At the Billionaire’s Wedding

by Maya Rodale, Caroline Linden, Miranda Neville, Katharine Ashe

  “Mr. Austen,” Harry began.

  “Please, call me Duke. Having trouble with your Wi-Fi, I see. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Probably not. As I told Arwen, I thought I had our problem sorted last week, but it’s gone on the blink again. The telephone company says it could recover at any time. Or not.” Arwen glared at him, silently fuming at the implication that Harry had kept her informed about the problem when, in fact, he’d never given her the straight scoop.

  “I have to be in touch with work,” Duke said, clearly on the verge of apoplexy. “I can’t stay here. We’ll have to leave, Jane.”

  “I’ve looked into the possibilities,” Harry said. “We could get a mobile satellite connection here within a day or so. Or the dedicated broadband could come back online. Or…” He went off on one of his technical spiels.

  Arwen thought the strain in his face matched her own, as though he had as much at stake as she did. Though if Duke Austen walked, he’d still have his fabulous house and hotel and his title; Arwen wasn’t sure if her business would survive once the news leaked out of such a spectacular failure. Luxe Events could certainly wave goodbye to any more billionaire gigs.

  Then Jane, wonderful Jane Sparks, the best friend a girl ever had, laughed. “Duke, honey, you promised me a Regency wedding and I guess that’s what I’m getting. I find it very sweet and romantic that you’ll have to pay attention to your bride instead of spending ninety percent of the time with your nose in the phone.”

  “But…”

  Jane tucked her arm in his and gave him a kiss. “You know everything’s fine. There’s no reason you shouldn’t go all week without checking in at the office.” She dropped her voice so only Arwen was close enough to hear. “Remember the hurricane?”

  Duke gave his fiancée a scorching look. “I suppose,” he said. “And it’ll help with secrecy if the guests can’t be online all the time.”

  “As to that,” Arwen said, “there’s cell signal at the gazebo in the park. We’ll fit it out with some comfortable seating and refreshments for when you—and other guests—want to rejoin the modern world for a little while. Otherwise we’ll immerse you in the aristocratic country life of old England. As Jane rightly says, nothing could be more romantic. Speaking of romantic, you must see your suite. It’s to die for.”

  “I’ll be happy to take you now.” Mark inserted himself into the discussion. “I’ve already sent your luggage up. I thought you’d enjoy putting your feet up with a glass of champagne before touring the house and grounds.” He swept them off, leaving Harry and Arwen alone in the hall.

  “What can I say?” He gestured hopelessly.

  “About what?” The Wi-Fi thing pissed her off, but she was far more upset about the way he’d lied about his identity. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a lord? I suppose it amuses you to have sex with the peasants.”

  “I’m not a lord, my father is. And yes, it amused me greatly to make love to you. And for the record you are about the farthest thing from a peasant I’ve met. I’m sure Mark could tell me who made that smart little red dress in which, incidentally, you look good enough to eat. I don’t name clothing, but I can spot expensive when I see it. Are you sure you weren’t amusing yourself by dallying with the lower orders?”

  Arwen bit her lip. She hoped she hadn’t treated him like a menial, but she had thought of him as some kind of manual laborer, of an elevated kind. He was wearing his usual jeans, with a good shirt, and looked sexy as hell. When he mentioned eating her, she got hot inside.

  But she couldn’t figure out his motive for presenting himself as a dumb wage slave instead of the owner’s son. Had he hoped to influence her report to Duke, somehow? She’d felt guilty about her attraction to him, and worried that she’d let it affect her judgment. It hadn’t occurred to her that he was the one doing the manipulating. She needed to consider the possibility from all angles, when she wasn’t feeling harassed and upset. Had he given her five mind-blowing orgasms—she hadn’t forgotten a single one—simply to keep her sweet about Brampton as the wedding site?

  Yet she had agreed to it before she came five times. So perhaps they’d been provided to keep her from noticing any little shortcomings of his hotel, like a functioning kitchen and the freakin’ Internet.

