Scandalous Box Set

by Layla Valentine

  Christian and I will have plenty of time to enjoy married life, and I’ll get used to being part of the royal family, way before Christian ever becomes king. We can raise Tyler and have the same experiences as other parents. But first, we have a royal wedding to plan.

  “I can’t believe I’ll be back here in two months for your wedding,” Blakely says, almost as if she was reading my mind.

  “I can’t, either.” It’s true. The last year has flown by, even more so than the year leading up to Tyler’s birth.

  “Is it going to be like—” Blakely waves her hands around the room at the over-the-top décor. “Or is it going to be a bit more—” she points at me.

  I laugh. “It will be more me. Understated. Simple. I’m going to wear boots with my dress.”

  “Yee-haw for that,” Blakely says, twirling her mini cowboy hat in the air.

  Blakely comes up to visit once every couple months or so. Christian flies her in on the recently acquired royal jet—the same one we take once a month to visit my parents back in Texas—and she has become like a member of the family.

  Once Christian found out exactly how much Blakely took care of me when I lost my job and my apartment, he made sure she was compensated and then some. The extra money has given her the ability to take time away from work and travel whenever she feels the urge, which usually means coming to see me. And I’m not complaining. Sigmaran has been more than welcoming, but having my best friend around makes it feel even more like home.

  “Clear the way. Birthday cowboy coming through.”

  I turn and see Tyler perched on my dad’s shoulders, decked out in a red plaid shirt, denim jeans, and his little cowboy boots. He is so cute I could cry.

  “Stick ’em up,” Blakely says, pointing her fingers at Tyler.

  He giggles and claps, wanting Auntie Blakely to hold him. She snatches him off my dad’s shoulders and takes him to the giant stuffed horse in the corner.

  When I feel hands snake around my waist, I don’t have to turn around to know who they belong to. My body knows when it is Christian. I lay my hands over his and lean my head back on his chest.

  “Hi,” I whisper.

  He presses a kiss to my neck. “You were gone this morning when I woke up.”

  I gesture around the room. “Lots of planning to do.”

  His lips move upward until he is nibbling at my earlobe. I look over at my parents to make sure they aren’t watching, and then moan.

  Christian whispers against my skin. “I had plans of my own this morning. Plans that were spoiled when you weren’t there to ravish.”

  Heat moves through me, and I have to push away from him before I grab his hand and find the nearest closet. “There will be plenty of time for ravishing after the party.”

  He pouts out his lower lip. “No fun.”

  I spin around and press my hips against his as I stretch onto my tip-toes to give him a kiss. “Be patient.”

  The King and Queen arrive, and amazingly, they are both wearing jeans and cowboy boots. The boots look shiny and brand new, and their jeans are creased down the front like a pair of dress slacks, but they are dressed up, which is all I could ever ask for. It is all Christian could ever ask for, too, because he spends the vast majority of the party standing with his brothers and teasing his parents.

  After Tyler smashes his way through his first slice of cake and covers himself head-to-toe in frosting, his grandma, the Queen, picks him up from his high-chair, presses a kiss to a tiny bit of clean skin above his ear, and then places him on his feet next to the table.

  Blakely rushes forward, expecting him to fall on his bum the way he has been for the last several weeks, but instead, he shuffles his tiny booted foot forward.

  I gasp. “Christian!”

  “I saw,” Christian says, his eyes and mouth wide next to me.

  “He just took his first step.” I squat down and clap my hands. “Come here, baby. Come to Mama.”

  Christian squats down next to me. “No, come to Papa.”

  “No, come to Grandma,” my mom says, bending down across the room.

  Blakely grabs a piece of cake from the table and wiggles it in front of Tyler’s nose. “No, come to Auntie Blake. She has cake.”

  Thrilled with the attention, Tyler just giggles and refuses to move. But by the end, every member of our weird, mix-and-match family, even the King, is down on the floor, begging the future King of Sigmaran to take his first stumbling steps toward them.

  The End

  The Triplet Scandal

  Layla Valentine

  Copyright 2019 by Layla Valentine

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.

  All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  Grace

  June

  Marriage has always felt unachievable for me. How could I attach myself to another person and vow to love and cherish them when I couldn’t even keep a cactus alive? The idea of being with the same person forever, while nice, seems improbable.

  Honestly, I blame my parents. High school sweethearts, they got married just after graduation and have spent the last three decades building a life together. They own a farm in Maryland and have matching rocking chairs, built by my dad from salvaged wood, sitting on the front porch. Their love story is beautiful and, I’ve come to realize, completely unrealistic.

  Normal people can’t count on that kind of happy ending. My mom and dad met when they were fifteen and claim to this day that they saw one another and “just knew.” The only thing I “just knew” at fifteen was that my mom was completely unfair about not letting me get a belly button piercing. I wasn’t in the headspace to find love.

  I’m still not in that headspace. Which is why I’m engaged to my boss.

  “Hey, Sebastian. It’s Grace.” I wince.

