not him. You wouldn’t expect me to still be pining away for you a year later. Or maybe you would. I don’t know what your opinion of yourself is like.”
“Pretty high, but not that high.”
“Especially with me?”
“You don’t strike me as the pining sort, for starters.”
Despite myself, I glance at the roses, ridiculously red in their vase on my otherwise very white desk, like the interior of a particularly maudlin Hallmark card.
“I’m not,” I say, and shrug. “If anything, I’m ruthlessly pragmatic and no-nonsense. Which leads me to why I asked you to stop by, actually.”
I walk around my desk, open a drawer, and grab some papers from a folder. Silas says something under his breath that sounds like it might be oh goodie, and I ignore it.
“Here,” I say, and hand him one set of papers. “The guidelines.”
Across the top is written FAKE DATING RULES AND REGULATIONS, and when he reads it, Silas gives me a look.
“Hurrah,” he says.