Falling For The Rebel Princess
Ellie Darkins
From princess to rockstar royalty!Self-proclaimed ‘black sheep’ Princess Charlie of Afland has worked long and hard to be taken seriously in the music industry, managing to keep her royal obligations, and her secret heartbreak, under the radar. Until one night in Vegas changes everything…Rockstar Joe Kavanagh gets more from his Vegas gig than he’d bargained for...a princess bride and a PR story to die for! As the initial attraction, which led them down the aisle, turns into something deeper, keeping their marriage strictly business proves increasingly difficult!
From princess to rock-star royalty!
Self-proclaimed “black sheep” Princess Charlie of Afland has worked long and hard to be taken seriously in the music industry, managing to keep her royal obligations, and her secret heartbreak, under the radar. Until one night in Vegas changes everything...
Rock star Joe Kavanagh gets more from his Vegas gig than he’d bargained for...a princess bride and a PR story to die for! As the initial attraction, which led them down the aisle, turns into something deeper, keeping their marriage strictly business proves increasingly difficult...
A glint of gold caught Charlie’s eye and stopped her dead.
No. That had been the dream. It had to be.
She went over her memories, rooted to the spot, staring at the ring, trying to pull apart what was dream and what was real. After eighteen hours traveling and many more without sleep, the past twenty-four hours barely felt real. Images and memories played through her mind as if they had happened to somebody else.
The thrumming, heaving energy of the gig last night. That had been real. The music capturing her senses, hijacking her emotions and pumping her full of adrenaline. Real.
Hot and sweaty caresses just before dawn. Dream.
Dancing with Joe in the club, trying to talk business, shouting in his ear. Moving so closely with him that they’d felt like one body. Feeling the music play between them like a language only they spoke. Maybe that was real.
The slide of his bare skin against hers. So, so dreamy.
Him talking softly, trading tracks, sharing a pair of headphones, until one and then both of them fell asleep. God, she wished she knew.
But as she raised her left hand and examined the demure gold band on her third finger she was certain of one thing.
Las Vegas chapel wedding. Real.
Falling for the Rebel Princess
Ellie Darkins
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ELLIE DARKINS spent her formative years devouring romance novels, and after completing her English degree decided to make a living from her love of books. As a writer and editor, she finds her work now entails dreaming up romantic proposals, hot dates with alpha males and trips to the past with dashing heroes. When she’s not working she can usually be found running around after her toddler, volunteering at her local library or escaping all the above with a good book and a vanilla latte.
For Mike and Matilda
Contents
Cover (#uccf0e3a1-5bc3-52eb-8d25-f0ba359d7cfb)
Back Cover Text (#u1f776613-bd44-595c-8cf6-0d24d82339b4)
Introduction (#uc7ee1f92-4fda-5837-a551-395e424bd353)
Title Page (#u17f3c740-be63-5e14-ae5c-cf159ef8ab14)
About the Author (#u514f3a1a-0f08-5358-a569-830f303dc098)
Dedication (#ucc0a5ff3-7775-5349-9910-3b20f1a176e4)
CHAPTER ONE (#u26b3677d-4884-528a-bbf7-da2a6c574b86)
CHAPTER TWO (#u9b2e866b-2f92-5a9e-bbcc-bb3c8cb0c220)
CHAPTER THREE (#u5cef403f-ff5d-5b11-8866-46a8a5a76875)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u69c4eb47-532a-5a64-9b64-9e84c2906f39)
‘NOT YET!’ CHARLIE GASPED, willing herself to be dragged back under.
In her dream her skin was hot and damp, on fire from his touch.
Awake, her tongue felt furry.
In her dream her body hummed, desperate for the feel of him.
Awake, her eyes stung as she peeled them open.
In her dream she begged for more, and got everything she didn’t even know she needed.
Awake, she needed to pee.
She admitted defeat and stretched herself properly alive, wincing at the harsh Nevada sunlight assaulting her in the hotel room. As her toes encountered skin she flinched back, realising that she did have this one, small reminder of her dream. The man who’d taken the starring role was beside her on the mattress, his face turned away from her, his arms and legs sprawled and caught in the sheets. She looked away. She couldn’t think about him. Not yet.
Easing herself out of bed, she willed him not to wake. And worked her thumb into her waistband, rubbing at her skin where her jeans had left a tight red line. The T-shirt she’d slept in was twisted and creased, and she glanced around the room, wondering whether her luggage had been transferred when the hotel had upgraded them to a luxury suite. She shuddered when she caught sight of herself in the mirror and tried to pull her hair up into some sort of order.
It had started out backcombed and messy, and her eyeliner had never been subtle in her life—but a couple of hours’ sleep had taken the look from grunge to tragic. She wiped under her eyes with a finger, and the tacky drag of her skin made her shudder. And desperate to shower.
A glint of gold caught her eye and stopped her dead.
No. That had been the dream. It had to be.
She went over her memories, rooted to the spot, staring at the ring, trying to pull apart what was dream and what was real. After eighteen hours travelling and many more without sleep, the past twenty-four hours barely felt real, images and memories played through her mind as if they had happened to somebody else.
The thrumming, heaving energy of the gig last night. That was real. The music capturing her senses, hijacking her emotions and pumping her full of adrenaline. Real.
Hot and sweaty caresses just before dawn. Dream.
Dancing with Joe in the club, trying to talk business, shouting in his ear. Moving so closely with him that they felt like one body. Feeling the music play between them like a language only they spoke. Maybe that was real.
The slide of his bare skin against hers. So, so dreamy.
Him talking softly as they lay on the bed, trading playlists on their phones, sharing a pair of headphones, until one and then both of them fell asleep. God, she wished she knew.
But as she raised her left hand and examined the demure gold band on her third finger, she was certain of one thing.
Vegas chapel wedding. Real.
She banged her head back against the wall. Why did she always do this? She was losing count of the number of times she’d looked over the wreckage of her life after one stupid, impulsive move after another and wished that she could turn back time. If she had the balls to go home and tell her parents that she didn’t want their royal way of life and everything that came with it, maybe she’d stop hitting the self-destruct button. But starting that conversation would lead to questions that she’d never be prepared to answer.
Thinking back to the night before, she tried to remember what had triggered her reaction. And then she caught sight of the newspaper, abandoned beside the bed. The slip of the paper under her fingertips made her shiver with the memory of being handed one like it backstage in the club last night, and she let out a low groan. It had been the headline on the front page: Duke Philippe bragging about his forthcoming engagement to Princess Caroline Mary Beatrice of Afland, otherwise known as Charlie. It was the sort of match her parents had been not so subtly pushing on her for years, the one she was hoping that would go away if she ignored it for long enough. She knew unequivocally that she would never marry, and especially not someone like Duke Philippe.
