by Emily Bishop
“Heaven investing, I told you.”
“Angel investing,” I say, infuriated by his drunkenness. “And yes, it’s a good idea. But how are you ready for this? Look at you. Drinking and fighting on a weekday morning. Out here a total mess. Are you sure you can handle all this money properly?”
Something in his voice changes. He sounds less drunk. More in pain. “I’m just a rogue. Just an irresponsible, feckless man-child. I can’t even have a relationship. I’ve never even had a job.”
That takes all the wind out of my sails. I expected him to fight back, defend how right he was, make a thousand excuses. But this feels different. There’s a deflation in my chest. Is that, even… guilt? My voice comes out a lot softer when I next speak. “Come on, let’s get you a water and a meal in here.” We’re passing one of my favorite places, an upscale Jamaican café. “You’ll feel better.”
He allows me to lead him in. I get a full breakfast for myself of ackee, saltfish, and fried dumplings, with a cold glass of sorrel—a pink drink made of a type of Hibiscus—on the side. Gray doesn’t have the presence of mind to order. “The menu’s a bit blurry,” he complains to the woman behind the counter. I order the same for him and lead him over to one of the tables.
He flops into the chair with a huge sigh. “I’m a little maudlin, aren’t I?”
“I’ll say.”
He gives me a wry but sad smile. “Not used to seeing Mr. Confident look like this, are you?”
I shake my head and feel something sink in my chest. This really is the final nail in the coffin. “You’re too unpredictable for me.”
“Oh, no,” he says. “I’m quite predictable. I can be relied upon to fuck up at every given opportunity.”
I can’t help but laugh a little at that. “Oh, Gray. What am I going to do with you?”
He shrugs and pushes his bottom lip out. “I don’t know. Feed me to the pigs.”
I burst out into real laughter. “That’s so random.”
“Yeah.” He plays with his fingers on the tabletop.
Then I see how charming he’s being. I refuse to be sucked into the Grayson Fairfax charm machine. I make my voice cold, hard. “So, where’s my money, Gray?”
He doesn’t look up. “It went down my esophagus in the form of whiskey.”
I don’t know whether to feel sorry for him or be furious. I watch him for a moment, some sick feeling building in my stomach. “Why, though, Gray? Why?”
“Good question.” He looks up into my eyes briefly. His own dark, deep eyes are filled with sadness. Then he looks back at his hands.
“Why are you feeling so sorry for yourself? When you’re the only one doing this to yourself? You have everything going for you right now. You’re about to inherit a crazy amount of money. You’ve seen there’s more meaning to life than drinking and having fun. I really thought you were changing, like I told your solicitor. Maybe I was wrong.”
“Maybe you were.”
The waitress places the breakfasts and the drinks on our table.
“Thank you,” I say to her. My insides feel all twisted up. “I hate this.”
“Hate what?”
“What you’re doing.”
He picks at his food. “And what am I doing?”
“Self-sabotaging.”
He shrugs. “I don’t need to do it to myself. It seems life does that enough for me already.”
A fury leaps up in me. “What the fuck are you talking about? You’re the most fortunate and privileged person I know in life. You could do anything you want. You have the world at your feet. Instead, you’re in a bar putting a man in a headlock because he called you a loser. I think maybe he might have a point.”
“Oh, really?” He looks up, his glare like fire. “Well, don’t worry. You can get this loser out of your life soon enough. Don’t worry.”
I puff out a frustrated breath. This is so aggravating. “Look, I don’t think you’re a loser, at all. You’re acting all sorry for yourself, like everything is out of your control. It’s so not true. What do you expect? A good life to just land at your feet? It’s like when anything gets good for you, you run away and fuck it up.”
“You don’t understand,” he says.
“Good. I don’t want to understand. Because it doesn’t make any sense.”
“But there’s something you don’t know.”
I pause, fork mid-air. “And what’s that?”
He opens his mouth then closes it. “It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.”
I refuse to join his pity party. “Well, until you tell me, I have no interest in talking to you. I have to eat this, then do some paperwork, then go to the hospital. Those people are hurting. Shocked. In pain. I can’t let them down.”
Something in his face changes. He looks up at me, his eyes so deep I think I might drown in them. “I want to come. I’ll sleep this off, then—”
“I’m going alone.”
“Please. I care about those people, too. And I don’t want you to do this alone.”
I feel my face screw up with confusion. “What? You’re just jumping all over the place. One minute you have a guy in a headlock. The next you’re like a puppy with big eyes. Now you want to be a hero? A knight in shining armor?” I shake my head. I love this sentiment, that he cares about them and wants to accompany me. But I don’t get it. “You’re one confusing man.”
He grins for the first time since I pulled him out of the bar. “You think it’s confusing from the outside? Try being in my mind.”
I shake my head. “I have enough problems of my own to deal with.”
***
“Oh, my god, I didn’t think you’d bring it!” Melody’s face opens into a lovely, elated smile. It’s the best thing that’s happened to me all day. She grips my waist in a hug from her bed.
“Melody!” her mother scolds. “Behave yourself.”