  We’ve been engaged and living together for a month, and yet, I still don’t know how to talk to him on the phone. My name pops up on his screen when I call. I don’t need to announce myself, but no matter how hard I try to act natural, I can’t ever seem to forget that I’m talking to my boss.

  “Give me a call when you’re on your way,” I say to the messaging service. “The reception is at seven, right? I’m sure you’ll be here soon. Otherwise, we’ll be late. Anyway, give me a call. Bye.”

  I hang up and throw the phone on the blue velvet sectional, covering my face with my hands, too embarrassed to even look at my own blurry reflection in the ten-by-ten-foot windows that line the walls.

  I shouldn’t have even called. He won’t call me back. I learned that within the first week of our arrangement. Sebastian goes where he wants and does what—and who—he wants, and he doesn’t require nor want my approval. And why should he? I’m not his real fiancée. I’m a business partner at best; an accomplice at worst.

  The day it happened, when Sebastian called me into his office and asked me to go to lunch with him, I thought I was getting a raise. Though, what I really wanted was a promotion.

  The only reason I took the position as Sebastian’s assistant was to get my foot in the door of the finance industry. I had my master’s; all I needed was my big break. And what better opportunity could I hope for than being the assistant to the CEO of Wayde Bank? If I could impress him, the world of finance would lie at my feet. Sebastian Wayde could be my mythical guide through the ranks.

  I thought he would be my fast track to success. Instead, I’d been running copies, scheduling his grooming appointments, and fetching coffees for six months without even a nod of approval from him. At
first, I thought he was just trying to intimidate me, to show me how serious he takes his job. After a month, however, I realized he truly didn’t notice how much I did for him every day. And even if he did, he didn’t care.

  The restaurant he took me to was a total boys’ club. Waitresses in skintight pencil skirts handed out scotch like it was water and red meat ruled the menu. I ordered the steak salad, and I had to lift a slab of bleeding meat to see the romaine lettuce buried underneath.

  “This is my favorite lunch spot,” Sebastian said, cutting into his braised veal with zeal, both elbows spread like wings.

  Sebastian Wayde, for all his wealth and pomp, is the image of a Scandinavian man. He has white blond hair and a frame that stretches well beyond six feet tall. He towers over every man he meets, but more than that, he is broad. He has wide shoulders and muscular arms and legs.

  I always picture him hiking up mountains with a pack on his back and chopping wood to prepare for a harsh winter. Of course, he would never wander into the wilderness alone. In the six months I’ve worked for him, he has taken three vacations, all of which were to luxury resorts where he spent tens of thousands of dollars to get drunk by a tiled pool that had a view of the ocean. He works out with a private trainer in his building’s private gym, and he only jogs on treadmills. He’s what you could call “indoorsy.”

  “Yeah, it’s great,” I agreed nervously.

  I wanted to ask him why he’d brought me out to lunch. Never once in the past five months had he asked me to go anywhere with him that wasn’t a meeting. And even then, he’d asked me to wait in the hallway a number of times, which was both embarrassing and infuriating.

  He nodded to the shallow glass in front of me. “You can drink if you want.”

  I couldn’t decide if it was worse to drink with my lunch and look like a lush or refuse him and look like a prude. Or, was the drink some kind of test? Was he trying to see if I was the kind of employee who would drink on the company dime? Would my response to this question determine whether I got the raise and/or promotion?

  “It isn’t a test,” he said, leaning forward and smiling like he wanted to take a bite out of my neck.

  Sebastian charmed people like a lion. He intimidated them into smiling back. When all of his attention was focused on you, you couldn’t help but smile. The only other option was to cower, and that was far less socially appropriate. Even if I’d wanted to resist, I wouldn’t have been able to. It was the first time since my first day on the job that his full attention had been on me, and I was ill-equipped to handle it.

  I smiled and took a sip, flinching against the burn of the alcohol down my throat.

  “Good, right?” he said, taking a drink of his own glass and then leaning back in his seat. “It is the best money can buy. At this restaurant, at least. The bottle costs three thousand dollars.”

  I didn’t know whether he wanted me to be surprised or awed by this. I settled on a casual nod. “It’s delicious.”

  “It is,” he agreed. “Would you like a bottle?”

  The question caught me by surprise, and I opened and closed my mouth several times, searching for the right words as though talking to him was a test I could pass.

  “I bet you would. Who wouldn’t?” he asked without waiting for my response. “The real question is—can you afford to buy a bottle?”

  He was right. That was the real question, and an easy one to answer.

  My cheeks flamed. “No.”

  “Student loans?” he asked, face twisted into mock concern. “And Manhattan living isn’t cheap. I pay my assistants well, but it can’t be easy.”

  I nodded. “I’m doing fine, though.”

  I wasn’t. Not really. Every month was a struggle, trying to find new and inventive ways to cut back. I’d started intermittent fasting for the simple reason that it meant eating slightly less food. My parents offered me money every time we talked on the phone, and I refused. So, Mom settled for sending care packages of homemade jam and fresh farm eggs—the essentials, she called them.

  “But you could be doing better,” he said, his voice slick as oil.