She’d left the cold, rocky, North Sea island of Afland nearly ten years ago, when she’d headed to London determined to make her own way in the music business. Her parents had given her ten years to pursue her rebellion—as they put it. But they all knew what was expected after that: a return to Afland, official royal duties, and a practical and sensible engagement to a practical, sensible aristocrat.
So there was nothing but disappointment in store for her family, and for her.
She shrank into the bathroom and hid the newspaper as she heard stirring from the bed. Perhaps if she hid for long enough it just wouldn’t be true—Joe Kavanagh and their marriage would fade away as the figment of her imagination that she knew they must be.
Marriage. She scoffed. This wasn’t a marriage. It was a mistake.
But it seemed as if her body didn’t care which bits of last night were real and which were imagined. The hair on her arms was standing on end, her heart had started to race, and she felt a yearning deep in her stomach that seemed somehow familiar.
‘Morning,’ she heard Joe call from the bedroom, and she wondered if he’d guessed that she was hiding out in there. ‘I know you’re in there.’
The sound of his voice sent another shiver of recognition. British, and educated. But there was also a burr of something rugged about it, part of his northern upbringing that felt exotically ‘authentic’, when compared to the marble halls and polished accents of her childhood.
She risked peeking round the bathroom door and mumbled a good morning, wondering why she hadn’t just left the minute that she’d woken up—running had always worked for her before. She’d been running from one catastrophe to another for as long as she could remember. Because this was her suite, she reminded herself. They’d been upgraded when the manager of the hotel had heard about their impromptu wedding, and realised that he had royalty and music royalty spending their wedding night in his hotel.
The only constant in her life since she’d left the palace in Afland had been her job. She’d worked from the bottom of the career ladder up to her position as an A&R executive, signing bands for an independent record label, Avalon. And that was the reason she had to get herself out of this room and face her new husband. Because not only was he a veritable rock god, he was also the artist that she’d been flown out here to charm, persuade and impress with her consummate professionalism in a last-ditch bid to get him to sign with her company.
She held her head high as she walked back into the bedroom, determined not to show him her feelings. The sun was coming in strong through the windows, and the backlighting meant that she couldn’t quite see his expression.
‘How’s the head?’ he asked, his expression changing to concerned.
She wondered whether she should tell him that she’d only had a couple of beers at most last night. That her recklessness hadn’t come from alcohol, it had been fuelled by adrenaline and something more dangerous—the destructive path she found herself on all too often whenever marriage and family and the future entered the conversation.
Had Joe been drunk last night? She didn’t think so. He’d seemed high when he’d come off stage, but she had been at enough gigs to know the difference between adrenaline and something less legal. She remembered him necking a beer, but that was it. So he didn’t have that excuse either.
Why in God’s name had this ever seemed like a good idea—to either of them?
‘I’ve felt better,’ she admitted, crossing the room to perch on the edge of the bed.
Up close, she decided that it really wasn’t fair that he looked like this. His hair was artfully mussed by the pillows, his shirt was rumpled, and his tiny hint of eyeliner had smudged, but the whole look was so unforgivably sexy she almost forgot that whatever had happened the night before had been a huge mistake.
But sexy wasn’t why she’d married him. Or maybe it was. When she went into reckless self-destruction mode, who was to say why she did anything?
Even in this oasis in the middle of the desert, she hadn’t been able to escape the baggage that came with being a member of the royal family. The media obsession with royal women marrying and reproducing. Someone had raised a toast when they had seen her, to her impending marriage, asked her if she was up the duff and handed her a bottle of champagne. She’d been tempted to down the whole thing without taking a breath, determined to silence the voices in her head.
‘So,’ she said. ‘I guess we’re in trouble.’
* * *
Trouble? She was right about that. Everything about this woman said trouble. He had known it the minute that he had set eyes on her, all attitude and eyeliner. He had known it for sure when they’d started dancing, her body moving in time with his. So at what point last night had trouble seemed like such a good idea?
When they’d left the dance floor, in that last club, their bodies hot and sticky. When she’d been trying to talk business but he’d been distracted by the humming of his skin and the sparks that leapt from his body to hers whenever she was near. When Ricky, the drummer in his band, had joked that he needed to show some real rock-star behaviour if they were going to sell the new album, and Joe had dropped to one knee and proposed.
He hadn’t thought for a second that she would go along with it.
But Charlie had stopped for a moment as their eyes had met, and as everyone had laughed around them he had been able to see that she wasn’t laughing, and neither was he. The club had stilled and quietened, or maybe it was just his mind that had, but suddenly there had been just the two of them, connected through something bigger than either of their bodies could contain. Something he couldn’t pretend to comprehend, but that he knew meant that they understood each other.
And then she had nodded, thrown back her head and laughed along with everyone else, and they had been carried on a wave of adrenaline, bonhomie and contagious intoxication into a cab and up the steps of the courthouse. Somehow, still high from their performance and bewitched by the Princess, he hadn’t stepped out of their fantasy and broken the spell.
They’d been cocooned in that buzz, carrying them straight through the ceremony. Such a laugh as they’d toppled out of the chapel. Right up until that kiss. Then it had all felt very real.
Did she remember that feeling as they had kissed for the first time? He knew in his bones that he could never forget it, as they were pronounced husband and wife.
‘Are you going to hide in there all morning?’ he asked.
In the daylight, she didn’t look like a princess any more than she had the night before. Maybe that was how he’d found himself here. He’d expected to be on edge around her, but as soon as he had met her... Not that he was relaxed—no, there was too much going on, too much churning and yearning and desire to call it relaxed. But he’d been... He wasn’t sure of the word. Her boss had sent her out here to convince him that their label was a good fit—and he’d been right. They had... Maybe fit was the right world. They’d just understood each other. She understood the music. Understood him. And when they had started dancing, there had been no question in his mind that this was important. He didn’t know what it was, but he knew that he wanted more.
And marrying her—it had been a good move for the band. You couldn’t buy publicity like that. He must have been thinking about that, must have calculated this as a business move. It was the only thing that made sense.
But was she expecting a marriage?
Because she came with a hell of a lot of baggage. Oh, he knew which fork to use, and how to spot the nasty ones in a room of over-privileged Henrys. He’d learned that much at his exclusive public school, where his music scholarship had taken him fee-free. But the most important part of his education had been the invaluable lesson he’d got in his last year—everyone was out to get something, so you’d better work out what you wanted in return.
