by Ally Blake
Only she couldn’t stop the strangely guilty warmth rising in her cheeks, because for her it had meant more than simply chatting. If Hugo noticed he didn’t say, but something passed over his face, nevertheless. Ruefulness? Or maybe it was release.
Sadie turned on Will, getting desperate now. “Will. You say the word and we can put an end to this idea.”
Will’s gaze turned to Sadie. All deep soulful eyes and tight, ticking jaw. And he said, “It’s fine.”
“Wow, how to make a girl feel wanted.”
A flash of fire lit the depths of his eyes, of want. It lit a twin fire in her belly, lower. Higher. All over. This was going to be a disaster.
“Don’t you see you’re off the hook? You’re not my babysitter any more. You’re not my bodyguard.”
“Then what is he?” Hugo asked.
“He’s... He’s...” So many conflicting answers rushed to the front of Sadie’s mind, none of which she could say out loud.
Hugo took her silence for acquiescence. “Exactly. It’s done. Prospero?”
“I’m on it.” And then the big man was off, striding down the hall.
Hugo shoved an overnight bag at her. “I had your mother pack for you, just in case you decided against coming home right away. Clothing, toothbrush, et cetera. A book. Your phone. Charger. And your passport.”
Passport? She’d run out of excuses. Unless she wanted to be hunted in her own backyard, she had to go. It was best.
Will gathered his leather overnight bag and his battered silver case. He’d been packed, ready to go, from the moment they’d arrived. “Let’s do this.”
And then they were off. Hugo at the head, Sadie in the middle, Will at the rear.
“Breathe,” Will murmured.
“Don’t want to.”
Then his hand slipped under her elbow and he walked beside her. “Do it anyway.”
“Story of my life.”
His rough laughter made her feel as if she’d stepped into a warm bath. The tingling in her toes diminished and her anxiety eased.
Striding down the hall, down the stairs and into Reception, they saw that Prospero had taken up residence with his back to the front door.
Janine of the ponytail was at the desk once more, watching Prospero like a hawk. When she looked up to see Will bearing down on her, her whole face brightened. “Why, hello! If it isn’t the lovebirds from the honeymoon suite!”
Sadie blanched. Not that Janine would have noticed. Her eyes were now comically jumping from Will to Prospero to Hugo.
“Heading out?” Janine called. “It’s cold out there—” Her voice came to a halt as her mouth dropped open into comical shock. “You’re...him. You’re the... Oh, my.”
Hugo stepped up to the plate, blinding smile in place. “Prince Alessandro. Pleased to meet you. Is there, by any chance, a back entrance to this place? We seem to have collected some unsavoury hangers-on.”
Janine, good girl that she was, did not need to be asked twice. She was out from behind the counter in a flash. “This way,” she stage-whispered, tiptoeing dramatically.
Will, Hugo and Sadie followed, edging through the old kitchen, and out into an alleyway filled with limp bougainvillaea petals, bins and a half-dozen stray cats. As luck would have it they could see the bumper of Will’s hire car out the other end.
To Will Hugo said, “Take care of her as if she is your most precious possession. Take care of her as if she is family.”
Will’s nod was solemn.
“Thanks again, Will,” said Hugo, shaking the other man’s hand. “I owe you.”
“You owe me nothing.”
“Can you let Maman know?” asked Sadie.
“Of course.” Hugo gave Sadie a quick bear hug. “Try not to cause too much trouble.”
She laughed. “Way too late for that.”
“Go. Now.”
Will grabbed Sadie’s bag from her shoulder and strode towards the car. Sadie followed, noting it had started to snow. Big, soft, romantic flakes that dissolved the second they hit skin.
Her feet ground to a halt as she neared the end of the alley, and moonlit hit her toes. “Just a second.”
She ran back to Hugo, who was waiting in the darkness, delved deep into the zip pocket in the side of her track top and found the ring which was still attached to the garter. She gave it to Hugo.
He winced. “Maybe I ought to gift this thing to the twins and be done with it.”
“Don’t say that. You’ll find someone one day. Someone wonderful. Someone who adores you. Someone who doesn’t cringe at the thought of kissing you. Someone who doesn’t answer back all the time and isn’t such a bad sport at board games as I am. Someone, maybe, a little like Clair.”
A moment of torment crossed her old friend’s face like a cloud passing the moon, and she wondered that she’d never noticed before.
Then he pulled himself free of it and gave her a smile. “Take care, Leo.”
“You too, Hugo.”
And with that, Sadie ran and hopped into the car. Or she tried, but her wedding dress was still smooshed into the footwell, her hairpiece sitting pathetically on top.
She hopped out of the car, dragged out the wedding stuff, went to the bin in the alleyway and threw it all away.
Back in the car she looked at Will, his face a familiar expression of barely reigned-in patience.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
Her heart clunked against her ribs just at the look of him. “Not even close.”
But as the engine growled to life, Sadie felt lighter. Like an untethered helium balloon. Even though, as they took off into the night, leaving Vallemont behind, she knew not when, or if, she might ever return.