  “Everyone could be doing better,” I said. “If I thought like that, I’d never be happy.”

  His brow creased for a moment, considering what I said, before he shook it away and continued on. “I have a proposition for you.”

  I sat up straighter. My heart pounded in my chest and my leg shook under the table, anticipating climbing the next rung on the proverbial ladder of success.

  “Okay?” I said, encouraging him to continue.

  “Marry me.”

  Sebastian was staring at me, his face calm and relaxed while my brain short-circuited. He couldn’t have said what I thought he’d said. He was too calm to have just uttered two of the most insane words I’d ever heard.

  So, I blinked and smiled. “Sorry. I didn’t catch that.”

  “Marry me,” he repeated, enunciating each word. “You will receive adequate compensation, of course. I was thinking five hundred thousand, but I am open to negotiating that number.”

  Compensation? Half a million dollars?

  I placed my sweaty palms flat on the table and took deep yoga breaths, exhaling like a dragon. “I don’t understand.”

  “Yes, you do,” he said. “I know you overheard my conversation with my mother last month.”

  I glanced up at him and then away as soon as I realized his all-knowing, steely eyes were on me. I’d gone to deliver his lunch and caught him talking with his mother. I should have walked away, but the conversation was tense, and curiosity got the better of me. The fact that Sebastian knew I’d eavesdropped on him was mortifying. Though, flooded as I was with confusion, I hardly had the energy to devote to being embarrassed.

  He angled himself in his chair, crossed one long leg over the other, and rested an elbow on the table. I’d seen him take up the position many times during meetings. It was a power pose, lending him an air of casual confidence and control. Meanwhile, I was searching for a pillow or jacket or thick cloth napkin to cling to like a blankie.

  “My mother is tired of my bachelor lifestyle,” he said, rolling his eyes. “She thinks it’s bad for business, and will not hand over ownership of Wayde Bank to me until I am married. So, I thought we could form a mutually beneficial relationship. You can become my wife until the reins to the bank are in my grip, and I will pay you handsomely.”

  “But she isn’t planning to retire for two years,” I said.

  I had a million questions, but it seemed like shooting down the idea before it could really get any wings was the best option. If I showed Sebastian this idea was insane, we could go back to our normal work relationship. At the start of lunch, I’d been hoping for a shift in our relationship, but now I just wanted to fetch Sebastian’s coffee and be invisible to him.

  He nodded. “And if I wait two years before I settle down with someone, she will smell a scheme. But if I am married for two years before becoming owner, it will look more believable. Besides, the fact that you are my assistant is reason enough why I would keep the relationship a secret from her and everyone. I can tell her we’ve been dating since shortly after you started working for me and just recently made it official. Once we are married, no one will even blink when I transfer the money into your account. Then, we will pretend for a few years. You’ll pay off your debts, and I’ll get my company. Then we’ll file for an amicable divorce. It’s quite simple.”

  “Five hundred thousand?” I asked.

  “Five zeroes,” he said without blinking. “We’ll sign a prenuptial agreement, obviously, and our relationship in all regards will remain professional. I do not want this situation to be construed by anyone as me paying for sex.”

  “You’d marry an assistant?” I asked.

  After first meeting Sebastian, it was hard not to imagine what it would be like to be with him. He was an attractive, powerful man. A woman would have to be dead to not even consider the possibility. And then I ex
perienced the trail of devastation he left in his wake. Women calling the office in the middle of the day trying to get in touch with him, wondering if he’d changed his phone number or if he was out of town. They weren’t the kind of women a man would usually blow off, either. These were beautiful women with illustrious careers and enough money that they certainly didn’t need Sebastian’s.

  He leaned across the table, his eyes roving over my face, and shrugged. “I’d do anything for my company. Besides, you’re attractive enough. It won’t raise too many eyebrows.”

  Attractive enough. I guess that was a compliment.

  The more he spoke, the more normal the idea became. He’d seemingly thought of everything, and as I listened to him lay out the timeline of our engagement and wedding, I couldn’t stop thinking about how good it would be to be free of my debts. To have the money to put a down payment on a place in the city. Perhaps, it was shock or desperation, but by the end of the lunch, I found myself shaking his hand.

  Now here I sit, in his penthouse, waiting for him yet again.

  When my phone buzzes, I jump up and grab it off the sofa, thinking it must be him, but it’s only an email from a luxury handbag designer asking if I’ll carry one of her bags on my next night out. I delete it without reading it all the way through and turn to look out at Central Park and the skyline beyond.

  In the month since the moment when I said yes to his proposition, I’ve had my regrets. Sitting at the lunch table listening to Sebastian talk through the engagement, marriage, and divorce, it seemed like everything would happen in a flash. What was two years compared to an entire lifetime? But then we lived together for a month, and I realized that one awkward dinner could feel like an entire year.

  Living day in and day out with someone you do not love and who clearly does not love you in return makes the days drag on and on. Especially when you have to pretend to be in love. When every outing together is filled with planned pecks on the cheek, hand holding, and loving gazes, followed by barely speaking once alone at home.