The only place he felt relaxed these days was on the road, with his band. They moved from city to city, sometimes settling for a few weeks if they could hire some studio space, otherwise going from gig to gig, and woman to woman, without looking back. Everyone knowing exactly what they wanted, and taking what was on offer with no strings attached.
‘Come on,’ he said, reaching for her hand. As his fingertips touched hers he had another flash of that feeling from last night. The electric current that had joined them together as they had danced; that had woven such a spell around them that even a visit to a courthouse hadn’t broken it.
‘I can’t believe we got married. This was your fault. Your idea.’
Was she for real? He shrugged and reminded her of the details. ‘No one forced you. You seemed to think it was a great idea last night.’
So why was she looking at her ring as if it were burning her?
‘Wh...?’
He waited to see which question was burning uppermost in her mind.
‘Why? Why in God’s name did I think it was a great idea?’
‘How am I supposed to know if you don’t? Maybe you were thinking it would be good publicity for the album.’
He looked at her carefully. Yes, that was why they had done it. But also...no. There was more to it. He couldn’t believe that she was such a stranger this morning. When they’d laughed about this last night, it hadn’t just been a publicity stunt—that sounded too cold. It had been a joke, a deal, between friends. A publicity stunt was business, but last night, as they’d laughed together on the way to the courthouse, it had been more than that.
And maybe that was where he had gone wrong, because he knew how this worked. He knew that all relationships were deals, with each partner out to get what they wanted. He had no reason to be offended that she was acting like that this morning.
‘I’m not sure why you’re mad at me. You thought it was a great idea last night.’
‘I hadn’t slept for thirty-six hours, Joe. I think we can say that I wasn’t doing my best reasoning. We have to undo this. What are my parents going to say?’
Her parents, the Queen of Afland and her husband. He groaned inwardly.
‘Last night you said, and I quote, “They’re going to go mental.” As far as I could work out, that was a point in the plan’s favour.’
In the cold light of morning—not such a good idea. Bad, in fact. Very bad.
He had married a princess—an actual blue-blooded, heir-to-the-throne, her-mother’s-a-queen princess.
He was royally screwed.
‘Look,’ Joe said. ‘I’m hungry, too hungry to talk about this now. How about we go out for breakfast and discuss this with coffee and as much protein as they can cram on a plate?’
CHAPTER TWO (#u69c4eb47-532a-5a64-9b64-9e84c2906f39)
CHARLIE GAZED INTO her black coffee, hoping that it would supply answers. Her memories had started to filter back in as she’d sipped her first cup; shame had started creeping in with her second. She hoped that this cup, her third, would be the one that made her feel human again.
‘So how do we undo this?’ she said bluntly. ‘This is Vegas. They must annul almost as many marriages as they make here. Do we need to go back to the courthouse?’
She looked up and met Joe’s eye. He was watching her intently as he took a bite of another slice of toast. ‘We could,’ he said. ‘If we want an annulment, I guess that’s how we go about it.’
‘If?’ She nearly spat out her coffee. ‘I don’t think you understand, Joe. We got married.’
‘I know: I was there.’
‘Am I missing something? The way I see things, we were joking around, we thought it would be hilarious to have a Vegas wedding, and we’ve woken up this morning to a major disaster. Aren’t you interested in damage limitation?’
‘Of course I am, but, unlike you, I think the reasons we got married were sound. Not necessarily the best reasons to enter into a legally binding personal commitment, but sound nonetheless.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘Remind me.’
‘Okay, obvious ones first. Publicity. The band needs it. The album is almost finished, we’re looking for a new label, and there is no such thing as bad publicity, right?’
‘Mercenary much?’
‘Look, this isn’t my fault. You were good with mercenary last night.’
She snorted. ‘Fine, publicity is one reason. Give me another.’
‘It shows you’re serious about the band.’
She crossed her arms and sat back in her seat, fixing him with a glare. ‘I’ve signed plenty of bands before without marrying the lead singer. They signed with me because they trust that I’m bloody good at my job. Are you seriously telling me that whether or not I would marry you was going to be a deal-breaker?’
He leaned forward, not put off by her death stare. In fact, his eyes softened as he reached for her hand, pulling her back towards him. She went with it, not wanting to look childish by batting him away.
‘Of course it wasn’t,’ he said gently. ‘But breaking the marriage now? I’m not sure how that’s going to play out. I’m not sure what our working relationship could look like with that all over the papers.’
She shook her head, looking back into the depths of her coffee, still begging it for answers.
‘All of which I have to weigh against the heartbreak of my family if we don’t bury this right now.’
She avoided eye contact as she tried to stop the tears from escaping. But she took a deep breath and when she looked up they were gone. ‘Do you think anyone knows already? The press?’
‘We weren’t exactly discreet,’ he said, with a sympathetic smile. ‘I’d think it’s likely.’
‘And that can’t be undone, annulment or not.’
He leaned back and took a long drink of his orange juice. ‘So let’s control the narrative.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What story would hurt your family more—a whirlwind romance and hasty Vegas marriage, or a drunken publicity stunt to further your career? Because that’s how the tabloids are going to want to spin it.’
‘What’s your point, Joe?’ She’d taken her hand back and crossed her arms again, sure that this conversation was taking a turn that she wasn’t going to like.
‘All I’m saying is that we can’t go back in time. We can’t get unmarried, whether we get an annulment or not. So we either dissolve the marriage today and deal with the fallout to our reputations...’
‘Or...?’
‘Or we stay married.’
Her breathing caught as just for a second she considered what that might mean, to be this man’s wife.
‘But we’re not in love. Anyone’s going to be able to see that.’
He scrutinised her from under his lashes, which were truly longer and thicker than any man’s had a right to be. ‘So we’re going to have to work hard to convince them. You can’t deny that it’s a better story.’
‘And you can’t deny that it means lying to my family. Ruining all the plans they were making for my life. I don’t know what your relationship with your family is like, but I’m not sure that I can pull it off. I’m not sure that I want to. Things are diffi—’
She stopped before she revealed too much. Joe raised an eyebrow, obviously curious about why she had cut herself off, but he didn’t push her on it.
‘Would you rather they knew the truth?’
Of course not. She had been hiding the truth from them for years, ever since she’d found out that she could never be the daughter or the Princess that they needed her to be.
‘Are we seriously having this conversation? You want to stay married? You do know that you’re a rock star, right? If you were that desperate for publicity you could have found a hundred girls who actually wanted to be your wife.’
