by Leslie North
Champagne didn’t explain the splitting headache. Not by far.
Nora rolled over and pressed her head into the pillow beneath her cheek, relishing the space she had in the otherwise empty king-size bed. They’d stood out in that courtyard for a full twenty minutes, Barron coming at the “problem” of wanting to take her back to his room from every angle.
The thought didn’t appeal to her. She was no virgin, but every time she thought about relenting to Barron, her stomach twisted. He simply wasn’t her type. Theirs wouldn’t be a marriage based on romance. But god, the man was relentless about the sex. Hopefully he’d leave her alone until their wedding night. Maybe, just maybe, he’d get a horrible bout of food poisoning, and she could buy another week before she climbed in the sack with him.
Nora gave a snort-laugh. It made her feel a little better, thinking of Barron getting food poisoning. Then again, that might mean everyone else at the wedding would get it too. It was a failure of a plan. The laugh turned into a groan. What a headache.
The headache, of course, had to be from the tequila. Now she remembered taking it from the mini bar.
And she remembered why.
Rashid.
Rashid had been there in the courtyard. What an insane coincidence, running into him after all this time. And of all people to run into. She’d had such a wild crush on him at Westminster. Nora rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. She’d made every excuse in the book to get close to him back then but never got up the nerve to tell him how she felt. How could it have mattered, anyway? He was the crown prince of his country, and she was…well, not a princess.
It was even worse now. In the privacy of her hotel room, she could admit that to herself. It was worse, because Rashid hadn’t stayed the gangly teenage boy she’d known. He had grown up—and how.
She shivered at the memory of him in the finely cut suit he’d worn. He’d always looked good in the school uniform—he’d always looked good, period—but seeing him as a grown man…
Nora had never expected that Rashid would grow up into such a mouthwatering specimen. It made sense that he’d have his engagement party at the Corinthia, since he’d spent so many of his school years in London. Just like her.
On the other hand, that grown man was as bossy as he’d ever been. She frowned. They hadn’t seen each other in, what, eight years? Ten? It had been long enough that he had no right to tell her to call off her own wedding. How dare he, honestly. She snort-laughed again and instantly regretted it. Call off the wedding, with one day to spare? There was no way. The entire event had been bought and paid for.
Her freedom had been bought and paid for.
She had to keep her eyes on the prize. Certain sacrifices had to be made, and the wedding was one of them.
Coffee. That’s what she needed. In the short-term, there were all kinds of things to be done before tomorrow’s ceremony, and it would be highly suspicious for Nora to spend the day recovering from a tequila hangover. Not that Barron would notice. She’d already denied him the one thing he wanted, so no doubt he’d give her some version of the silent treatment today. Not enough that other guests would notice, of course. A special show, just for her.
Coffee sounded better by the moment. She’d feel more fortified after she had her first cup.
She pushed herself up on one elbow, allowing the piercing pain in her head to subside before she carefully put one leg then the other over the side of the bed. Nora stood up and held her breath. So far, the quest for coffee wasn’t a disaster.
There was an in-room machine, but she bypassed it in favor of a shower. Nora didn’t want to fiddle with the filter and the water. She wanted something strong and hot and good, and that meant going to the Crystal Moon Lounge. As with most places to eat at the Corinthia, getting a table at the Crystal Moon Lounge required a shower.
The hot water on Nora’s shoulders took the edge off her headache, and by the time she tugged on an understated dress and put the finishing touches on her makeup, she felt worthy of ordering her coffee at one of the linen-covered tables in the hotel restaurant. Maybe she’d even order breakfast. That was the appropriate cure for clearing the minibar of all its tequila, wasn’t it? Eggs. She’d have eggs. Toast with jam… She’d have a breakfast, and Barron didn’t need to be part of it. These were her last few days of freedom until she’d had a year of married life. She’d have to savor them while she could.
Nora tugged the door of the room to make it shut a bit faster, then turned and went down the hall toward the elevator. The alternating pattern on the carpet seemed to draw her along. It was true—she would eventually get her freedom via her wedding to Barron. But for now, she had a few minutes left to herself.
She held her breath as she approached Barron’s room on her way to the elevator, noticing the slant of light on the carpet ahead of her not a moment too soon.
The door was open.
He must have called for room service, then. Nora had no idea when Barron had finally called it a night—he’d still been at the bar with several of his friends when she said her goodbyes and came up to attack the minibar in her room. She should probably invite him down for breakfast. They were getting married in less than forty-eight hours.
But she didn’t want to.
She came level with his door and flicked her eyes to the side. Let it be empty, she thought. Let it be empty.
It wasn’t empty.
But it also wasn’t Barron standing inside.
It was a woman, tall and blonde and wearing a sheer pink robe that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.
Nora froze.
She willed herself to move, to keep walking, but her feet seemed glued to the carpet. The woman was half-turned away from her and didn’t notice. If she kept moving now, then she could forget about all this, somehow. She could carry on with her plan to eat breakfast and let the sight of the woman in the pink robe slip neatly out of her memory.