CHAPTER EIGHT
DARKNESS HAD LANDED by the time their private plane—organised with stunning speed by Will’s apparently unflappable assistant, Natalie—hit English soil. While the snow falling through the crisp Vallemontian air had felt dreamy and romantic, London’s weather was damp and grey.
A driver was waiting for them at a designated point. “Where to, sir?”
Will gave an address in Borough Market and it wasn’t long before they were pulling down a dark concrete alley to a warehouse conversion with rows of arched leadlight windows and striped metal security bars.
Sadie walked hesitantly inside.
Will dragged his battered silver case with Maia the telescope inside to a spot beside a long, black leather couch, then moved about, turning on lights, turning on the heat.
Industrial lamps splashed pools of cool light against walls of rustic exposed brick. Insanely high ceilings criss-crossed with massive steel and wooden beams. There was a fantastical Art Deco staircase that went up, up, up. Huge, gunmetal-grey barn doors shut off whatever rooms were behind them. Everything was dark, seriously arty and hyper-masculine. There was an old wooden plane propeller mounted to the wall above the TV, for Pete’s sake!
It was an amazing place, to be sure. Only it didn’t mesh with what she thought she knew of Will. Not even close. She would have said Will’s defining feature was how confident he was in his own skin—in his cleverness, his quirks, his self-containment. This place was pure mid-life crisis—all it was missing was wood chips on the floor, a Lamborghini in the lounge room and the scent of beer in the air.
Coming here had been a mistake. A huge, colossal mistake.
Will touched her on the shoulder and she near leapt out of her skin.
When she realised he was taking her overnight bag she let out a shaky laugh. “Sorry. I was half expecting the bogeyman to have followed us here.”
“We weren’t followed. I’m sure.”
“Prospero was sure and he’s a professional.”
“Prospero’s neck is so thick he can’t turn his head to check his side mirrors.”
Sadie laughed and a small measure of her nerves faded away.
Then she realised Will’s fingers were still hooked into her bag, on her shoulder, the heat of them tingling through her arm. She let him slide the strap away.
Then she moved further into the space. So much space. “How long have you lived here?”
“I’ve owned it about eight years. Ten maybe. Quite a place, isn’t it?”
“Quite.”
“But?”
“Did you hear the but?”
“It’s written all over your face.”
His arms were crossed as he watched her move through his home, but his face was gentle. He didn’t seem to mind her hesitance, he was more...curious than anything else. The Will she knew was curious. Painfully so. It made her nerves fade a little more.
“But...where’s all your stuff?”
He looked around. “In its place.”
What place? There was nothing there. No rugs to soften it, no cushions to add comfort. No bookshelves, even though Will was an educated man. No knick-knacks, no family photos. Not even a telescope pointing out the expanse of windows. No sense of Will at all.
“I wasn’t expecting company.”
She dragged her eyes away from the man cave to shoot Will a flat stare. “Big shock. But even if you were, all of this feels more like a concerted effort to scare people away.”
He didn’t react. Didn’t even blink. But then a smile kicked at the corner of his mouth and his dimple came out to play. Sadie tried to settle the resultant shimmer in her belly, as she wondered if maybe she had him figured out after all.
The she turned on her toes and came to a halt, her mouth dropping open at the huge, twenty-foot-high wall covered in the most stunning wallpaper—a black background scattered with the names of constellations and such in chunky white font.
“That was the clincher,” he said, his voice near as he moved in behind her. “My publisher had rented the place and a stylist had decked out that wall for a publicity shoot before my first book came out. I found I wasn’t comfortable pretending the place was mine for the book jacket photographs, so I bought it. As is. Stuff—or lack thereof—and all.”
Sadie wasn’t au fait with London real estate but she knew enough. “Who knew gazing at the stars paid so well?”
“It’s not all star-gazing, Sadie,” he said, his voice going gruff in that way it did when she had him on the ropes. He was so easy that way.
“No?”
“Consultancy, publishing, speaking, teaching. I do okay. Not as well as a prince, mind you.”
“Ha! Turns out, for me, that’s not all that much of a selling point.”
Will’s brow clutched. And Sadie, belatedly, heard what she’d said.
“Not that you were trying to sell me anything, of course.” Stop. Stop talking right now. Nope, more words coming. “But if you were... I’m out of a job, out of a home and on the shelf. You in the market for a wife?”
It had been a joke. Absolutely. She had meant to alleviate the tension that had been humming between them since they’d taken off in Will’s car. Or maybe it had been since the first night on the balcony. Or the first time she’d seen Will’s smile.
It didn’t work. Tension rippled through the air like a living thing, smacking against the stark brick and overwhelming glass and rocketing back at them like flying knives.
Feeling the pink beginning to rise up her throat, Sadie flapped a lazy hand at Will. “I changed my mind. Now I’ve seen this place I realise the neat freak thing wasn’t a one-off. And I’m a delightful slob. It would never work.”
She feigned a nonchalant yawn which turned into the real thing.
“You look exhausted.”
“Why, thank you,” she said on yet another yawn.
“You hungry?”
“Not a bit,” she lied. Knowing she had to head somewhere quiet, alone, to collect her thoughts before she said something even less appropriate than mock-proposing to the guy.