  “I can’t talk about this now,” she said. “I have too many things to deal with.”

  “I got rid of the big pile of earth next to the stables,” he cajoled. “And we have a kitchen. The inspectors came yesterday so we canceled the mobile equipment.”

  “Oh. That’s good.” The news tamped down her steamy indignation, for a second. “We had that sorted, for God’s sake.” She was talking like an English person now. “But the Internet?” She almost shouted with exasperation. “And your real name?”

  He was looking at her with sincere concern in his blue eyes that she didn’t trust. “I messed up, Arwen,” he said. “It all started out innocently enough and now I really regret not telling you who I am.”

  “I must go and see what the Next Gordon Ramsey is doing. I have a wedding to run and no time to spend on screwups.”

  “Don’t you ever screw up?” he asked quietly.

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “How nice for you.” He sounded slightly nettled while she was ready to scream like a banshee.

  Hoisting her leather tote over her shoulder she stormed off, then stopped at the door and turned. “I can’t afford to screw up because I wasn’t born a lord. I suppose Mark is a duke or something.”

  “Uh, his family may possibly own the Delaville Group.”

  “Good. He should know more about running a hotel than a freakin’ English aristocrat.”

  Arwen managed to go almost twenty-four hours without exchanging more than a few terse words with Harry. She let Mark handle greeting the guests—she couldn’t complain about his skills—while she made final arrangements for the flowers and tents, made sure the Next Gordon Ramsey was installed in the newly inspected kitchen, and avoided his wandering hands. Only when Harry happened to come into the pantry while she was discussing the breakfast menu did she allow the chef to stroke her ass without repercussion.

  She stuck her nose in the air when Harry followed her into the hall and waited while she had a few words with Jane’s college friend Cali Blake.

  “I hear you’re a librarian,” she said.

  “You must see the library here.” Harry smiled engagingly at the pretty Philadelphian.

  He hadn’t shown her the library. Arwen didn’t even know Brampton had one.

  “I would really love that.” Cali hid a yawn behind her hand. “Maybe tomorrow, so I can really appreciate it after some sleep? Or whenever you’re able.”

  She followed Mark and a new batch of arrivals upstairs and for a moment the busy hall emptied, leaving Arwen and Harry alone.

  “Are you ever going to speak to me again?” Harry asked.

  “We’ve spoken.”

  “Don’t be disingenuous.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me who you are? It’s not a little lie, like saying you’ve read Moby Dick or you’ll call in the morning. I feel stupid and that is one of my least favorite emotions.” She felt itchy in her skin and it made her surly.

  Harry folded his arms and frowned. “I don’t see why you’re so annoyed. Forgive me if I’m pleased when people seem to like me for myself, not because I’m the future Lord Melbury, an event that is unlikely to occur for many years, what with my father being well under sixty and in rude health. Besides, the peerage is all rubbish now, completely outdated and of no use except for getting a table in snobbish restaurants. I doubt I will ever use the title.”

  “It’s all very well to say that, but you’ve still got all this.” Arwen stretched her arms out to encompass the house, the gardens, and all the other magnificence that was Brampton. “It’s easy to dismiss what you were born with since no one can take it away from you.”

  He took her hand and held it tightly, a
lmost, but not quite, to the point of pain. “You think so? Do you have any idea how difficult it is to hold onto a place like this? If I had any sense I’d have let my father sell it when he wanted to.”

  “Sell it?” Naively, perhaps, she hadn’t thought much about the history and economics of Brampton. They had a big house and decided to turn it into a hotel. End of story. But of course it wasn’t.

  He spoke quietly, with an urgency unlike his usual relaxed, amused tones. “Three years ago, my parents decided they’d had enough of the place. It cost a fortune to maintain, even in a rundown state, and they wanted to move to Bali, where living is cheap and the weather is great. As a matter of form, since I’m their only child, they asked for my opinion. I was living in London and opened my mouth to say yes, of course, it was their house and their decision. But the words wouldn’t come out. I realized I didn’t want to give it up.”