“My god,” Barron said from somewhere inside the room. “Take that back off.” He stepped into view wearing only a pair of boxers. The woman smiled, and he wrapped his arms around her and put his hand under her chin, tipping her face back to give her a kiss that struck Nora as passionate and vicious all at once. “You taste so good,” he growled into her mouth.
“Room service,” a voice called to Nora’s right, and on instinct she stepped out of the way. A bellhop pushed an enormous cart with a silver covering toward her, giving her an apologetic smile. He maneuvered the tray through the doorway of Barron’s room. Nora watched as he pushed it all the way inside the room. Barron still hadn’t taken his mouth off the woman’s. He didn’t come up for air until the bellhop made to leave, and even then, he didn’t let the woman go, but only leaned over for a moment and returned with his wallet. Barron pressed some bills into the bellhop’s hand.
“I’m so hungry,” said the woman inside the room. The bellhop stepped out, moving briskly toward the elevator. Barron backed toward the door, sticking out one arm to push it closed even as he tugged her along with the other.
I don’t think so.
Nora stepped forward at the last second, stopping the door with her palm, steeling herself for the confrontation. Damn it, couldn’t he have kept it in his pants until after they were married? Her stomach curdled. Nora had never mistaken Barron for an angel, but the way he’d practically eaten that woman’s face—the day before their wedding, no less—disgusted her. She had been prepared, in some abstract sense, to turn a blind eye to his indiscretions after they tied the knot and she had what she wanted.
But this? This?
Nora couldn’t tolerate it.
She shoved the heavy door inward with her palm and stepped across the threshold. Barron was murmuring something into the woman’s ear.
Nora stood there, still, for one heartbeat. Two. Neither of them noticed her. Neither of them noticed a third adult standing in the room. If she didn’t do something soon, they’d fall into bed, and where would that leav
e her?
“Barron.” She let her voice ring out, loud and sharp, and no small part of her delighted in watching him jump out of his skin.
No part of her of any size wanted to be in that room with him. But really? Days, hours, before their own wedding?
He leapt backward, pushing the woman away from him. Her knees hit the bed and she sat down heavily, bouncing in a way that Nora would find humorous under any other circumstances.
Barron whirled to face Nora, a hand running quickly through his hair as if to hide the evidence of what he’d been doing. There was still plenty of evidence left behind in the bulge of his boxers. Nora swept her gaze coldly over his body, meeting his eyes in time to see him arrange his expression into a facsimile of innocence. What? Nothing’s happening here, his face said, even as the woman caught her balance and sank back down on the bed.
It was too much. It was all too much.
Nora’s fiancé stood in the middle of the room, his mouth opening and closing like a fish flapping on a dock along the Thames. Her stomach still felt sour from the tequila, and her desire for coffee was almost as strong as her desire for this entire charade to be over.
There had to be other ways to find her freedom. There had to be. Nora felt her lip curl. How had she ever talked herself into this engagement in the first place? Barron was a sad approximation of a man.
She yanked her engagement ring off her finger and took several determined steps into the room, feeling their eyes on her. At the bedside table, she let the ring fall to the wooden surface and slapped it down before it could spin.
Then she turned to face them again.
How pathetic he was. How her father loved him. That should have been the first sign that she couldn’t go through with this wedding. Yet it hadn’t been, had it? Nora had completely ignored the red flag.
She took a breath, then decided not to waste it on any frivolous announcements. He had his ring back. They were over.
Nora marched for the door, the weight on her shoulders lifting with every step she took.
“Nora, wait,” Barron called. She could hear his frenzied motion behind her. “My pants…”
His companion could help him with those. She probably already had, several times, while Barron’s now-former fiancée slept just down the hall. So classy.
“Stop, love.” Now that she was pulling open the door, he sounded quite urgently. “Stop. Nora. Please.”
She held up one hand, not bothering to turn to face him, and went out into the hall. Nora walked resolutely toward the elevator. Coffee. That was next on her agenda, along with some breakfast.
It didn’t escape her attention that Rashid had been right.
3
She’d done it.
She’d left Barron. Left him struggling to put his pants on in front of the woman he’d spent the night with. Nora’s hand felt curiously light, and she lifted it in front of her face in the elevator, turning it this way and that. Elevator light was pleasant—she and her friends had stopped many an elevator to take photos when they were in university—but nothing was more pleasant than the empty space on her finger where the heavy ring had been only a minute before.
Nora was still relishing the sensation when she approached the hostess station at the Crystal Moon Lounge, and again a minute later when she took her seat at the table.
The waiter came, and she ordered coffee, hardly hearing herself say the words.
She had broken off the engagement.
Her father was not going to be happy. He was the one who was footing the bill for the wedding.
He’d also been behind the idea from the very beginning, and he was somewhere at the Corinthia right now. She took a quick scan of the dining room. Not here, at least.
She had plans to make.
What was she going to do with her life now that the wedding was off? Depending on just how angry her father was, she might need to get a job. Starting her own women’s health practice now was probably a pipe dream, unless she could get funding.
One silver lining was that Nora could finally make a living using her training as a nurse midwife instead of volunteering a few hours a week, as she’d had to do while her father ran the show. He hadn’t wanted her out of his sight for long, and he was the one who held the purse strings. It had been easier to go along with it when the plan was to marry Barron and get access to her trust fund one year after the wedding.
