Falling For The Rebel Princess

He fixed her with a meaningful stare, the intensity of his expression making it impossible for her to look away.

‘I never said that.’

Heat rose in her belly as he held the eye contact, leaving her in no doubt about how he thought of her. She shook her head as he finally broke the contact. ‘I can’t believe that I’m even considering this. You’re crazy. There’s no way we can keep this up. What happens if we slip? What happens when someone finds out it’s not for real? What happens when one of us meets someone and this marriage of convenience isn’t so convenient any more?’

He reached for her hand across the table, and once again there was that crackle, that spark that she remembered from the night before. She saw him in the chapel, eyes creased in laughter, as he leaned in to kiss her. Those eyes were still in front of her, concerned now though, rather than amused.

‘It doesn’t have to be for ever. Just long enough that it doesn’t look like a stunt when we split. You weren’t planning on marrying someone else any time soon, were you?’

‘Never.’ Her coffee cup rattled onto the saucer with a clash, liquid spilling over the top.

‘Wow—that really was a no.’

She locked her gaze on his—he had to understand this if they were going to go on. ‘I mean it, Joe. I didn’t want to get married. Ever. I’m not wife material.’

‘And yet here I am, married to you.’

He held her gaze and there was something familiar there. Something that made her stomach tighten in a knot and her skin prickle in awareness. With all the unexpected drama of finding themselves married, it seemed as if they’d both temporarily forgotten that they had also found themselves in bed together that morning.

Perhaps he was remembering something similar, because all of a sudden there was a new fire in his eyes, a new heat in the way that he was looking at her.

Her memory might be a bit ropey, but between the caffeine and the sugar her brain had been pretty much put back together, and there was one image of the night before that she couldn’t get from her mind.

You may now kiss the bride.

They’d all burst out laughing, finding the whole thing hilarious. But as soon as Joe’s hand had brushed against her cheek, cupping her jaw to turn her face up to him, the laughs had died in her throat. He’d been looking down at her as if he were only just seeing her for the first time, as if she had been made to look different by their marriage. His lush eyelashes had swept shut as he’d leaned towards her, and she’d had just a second to catch her breath before his lips had touched hers. They had been impossibly soft, and to start with had just pressed dry and chaste against hers. She’d reached up as he had and touched his cheek, just a gentle, friendly caress of her finger against his stubbled skin. But it had seemed to snap something within him; a gasp had escaped his lips, been swallowed by hers. His mouth had parted, and heat had flared between them.

She’d closed her eyes, understood that she was giving herself up to something more powerful than the simple actions of two individuals. As her eyes had shut her mouth had opened and her body had bowed towards her husband. Her hips had met his, and instantly sparks had crackled. His hands had left her face to lock around her waist, dragging her in tight and holding her against him. His tongue had been hot and hungry in her mouth; her hands frenzied, exploring the contours of his chest, his back, his butt.

And then the applause of their audience had broken into her consciousness, and she’d remembered where they were. What they were doing.

Blood had rushed to her cheeks and she could feel them glow as she’d broken away from Joe, acknowledging the whoops with an ironic wave.

‘All right, all right,’ she’d said, a sip of champagne helping with the brazen nonchalance; she’d hoped that she was successfully hiding the shake in her voice. ‘Hope you enjoyed the show, people.’

She’d looked up at Joe to see whether she had imagined the connection between them, whether he’d still felt it buzzing and humming and trying to pull their bodies back together. By the heated, haunted look in his eyes, she wasn’t alone in this.

He was worried, and he should be, because this marriage of convenience had just got a whole lot more complicated, for both of them. It had been a laugh, a joke, until their lips had met and they had both realised, simultaneously, that the flirting and banter that had provided an edge of excitement to their dancing that night would be a dangerous force unless they got a lid on it.

In the cold light of the morning after, she knew that they needed to face the problem head-on. She broke her gaze away from him, trying to cover what they had both clearly been remembering.

