The Royals Series

by Bay, Louise

  “Ryder?”

  I shot out of my seat, cracking my leg on the table. Scarlett. Shit, I was normally cooler than this, but I was so damn relieved to see her.

  “Hi,” I said, bending to kiss her on the cheek. “Let me get you a drink.”

  She didn’t meet my eye as she sat. Fuck, I hoped she hadn’t just come to turn me down face-to-face.

  As I stood at the bar, I glanced back to our table. Her long dark hair was pulled back, giving me a perfect view of her slender neck. I’d never seen a woman with hair that black. Those full, almost pouting lips I’d kissed so much just two nights ago, those eyes that watered a little as she came. She was just as beautiful as I remembered. I smiled when she glanced at me.

  She looked away.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said as I returned to the table and slid into the booth.

  She pulled her shoulders back and looked straight at me. “I’m hoping you’ll give me a little more information about this”—she fluttered her fingers through the air—“arrangement you’re proposing.”

  I was in with a shot. Thank God. “Ask anything you like.”

  She glanced toward the bar as if checking for a waitress. Was she needing a little liquid courage before we got down to business?

  A waitress approached and set our drinks down.

  Scarlett tipped back her glass, emptying it. Maybe I should have asked for shots instead of cocktails.

  Fair enough. This was likely to be one of the most bizarre conversations I’d ever have. I could only assume Scarlett felt the same.

  “Let’s start with the sex,” she said.

  “What, now?” She came here to get fucked? I was definitely okay with that, but that’s not what this was about for me. “I’d really like you to agree to marry me first.” And weren’t those words I’d never thought to hear come from my mouth?

  “What? No. If we get married, do you expect me to have sex with you?”

  Jesus, would that be such a hardship? “There is no expectation from my perspective. And I think it would be good to keep things simple.”

  “Would I be able to date other men? I assume we’d have to live together?”

  I’d been through all this with the lawyers on the phone over the last couple of days. As ever, I was prepared.

  “Why don’t I give you a little more background?”

  She nodded, so I continued. “When my grandfather passes, I must be married—and the marriage has to appear genuine. Should our arrangement ever be challenged, the courts would look at things like living arrangements, trips together and any gifts exchanged. So yes, we have to live in the same place, but that doesn’t mean our lives have to change.” I took a long sip of my drink. “My lawyer says that the more questions we can head off at the beginning the better. He’s suggested a public wedding in England—no elopement. We don’t have to make a huge affair of it, but friends and family should go. If we fly over a week ahead of time, that will give people enough time to get to know you—and buy into us.”

  “You’ve thought about this,” she said, nodding slowly.

  “My grandfather’s health is deteriorating, when he dies—” I swallowed hard against the thought of a world without my grandfather in it. “I could lose everything I’ve worked for.”

  “So could I,” she said.

  “Exactly why this works for both of us.” This was business, not a favor. We would both be saving our business by doing this.

  “I’m not sure a week with your family, faking our relationship, would be so easy,” she said, her finger tapping against her cocktail glass. “I’m a terrible liar—people are bound to see right through me.”

  “You’re American.” I shook my head with a laugh. “We can blame a lot on that.” I grinned and she rolled her eyes.

  “Oh my God. Are we really thinking about doing this?” she asked, her eyes betraying her nerves.

  “I really hope so.”

  She ran her finger down her glass, collecting the condensation on her fingertip. “How long? I don’t think you said.”

  “Three months—”

  “Okay.” She nodded her head.

  “Three months minimum after my grandfather dies.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Is that likely to happen . . . How soon—God, I’m sorry, I don’t know how to ask.”

  I swallowed, while trying to build an imaginary wall in front of thoughts of my grandfather’s death. But she was right to ask. “Well, he’s eighty-two. Divorce proceedings can’t be finalized for three months after . . .”

  “He could live another twenty years! There’s no way I’m staying married to you for decades—it’s just not worth it.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I replied.

  She closed her purse as if she were preparing to leave. “You can’t seriously expect me just to go along with that.”

  Shit, I could see how a decade of an arranged marriage might be unpalatable. I’d not thought much beyond actually finding a wife. No one would accept an open-ended offer. No one except Aurora.

  “Five years,” I blurted as she pulled her purse onto the table and stared at me. “Five years and if he hasn’t—if the estate hasn’t passed to me by then, we can either renegotiate, or I’ll find someone else.”

  “Five years is a long time, Ryder. Too long.”

  This was awful, negotiating over the date of someone’s death. “Three years. That’s my final offer.” She’d thought more carefully about the implications of this deal, which was good, as long as she said yes. “We move in together here in New York and you travel with me when I go to England.”

  “I have always wanted to go to England,” she said, sliding her purse back beside her. My breathing slowed. “What did you say about dating?” she asked.

  “I can’t take any risks that my cousin could then use against me,” I said, hoping it wouldn’t be a deal breaker.

  “So no dating.” She nodded slowly as if she were trying to picture her future. “Okay, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I’m terrible at it anyway.”

  That couldn’t possibly be true, but I wasn’t going to argue.

  “But if I’m going to be celibate, so are you,” she said. “I don’t want to find out you’ve got sexist double standards.”