‘Wow, you’re quite something for a guy’s ego. For the record, this isn’t some elaborate ruse to get myself a woman. I don’t have any problems on that score. All I’m doing is making the best of a situation. That’s all.’
Charlie took a big bite of pie, hoping that the sugar would succeed where the coffee hadn’t. ‘Well, I’m glad to hear that you’re not remotely interested in me as a woman.’
He fixed her with a meaningful stare, the intensity of his expression making it impossible for her to look away.
‘I never said that.’
Heat rose in her belly as he held the eye contact, leaving her in no doubt about how he thought of her. She shook her head as he finally broke the contact. ‘I can’t believe that I’m even considering this. You’re crazy. There’s no way we can keep this up. What happens if we slip? What happens when someone finds out it’s not for real? What happens when one of us meets someone and this marriage of convenience isn’t so convenient any more?’
He reached for her hand across the table, and once again there was that crackle, that spark that she remembered from the night before. She saw him in the chapel, eyes creased in laughter, as he leaned in to kiss her. Those eyes were still in front of her, concerned now though, rather than amused.
‘It doesn’t have to be for ever. Just long enough that it doesn’t look like a stunt when we split. You weren’t planning on marrying someone else any time soon, were you?’
‘Never.’ Her coffee cup rattled onto the saucer with a clash, liquid spilling over the top.
‘Wow—that really was a no.’
She locked her gaze on his—he had to understand this if they were going to go on. ‘I mean it, Joe. I didn’t want to get married. Ever. I’m not wife material.’
‘And yet here I am, married to you.’
He held her gaze and there was something familiar there. Something that made her stomach tighten in a knot and her skin prickle in awareness. With all the unexpected drama of finding themselves married, it seemed as if they’d both temporarily forgotten that they had also found themselves in bed together that morning.
Perhaps he was remembering something similar, because all of a sudden there was a new fire in his eyes, a new heat in the way that he was looking at her.
Her memory might be a bit ropey, but between the caffeine and the sugar her brain had been pretty much put back together, and there was one image of the night before that she couldn’t get from her mind.
You may now kiss the bride.
They’d all burst out laughing, finding the whole thing hilarious. But as soon as Joe’s hand had brushed against her cheek, cupping her jaw to turn her face up to him, the laughs had died in her throat. He’d been looking down at her as if he were only just seeing her for the first time, as if she had been made to look different by their marriage. His lush eyelashes had swept shut as he’d leaned towards her, and she’d had just a second to catch her breath before his lips had touched hers. They had been impossibly soft, and to start with had just pressed dry and chaste against hers. She’d reached up as he had and touched his cheek, just a gentle, friendly caress of her finger against his stubbled skin. But it had seemed to snap something within him; a gasp had escaped his lips, been swallowed by hers. His mouth had parted, and heat had flared between them.
She’d closed her eyes, understood that she was giving herself up to something more powerful than the simple actions of two individuals. As her eyes had shut her mouth had opened and her body had bowed towards her husband. Her hips had met his, and instantly sparks had crackled. His hands had left her face to lock around her waist, dragging her in tight and holding her against him. His tongue had been hot and hungry in her mouth; her hands frenzied, exploring the contours of his chest, his back, his butt.
And then the applause of their audience had broken into her consciousness, and she’d remembered where they were. What they were doing.
Blood had rushed to her cheeks and she could feel them glow as she’d broken away from Joe, acknowledging the whoops with an ironic wave.
‘All right, all right,’ she’d said, a sip of champagne helping with the brazen nonchalance; she’d hoped that she was successfully hiding the shake in her voice. ‘Hope you enjoyed the show, people.’
She’d looked up at Joe to see whether she had imagined the connection between them, whether he’d still felt it buzzing and humming and trying to pull their bodies back together. By the heated, haunted look in his eyes, she wasn’t alone in this.
He was worried, and he should be, because this marriage of convenience had just got a whole lot more complicated, for both of them. It had been a laugh, a joke, until their lips had met and they had both realised, simultaneously, that the flirting and banter that had provided an edge of excitement to their dancing that night would be a dangerous force unless they got a lid on it.
In the cold light of the morning after, she knew that they needed to face the problem head-on. She broke her gaze away from him, trying to cover what they had both clearly been remembering.
‘Ground rules,’ she said firmly, distracting herself by taking another bite of pie. ‘If we do this, there have to be ground rules to stop it getting complicated.’ He nodded in agreement, and she kept talking. ‘First of all, we keep this strictly business. We both need to keep our heads and be able to walk away when the time is right. Let’s acknowledge that there is chemistry between us, but if we let that lead us, we’re not going to be objective and make smart decisions. And I think we both agree that we need to be smart.’
‘People will talk if we don’t make this look good. It has to be convincing.’
‘Well, duh.’ She waved to the waitress for a coffee refill. ‘You’re really trying to teach me how to handle the press? Obviously, in public we behave as if we’re so madly in love that we couldn’t wait a single minute longer to get married. We sell the hell out of it and make sure that no one has a choice but to believe us. But that’s in public. In private, we’re respectful colleagues.’
He snorted. ‘Colleagues? You think we can do that? You were there, weren’t you, last night? You do remember?’
Did she remember the kiss? The shivers? The way that she could still feel the imprint of his mouth on hers, as if the touch of skin on skin had permanently altered the cells? Yeah, she remembered, but that wasn’t what was important here.
‘And that’s why we need the rules, Joe. If you want to stay married to me, you’d better listen up and pay attention.’
‘Oh, I’m listening, and you’re very clear. In public, I’m madly in love with you. Behind closed doors I’m at arm’s length. Got it. So what are your other rules?’
She resurrected the death stare. ‘No cheating. Ever. If we’re going to make people believe this, they have to really believe it. We can’t risk the story being hijacked. Doesn’t matter how discreet you think you’re being, it’s never enough.’
‘I get it. You don’t share. Goes without saying.’
She dropped her cup back onto her saucer a little heavier than she had planned, and the hot, bitter liquid slopped over the side again. ‘This isn’t about me, Joe. Don’t pretend to know me. This is about appearances. I’ve already told you, this isn’t personal.’
‘Fine, well, if you’re all done then I’ve got a rule of my own.’
‘Go on, then.’ She raised an eyebrow in anticipation.
‘You move in with me.’
This time, the whole cup went over, coffee sloshing over the side of the table and onto her faded black jeans. At least she’d managed to miss her white shirt, she thought, thanking whoever was responsible for small mercies. She mopped hastily with a handful of napkins, buying her precious moments to regain her composure and think about what he had said. Of course she understood deep down that they would have to live together. But somehow, until he’d said it out loud, she hadn’t believed it.