But Melody squeezes tighter. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” When she pulls away, she takes out her phone and arranges it on the tray that’s over her hospital bed, against her can of soda. “Camera, camera, camera,” she says, tapping the phone. “I’m going to try it all out now.”
Melody’s mother says, “Thank you for the kind gesture,” with a tight-lipped gratitude, but she can’t meet my eyes. “But I’m sure you appreciate a bit of makeup isn’t enough to compensate for her burned leg. Yes, the doctor says it will heal, but we’ve been through a lot of trouble, and she’s been in pain, too. I’ve missed work already.”
I’ve checked things out with my insurance company. “We’ll be able to compensate you.” It feels like a weight off my chest to be able to say so.
“Oh,” the woman says, almost like she’s taken off her guard. She says nothing but returns to the chair by her daughter’s bedside and watches her apply the makeup with a frown.
I hang back for a moment too. I watch Gray, who has gone over to one of my employees, Sandra. She’s an older lady, very competent, who runs the store. Apparently, she got worse burns than the rest because she wouldn’t leave the store until everyone else was out. I’ve been thinking about what I can do for her. Of course, she’ll get the insurance compensation. But I want to give her something more for her bravery. For her loyalty. For her good heart.
Gray’s making her laugh. His voice is strong but kind. He looks capable. If I didn’t know who he was and I had to guess, I would chance that he was the top surgeon of the hospital. Or the CEO of my company. I have a headache. How can he go from the pathetic drunken violent wreck this morning to a man with so much charm, making the whole room eat out of his hand?
Sandra laughs and looks more at ease than I’ve ever seen her since she came to the hospital. It relieves and infuriates confuses me all at once. If only they knew the sides of Gray I see in private. If only they knew.
Chapter 25
Grayson
DAY 17
It’s the moment of truth. I can feel it all around me in the dark apartment. God. All the ti
me we were in the hospital, I pushed it out of my mind. I was my charming self, though, since I wasn’t trying to get sex. It felt more like the actual me, less like I was pretending.
But now, as Isabella shuts the apartment door behind us, I know I can’t push it away anymore. Living with my head in the sand, pushing uncomfortable things away from me, used to be my specialty. Somehow, they’d all just disappear somewhere. But now anything I try to deny feels like something hanging around my neck. An ever-tightening rope ready to constrict around me until I can’t breathe anymore.
“You were magnificent in the hospital,” Isabella says tightly. She pours a glass of wine and swigs it back. “Wine?”
“No, thanks.”
She sighs then goes over to the couch. “I’m sorry I’m not being very nice. But you’re too confusing.”
“I apologize for taking your hundred dollars.”
“Apology accepted.” She slumps down and sips the wine, looking a bit miserable.
I sit opposite her. I feel my heart hammering. God, when did I start getting all these feelings? I used to sail through life without so much as a wave. Admittedly, they were shallow waters. “I have something to tell you,” I force myself to say. I dread how she’ll react. Will I lose her forever?
“Thank god,” she says. “Maybe then I’ll have some insight into the complex workings of Gray’s mind.”
I force myself to look in her eyes and not down at my hands. “It’s not a good thing I have to tell you, I’m afraid.”
Worry takes over her face. “You can’t get the money after all?”
I know she’s thinking about her father’s business crashing around her feet.
“No, it’s not that. Well, I don’t know, really. Something’s happened. I don’t know what the ramifications will be.” I wish I could kiss her. I wish Lilly never existed. I wish we could intertwine in each other’s arms and never unlock our grip. My heart pounds at the thought of her running. But I have to press on. She has to know the truth.
“Tell me,” she says, her brow creased. “Please.”
I have no choice. “Lilly’s published a horrible story all over the British media. About us. About her. About a supposed love triangle. It’s everywhere.”
She stares at me. “What?”
“Yeah.”
She pauses. “But why?”
“She says she’s better placed to manage my money and tame me, the pathetic bad-boy rogue who can’t take care of himself or do anything right.”
“Jesus. And who am I? Some evil American witch come to steal you away and lead you astray?” She laughs bitterly.
I swallow. “No. Worse.” I don’t want to speak it out. I can see her erupting in my mind’s eye.
“What? Tell me, Grayson. Right now.”
“She’s painted you like the total opposite to how you are. She’s making out you’re like… pathetic. Incompetent. Totally out of your depth among the English aristocracy. It’s all bullshit.”
I expect her to jump up from the couch with curses. But what she does is worse. She drops her head, and all the life drains out of her voice. “And you say the whole country’s seen this?”
“Yes.”
“I have to see it.”
I don’t want to show her. I really don’t. Gray of the past would have taken her into his arms and told her all the nice things she wanted to hear and told her it’s all nothing and not to worry. And then given her amazing sex to forget about it all. And it would have all been so semi-real, semi-fake, that I wouldn’t have known what was right or wrong anymore. I wouldn’t have known where the reality or fantasy began. But looking into Isabella’s steely blue eyes, I know that’s not an option. Despite the dread churning in my stomach, I’m glad of it. She faces reality with a grace like no one I’ve ever known. Well, I suppose when you can look at a balance sheet that’s in the red to the tune of thirty-five million, you can face pretty much anything.