  “I wouldn’t either.” Arwen stopped trying to pull her hand away, and he relaxed his grip. “It is gorgeous, though a bit on the large side.”

  “They thought I was mad and sometimes I think so too. I couldn’t bear the thought of not having Brampton to come home to. So we came to an arrangement. My father handed the estate over to me and, as long as he lives seven years, I won’t have to pay death duties on the value of the property. We sold the good pictures; the Rembrandt made enough after taxes to keep my parents forever, while some other paintings funded the conversion of the house. Between the hotel itself, shooting parties, and holiday rentals of cottages around the estate, we should be able to keep going.”

  “You were set to open this fall. Why did you agree to Duke’s request to hold the wedding here? It seems like an awful lot of hassle.”

  “Come with me.”

  Off the hall, next to the Gold Saloon, there was a room Arwen hadn’t seen before. Used to the high state of gloss that characterized the rest of the house, in the library she might have been in a different world. Twice as long as it was wide, it was lined with cases of deep brown wood that reached almost to the beautiful ceiling. Fancy plasterwork had been painted bright white, in contrast to the shabby state of the rest of the fixtures. Although the furniture—chairs and tables, Arwen guessed—was covered in dust cloths, the parquet floor was scratched with numerous loose sections. Odors of paint and dust hung about the room. The principal cause of the atmosphere of neglect was easily identified: the bookcases, covered over with giant sheets of clear plastic, were almost all empty.

  The library was like a sleeping beauty, waiting to be reawakened to its former glory.

  “What a beautiful room, and how sad,” Arwen said.

  “This is why I need Duke Austen,” Harry said simply. “He offered me enough money to finish the restoration in here. It’s my favorite room and a house isn’t a house without a library.”

  “I agree. In my New York apartment, I give the name to a few shelves on either side of the fireplace.” She stopped and smiled. “In terms of percentage of available space, mine might be bigger.” She walked over to a couple of sections of shelves in the wall opposite the marble fireplace, the only ones occupied.

  “Be careful,” Harry said. “All the bookcases were removed from the wall so we could deal with dry rot in the wainscoting. They haven’t been screwed back in securely.”

  Arwen stepped back and peered at the titles from a distance. Lots of novels and history and eastern philosophy, reflecting the interests displayed on Harry’s nightstand. “Why so few books? Did you have to sell most of them?”

  “It was a toss-up between a painting and the library, but in the end I couldn’t part with rare editions that had been bought new by my ancestors.”

  “I can understand that. Books are personal. Knowing what people read brings them closer.”

  “My feelings exactly. The collection has been stored away, so when we ran out of money a year ago, it was too depressing having no books. I unpacked the books I had in my flat in London and stuck them in here. They’re not properly arranged, but you are welcome to borrow anything you like.”

  “I’ll be too busy with the wedding, I expect, but it’s good to know I have options.” He looked at her anxiously and she found that it was hard to stay really mad at a man in the middle of a library. “Thanks for showing me this, Harry. I understand now why you were so anxious for the wedding plan to go through.”

  “Does that mean I’m forgiven?”

  She wanted to say yes; already she’d had to restrain herself from kissing him. Not a sexual kiss, but one on the cheek, between friends; a gesture of solidarity. But while her anger had subsided, her hurt had not. “You should have told me who you were. It wouldn’t have affected my opinion of the hotel. And you especially should have told me who you were before we slept together.”

  He nodded. “No more lies, I promise. Can we revisit the issue after the wedding?”

  “If everything between now and next Sunday goes perfectly, you may find me in a forgiving mood.”

  “That’s something to look forward to. What would you like me to do?”

  “Duke has his heart set on a hunt for his bachelor party. Most of these guys are from Silicon Valley, for God’s sake. Can you prevent a bunch of geeks with guns from shooting each other? It’s bad for business when half the wedding party is dead or in intensive care.”

  Harry gave the sleepy grin that never failed to make her insides quiver. “The gamekeeper who organizes the shooting at Brampton is thoroughly used to managing lunatics.”