The details of her future were fuzzy, rushing across her mind in a harried frenzy. It was too hard to think without coffee, so Nora sat back, closed her eyes, and drank in the gentle noise of the Crystal Moon Lounge. Hushed conversation. Silverware clinking against plates.
“Your coffee, miss.” She opened her eyes in time to see the waiter pour God’s own liquid treasure into the delicate china coffee cup in front of her. A curl of steam rose from the surface. “Anything else I can bring for the moment?”
“No, thank you.” Nora was already reaching for the cream. She poured in a dash and watched the coffee settle into the perfect in-between color. A packet of sugar was next. She stirred thoughtfully, almost meditatively, then put the spoon on the saucer.
A lot had happened since she’d decided on the coffee, and now here she was, lifting the cup to take the first sip. How quickly life could change.
Her lips had barely grazed the rim when someone slid into the chair across the table.
“Nora. Thank god I found you here.” Her heart beat faster at the low tenor of Rashid’s voice. So Barron hadn’t gotten his pants on after all. “You can’t marry him.” She took a drink of coffee. It was good. She’d gotten the cream-to-coffee ratio exactly right, and it was hot without being scalding.
She said nothing to Rashid.
Instead, she focused on the coffee, closing her eyes to better savor the smooth, rich taste. There would be no listening to men and their opinions before she’d had at least five more sips. Maybe ten.
Even with her eyes closed, she could feel Rashid watching her. How did he see her, in this moment? Was he still consumed by the idea of stopping her wedding?
What did his lips look like on the rim of a coffee cup?
She’d known how he looked years ago, when they were teenagers. It might be altogether different now.
“I’ve hardly slept,” Rashid said urgently. “Before you walk down that aisle, there are things you need to know about Barron.”
They’d been at Oxford together, Rashid told her. Another swallow of coffee. He’d always seemed cruel, and then there had been times when Rashid saw him with women that set off all kinds of alarm bells in his mind. Nora learned that Rashid had once had to intervene between Barron and a woman at a bar. None of it surprised her. Barron had a single-minded focus on getting what he wanted. Why would he ever let a woman’s humanity stop him?
“He’s awful,” Rashid said. “No woman deserves that kind of treatment. No person. But you—I couldn’t let you enter the marriage without knowing. I know this is out of line. It’s been years since we’ve spoken, and you can make your own choices, but I couldn’t in good conscience—”
“Do you want something to drink?”
Rashid’s tirade against Barron stopped abruptly. “What?”
“Something to drink?” Nora put her almost-empty cup back on the saucer. “Tea, maybe? I was thinking of ordering some food, now that I’ve had my coffee. Have you already eaten?”
“Eaten? I haven’t eaten, but—” Rashid ran a hand through his hair, somehow leaving it as perfect as it had been before he’d touched it. “Did you hear what I said?”
“I’ll order you a tea.” Nora blinked, shaking her head from side to side to clear the last of the cobwebs from her thoughts. The coffee had lifted her spirits—and so had the sight of Rashid sitting across the table from her, even if he couldn’t stop talking about Barron. If he wasn’t careful, saying his name so many times was going to summon him from his room. Forget about that. She was busy with her coffee, and eggs and toast sounded better by the
second. “Think of it as a celebration, because—”
The ring fell as if from a great height, landing on its side on the linen tablecloth with a hollow ting and falling over onto its side, the garishly large diamond settling last.
Nora sighed. So he had gotten his pants on.
“Put that back on.”
Barron towered above the table, his arms crossed over his chest.
She reached for her coffee instead and took another fortifying sip. “I don’t think so, Barron.”
He looked completely out of place in the Crystal Moon Lounge. Rashid, for his part, looked like he’d been up for hours—and he probably had. He wore neat gray slacks and a white shirt that made his skin look positively delicious. Barron wore a pair of black exercise pants and a pale blue T-shirt that brought out the hue of his eyes. Nora had never been able to decide if Barron’s eyes were gray or blue—they were simply pale and, most of the time, calculating. Or mean.
Luckily, it didn’t matter anymore. She wouldn’t have to spend her days looking at him. Or avoiding him.
Barron reached down, picked up the ring between two fingers, and moved it closer to her. “Put it on.”
“No.”
He laughed, the sound sharp edged and horrible. “Do you honestly think you can back out of the wedding now? It’s set in stone, Nora.”
“Nothing’s ever set in stone.” She was going to need another cup of coffee soon. “And better to back out today than at the altar tomorrow, I’d say.”
“And I’d say you haven’t thought this through.”
“Oh? How much thinking did you do before you took that woman back to your room two nights before your own wedding?”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Rashid’s mouth twitch. He didn’t say a word when she met his eyes across the table, only leaned back in his seat. The only sign of tension was the tightness of his jaw. Over his shoulder, Nora noticed a flash of black—one of his security guards. Even if Barron went ballistic, there would be another set of hands to intervene. It struck her then, in a way it never had before, that Rashid was the crown prince of Omirabad. He’d be the king one day.