Falling for the Rebel Princess
Autore
Ellie Darkins
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Chapter One
‘NOT YET!’ CHARLIE GASPED, willing herself to be dragged back under.
In her dream her skin was hot and damp, on fire from his touch.
Awake, her tongue felt furry.
In her dream her body hummed, desperate for the feel of him.
Awake, her eyes stung as she peeled them open.
In her dream she begged for more, and got everything she didn’t even know she needed.
Awake, she needed to pee.
She admitted defeat and stretched herself properly alive, wincing at the harsh Nevada sunlight assaulting her in the hotel room. As her toes encountered skin she flinched back, realising that she did have this one, small reminder of her dream. The man who’d taken the starring role was beside her on the mattress, his face turned away from her, his arms and legs sprawled and caught in the sheets. She looked away. She couldn’t think about him. Not yet.
Easing herself out of bed, she willed him not to wake. And worked her thumb into her waistband, rubbing at her skin where her jeans had left a tight red line. The T-shirt she’d slept in was twisted and creased, and she glanced around the room, wondering whether her luggage had been transferred when the hotel had upgraded them to a luxury suite. She shuddered when she caught sight of herself in the mirror and tried to pull her hair up into some sort of order.
It had started out backcombed and messy, and her eyeliner had never been subtle in her life—but a couple of hours’ sleep had taken the look from grunge to tragic. She wiped under her eyes with a finger, and the tacky drag of her skin made her shudder. And desperate to shower.
A glint of gold caught her eye and stopped her dead.
No. That had been the dream. It had to be.
She went over her memories, rooted to the spot, staring at the ring, trying to pull apart what was dream and what was real. After eighteen hours travelling and many more without sleep, the past twenty-four hours barely felt real, images and memories played through her mind as if they had happened to somebody else.
The thrumming, heaving energy of the gig last night. That was real. The music capturing her senses, hijacking her emotions and pumping her full of adrenaline. Real.
Hot and sweaty caresses just before dawn. Dream.
Dancing with Joe in the club, trying to talk business, shouting in his ear. Moving so closely with him that they felt like one body. Feeling the music play between them like a language only they spoke. Maybe that was real.
The slide of his bare skin against hers. So, so dreamy.
Him talking softly as they lay on the bed, trading playlists on their phones, sharing a pair of headphones, until one and then both of them fell asleep. God, she wished she knew.
But as she raised her left hand and examined the demure gold band on her third finger, she was certain of one thing.
Vegas chapel wedding. Real.
She banged her head back against the wall. Why did she always do this? She was losing count of the number of times she’d looked over the wreckage of her life after one stupid, impulsive move after another and wished that she could turn back time. If she had the balls to go home and tell her parents that she didn’t want their royal way of life and everything that came with it, maybe she’d stop hitting the self-destruct button. But starting that conversation would lead to questions that she’d never be prepared to answer.
Thinking back to the night before, she tried to remember what had triggered her reaction. And then she caught sight of the newspaper, abandoned beside the bed. The slip of the paper under her fingertips made her shiver with the memory of being handed one like it backstage in the club last night, and she let out a low groan. It had been the headline on the front page: Duke Philippe bragging about his forthcoming engagement to Princess Caroline Mary Beatrice of Afland, otherwise known as Charlie. It was the sort of match her parents had been not so subtly pushing on her for years, the one she was hoping that would go away if she ignored it for long enough. She knew unequivocally that she would never marry, and especially not someone like Duke Philippe.
She’d left the cold, rocky, North Sea island of Afland nearly ten years ago, when she’d headed to London determined to make her own way in the music business. Her parents had given her ten years to pursue her rebellion—as they put it. But they all knew what was expected after that: a return to Afland, official royal duties, and a practical and sensible engagement to a practical, sensible aristocrat.
So there was nothing but disappointment in store for her family, and for her.
She shrank into the bathroom and hid the newspaper as she heard stirring from the bed. Perhaps if she hid for long enough it just wouldn’t be true—Joe Kavanagh and their marriage would fade away as the figment of her imagination that she knew they must be.
Marriage. She scoffed. This wasn’t a marriage. It was a mistake.
But it seemed as if her body didn’t care which bits of last night were real and which were imagined. The hair on her arms was standing on end, her heart had started to race, and she felt a yearning deep in her stomach that seemed somehow familiar.
‘Morning,’ she heard Joe call from the bedroom, and she wondered if he’d guessed that she was hiding out in there. ‘I know you’re in there.’
The sound of his voice sent another shiver of recognition. British, and educated. But there was also a burr of something rugged about it, part of his northern upbringing that felt exotically ‘authentic’, when compared to the marble halls and polished accents of her childhood.