They would be alone together. Living alone together. No one to chaperone or keep them to their ‘this is just business’ word. Watching him across a diner table this morning, it wasn’t exactly easy to keep her hands off him, so how were they meant to do that living alone together?
But she knew better than anyone that they had to make this look good. If her parents knew that she’d only done this to get out of the marriage to Philippe they would be so disappointed, and she didn’t know that she could take doing that to them again.
Separate flats weren’t going to cut it. By the time she looked back up, she knew that she seemed calm, regardless of what was going on underneath.
‘Of course, that makes sense. Are you going to insist on your place rather than mine?’
‘I’ll need my recording studio.’
She nodded. ‘Fine. So that’s it, then? Three ground rules and we’re just going to do this?’
‘Well, if you’re going to chicken out, you need to do it now.’
‘I’m not eight years old, Joe. I’m not going to go through with this because you call me chicken.’
‘Fine, why are you going to do it?’ Nice use of psychology there, she thought. Act as though I’ve already agreed. He really did want this publicity. But it didn’t matter, because she’d already made up her mind.
‘I’m doing it because I don’t want to hurt my family any more than I have to, and because I think it’ll be good for my career.’ And because it would save her from being talked into a real marriage, one which she knew she could never deserve.
‘As long as you’re doing it, your reasons are your own business,’ Joe replied. She felt a little sting at that, like a brush of nettles against bare skin. Her own business. Damn right it was, but the way he said it, as if there really were nothing more than that between them... It didn’t make sense. She didn’t want it to make sense. She just knew that she didn’t want it to hurt.
‘So what are we going to tell people?’ she asked after a long, awkward silence. ‘I guess we need to get our stories straight.’
He nodded, and sipped at his coffee. ‘We just keep it simple. We were swept away when we met each other yesterday, knew right away that it was love and decided we needed to be married. The guys in the band will go along with it. You don’t have to worry about that.’ Somehow she’d forgotten that they’d been there, egging them on, bundling them in the cab to the courthouse. When she thought back to last night, she remembered watching Joe on stage, sweat dripping from his forehead as he sang and rocked around the stage. Him grabbing her hand and pulling her to the dance floor when they’d gone on to a club after the gig, when he hadn’t wanted to talk business.
She remembered the touch of his mouth on hers, as they were pronounced husband and wife.
But of course there had been witnesses, people who knew as well as she did that this was all a sham.
‘What if they say something? They could go to the press.’
‘They won’t. Anyway, to everyone else it was just a laugh. And if anyone did say something, it’d be up to us to look so convincingly in love that no one could possibly believe them.’
‘Ah, easy as that, huh.’
As they sat in the diner she realised how little thought they’d actually given this. She didn’t even know when she would see him again. Her flight was booked back to London that night. She’d only been in Vegas to take this meeting. Her boss had sent her on a flying visit, instructed to try anything to get him to sign. She’d given her word that she wouldn’t leave without the deal done. Would he see through them when they got back? Would he realise how far she had gone to keep to her promise?
‘I’m flying home tonight,’ she said.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘You were pretty sure you’d get me to sign, then. Didn’t think you’d have to stick around to convince me?’
‘I thought you’d be on the move, actually. I was told that you were only in Vegas for one night.’ She knew that the band were renowned for their work ethic and their packed tour schedule, moving from city to city and gig to gig night after night. This had been her only chance for a meeting, her boss had told her as he’d instructed her to book a flight.
If he was always on the move like that, perhaps this would be easier than she thought. It could be weeks, months, before they actually had to live together. And by then, maybe... Maybe what. Maybe things would be different? There was no point pretending to be married at all if she thought that they would have changed their minds in a few weeks. They had to stick it out longer than that. If they were going to do this, they had to do it properly.
‘I am, as it happens. I’m flying back to London tonight too.’
* * *
Why had he said that? They were meant to be in the States for two more weeks. Their manager had booked them into a retreat so that he could finish writing the new album. It should have been just a case of putting the finishing touches to a few songs, but he had an uneasy feeling about it this morning. He needed to go back and look at it again. There were a few decent tracks there, he was sure. But a niggling voice in his head was telling him that he still hadn’t got the big hitters. The singles that would propel the album up the streaming charts and across the radio waves. There was studio space booked for them in London in two weeks’ time and it had to be fixed before then.
Their manager was going to kill him when he told him he wouldn’t be showing up.
He could write in London; he had written the last album in London. It had nothing to do with Charlie. Nothing to do with her feelings, anyway. As she kept saying, this was just business. But it would look better for them to arrive home together.
Nothing to do with their feelings. Right. He would make her believe that today. Because her memory might be fuzzy but he could remember everything. Including the moment that they’d been on the dance floor, him still buzzing from the adrenaline of being on stage, her from the dancing and the music and the day and a half without sleep.
They’d moved together as the music had coursed through him, the bass vibrating his skin. She’d been trying to talk business, shouting in his ear. Contracts and terms, and commitment. But he hadn’t been able to see past her. To feel anything more than the skin of her shoulder under his hand as he’d leaned in to speak in her ear. The soft slide of her hair as he’d brushed it off her face. ‘Let’s do this,’ she’d said. ‘We’d be a great team. I know that we can create something amazing together.’
She’d reached up then, making sure she had his attention—as if it would ever be anywhere but on her again. And then Ricky had said those idiotic words, the ones that no judge could take back this morning.
* * *
She’d laughed, at first, when he had proposed, assuming that he was joking. It had had nothing to do with the way she’d felt when his arm was around her. The way that that had made him feel. As if he wanted to protect her and challenge her and be challenged by her all at once.
He could never let her know how he had felt last night.
It was much better, much safer that they kept this as business. He knew what happened when you went into a relationship without any calculation. When you jumped in with your heart on the line and no defences. He wouldn’t be doing it again.
And then there were the differences between them. Sure, it hadn’t seemed to matter in that moment that he’d asked her to marry him, or when they were dancing and laughing and joking together, but a gig and a nightclub and beer were great levellers. When you were having to scream above the music then your accent didn’t matter. But in the diner this morning there was no hiding her carefully Londonised RP that one could only acquire with decades of very expensive schooling, and learning to speak in the echoey ballrooms of city palaces and country piles.
He’d learnt that when he’d joined one of those expensive schools at the age of eleven, courtesy of his music scholarship free ride. His Bolton accent had been smoothed slightly by years away from home, first at school, and then on the road, but it would always be there. And he knew that, like the difference in their backgrounds, it would eventually come between them.
His experiences at school had made it clear that he didn’t belong there.
