“Look, Gab, we should talk,” he said.
“Yeah, maybe we should,” she said, re-thinking the ‘no discussion’ thing. It was time to lay it all out on the table because she had no intention of becoming a political widow for the next forty years. “I think it’s time for us to go back home. You said you’d be willing to move to Monaforte or to Italy with me, and I think this proves the time is now. Unless we go back there, you’ll just worm your way further and further into this black hole of work and the next thing you know we’ll be complete strangers.”
Matthew’s brows furrowed. “Move to Monaforte? Or Italy?”
She nodded. “Remember? We talked about this early on when we started dating,” she said. “We’d stay here for a few years and then go back home. I think a few years is officially up. It’s time to go home.”
He shook his head. “Monaforte or Italy might be your home, Gabriella, but they’re not mine,” he said. “I have an important career here. I just found out our legislative director is leaving to go head up a committee. Which means I’ll take over his job. And with the senator about to move into an election cycle, well, I’m not going anywhere but to work.”
Gab’s eyes grew wide. “You mean even more work than you already do?” She threw up her hands in exasperation and shook her head, completely dismayed: Americans and their notion of working until they die, no pleasure, no relaxation, just work, work, and more work. “There are hardly any more hours in a day in which to work! Unless you’re planning to go home and sleep in the senator’s bed and make him breakfast every the morning.”
“So funny,” he said. “No need to get cynical about it.”
She shook her head. “Cynical? Are you crazy? Here you are this man who woos me on the subway and promises me this wonderful future with him and asks me to marry him and six months later with you constantly postponing wedding plans, you tell me that basically you’re planning to get married to your career and not your fiancé?”
Matthew pursed his lips and furled his brow, running his hand through his hair in evident exasperation. “Look, Gabriella, why don’t we just talk about this tomorrow?”
“Because you’ll be gone to work long before I’m up. And you’ll be back well after I’m in bed. So when will we discuss it? After the election in a year or so?”
“Gab, this is what I want to do with my life,” he said. “I need you to support me with that.”
Which sounded suspiciously like what Giovanni had said to her back in her university days. Why was it Gab always had to be the one to be subsumed in the man’s world? Why was it that her time, her career, and her wishes took second place?
Gab shook her head. “Uh, sorry, Matthew. I love you, really I do. But I’m not going to sit alone every night for years on end while you work yourself into burn-out. And for what? Some egotistical politician who views you as completely disposable tinder for the political fire he’s building, and when he’s done with you he’ll merely discard you like he does everyone else who becomes useless to him?” by now she was pacing the floor, having realized finally what should have been obvious to her long ago. This relationship was never going to work out.
Matthew crossed the room and grabbed Gabriella’s hands in his. “Gabriella, sweetheart,” he said. “You know you mean the world to me, babe. I love you so much. But I need to do this. For me. I need to see where this can take me. And I need you to be by my side and not complain about it, okay?”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Matthew. I just can’t be the invisible woman in your life.”
With that she dropped his hands and turned away, flicking lights off as she went. “I think you know your way out.”
Chapter Two
Edouardo Squires-Thornton had been out of sorts for far too long, after having lost his father unexpectedly months earlier. It was hard enough that he no longer had the most important man in his life—the one who guided and encouraged him and showed him what it meant to be a man—to look up to. But with losing his father he also felt as if he’d become an invisible member in his family: when Lord Hubert, Marquess of Weltenham, passed away, everything—the estate, the stables, the horses, the thousands of acres, the investments, the very prestige of the Squires-Thornton family, all immediately funneled to Edouardo’s older brother, Darcy.
It’s what happened in the circle in which his family came up: the right of succession went to the first-born son in the family, and Edouardo had the bum luck of not being that man. So with the demise of his father came the very loss of identity with which he’d been raised: he was Lord Hubert’s son, but with Lord Hubert now conspicuously absent from his life, who exactly was he and what was he supposed to be?
If he were to be honest with himself, he’d have acknowledged at this point that he was probably pretty depressed. His first clue would have been that he spent an inordinate amount of time in his boxer shorts watching American reality TV, which clearly was doing nothing to prod him out of his funk. Nothing like binge-watching a season of The Bachelor to make you feel thoroughly disgusted with yourself. Had he so chosen, he also could have picked up on this whole thing being a source of concern for others, since his mother, Lady Charlotte, and sister Clementine would not stop haranguing him about what a complete sloth he’d become. Not that they used the word sloth, but he could read between the lines.