So, I show her. She reads the article through on my phone, her face changing from anger to worry and back again. But by the time she’s done, it’s devastation clouding her face. “They put my father’s business name and accounts on this. You failed to mention that.”
“I didn’t really think that was the worst part.” That was the only part that was actually true, for one thing.
“It’s by far the worst part! She can slander my name as much as she likes. Anyone can think anything they want about me. I know what I am. I can defend myself. But my dad? He’s not here. She’s made his name look terrible. All over the country.” She plunges her head into her hands and wild dark curls stick out between her fingers. “And you know how much some Americans go for this English royal stuff. Maybe it’ll all come out over here, too.”
“I’m not a royal,” I say stiffly. The idea is just horrific. Duke is bad enough.
She looks up and stares at me with wet eyes. “I can’t do this anymore,” she croaks. “I just can’t.”
“It’s all right,” I say softly. I’m ready to take her in my arms and reassure her.
“No, it’s not all right!” She leaps up from the chair and walks to the little window that looks over the city. “I can’t go back to England.”
“But—”
“I can’t, Gray. I had been thinking of not going back, anyway. What is it going to look like if I abandon all these people in the hospital? They’ll think I’m running away. We’re lucky to have escaped with not much press coverage of the accident. If I jet off to England, everyone’s going to think I don’t give a damn.”
The distress in her voice pulls me to her feet.
“I’ll be an incompetent loser one side of the pond,” she continues, “and a heartless bitch on the other. And my father’s business will be a joke on two continents. Let’s face it, Gray. This isn’t working. This just isn’t working.”
I go over to her and give a light touch on her arm. “We can make it work.”
“No, we can’t.” She pulls away. “Not even Isabella Price’s Ice Queen determination and Grayson Fairfax’s charm can pull us out of this.”
I laugh, but she doesn’t. I take her into my arms, and she doesn’t pull away. For this one blissful moment, she rests her head on my chest. She’s sinking into my comfort, depending on my support. But then when she pulls back and rests her hands on my shoulders, I know it’s not good news. “This is all too much, Gray.” Her voice is soft and sad, but it’s the undertone of absolute determination that unnerves me. “This arrangement. The fake part. The… somewhat real part. The whole thing. Maybe all these things going wrong are signs. One of my stores burning. Now Lilly’s story. Signs we shouldn’t be doing this at all.”
“They’re not signs,” I say, cupping her delicate jaw with my strong hand. “They’re obstacles.” I feel a power in my chest. A fierce conviction in what I’m saying. This must be what truth feels like. “They’re not signs to turn back. They’re signs to keep going.”
“No.” She leaves her face in my hand but her eyes flicker toward the ground. “It’s like… it might sound dumb, but I think my father’s trying to give me a message somehow with this Lilly thing. Maybe that the fake marriage isn’t honorable. That I should try to get the money through other channels.”
“But the bank wouldn’t hear you out,” I say, feeling desperate. The grip of my other hand tightens around her waist.
“No, but angel investors will. It was you who gave me that idea in the first place. I was so focused on banks I’d forgotten that side of things.”
She has this all planned out. A huge plan, all without me. She doesn’t need me anymore.
“Thank you for everything, Gray,” she says. “I’ve learned a lot about you. You’re a great guy. You’ll find another girl to impress Mr. Fink. He probably won’t like me anyway after this article fiasco. You’d probably do better with someone else.”
“I wouldn’t,” I say firmly. “I want you to come back to England with me and continue.”
She places her h
and on mine and removes it from her waist. She shakes her head slowly. “This isn’t right. You know it. I know it. It feels too uncomfortable to be right.”
“No.” I can’t believe this is happening. But I try not to sound too desperate. “It feels uncomfortable because it’s new and strange. For us both. That’s normal. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. That doesn’t mean we can’t do it. For the first time, I’m in the right place at the right time.”
Isabella’s eyes well up. “But I’m not.” She shakes her head over and over, and plays with her hands, pushing her fingers of one hand into her other palm. “How do we work that one out?”
I put my hands on her shoulder. “We keep trying.”
“No.” Her voice is unexpectedly strong in the small apartment. “We’re making too many mistakes. We’re bumbling through this, like Lilly’s article said. I’m already dealing with the debt situation, and I just about know what I’m doing with that. I can do it through traditional business channels. Plenty of people before me have, plenty will do it after. This is too strange. Too unchartered. There’s no guide for this.”
I think of the Kindle book she had about wrapping me around her little finger and can’t help but laughing. “A guide for snagging an inheritance? Or a guide for being far too fond of a loveable rogue?”
She manages a smile, in spite of herself. “You like that phrase, don’t you? Well, for both. And there’s no guide for dodging bitter aristocratic ex-girlfriends, either.”
It feels like a lost cause. I sit on the couch and see if I can sink into accepting this. But I can’t. Not even for a second. In a moment, I’m back on my feet. “There’s no guide for getting over your one chance at true love, either.”
She smiles wryly. “Oh, that one’s easy. Just move on in life and pretend it never happened. Maybe cry from time to time. The rest of the time, push those feelings down and soldier on. What else can you do?”