‘Ground rules,’ she said firmly, distracting herself by taking another bite of pie. ‘If we do this, there have to be ground rules to stop it getting complicated.’ He nodded in agreement, and she kept talking. ‘First of all, we keep this strictly business. We both need to keep our heads and be able to walk away when the time is right. Let’s acknowledge that there is chemistry between us, but if we let that lead us, we’re not going to be objective and make smart decisions. And I think we both agree that we need to be smart.’

‘People will talk if we don’t make this look good. It has to be convincing.’

‘Well, duh.’ She waved to the waitress for a coffee refill. ‘You’re really trying to teach me how to handle the press? Obviously, in public we behave as if we’re so madly in love that we couldn’t wait a single minute longer to get married. We sell the hell out of it and make sure that no one has a choice but to believe us. But that’s in public. In private, we’re respectful colleagues.’

He snorted. ‘Colleagues? You think we can do that? You were there, weren’t you, last night? You do remember?’

Did she remember the kiss? The shivers? The way that she could still feel the imprint of his mouth on hers, as if the touch of skin on skin had permanently altered the cells? Yeah, she remembered, but that wasn’t what was important here.

‘And that’s why we need the rules, Joe. If you want to stay married to me, you’d better listen up and pay attention.’

‘Oh, I’m listening, and you’re very clear. In public, I’m madly in love with you. Behind closed doors I’m at arm’s length. Got it. So what are your other rules?’

She resurrected the death stare. ‘No cheating. Ever. If we’re going to make people believe this, they have to really believe it. We can’t risk the story being hijacked. Doesn’t matter how discreet you think you’re being, it’s never enough.’

‘I get it. You don’t share. Goes without saying.’

She dropped her cup back onto her saucer a little heavier than she had planned, and the hot, bitter liquid slopped over the side again. ‘This isn’t about me, Joe. Don’t pretend to know me. This is about appearances. I’ve already told you, this isn’t personal.’

‘Fine, well, if you’re all done then I’ve got a rule of my own.’

‘Go on, then.’ She raised an eyebrow in anticipation.

‘You move in with me.’

This time, the whole cup went over, coffee sloshing over the side of the table and onto her faded black jeans. At least she’d managed to miss her white shirt, she thought, thanking whoever was responsible for small mercies. She mopped hastily with a handful of napkins, buying her precious moments to regain her composure and think about what he had said. Of course she understood deep down that they would have to live together. But somehow, until he’d said it out loud, she hadn’t believed it.

They would be alone together. Living alone together. No one to chaperone or keep them to their ‘this is just business’ word. Watching him across a diner table this morning, it wasn’t exactly easy to keep her hands off him, so how were they meant to do that living alone together?

But she knew better than anyone that they had to make this look good. If her parents knew that she’d only done this to get out of the marriage to Philippe they would be so disappointed, and she didn’t know that she could take doing that to them again.

Separate flats weren’t going to cut it. By the time she looked back up, she knew that she seemed calm, regardless of what was going on underneath.

‘Of course, that makes sense. Are you going to insist on your place rather than mine?’

‘I’ll need my recording studio.’

She nodded. ‘Fine. So that’s it, then? Three ground rules and we’re just going to do this?’

‘Well, if you’re going to chicken out, you need to do it now.’

‘I’m not eight years old, Joe. I’m not going to go through with this because you call me chicken.’

‘Fine, why are you going to do it?’ Nice use of psychology there, she thought. Act as though I’ve already agreed. He really did want this publicity. But it didn’t matter, because she’d already made up her mind.

‘I’m doing it because I don’t want to hurt my family any more than I have to, and because I think it’ll be good for my career.’ And because it would save her from being talked into a real marriage, one which she knew she could never deserve.

‘As long as you’re doing it, your reasons are your own business,’ Joe replied. She felt a little sting at that, like a brush of nettles against bare skin. Her own business. Damn right it was, but the way he said it, as if there really were nothing more than that between them... It didn’t make sense. She didn’t want it to make sense. She just knew that she didn’t want it to hurt.

