Stiff Drink: Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet #1

by Blair Babylon

  “Is she the ‘Elizabeth’ whom I was supposed to call if you die? Friends of your parents?”

  “Yes. She is Elizabeth, but you can talk to anyone who answers that number.”

  “They seemed fond of you.”

  “Did Bentley say something while you were dancing?”

  “Not much, but I saw Elizabeth in the ladies’ room. She kept calling you ‘our Arthur.’ I got the feeling that she likes you, even if she does think you party too much.”

  Arthur had turned in his seat while she spoke, and he leaned toward her. A streetlight passing over the car shone sallow light into the car, and the irises of his eyes were almost clear except for a dark ring around his wide, dark pupils. “You spoke with Elizabeth?”

  “Yes, she thinks you’re going to break my heart and leave me shattered. It’s a good thing I’m just your barrister, huh?”

  Arthur was leaning close to Gen, and he wasn’t smiling. His handsome face had fallen into perfectly serious, very sober lines, almost like he had had nothing to drink at all. “Tell me what she said, her actual words.”

  “She said that dating you could be dangerous and that she didn’t want a nice girl like me to get hurt.”

  Arthur leaned back, and he was kind of looking down at her sideways. “Those were her words?”

  “Yeah. Something like that.”

  “Well.” Arthur poured himself a vodka from the mini-bar in the car. “That’s altogether different now, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Gen said.

  “Shall we take you home?” Arthur asked. “Pippa, are we on our way to Islington?”

  The woman in the front seat said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Home at a somewhat decent hour.” Gen took her phone from her purse and checked it. “One A.M., anyway. At least I don’t have anything at work until ten. I had a client cancel an appointment.”

  “Oh?” Arthur asked. “Why is that?”

  Gen sighed. “Horace had a very posh client list, and Octavia Hawkes’s is, if anything, even more so. Very upper-class. Even in the low-level cases that I’ve been assigned, no one wants to work with me. I’m too American, too uncouth, and too amateur. Even Horace kept saying that I needed to be more British. I keep trying to work on my accent, but it never comes out right.”

  Arthur patted her hand that was still tucked in the crook of his arm. She was almost getting used to him touching her like that.

  Almost. Her arm still felt like spiders were running up her skin.

  Arthur sipped his drink. “I hesitate to mention this, but Horace liked you, and I liked Horace. Some little things that might be beneficial to you in your profession and might help you retain some of those clients can be learned rather easily.”

  Gen paused. “Like what?”

  “Oh, just some mannerisms. Inconsequential things. Subliminal things that will put people at ease.”

  “So like elocution lessons? I looked into those.”

  “Your Western American accent is the least of your worries. Some people will find it charming, and it makes you seem industrious and a little dangerous, always good qualities in one’s barrister.”

  “You’re going to make me into a lady?”

  “Let’s say I can make a few introductions, a few recommendations. Polish you up a bit.”

  “Like what?”

  “It hardly bears saying,” he said.

  “No, seriously. Like what?”

  He sighed. “The British are unflaggingly polite and do not enumerate faults nor prescribe actions for people. Perhaps I could nudge you in the right direction or make suggestions.”

  Another streetlight shone yellow glare through the back windshield, and the light dawned on Gen. “Just like that, right?”

  “Yes, just like that.”

  “You’re not going to put a book on my head and have me parade around in front of you, are you?”

  “Splendid idea.” Even in the dim light from the other cars’ headlights and the tall buildings’ bright windows, Gen could see Arthur’s comic leer.

  “Oh, Lord!” She started to pull her hand away from his arm.

  Arthur patted her fingers around his biceps and laughed. “My plan was that I should observe you in court or around your offices, perhaps offer some advice. We are supposed to be dating. It would be perfectly natural if I attended some of your court appearances as moral support or took you to lunch. It would ease your job as dogwatcher. It would be a very English courtship, take you to certain events, be seen in the correct places, and make connections with the right people.”

  She smiled at him. “And you are very English, aren’t you?”

  He chuckled. “I am more English than the princes of the realm, who until the current generation were far more Hanoverian Germans than English, at least genetically. Thank heavens for Princess Di and Duchess Kate for infusing some Englishness into our royal family.”

  “Oh, my. Not that anyone would say such a thing,” Gen laughed.

  Arthur laughed, too. “My bloodlines include both sides of the War of the Roses, the Scottish kings, and go back to the Anglos and the Saxons. I’m as British as King Arthur of Camelot and as English as the OED.”

  “King Arthur, huh? Maybe you should be on the throne.”

  He shuddered extravagantly. “God forbid, and a few centuries ago, that statement would have gotten us both killed. I’m far happier as just a wastrel earl, spending my estate as quickly as possible. I have earned my nickname, the Earl of Givesnofucks. I shan’t lose it easily.”

  “Oh, my word. How am I supposed to defend you if everyone calls you that?”

  “It’s just a few friends, not the general public. Hopefully, you’ll never have to meet them because if you do, it means that something has gone horribly, terribly wrong.”

  “Are those the two guys that I’m supposed to call if you’re in jail? What’re their names?”