Edouardo’s slight salvation was Alastair Crowell, who’d served as the estate manager for Lord Hubert, and who at least maintained some continuity with the place after Hubert’s untimely passing. As the youngest in the family, Edouardo spent much of his childhood on the Weltenham estate hanging out with and learning from his father. Whether it was while on long treks into the forest, or hunting for grouse, or even occasionally wild boar, he lived an idyllic childhood, often times by his beloved father’s side. But when not with his father, who spent plenty of hours stuck at his desk and on the telephone running his empire, Edouardo enjoyed being with “Uncle” Alastair.
Whether it was mucking stalls or feeding the horses, collecting eggs in the henhouse, or tending the family garden for the fruits and vegetables they used regularly, the two often worked side by side all day long. Tall from an early age with broad shoulders, Edouardo was built for manual labor, and it was where he was happiest. The only problem was now it only served to remind him of his loss, and further cement the fact that this land was not his nor would it ever be. Hence he reverted to slouching around in the house most days, putting out very little effort and trying to engage in conversations as little as possible. He’d come to conclude that he was perfectly happy being a hermit, and would have gladly remained so, were it not for his scheming sister.
“So, uh, Edouardo,” Clementine said, twirling her long, blond hair as she stood behind him while he sprawled out on the sofa, glued to the television screen. “I think you need to get a life.”
“I’ve got a life, thanks.” He stuck out his hand and aimed the remote toward the screen.
“Honestly, have you ever washed your hair this week?” she said as she peered at the top of his head, trying to do something with his bedheaded blond hair that was sticking up in all directions.
He swatted up at her hands. “Leave me alone,” he said. “My hair’s fine. Besides, it’s not good to wash it every day.”
“And you’re an expert on hair maintenance because?”
“I saw it on a talk show yesterday,” he said. “Washes out the natural oils in your hair.”
“Yeah, well, it looks like you could bottle the natural oil in your hair, it’s built up so. It’s gross.”
“So I like to be gross,” he said. “Maybe I’m working on making this a new trend. Before you know it all the guys will have greasy hair by choice.”
“You mean all the guys who aren’t going to get laid because they’re disgusting?” Clementine grabbed her phone off the end table and started taking pictures of her brother.
“Leave me alone, Clem,” he said. “The Bachelor is about to go into the F
antasy Suite. I want to see what happens.”
“Jesus, Edouardo, did you just hear yourself? I almost can’t believe my own ears. My little brother, the six-foot-five hunk of man whose ‘sincere brown eyes’ used to make women swoon, now wants everyone to stop what they’re doing to see if the Bachelor hooks up with whatever loser girl he’s trying to bed?”
“It’s entertaining, Clem.”
“The real world is super entertaining too,” she said. “You might want to drag your ass off that sofa, take a shower, and step out into it and discover this for yourself.”
“Thanks, but I’m good,” he said, frowning at yet another commercial break, which left him no choice but to pay half attention to his sister’s whining.
Clementine came around in front of him, trying to block his view of the wide screen on the wall. “Point in fact, you are not fine,” she said, sweeping her arm around him. “You haven’t been fine for months, ever since Papa died. Do you think he’d like to see what you’ve done to yourself?”
Her brother glared at her. “It’s none of your business what I do nor is it your business what my father would think of it.”
“He’s all of our father,” she said. “And I get it, sweetie. I know you took it hard. We all did. The last thing we wanted was to lose him so early. But his death doesn’t mean that we should die with him, Edouardo. We’re his legacy: we’re what he left behind to carry on without him.”
“Actually, Darcy is who was left to carry on without him,” he said. “I, on the other hand, was left with no purpose, thanks.”
Clementine shook her head and flicked him on the forehead with her finger. “You are such an idiot sometimes,” she said. “Just because you didn’t get to take over the estate—”
“And the family heritage. Don’t forget that.”
“Stop,” she said. “Just because things were left to Darcy to manage doesn’t mean you now have a meaningless life. If you flip that notion on its head, maybe this has given you the chance to figure out what you can do: the whole world is yours to own; you just need to figure it out. And maybe, if you look at it this way, Darcy got the short end of the stick because he’s stuck with this now, like it or not. He doesn’t have the chance to take off and do whatever he pleases.”
“Okay, sis, you can put your pompoms away. I really don’t need any more cheerleading.”
“Yes, you’ve made that abundantly clear,” she said. “Which is why I’m done with the Pollyanna tack and now I’m ready to play hardball with you.”
“This should be amusing.” Edouardo pretended to look at his fingernails out of sheer boredom.
Clementine held up her phone and started scrolling through her photos. “So I’m going to a party tonight. I’m taking Isabella with me. And now, well, we’re taking you as well. In fact, since I’m playing hardball, you’re going to be the designated driver so Bella and I can drink to our heart’s content.”