And when he’d returned home to his parents, and their comfy semi-detached in the suburbs, he had realised that he didn’t belong there any more either. He was caught between two worlds, not able to settle in either. So the last thing that he needed was to be paraded in front of the royal family, no doubt coming into contact with the Ruperts and Sebastians and Hugos from his school days.
And what about his family? Was Charlie going to come round for a Sunday roast? Make small talk with his mum with Radio 2 playing in the background? He couldn’t picture it.
But he would have to, he realised. Because it didn’t matter what they were doing in private. It didn’t matter that he had told himself that he absolutely had to get these feelings under control, their worlds were about to collide.
It wasn’t permanent. That was what he had to remind himself. It wasn’t for ever. They were going to end this once a decent amount of time had passed, and in the meantime they would just have to fit into each other’s lives as best they could.
Just think of the publicity. A whirlwind romance was a good story. No doubt a better one than a drunken mistake. But since when had he allowed the papers to rule on what was and wasn’t a good idea for him? No, there was more to it than that. Something about waking up beside her in bed that he wasn’t ready to let go of yet.
‘I have an album launch party to go to first, though,’ he said at last. ‘What do you say to making our first appearance as husband and wife?’
CHAPTER THREE (#u69c4eb47-532a-5a64-9b64-9e84c2906f39)
CHARLIE ADJUSTED THE strap on her spike heels and straightened the seam of her leather leggings. As soon as the car door opened, she knew there would be a tsunami of flashes from the assembled press hordes. She was considered fair game at the best of times, and if news of the wedding had got out by now, the scrum would be worse than usual.
These shots needed to be perfect. She wasn’t having her big moment hijacked by a red circle of shame.
It was funny, she thought, that neither she nor Joe had called his manager, or her boss yet, and told them about what had happened. Not the best start to a publicity campaign, which was, after all, what they had agreed this marriage was. It was more natural, this way, she thought. If there was a big announcement, it would look too fake. Much better for them to let the story grow organically.
As the limo pulled up outside the club she realised that no announcement was necessary anyway. Word had obviously got around. The hotel had arranged for them to be picked up from a discreet back door, an old habit, so she hadn’t been sure whether there had been photographers waiting for her there. If there had, they’d taken a shortcut to beat them here. There were definitely more press here than a simple album launch warranted. The story was out, then.
Without thinking, she slipped her hand into Joe’s, sliding her fingers between his. The sight of so many photographers still made her nervous. It didn’t matter how many times she had faced them. It reminded her of those times in her childhood when she’d been pulled from the protective privacy of her family home and paraded in front of the world’s press, all looking for that perfect picture of the perfect Princess. As a child she had smiled until her cheeks had ached, dressed in her prettiest pink dress, turning this way and that as her name was shouted. It had been a small price to pay, her parents had explained, to make sure that the rest of their lives were private. But as she’d got older she’d resented those days more and more, and her childish rictus grin had turned into a sullen teen grimace.
And then, when she was nineteen, and had realised that she would never be the Princess that her family and her country wanted her to be, she’d stopped smiling altogether. She remembered sitting in the doctor’s office as he explained what he’d found: inflammation, scar tissue, her ovaries affected. Possible problems conceiving.
She might never have a baby, no chubby little princes or princesses to parade in front of an adoring public, and no hope of making the sort of dynastic match that would make her parents happy.
Her most important duty as a royal female was to continue her family’s line. It had been drummed into her from school history lessons to formal state occasions from as far back as she could remember. Queens who had done their duty and provided little princes and princesses to continue the family line.
And things hadn’t changed as much as we would all like to think, she knew. The country had liked her mother when she was a shining twenty-something. But it was when she’d given the country three beautiful royal children that they’d really fallen in love with her, when she had won their loyalty. And that was something that Charlie might never be able to do. She might never feel the delicious weight of her child in her arms. Never breathe in the smell of a new baby knowing that it was all hers.
What if she never made her parents grandparents, and saw the pride and love in their eyes that she knew they were reserving for that occasion?
And as soon as she’d realised that, she had realised that she could never make them truly proud of her, somehow the weight of responsibility had fallen from her shoulders and she’d decided that she was never going back. If she wanted to roll out of a nightclub drunk—okay. If she wanted to disappear for three days, without letting anyone know where she was going—fine. If she wanted to skip a family event to go and listen to a new band—who cared?
Her mother insisted on a security detail, and Charlie had given up arguing that one. Her only demand was that they were invisible—she never looked for the smartly dressed man she knew must be on the row behind her on the plane, and so she never saw him. And the officers didn’t report back to her mother. If she thought for a second that they would, she would have pulled the plug on the whole arrangement. That was why they’d not intervened last night: they knew she had a zero-tolerance approach to them interfering with anything that didn’t affect her physical safety.
She was never going to be the perfect Princess, so why build her family’s hopes up? She could let them down now, get it out of the way, in her own way, and not have to worry with blindsiding them with disappointment later.
Except it hurt to disappoint them, and it didn’t seem to matter how many times that she did it. Every time, the look on their faces was as bad as the time before.
What would they say this time, she wondered, when they realised that she had married someone she had just met—so obviously to scupper the sensible match that they were trying to make for her? And she had married a rock star at that, someone who couldn’t be further from the nice reliable boys that they enjoyed steering her towards at private family functions. What was the point of going along with that? she’d always thought. Entertaining the Lord Sebastians and Duc Philippes and Count Henris who were probably distant cousins, and who all—to a man—would run a mile as soon as they found out that they might not be needing that place at Eton or Charterhouse, or wherever they’d put their future son’s name down for school before they had even bagged the ultimate trophy wife.
Joe leaned past her to look out of the window, and then gave her a pointed look. ‘I guess our happy news is out.’
‘Looks that way,’ she said, with a hesitant smile. ‘Ready to face the hordes?’
‘As I’ll ever be.’ He looked confident, though, and relaxed. As if he’d been born to a life in front of the cameras, whereas she, who had attended her first photo call at a little under a day old, still came out in a sweat at the sight of a paparazzo.
But she stuck on what she’d come to think of as her Princess Scowl, in the style of a London supermodel, and pressed her knees and ankles together. It was second nature, after so many hours of etiquette lessons. Even in skin-tight leather, where there was no chance of an accidental underwear flash. She ran a hand through her hair, messing up the backcombed waves and dragging it over to one side in her trademark style. A glance in the rear-view mirror told her that her red lip stain was still good to go, managing to look just bitten and just kissed. She took a deep breath and reached for the door handle.
Joe stopped her with the touch of his fingertips on her knee. ‘Wait.’