‘So what are we going to tell people?’ she asked after a long, awkward silence. ‘I guess we need to get our stories straight.’

He nodded, and sipped at his coffee. ‘We just keep it simple. We were swept away when we met each other yesterday, knew right away that it was love and decided we needed to be married. The guys in the band will go along with it. You don’t have to worry about that.’ Somehow she’d forgotten that they’d been there, egging them on, bundling them in the cab to the courthouse. When she thought back to last night, she remembered watching Joe on stage, sweat dripping from his forehead as he sang and rocked around the stage. Him grabbing her hand and pulling her to the dance floor when they’d gone on to a club after the gig, when he hadn’t wanted to talk business.

She remembered the touch of his mouth on hers, as they were pronounced husband and wife.

But of course there had been witnesses, people who knew as well as she did that this was all a sham.

‘What if they say something? They could go to the press.’

‘They won’t. Anyway, to everyone else it was just a laugh. And if anyone did say something, it’d be up to us to look so convincingly in love that no one could possibly believe them.’

‘Ah, easy as that, huh.’

As they sat in the diner she realised how little thought they’d actually given this. She didn’t even know when she would see him again. Her flight was booked back to London that night. She’d only been in Vegas to take this meeting. Her boss had sent her on a flying visit, instructed to try anything to get him to sign. She’d given her word that she wouldn’t leave without the deal done. Would he see through them when they got back? Would he realise how far she had gone to keep to her promise?

‘I’m flying home tonight,’ she said.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘You were pretty sure you’d get me to sign, then. Didn’t think you’d have to stick around to convince me?’

‘I thought you’d be on the move, actually. I was told that you were only in Vegas for one night.’ She knew that the band were renowned for their work ethic and their packed tour schedule, moving from city to city and gig to gig night after night. This had been her only chance for a meeting, her boss had told her as he’d instructed her to book a flight.

If he was always on the move like that, perhaps this would be easier than she thought. It could be weeks, months, before they actually had to live together. And by then, maybe... Maybe what. Maybe things would be different? There was no point pretending to be married at all if she thought that they would have changed their minds in a few weeks. They had to stick it out longer than that. If they were going to do this, they had to do it properly.

‘I am, as it happens. I’m flying back to London tonight too.’

* * *

Why had he said that? They were meant to be in the States for two more weeks. Their manager had booked them into a retreat so that he could finish writing the new album. It should have been just a case of putting the finishing touches to a few songs, but he had an uneasy feeling about it this morning. He needed to go back and look at it again. There were a few decent tracks there, he was sure. But a niggling voice in his head was telling him that he still hadn’t got the big hitters. The singles that would propel the album up the streaming charts and across the radio waves. There was studio space booked for them in London in two weeks’ time and it had to be fixed before then.

Their manager was going to kill him when he told him he wouldn’t be showing up.

He could write in London; he had written the last album in London. It had nothing to do with Charlie. Nothing to do with her feelings, anyway. As she kept saying, this was just business. But it would look better for them to arrive home together.

Nothing to do with their feelings. Right. He would make her believe that today. Because her memory might be fuzzy but he could remember everything. Including the moment that they’d been on the dance floor, him still buzzing from the adrenaline of being on stage, her from the dancing and the music and the day and a half without sleep.

They’d moved together as the music had coursed through him, the bass vibrating his skin. She’d been trying to talk business, shouting in his ear. Contracts and terms, and commitment. But he hadn’t been able to see past her. To feel anything more than the skin of her shoulder under his hand as he’d leaned in to speak in her ear. The soft slide of her hair as he’d brushed it off her face. ‘Let’s do this,’ she’d said. ‘We’d be a great team. I know that we can create something amazing together.’