  Wait . . . No fucking. For three years?

  But what choice did I have?

  That sounded like a yes to me. “Okay,” I replied before I could overthink it. I could go without for a few years if it saved my company. “I’ll write it into the contract.” And get to know my right hand, hell, maybe even my left, really, really well.

  “Okay. When do you want to do this?”

  I clenched my fists, trying not to give a high five. I cleared my throat and focused. “You mean when do we sign the contract? Or when do we get married?”

  “All of it. But I want my lawyers to look things over. I want you to replace the loans by the end of next week and have it written in that your loans transfer to me automatically at the end of three years or on our divorce, whichever is the earlier.” She was leaning forward, her hands placed flat on the table. She meant business. But nothing she was suggesting was unreasonable. “And, I get to pick the ring, right?” She paused before she added, with a huge grin, “I’m a sucker for jewelry.”

  “Sure.” Like I gave a shit about the ring.

  “If I have to wear it, I don’t want it to be ugly. And of course, we can sell it at the end.”

  “You can keep the ring, Scarlett.” I’d be a complete dick if I made her give me back the ring after what she would be giving up and giving me.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ryder

  The sun glinted off the aircraft’s fuselage as we got to the top of the steps. I hoped the weather would be as nice when we arrived in London.

  “But you don’t own it?” Scarlett asked as she glanced around the plane.

  “No, it’s too much responsibility—and a little too flash.”

  She laughed. “So it’s too
flashy to own a private plane, but not too flashy to ride in one every time you fly?”

  “It’s all relative,” I replied.

  She slid into a cream-leather seat I usually preferred, so I sat across the table from her.

  “You don’t have to entertain me,” she said. “It’s a long flight.”

  “I know. This is where I normally sit. Well actually, I mostly sit there,” I said, nodding at her chair. “But I’m just as good with this seat. And anyway, we need to talk.”

  She opened her purse and began to pull out all sorts of things—her phone, a tablet, a cosmetics bag, tissue and headphones. Jesus, who was she? Mary Poppins? “You want one?” she asked, catching me staring at the tin of mints she’d just set down.

  I shook my head.

  “Okay. What do you want to talk about?” she asked, looking past me toward the flight deck.

  “Nothing specific. But as you’re going to be meeting all my friends and family in the days ahead of the wedding, we need to get to know each other. Get our story straight.”

  She groaned and my cock twitched. “I told you, I’m a terrible liar.”

  “Then we’ll stick as close to the truth as we can. What we don’t want is Frederick challenging the legitimacy of our relationship in the courts.”

  “Okay, well, you tell me what to say and I’ll say it.”

  The plane began to taxi and we fastened our seatbelts, ready for takeoff.

  “I want to make sure you’re comfortable. We need to decide how we met and how long we’ve known each other. That kind of thing.”

  She gripped the arms of the chair as we picked up speed, closing her eyes as we took off. “Okay,” she said, her voice tight.

  So she was a nervous flyer—that was a new detail.

  “You’re going to be okay,” I said. I wanted to comfort her, but I didn’t want things to be awkward between us.

  “I’ll be fine once we’re up and I’m drunk.”

  I chuckled.

  We levelled out and she finally opened her eyes.

  “You’re back,” I said.

  She released the arms of her chair. “We can say we met because you were interested in buying Cecily Fragrance,” she said, picking up where we left off. “That’s kind of true.”

  I grinned. By the time I’d realized she was connected to Cecily Fragrance, I’d made her come three explosive times.

  “You know what I mean,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me.

  “Okay, but we can’t say we met a few weeks ago. No one is going to buy a relationship that new.”

  “I’ve only owned Cecily Fragrance for two years, so we can’t have known each other longer than that.”

  As I thought about a solution, I took off my cufflinks and placed them on the table and began to roll up my shirt sleeves.

  “Do you always wear formal shirts and suits?” she asked.

  I glanced down at myself. “I came straight from the office,” I said.

  “I’ve never seen you in anything else.”

  “Now that’s not true.” I grinned. “You’ve seen me in nothing.”

  A hint of pink colored her cheeks. “You know what I mean.”

  “What about if I met you years ago at a party?” I asked.

  “What kind of party?” she asked as she tilted her head.

  I paused. “A Christmas party. In Manhattan. I saw you and came over to talk to you. I asked you out and you told me you were married.”

  “You didn’t see the ring?” She fiddled with the engagement ring on her left hand that we’d picked out yesterday.

  “I was too dazzled by your beautiful smile,” I replied, watching as the corners of her mouth turned up.

  “There’s no missing that ring,” I said, nodding at her new engagement ring.

  “You think it’s too big?” she asked. “It’s a lot bigger than my last one.”

  I’d hoped it was. Maybe it was the competitor in me, but even if this marriage was one of convenience, I wanted it to be better than her last one. “The British don’t do big engagement rings. That’s large enough to look authentically American, but small enough people won’t think we’re flash.”

  She tilted her head as she held her hand out to admire her ring. “I like it—it’s Harry Winston for crying out loud! But it’s also art deco, a classic and very New York.”