  “Casimir and Maxence, and yes, those two. Max and I had to go intervene with Caz just a few months ago, although we couldn’t help the poor bugger.”

  “Was he in jail?”

  “No, but he got a life sentence.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Married. The poor bloke got married.”

  “Oh, well, you’re in no danger of anything awful like that happening to you. You’ve even got me as a fake girlfriend now to fend off any matrimonial-minded women. Only the one-night ladettes will have any interest in you, now.”

  He straightened as if a light bulb of wonder had lit over his head. “This deception keeps getting better and better.”

  “Pleased to be of service, your highness.”

  “Ah, ah, ah. I’m only an earl, not a member of the royal family. The correct term of address is My Lord, Your Lordship, or Lord Severn. When I’m not about, you call me His Lordship. And we’ve started polishing you up already.”

  “This could be less painful than I’d thought.”

  “I can be positively delightful when I’m of a mind. Shall I observe you in court tomorrow?”

  “You might make me nervous if you tell me things while I’m trying to work. I have to really concentrate when I’m in court because of the games that barristers play.”

  “You mean like working certain words into your arguments?”

  So he remembered what she had said during their first meeting. “In this case, I meant the real games, head games, where they try to out-argue you about everything.”

  “I shall only watch, and then we shall adjourn to a private supper afterward to discuss the notes.”

  “That sounds okay.” It sounded pretty nice.

  “Splendid, and here we are at your house.” The car rolled to a gentle stop in front of Gen’s mother’s house. Arthur held out his hand to shake. “Thank you for a lovely evening, Genevieve. I shall see you on the morrow in court. Don’t be surprised if I just slip in.”

  “Okay! I’ll see you tomorrow!”

  G
en practically skipped up the short sidewalk to her house except that she was still being careful on those fragile high heels.

  Everything was looking up. Without even rolling over on her back and spreading her legs, Gen had tamed the wild Earl of Severn.

  Arthur was really a sweet guy, in many ways. It was really great of him to offer to “polish her up,” and he hadn’t made a drunken fool of himself tonight and offered clickbait to the paparazzi at all.

  If he didn’t feed the trolls, she could win his case, and he was going to make her more amenable to the firm’s higher class of clientele, too. This would help her in her quest for tenancy. She would be able to pay her mother’s nursing home bills.

  Everything was going to be fine.

  Gen locked her front door behind herself, cleaned up, hung the ridiculous, overpriced dress on a hanger for the night, and wrapped herself in a quilt to sleep on the downstairs sofa.

  She slept well.

  Better than she had in months.

  Things were going to be all right.

  The next morning when Gen got to the office, she flipped open her laptop.

  The internet search for “Lord Arthur Finch-Hatten OR Earl Severn AND gossip” refreshed itself.

  A new picture appeared at the top of the queue.

  Oh, God, no.

  Gen stared at the screen, unable and then unwilling to believe what she was seeing.

  The date on the pictures was for the night before, and it sure as Hell wasn’t at the Rainforest Alliance dinner. From the darkness in the background and the women’s glittery pasties on their boobs, it looked like he had gone to a strip club.

  She picked up her cell phone to call His Lordship Arthur fucking Finch-Hatten.

  NEEDED TONIGHT

  Arthur sat in the rear seat of the car, sipping his soda water, and watched Gen teeter happily up the sidewalk to the cozy house that she used to share with her mother before her mother’s stroke six months before. Tragic, that. Reading about it in her background check had horrified him. She hadn’t mentioned it yet, so he hadn’t, either.

  She went into the terraced house and closed the door. The door jiggled in the light from the bare bulb on the landing when she locked it.

  Good.

  Just one lock? He would call his lock man to add more locks to the doors and windows tomorrow. Perhaps an alarm system.

  Pippa pulled the car away from the curb and drove toward downtown London. She asked, “Where should we go?”

  “Find a place to park for a moment, if you would?” Arthur pulled his phone out of his pocket.

  Pippa found a small parking area behind a shop, took a look around, and stepped out of the car. Yes, she knew the drill.

  Arthur dialed a number on his phone that was not in the contact list.

  A woman answered, “Yes.”

  Not hello.

  Not her name nor his, though surely she had recognized the number.

  Arthur could imagine lamplight glimmering on her silver and golden-streaked hair.

  “What the Hell were you doing in the ladies’ room with her?” he asked.

  “We had a nice chat,” the woman said. Her upper-crust British accent softened with each sentence, sliding toward French-like sibilance.

  “That’s not what she said.”

  “She seemed fine, not distressed.”

  “Only because she didn’t realize what you were saying. She thinks that you were warning her that I would break her heart.”

  The woman laughed, a high, tinkling sound. She finally said, “How amusing.”

  “I don’t find it amusing in the slightest.”

  “She’s in no danger from us, dear heart. You know that.”

  Arthur hated that nickname and the history behind it, but he was British, so he gave no indication of it. “She has no need to know such things.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Then why would you be sending cryptic messages to such a girl?”

  “She’s distracting you, dear heart.”