She’d reached up then, making sure she had his attention—as if it would ever be anywhere but on her again. And then Ricky had said those idiotic words, the ones that no judge could take back this morning.

* * *

She’d laughed, at first, when he had proposed, assuming that he was joking. It had had nothing to do with the way she’d felt when his arm was around her. The way that that had made him feel. As if he wanted to protect her and challenge her and be challenged by her all at once.

He could never let her know how he had felt last night.

It was much better, much safer that they kept this as business. He knew what happened when you went into a relationship without any calculation. When you jumped in with your heart on the line and no defences. He wouldn’t be doing it again.

And then there were the differences between them. Sure, it hadn’t seemed to matter in that moment that he’d asked her to marry him, or when they were dancing and laughing and joking together, but a gig and a nightclub and beer were great levellers. When you were having to scream above the music then your accent didn’t matter. But in the diner this morning there was no hiding her carefully Londonised RP that one could only acquire with decades of very expensive schooling, and learning to speak in the echoey ballrooms of city palaces and country piles.

He’d learnt that when he’d joined one of those expensive schools at the age of eleven, courtesy of his music scholarship free ride. His Bolton accent had been smoothed slightly by years away from home, first at school, and then on the road, but it would always be there. And he knew that, like the difference in their backgrounds, it would eventually come between them.

His experiences at school had made it clear that he didn’t belong there.

And when he’d returned home to his parents, and their comfy semi-detached in the suburbs, he had realised that he didn’t belong there any more either. He was caught between two worlds, not able to settle in either. So the last thing that he needed was to be paraded in front of the royal family, no doubt coming into contact with the Ruperts and Sebastians and Hugos from his school days.

And what about his family? Was Charlie going to come round for a Sunday roast? Make small talk with his mum with Radio 2 playing in the background? He couldn’t picture it.

But he would have to, he realised. Because it didn’t matter what they were doing in private. It didn’t matter that he had told himself that he absolutely had to get these feelings under control, their worlds were about to collide.

It wasn’t permanent. That was what he had to remind himself. It wasn’t for ever. They were going to end this once a decent amount of time had passed, and in the meantime they would just have to fit into each other’s lives as best they could.

Just think of the publicity. A whirlwind romance was a good story. No doubt a better one than a drunken mistake. But since when had he allowed the papers to rule on what was and wasn’t a good idea for him? No, there was more to it than that. Something about waking up beside her in bed that he wasn’t ready to let go of yet.

‘I have an album launch party to go to first, though,’ he said at last. ‘What do you say to making our first appearance as husband and wife?’

CHAPTER THREE

CHARLIE ADJUSTED THE strap on her spike heels and straightened the seam of her leather leggings. As soon as the car door opened, she knew there would be a tsunami of flashes from the assembled press hordes. She was considered fair game at the best of times, and if news of the wedding had got out by now, the scrum would be worse than usual.

These shots needed to be perfect. She wasn’t having her big moment hijacked by a red circle of shame.

It was funny, she thought, that neither she nor Joe had called his manager, or her boss yet, and told them about what had happened. Not the best start to a publicity campaign, which was, after all, what they had agreed this marriage was. It was more natural, this way, she thought. If there was a big announcement, it would look too fake. Much better for them to let the story grow organically.

As the limo pulled up outside the club she realised that no announcement was necessary anyway. Word had obviously got around. The hotel had arranged for them to be picked up from a discreet back door, an old habit, so she hadn’t been sure whether there had been photographers waiting for her there. If there had, they’d taken a shortcut to beat them here. There were definitely more press here than a simple album launch warranted. The story was out, then.

Without thinking, she slipped her hand into Joe’s, sliding her fingers between his. The sight of so many photographers still made her nervous. It didn’t matter how many times she had faced them. It reminded her of those times in her childhood when she’d been pulled from the protective privacy of her family home and paraded in front of the world’s press, all looking for that perfect picture of the perfect Princess. As a child she had smiled until her cheeks had ached, dressed in her prettiest pink dress, turning this way and that as her name was shouted. It had been a small price to pay, her parents had explained, to make sure that the rest of their lives were private. But as she’d got older she’d resented those days more and more, and her childish rictus grin had turned into a sullen teen grimace.