  “You better love it. I dropped six figures on it.”

  She pulled her hand away and rolled her eyes. I hadn’t meant to sound like an asshole who only cared about money. “So you met me at a party, you crashed and burned. Then what?”

  “Then nothing. I met you again a year ago when I wanted to invest in Cecily Fragrance. Brutal negotiator, you turned down my offer—”

  “But accepted the date.” She grinned. “I like it. It sounds romantic. Did I remember you? From the party?”

  “Of course you remembered me. I was the guy you couldn’t forget.” I liked this game. We could decide who we wanted to be. That’s what I’d been trying to do when I established the Westbury Group. It’s what I’d been trying to do all my adult life.

  She shook her head. “No. No one I know would go for that. I loved my husband.”

  She sounded sad. Was she still in love with him? Fuck, I hoped he wasn’t going to be a problem. The last thing I needed was for him to want her back, or for her to want out of our arrangement. “Okay, so I remembered you, but you forgot all about me.”

  Her smile was back. “Sounds good. And why did you want to marry me?”

  “You told me we wouldn’t have sex before marriage.”

  She laughed and then stopped herself as the cabin crew came over. “Can I get you drinks? Champagne to celebrate?”

  I’d made it pretty clear to people I was flying back to England to get married. I had to act as if I had nothing to hide. As if I’d finally fallen in love.

  “Yes, that would be great.” Scarlett beamed up at the flight attendant—a woman I’d never fucked, thank God. I didn’t want any unnecessary complications on this trip.

  “The start of the celebrations,” Scarlett whispered. “So, really, why are we getting married?”

  “You’re the right girl,” I said, shrugging.

  She nodded and then stopped. “Is it really that simple?”

  “You tell me. You’re the one who’s been married before. Why did you marry your first husband?”

  She picked up her glass, pausing before pressing it to her lips and taking a sip. “I don’t see how that’s relevant. So, I guess, we’re just in love. Never felt like this before blah, blah, blah.”

  I chuckled. “Well, if you left out the blah, blah, blah, I think it might be more convincing.”

  She shrugged and looked out the window.

  “I didn’t want to lose you a second time,” I said.

  She turned back to me, her eyebrows drawn together in confusion. “What?”

  “That’s why I asked you to marry me. I knew when I met you at that party years ago that you were special, and I always regretted that I’d met you too late. I wasn’t about to let you slip away again.”

  “You’re quite the storyteller.”

  “You think it’s too much?”

  “I think it sounds like a fairytale.” She glanced back at the window, absently twirling the stem of her glass against the table. “A beautiful story,” she whispered. “So yes, let’s say that.”

  I wanted to ask what she was thinking. Why she sounded like she didn’t believe in fairytales. But we were strangers. We might have been physically intimate before we’d known anything about each other but, engaged or not, it didn’t seem right to ask such personal questions.

  She sat back into her chair. “Where did you go to college?”

  “Yale. You?”

  “Princeton,” she replied.

  “Did you like it?”

  “It was close to home and by then I was already dating my ex—we went to high school together.”

  “Right.” Again, I
had more questions for her that I had to push down.

  “But yeah, college was good. All those hormones and lack of boundaries. You know?”

  I chuckled.

  “But I went home most weekends. He was at a local school.”

  Sounded like he might be a bit of a fuckup compared to Scarlett. She’d probably never realized she was too good for him.

  “What about you? Your family’s from England, yet you went to college here? Did your parents move?”

  “No. I wanted to go to school here. I boarded from twelve.”

  “Wow, you were a long way away from home. It didn’t bother you?”

  “I didn’t like being away from my sister, but she was older and was away boarding in England anyway.”

  “You didn’t miss your parents?”

  “Nope.” I took a sip of my drink. “My mother was less of a parent and more of a dependent. My father was never around—he disappeared when we were quite young.”

  Scarlett flinched but didn’t comment.

  “School was good, and during the holidays Darcy and I had my grandparents. He was more a parent to us than our mother and father ever were.”

  She paused as if she were trying to find the right words. “And you’re close with Darcy? Even now?”

  “Yeah. She’s crazy, but sweet and protective and everything I could ever want in a big sister.” Thank God for Darcy.

  “I’m close with my brother and sister as well. We have that in common.” I hadn’t noticed the small freckle on her collarbone before.

  “What are their names again?”

  “Violet, who you met at the bar that night. She’s the more bohemian of the three of us. Always has a different job, always willing to try new things. She’s a free spirit. My brother Max is older. Super protective. He became a father when he was in college, had to grow up fast.”

  “Are they married?”

  “Violet, no. I’m not sure she’ll ever get married.” She drew an invisible square on the table with her index finger. “But Max married Harper a few years back—and they all know the truth about this.” She swept the hand holding her champagne flute between us. “Violet and Harper actually talked me into it. Max wasn’t so supportive. He tried to give me the money to pay off the Cecily Fragrance loans, but there was no way I was going to accept that. In the end he gave in and accepted my choice—because he’s a marshmallow.” She grinned as she spoke about her family. “Gruff on the outside only. He’ll do anything for the three of us so long as we’re happy.”