It was as if the leather melted away and those fingertips were burning straight into her skin. Wait? For ever, if she had to.
But before she could say, or do, anything, they were gone, as was Joe. Out of the door and into the bear pit. Then her door was wrenched open and his hand was there, waiting to pull her out into the bright desert sunshine. She gripped his hand as he helped her from the car, and the flashbulbs were going off before she was even on her feet.
Shouts reached her from every direction.
‘When was the wedding?’
‘Was Elvis there?’
‘Were you drunk?’
And then there it was, the question that she’d never anticipated but that she realised now had been inevitable from the first.
‘Are you pregnant?’
She stumbled, and it was only Joe’s arm clamping round her waist and pulling her tight that stopped her falling on her face in front of the world’s press. And then she was falling anyway, because Joe’s lips were on hers, and her heart was racing and her legs were jelly and her lips...her lips were on fire. One of his hands had bunched in her hair, and she realised that this, this look, this feeling, was what she’d been cultivating in front of the mirror for more years than she cared to think about. Just been kissed, just been ravished. Just had Joe’s tongue in her mouth and hands on her body. Just had images of hot and sweaty and naked racing through her mind. He broke away and gave her a conspiratorial smile. She bit her lip, her mouth still just an inch from his, wondering how she was meant to resist going back for more.
And then the shouts broke back into her consciousness. ‘Go on—one more, Charlie!’
And the spell was broken. She wasn’t going to give them what they wanted. She turned to them, scowl back in place, though there was a glow now in the middle of her chest, something that they couldn’t see, something that they couldn’t try and own, to sell for profit.
She grabbed Joe’s hand and pulled him towards the door of the venue, ignoring the shouts from the photographers.
She dragged him through the door and into a quiet corner.
‘So I guess we survived our first photo call.’
She had hoped the relative seclusion of this dark corner would give her a chance to settle her nerves, for her heartbeat to slow and her hands to stop shaking. But as Joe took another step closer to her and blocked everything else from her vision, she felt anything but relaxed.
‘Are you okay? You look kind of flushed,’ he asked.
‘I’m fine. I just hate...never mind.’ Her voice dropped away as her gaze fixed on his lips and she couldn’t break it away. This wasn’t the time to think about what she hated, not when she was so fixed on what she loved, what she couldn’t get enough of. Like the feeling of his lips on hers.
‘Joe, I thought I saw you come in. And the new missus!’
Ricky, the drummer from Joe’s band, Charlie recognised with a jolt.
More flashbacks of the night before: the band laughing with them in the taxi cab to the courthouse, joking about how they were going to have to sign with her now she’d done this. She had to convince them that they’d been mistaken last night. That she’d married Joe for love at first sight, before they started talking to journalists. If it wasn’t already too late.
She reached for Joe’s hand and gripped it tightly in hers, hoping that it communicated everything that she needed it to.
‘Hi, Ricky,’ she said, plastering on a smile that she hoped broadcast newly wedded bliss and contentment.
‘So your first day as husband and wife, eh. How’s it working out for you?’
She tried to read into his smile what he was really saying. If only she could fake a blush, or a morning-after glow. But in the absence of that, she’d have to go on the offensive.
‘Pretty bloody amazingly, actually,’ she said, leaning into Joe and hoping that he’d run with this, with her.
‘Really?’
Ricky gave Joe a pointed look, and it told Charlie everything that she needed to know. He had thought last night that this was all a publicity stunt, and nothing that he had seen yet had changed his mind.
‘Well, I’m just glad that you both decided to take one for the team.’ He grinned. ‘It was a brilliant idea. I wish I’d thought of it first.’
She opened her mouth to speak, but Joe got there first.
‘I’m not sure what you mean, Ricky. We’re not doing this for the team. I admit it was a bit hasty, but we really meant it last night. We wanted to get married.’
‘Because you’re both so madly in love?’
She felt Joe’s hand twitch in hers and tried not to read too much into it.
‘Because it was the only thing we could do,’ he said. ‘I don’t care what we call it. Love at first sight. Or lust. Whatever. I just knew that once I had Charlie in my arms there was no way I was going to let her go. And if that meant marriage, then that’s what I wanted.’
Bloody hell, maybe he should have been an actor rather than a singer. He certainly gave that little speech more than a little authenticity. She leaned into him again, and this time he dropped her hand and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She looked up at him, and there was something about the expression in his face that forced her up onto her tiptoes to kiss him gently on the lips.
‘Wow, okay,’ Ricky said as she broke away. ‘I guess I missed something last night. So, someone wants to chat with us about the new album, if you’ve got a minute.’
‘Okay,’ Joe replied, ‘but you do remember what we decided last night. We’re going to say yes to Charlie’s label. I’m not going back on my word.’
‘A bit early in the marriage for those sorts of ructions, is it?’ Ricky looked at them carefully, and Charlie knew that they hadn’t dispelled all of his doubts, regardless of how good an actor Joe was. ‘Either way, we still need to speak to them. Until this deal is signed, we schmooze everyone, as far as I’m concerned. I know the others feel the same.’
She had to call her boss. She couldn’t think why she hadn’t done it before now. She’d do it on the way to the plane. She glanced at her watch. They couldn’t stay long if they were going to make the flight. For a second she thought wistfully of her family’s private plane, and how much easier life had been when she’d been happy to go along with that lifestyle, to take what she didn’t feel she had earned. But it had got to the point where she simply couldn’t do it any more. If she was never going to be able to pay her parents back with the one thing that everyone wanted from her, she couldn’t use their money or their privilege any more.
She had some money left to her by her grandparents—despite her protestations, the lawyers had told her that it belonged to her and there was nothing that she could do about it—and her salary from the record label.
‘I’m sorry, do you mind if I talk to them?’ Joe asked, turning to her.
‘Of course not.’ She forced a smile, trying to live in the moment and forget all of the very good reasons she should be freaking out right now. ‘Go on.’
But Joe turned to Ricky. ‘You go ahead,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there in a second.’
‘You all right?’ he asked, when they were alone. ‘Still happy with everything? Because if you’re going to change your mind, now’s the time...’
She drew away from him and folded her arms. ‘Why would I have changed my mind?’
She didn’t understand what had happened to cause this change in mood. His shoulders were tense, she could see that.
Was it because he’d just reminded Ricky of their deal to sign with her the night before? The thought made her feel slightly sick, reminded her that whatever they might say to his band, whatever story they might spin for the papers, when it came down to it, this really was just a publicity stunt, or a business arrangement or...whatever. Whatever it was, she knew what it wasn’t. It hadn’t been love at first sight. It wasn’t a grand romance. It wasn’t a fairy tale, and there was going to be no happy ending for her. Well, fine, it wasn’t like she deserved one anyway.