  Chapter Seven

  Only four more days until the wedding and Harry couldn’t wait.

  The strain of a weeklong event with almost one hundred residential guests was beginning to tell on him. He couldn’t imagine how Arwen stood it. Her only outward sign of stress was a derangement of her sleek, shiny hair, but he knew she worried about everything. He had some excellent ideas about how to make her relax as soon as this damn thing was over. He’d enjoy them too.

  “Good morning, Elf,” he said, finding her staring at and baffled by the espresso machine in the family kitchen. “Let me do that. Did you hear that Nanny caught the Next Gordon Ramsey shagging one of the guests on a saddle horse in the stables?”

  “Is Nanny okay?”

  “She’s pretty unflappable. I trust you’re over your infatuation with the man. Faithless bastard.”

  “The guy is impossible. I wish the Original Gordon Ramsey had been available. Much less trouble. All in all things could be worse. Jane seems to have lost her mind, but that’s normal for brides.” She leaned in to breathe the freshly ground coffee while he enjoyed her proximity and her scent.

  “She’s not going to call it off, is she? I’m not sure I have a cancelation clause in my contract.”

  “It’s her wedding dress. She has an incredibly beautiful designer wedding gown, but now she wants to check out a bridal shop in Melbury. Is it conceivable she’ll find anything she likes there?”

  “I have no idea, but I expect they can produce something suitably meringue-like. Do you have to go with her?”

  “Thank God, no. She hasn’t asked me and I only heard about it from Mark. Just an attack of the last-minute crazies, I expect.”

  He tightened the portafilter and slung an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t you ever want a wedding dress for yourself?” That was a dangerous thing to ask, the kind of question he shied away from, not wishing to give rise to expectations. Antiquated institution or not, there was something about the peerage that put a gleam into the eyes of otherwise sensible women.

  Not his Elf. She stepped away as though scalded. “While the coffee brews I’ll run over to the hotel kitchen and make sure that lecher has breakfast running smoothly. Also make sure he hasn’t put anything in the refrigerator reserved for the desserts being delivered from London. And that Sheila and he haven’t gotten into a knife fight over the vegan dishes.”

  Babbling away, she backed out of the room. Harry whistled optimistically. Arwen was rattled and, if he wasn’t mista
ken, it had nothing to do with work.

  Two days until the wedding and Arwen felt like she was running a marathon, overseeing the meals and entertainment for a solid week and dealing with one small crisis after another.

  And then there was the tabloid photographer. This was particularly worrisome, given the heavy secrecy that had surrounded the wedding. As far as they could tell, there was only one. His phallic camera lens had been spotted peeking around a corner or sticking out from shrubbery. He’d been surprised several times, but the man was nimble on his feet.

  He had to be driven off by Saturday because People magazine had an exclusive on the wedding itself in exchange for a hefty contribution to an animal rescue charity. No way was Arwen going to lose the chance of getting her wedding—all right, technically Duke and Jane’s—in People, thanks to the squalid British tabloids.

  On the whole, things had gone well and she worked well with Harry and Mark. Once the hotel was properly staffed it would be a fabulous location for any event. She was already thinking about how she could sell Brampton as a destination wedding site to American clients. Most importantly, the bridal couple was happy and the guests seemed to be enjoying themselves.

  Meanwhile, she had a relatively easy day ahead of her. Harry had arranged to take all the men off, hopefully to kill birds and not each other. Jane and her maid of honor Roxanna were leading a bachelorette expedition off the premises. Arwen looked forward to a quiet morning at the gazebo, going over her lists, checking e-mail, and making calls to suppliers, then an afternoon overseeing the tent people and the florist.

  First coffee and a soothing chat with Nanny in the giant kitchen. Since Harry was away she’d have to tackle the espresso machine herself. She’d watched him often enough. She found those big sure hands twisting the little metal containers of coffee into place very sexy.

  “Arwen, honey.” The last voice she would have expected greeted her at the kitchen door.