“Then I’ll show you to your room.”
Sliding the strap of her bag over his shoulder, Will headed for the stairs, leaving Sadie to follow. The heating system must have been state of the art as she was starting to feel all thawed and fuzzy already.
Up the big black stairs they went, past more barn doors—she spied a sliver of sterile-looking office behind one, fancy gym equipment behind another, which explained the man’s physique—until Will stopped in front of a neat, light room with huge, curtainless windows and a view of a whole lot of rooftops of post-industrial London.
Will handed over her bag and waited on the threshold as she went inside. “There’s a private bathroom through that door. The remote on the bedside table darkens the windows.” A beat. Time enough for his cheeks to lift before he said, “Knowing how much you like borrowed clothes, there are spares in the cupboard.”
She sat on the corner of the neat grey bed and patted her bag, holding it close to her chest to try to stop the ba-da-boom of her heart at the sight of that smile. “I’m all good.”
“Excellent. If I’m not here in the morning there’ll be food in the fridge. I’ll leave my assistant’s contact details on the kitchen bench. She knows where I am at all times.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. Goodnight, Sadie.”
“Goodnight, Will.”
Will went to slide the door closed, but Sadie stopped him with a breath. “They’ll figure out who you are, you know.”
“I know.”
“They’ll make assumptions without fact and write about it. They’ll take those pictures and turn them into something ugly. Over and over again, the stories getting bigger, wilder, further and further from anything resembling truth.” She knew. She’d seen it happen to other members of Hugo’s family. Tall poppies ripe for cutting down.
“I’m aware.”
“Are you? Because the thought of it impacting your career, of you having to explain me to your friends... I sense that, for all the speaking and publishing and teaching and consulting and international jet-setting, you’re a private man, Will. Should you call your family?”
“No family to call.”
“None?”
“Sadie, don’t worry about it.”
“But I will. I do. I worry all the time. The thought of someone out there not liking me, or being angry at me, or blaming me...” She ran a hand over her eyes. “You’re right. I am exhausted.”
Will’s toe nudged over the line at her door before he stopped himself. “Whatever happens tomorrow, or next week, the sun will rise, the earth will turn, and it will be forgotten. We all will be forgotten. Nothing lasts for ever.”
Sadie laughed. “Was that meant to make me feel better?”
“You’re laughing.”
“So I am.”
“Sleep.”
“Yes, sir.”
With that Will slid the door closed, leaving Sadie in his big grey room, in the big, bold house, in a big, strange city, her thoughts a flurry, her heart confused, her oldest fears playing on the edges of her mind.
Alone.
* * *
“I’m back.”
“The Boss Man’s back!” Natalie paused as she mulled over Will’s words. “Back to work or back in London? Or back in Vallemont? I’ve lost track.”
Will lay back on his uncomfortable couch in the main room, staring up at the propeller jutting out from the floating wall, wondering if there might be a button somewhere to make it work, he’d simply never cared enough to find out. “London. Work.”
“Fantastic! I’ll set up newyorker.com for you for...tomorrow afternoon your time. No appointment set up with the prime minister as yet, but I’ve managed to become firm friends with his secretary, Jenny. She gave me an amazing recipe for mulberry jam. And I can let Garry know he no longer has to berate you for never t
aking a break, as you’ve just had two whole days in the gorgeous countryside of Vallemont! Was it amazing?”
“Amazing,” Will said.
“You’re not even listening.”
Will sat up straight. Focused. He checked his watch to find it had been five minutes since the last time he’d looked. And twenty-five minutes since he’d left Sadie to sleep in his spare bedroom.
He rubbed a hand over his chin to find his beard now long enough to leave a rash, and said, “New Yorker. Jam. Sadie. I got it.”
“Will.”
“Yes, Natalie.”
“Who’s Sadie?”
Will held the phone away from his ear as if it had just grown legs. Dammit. How distracted was he.
“Will? Will!” Natalie’s voice chirped through the phone.
Will slowly brought it back to his ear. In time to hear his assistant ask, “Is that what you were doing the past two days? A girl?”
Will pinched the bridge of his nose. For all her voracious work ethic and killer travel-arranging skills, Natalie was ridiculously focused on his private life. She had been since she saw a photo of him once in GQ, attending the Kennedy Centre honours for a previous president with a Victoria’s Secret model on his arm.
The fact that his date was a space buff who’d been in contact with Garry, his manager, asking for advice on which university was best for post-grad studies was beside the point as far as Natalie was concerned.
“Will,” she shouted. “Don’t you lie to me. It’s the one non-negotiable of our contract together.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Fine. But tell me anyway. I worry about you. From all the way over here. Garry does too. And Cynthia.”
His publisher? Please don’t say they’d all been talking about him.
“Knowing you had a nice girl in your life would go a long way to alleviating our concerns.”
“Natalie, do I not pay you enough?”
“Oh, no, Boss Man. I cannot complain on that score. Not a single bit.”
“Do I push my luck, ask too much of you, underappreciate you?”
“Often, sometimes and absolutely no.”
Not the answer he’d expected. Into the moment’s pause Natalie said, “Will, did you or did you not meet a girl in Vallemont?”