But now that they were married, they had to make it work. They had to appear to be intoxicated with one another. Luckily, intoxicated was one of her fortes. She forced herself to unfold her arms and smile. ‘Of course I’m all right.’
Taking a deep breath, she stepped towards him, and with a questioning look in her eye snaked her arms around those tense shoulders. She placed another chaste peck on his lips, and smiled as she drew away. ‘See? Picture perfect. Everything’s as we agreed. Let’s go say hi to everyone.’
Under the pressure of her arms, she felt his shoulders relax and his face melted into a smile. ‘Well, we could give them something to talk about first.’
His arms wrapped around her waist, and she was reminded of the rush of adrenaline and hormones that she had felt outside when he had kissed her in front of the cameras. Her breath caught as her body softened into his hold. This time when his lips met hers, there was nothing chaste about it. Her arms tightened around him as he lifted her just ever so slightly, rubbing her hips against his as she slid up his body. His arms wrapped her completely, so that her ribs were bracketed with muscular forearms, and his hands met the indents of her waist. She was surrounded by him. Overwhelmed by the dominance of his body over hers.
His mouth dominated her too, demanding everything that she could give, and it was only with the touch of his tongue that she remembered where they were. She pushed both hands on his chest, forcing him to give her space, to unwind his arms from around her waist.
She smiled as she looked at him, both of them still dazed from the effect of the kiss. ‘Do you think they bought it?’ she asked, remembering that just a few moments ago they had been discussing the fact that this relationship was just a business deal—that the purpose of the kiss had been to keep up appearances. But Joe’s face fell, and she knew that she had said the wrong thing.
‘I think they bought it fine,’ he said. ‘It was a winning performance.’
Through the bite of his teeth, she knew that it wasn’t a compliment.
She shook her head, then reached up and pecked him one last time on the cheek. ‘Whatever it was, it blew my mind.’ She met his eyes, and she knew that he saw that she was genuine. Whatever else might be going on, there was no denying the chemistry between them. It would be stupid to even try.
But beyond that, beyond the crazy hormones that made her body ache to be near his, was there something else too? A reason that the disappointment in his eyes made some part of her body hurt? She slipped her fingers between his and they walked over to where Ricky was holding court with a woman that she recognised from another record label, her competition, and a music journalist.
‘So here’s the happy couple,’ the hack said with a smile, raising her glass to toast them. Charlie spotted a waiter passing with a tray of champagne and grabbed a flute for herself and one for Joe. She saw off half the glass with her first sip, until she felt she could stare down the journalist with impunity.
She watched Joe as they chatted, her hand trapped within his, and tried not to think about whether the warm glow of possessiveness she felt was because she’d bagged him as an artist, or a husband.
* * *
As they walked through Arrivals at Heathrow Airport, Joe felt suddenly hesitant at the thought of taking Charlie back to his apartment, definitely not something he was used to. It wasn’t as if he were a stranger to taking girls home. Though in fairness home was more usually a hotel room or their place. But now that he and Charlie were back on British soil, he realised how little they’d talked about how this was going to work.
‘So we said we’d stay at my place,’ he reminded her as they headed towards the end of another endlessly long corridor.
‘We did,’ she agreed, and he looked at her closely, trying to see if there was more he could glean from these two words. But he had forgotten that his new wife was a pro at hiding her feelings—she’d had a lifetime of practice. Charlie offered nothing else, so he pushed, wanting the matter settled before they had to face the press, who were no doubt waiting for them again at the exit of the airport. Airport security did what they could to push them back, but couldn’t keep them away completely. Not that he should want that, he reminded himself. They wanted the publicity. It was good for the band. It was the whole reason they were still married.
But even good publicity wasn’t as important as finishing a new album would be—that thought hadn’t been far from his mind the last few days. He couldn’t understand how he had thought that it was nearly finished. He’d played the demo tracks over and over on the plane, and somehow the songs that he’d fine-tuned and polished so carefully no longer worked when he listened to them. They didn’t make him feel. They had a veneer of artifice that seemed to get worse, rather than better, the more that he heard them.
His first album had come from the heart. He shuddered inwardly at the cliché. It was years’ worth of pent-up emotion and truths not said, filtered through his guitar and piano. It was honest. It was him. This latest attempt... It was okay. A half-dozen of the tracks he would happily listen to in the background of a bar. But it was clean and safe and careful, and lacking the winners. The grandstanding, show-stopping singles that took an album from good to legendary.
He was still writing. Still trying. But he was out of material and out of inspiration. His adolescent experiences, his adult life of running from them had fed his imagination and his muse for one bestselling album. But he couldn’t mine the same stuff for a second. It needed something new. So what was he meant to write about—how ten years on the road made relationships impossible? How his parents kept up with his news by reading whatever the tabloids had made up that week? That his only good friends had spent most of that time trapped with him in some mode of transport or another for the last decade? It was hardly rousing stuff.
‘Do you want to go back there now, then?’ he asked Charlie.
How was this so difficult? Was she making it that way on purpose?
She looked down at her carry-on bag. ‘This is all I have with me.’
‘We can send someone for your stuff.’
‘No.’ She didn’t want anyone riffling through her things. Occasionally she missed the discreet staff from her childhood home in the private apartments of the palace, who had disappeared the dirty clothes from her bedroom floor before it had had a chance to become a proper teenage dive, but she loved the freedom of her home being truly private. That the leather jacket that she dropped by the door when she got home would still be right there when she was heading out the next morning.
She stopped walking and looked up at him. ‘Okay, so we go back to yours tonight. Tomorrow we go to my place and pack some stuff. Does that work for you? Or I could go back to my place tonight. Sleep there, if we don’t want to rush into—’
‘You sleep with me.’
He couldn’t explain the shot of old-fashioned possessiveness that he had felt when she suggested that they sleep apart. Except... The bed share of the previous night. That was a one-off, wasn’t it? He supposed they’d find out later, when she realised that his apartment’s second bedroom had been converted to a recording studio. Leaving them with one king-sized bed and one very stylish but supremely uncomfortable couch to fight over. He was many things, but chivalrous about sleeping arrangements wasn’t one of them. He couldn’t remember the last time that he had slept eight hours in a bed that wasn’t hurtling along a motorway or through the clouds. So he could promise her a chivalrous pillow barrier if she absolutely insisted, but there was no way he was forgoing his bed. Not even for her.
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