  “This lawsuit is distracting me.” Arthur knew better than to suggest that something might be done about it. He wasn’t a monster.

  She said, “You shouldn’t allow yourself to be distracted.”

  “I’m not. Not really.”

  “Excellent. You’re needed tonight.”

  He listened to the details, hung up, and tapped the window for Pippa to get back into the car.

  She glanced through the rearview mirror at him, her gray eyebrows raised.

  Arthur said, “Luton.”

  Pippa navigated the car out of the car park and back into the snarling London traffic.

  COME TO JESUS

  Gen held her cell phone in her hand and started into Arthur the second that he said, “Hello? Gen?” in that maddening, drowsy voice of his.

  She yelled, “What in the seven Hells do you think that you’re doing?”

  A rustling sound, like sheets being adjusted, rumbled through the line. “Sleeping.”

  “How in the Hell did you get to Paris and then get photographed in a strip club after you dropped me off at home last night ?”

  “I didn’t want to keep you out late. You had to work in the morning.”

  “I swear to God, Arthur. Paris. A strip club in Paris. I swear to God that I will drop you and your case like you’re an armadillo with leprosy.”

  “That’s a pleasant image.”

  “How did you get to Paris and back so fast?”

  “I have a plane,” he said.

  “You had to have filed a flight plan. Is that why you wanted to leave the charity thing early? So you could go get smashed with hookers in Paris?”

  “I hadn’t planned to go to Paris. It was a whim. I can leave within an hour of calling. Also, they were strippers, not hookers.”

  “Arthur, why, oh why, did you go carousing last night?”

  “I was bored. I needed a diversion.”

  “From what? What on Earth could be so terrible about your charmed life of charity balls and sports and working out and traveling on a perpetual vacation that you of all people need a diversion?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “It is my business. Everything about you is my business because I agreed to take on your case and especially since I put my career on the line by pretending to be your damn girlfriend!”

  “You’re certainly acting like a real girlfriend. Can’t a guy go to one strip club?”

  “I don’t care that you went there. I don’t care why you went there. I care that your picture is on five different gossip websites with a French stripper who’s sticking her tongue in your ear!”

  “Five? That’s rather more than I had thought.”

  “Yes, five, you son of a bitch!”

  “Now, now. Such language. If we’re going to polish you up—”

  “You’re not going to ‘polish me up’ because I am going to walk into Octavia Hawkes’s office right now and tell her that I can’t handle you. I will tell her that she has to defend your case because it’s far too complex for a mediocre, stupid baby barrister such as myself!”

  “That doesn’t sound like it will help your chances for tenancy much.”

  “Losing your case will murder my chances for tenancy!”

  “Hawkes is thinking about applying for the silk, isn’t she?”

  Gen wanted to reach through the phone and strangle that arsehole. “So what if she is applying to be Queen’s Council? She’s brilliant. She’s worked hard her whole life. She deserves it.”

  “And she’s giving you her unwinnable cases because she knows they’re unwinnable and needs to get her stats up. In addition, she doesn’t want to argue my case before a judge who might be giving her a recommendation.”

  But that wasn’t how it had happened. “The Head Clerk gave me your case, not Hawkes.”

  “Are you telling me that your Head Clerk had no guidance from the more senior barristers? That no one sought to sway his judgment?”
/>
  “Her judgment, and I’m sure that it was all on the up-and-up.” Except that even caramel macchiatos had been legal tender for the crime of bribery of Celestia Alen-Buckley that afternoon, but Gen hadn’t known it.

  Arthur said, “Your boss is sabotaging you.”

  “She is not, and even if she is, she’s my pupil mistress. I’ll take her hopeless cases for her, and then she’ll make sure I get a tenancy offer in return.”

  “Has she said that?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Then it’s not a binding contract, and it wouldn’t be even if she had said it.”

  “It’s never a binding contract. It’s not in writing. And who’s the damn attorney here, anyway?”

  “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “Then stop fucking around and making it impossible to win your case!”

  A moment of silence over the phone. “Score one for you.”

  “Hell, yes, ‘score one for me.’ I mean it. This is your come-to-Jesus moment, you drunken degenerate. If you don’t stop going out, getting hammered, and ending up in the tabloids as nothing more than a joke about being a waste of oxygen, I swear to God that you and your solicitor can find a new barrister to argue your case!”

  “You can’t do that, you know.”

  “I can and I will!” Gen fumed.

  Arthur said, “Cab rank rule.”

  His deep voice sounded ridiculously, infuriatingly smug. She snarled, “How do you even know about that!”

  “My uncle is a barrister.”

  “I thought Christopher lived with him, not you.”

  “Everyone stayed at Spencer House for the holidays until I was nine. After that, Caz and I often went home with Max for holidays. Sometimes we went to Caz’s place. Not often.”

  Dear Lord, Arthur hadn’t had a home to go to for Christmas or Easter vacation from boarding school. Gen raised one fist in frustration. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Caz and Max are my family.”

  “They don’t even live here.”

  “But they would be here if I needed them, in a heartbeat.”

  “As soon as someone thought to call them, and as soon as someone managed to get ahold of them.”