Edouardo wrinkled his eyebrows. “Yeah, like you can make me do that.”
“Which is where these come in handy,” she said, pointing to the images on her phone. “Because I’m going to start Instagramming pictures of you in your underwear watching The Bachelor starting in, oh, let’s say two minutes, unless you agree to get up off of that sodding sofa, get yourself under the shower, and get dressed to join the rest of humanity at a party tonight. I don’t know if you remember Isabella’s cousin Gabriella Puccini? She’s back in town after breaking off her engagement to some American and she’s trying to get back in touch with friends from childhood with this party. So this will be the perfect occasion for you to go out, make nice with grown-ups, and realize that you can indeed enjoy yourself. And maybe you can cheer up Gab while you’re at it; she’s been licking her wounds after her big break-up.”
“Well, great,” he said. “Just want I want: to be blackmailed into going to some party with some mopey woman who’s mooning over some dumb guy who dumped her.”
Clementine rolled her eyes. “For all I know she won’t even look at you, so don’t flatter yourself. But maybe, just maybe, you can discover that others have it worse off than you and you can grow some empathy while you’re learning to have fun again.”
“Are you really going to make me get up off of this couch?”
She nodded, then started tugging his hands to pull him up. “And pick up that bag of chips that’s fallen on the floor,” she said, pointing nearby. “And while we’re out I’m going to get Rosa to fumigate this room so maybe the rest of us can enjoy it some time.”
With that, Edouardo put his new-favorite show on pause and forced himself to go clean up his act.
~*~
It’s Getting Hot in Heir
coming May 24, 2016.
Available now for pre-order!
About the Author
Jenny Gardiner is the author of #1 Kindle Bestseller Slim to None and the award-winning novel Sleeping with Ward Cleaver. Her latest works are the It’s Reigning Men series, featuring Something in the Heir; Heir Today Gone Tomorrow; Bad to the Throne; Love is in the Heir; Shame of Thrones; Throne for a Loop and the upcoming It’s Getting Hot in Heir. She also published the memoir Winging It: A Memoir of Caring for a Vengeful Parrot Who's Determined to Kill Me, now re-titled Bite Me: a Parrot, a Family and a Whole Lot of Flesh Wounds; the novels Anywhere but Here; Where the Heart Is; the essay collection Naked Man on Main Street, and Accidentally on Purpose and Compromising Positions (writing as Erin Delany); and is a contributor to the humorous dog anthology I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship.
Her work has been found in Ladies Home Journal, the Washington Post, Marie-Claire.com, and on NPR’s Day to Day. She was also a columnist for Charlottesville’s Daily Progress for over a decade, and is the Volunteer Coordinator for the Virginia Film Festival.
She has worked as a professional photographer, an orthodontic assistant (learning quite readily that she was not cut out for a career in polyester), a waitress (probably her highest-paying job), a TV reporter, a pre-obituary writer, as well as a publicist to a United States Senator (where she first learned to write fiction). She's photographed Prince Charles (and her assistant husband got him to chuckle!), Elizabeth Taylor, and the president of Uganda. She and her family and menagerie of pets now live a less exotic life in Virginia.
Visit Jenny at her website and sign up for her newsletter, her blog, or find her on Facebook and Twitter. And every blue moon she’ll post adorable pictures of her pets on Instagram as @thejennygardiner.
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Also by Jenny Gardiner
Confessions of a Chick Magnet
Skirt Chaser (Coming Soon)
Falling for Mr. Wrong
Falling for Mr. Wrong
Falling for Mr. Maybe
Falling for Mr. No Way In Hell
Falling for Mr. Sometimes
Falling for Mr. Right
It's Reigning Men
Something in the Heir
Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow
Bad to the Throne
Love is in the Heir
Shame of Thrones
Throne for a Loop
It's Getting Hot in Heir
A Court Gesture
It's Reigning Men - Books 1 - 3
The Royal Romeos
Red Hot Romeo
Black Sheep Romeo
Red Carpet Romeo
Blue Collar Romeo
Silver Spoon Romeo
Blue-Blooded Romeo
Big O Romeo
Standalone
Sleeping with Ward Cleaver
Where the Heart Is
Accidentally on Purpose
Compromising Positions
<
br /> Naked Man on Main Street
Bite Me - A Parrot, a Family, and a Whole Lot of Flesh Wounds
Anywhere but Here
Slim to None
Watch for more at Jenny Gardiner’s site.
Throne for a Loop Page 16