And then, when she was nineteen, and had realised that she would never be the Princess that her family and her country wanted her to be, she’d stopped smiling altogether. She remembered sitting in the doctor’s office as he explained what he’d found: inflammation, scar tissue, her ovaries affected. Possible problems conceiving.

She might never have a baby, no chubby little princes or princesses to parade in front of an adoring public, and no hope of making the sort of dynastic match that would make her parents happy.

Her most important duty as a royal female was to continue her family’s line. It had been drummed into her from school history lessons to formal state occasions from as far back as she could remember. Queens who had done their duty and provided little princes and princesses to continue the family line.

And things hadn’t changed as much as we would all like to think, she knew. The country had liked her mother when she was a shining twenty-something. But it was when she’d given the country three beautiful royal children that they’d really fallen in love with her, when she had won their loyalty. And that was something that Charlie might never be able to do. She might never feel the delicious weight of her child in her arms. Never breathe in the smell of a new baby knowing that it was all hers.

What if she never made her parents grandparents, and saw the pride and love in their eyes that she knew they were reserving for that occasion?

And as soon as she’d realised that, she had realised that she could never make them truly proud of her, somehow the weight of responsibility had fallen from her shoulders and she’d decided that she was never going back. If she wanted to roll out of a nightclub drunk—okay. If she wanted to disappear for three days, without letting anyone know where she was going—fine. If she wanted to skip a family event to go and listen to a new band—who cared?

Her mother insisted on a security detail, and Charlie had given up arguing that one. Her only demand was that they were invisible—she never looked for the smartly dressed man she knew must be on the row behind her on the plane, and so she never saw him. And the officers didn’t report back to her mother. If she thought for a second that they would, she would have pulled the plug on the whole arrangement. That was why they’d not intervened last night: they knew she had a zero-tolerance approach to them interfering with anything that didn’t affect her physical safety.

She was never going to be the perfect Princess, so why build her family’s hopes up? She could let them down now, get it out of the way, in her own way, and not have to worry with blindsiding them with disappointment later.

Except it hurt to disappoint them, and it didn’t seem to matter how many times that she did it. Every time, the look on their faces was as bad as the time before.

What would they say this time, she wondered, when they realised that she had married someone she had just met—so obviously to scupper the sensible match that they were trying to make for her? And she had married a rock star at that, someone who couldn’t be further from the nice reliable boys that they enjoyed steering her towards at private family functions. What was the point of going along with that? she’d always thought. Entertaining the Lord Sebastians and Duc Philippes and Count Henris who were probably distant cousins, and who all—to a man—would run a mile as soon as they found out that they might not be needing that place at Eton or Charterhouse, or wherever they’d put their future son’s name down for school before they had even bagged the ultimate trophy wife.

Joe leaned past her to look out of the window, and then gave her a pointed look. ‘I guess our happy news is out.’

‘Looks that way,’ she said, with a hesitant smile. ‘Ready to face the hordes?’

‘As I’ll ever be.’ He looked confident, though, and relaxed. As if he’d been born to a life in front of the cameras, whereas she, who had attended her first photo call at a little under a day old, still came out in a sweat at the sight of a paparazzo.

But she stuck on what she’d come to think of as her Princess Scowl, in the style of a London supermodel, and pressed her knees and ankles together. It was second nature, after so many hours of etiquette lessons. Even in skin-tight leather, where there was no chance of an accidental underwear flash. She ran a hand through her hair, messing up the backcombed waves and dragging it over to one side in her trademark style. A glance in the rear-view mirror told her that her red lip stain was still good to go, managing to look just bitten and just kissed. She took a deep breath and reached for the door handle.