She risked peeking round the bathroom door and mumbled a good morning, wondering why she hadn’t just left the minute that she’d woken up—running had always worked for her before. She’d been running from one catastrophe to another for as long as she could remember. Because this was her suite, she reminded herself. They’d been upgraded when the manager of the hotel had heard about their impromptu wedding, and realised that he had royalty and music royalty spending their wedding night in his hotel.
The only constant in her life since she’d left the palace in Afland had been her job. She’d worked from the bottom of the career ladder up to her position as an A&R executive, signing bands for an independent record label, Avalon. And that was the reason she had to get herself out of this room and face her new husband. Because not only was he a veritable rock god, he was also the artist that she’d been flown out here to charm, persuade and impress with her consummate professionalism in a last-ditch bid to get him to sign with her company.
She held her head high as she walked back into the bedroom, determined not to show him her feelings. The sun was coming in strong through the windows, and the backlighting meant that she couldn’t quite see his expression.
‘How’s the head?’ he asked, his expression changing to concerned.
She wondered whether she should tell him that she’d only had a couple of beers at most last night. That her recklessness hadn’t come from alcohol, it had been fuelled by adrenaline and something more dangerous—the destructive path she found herself on all too often whenever marriage and family and the future entered the conversation.
Had Joe been drunk last night? She didn’t think so. He’d seemed high when he’d come off stage, but she had been at enough gigs to know the difference between adrenaline and something less legal. She remembered him necking a beer, but that was it. So he didn’t have that excuse either.
Why in God’s name had this ever seemed like a good idea—to either of them?
‘I’ve felt better,’ she admitted, crossing the room to perch on the edge of the bed.
Up close, she decided that it really wasn’t fair that he looked like this. His hair was artfully mussed by the pillows, his shirt was rumpled, and his tiny hint of eyeliner had smudged, but the whole look was so unforgivably sexy she almost forgot that whatever had happened the night before had been a huge mistake.
But sexy wasn’t why she’d married him. Or maybe it was. When she went into reckless self-destruction mode, who was to say why she did anything?
Even in this oasis in the middle of the desert, she hadn’t been able to escape the baggage that came with being a member of the royal family. The media obsession with royal women marrying and reproducing. Someone had raised a toast when they had seen her, to her impending marriage, asked her if she was up the duff and handed her a bottle of champagne. She’d been tempted to down the whole thing without taking a breath, determined to silence the voices in her head.
‘So,’ she said. ‘I guess we’re in trouble.’
* * *
Trouble? She was right about that. Everything about this woman said trouble. He had known it the minute that he had set eyes on her, all attitude and eyeliner. He had known it for sure when they’d started dancing, her body moving in time with his. So at what point last night had trouble seemed like such a good idea?
When they’d left the dance floor, in that last club, their bodies hot and sticky. When she’d been trying to talk business but he’d been distracted by the humming of his skin and the sparks that leapt from his body to hers whenever she was near. When Ricky, the drummer in his band, had joked that he needed to show some real rock-star behaviour if they were going to sell the new album, and Joe had dropped to one knee and proposed.
He hadn’t thought for a second that she would go along with it.
But Charlie had stopped for a moment as their eyes had met, and as everyone had laughed around them he had been able to see that she wasn’t laughing, and neither was he. The club had stilled and quietened, or maybe it was just his mind that had, but suddenly there had been just the two of them, connected through something bigger than either of their bodies could contain. Something he couldn’t pretend to comprehend, but that he knew meant that they understood each other.
And then she had nodded, thrown back her head and laughed along with everyone else, and they had been carried on a wave of adrenaline, bonhomie and contagious intoxication into a cab and up the steps of the courthouse. Somehow, still high from their performance and bewitched by the Princess, he hadn’t stepped out of their fantasy and broken the spell.
They’d been cocooned in that buzz, carrying them straight through the ceremony. Such a laugh as they’d toppled out of the chapel. Right up until that kiss. Then it had all felt very real.
Did she remember that feeling as they had kissed for the first time? He knew in his bones that he could never forget it, as they were pronounced husband and wife.
‘Are you going to hide in there all morning?’ he asked.
In the daylight, she didn’t look like a princess any more than she had the night before. Maybe that was how he’d found himself here. He’d expected to be on edge around her, but as soon as he had met her... Not that he was relaxed—no, there was too much going on, too much churning and yearning and desire to call it relaxed. But he’d been... He wasn’t sure of the word. Her boss had sent her out here to convince him that their label was a good fit—and he’d been right. They had... Maybe fit was the right world. They’d just understood each other. She understood the music. Understood him. And when they had started dancing, there had been no question in his mind that this was important. He didn’t know what it was, but he knew that he wanted more.
And marrying her—it had been a good move for the band. You couldn’t buy publicity like that. He must have been thinking about that, must have calculated this as a business move. It was the only thing that made sense.
But was she expecting a marriage?
Because she came with a hell of a lot of baggage. Oh, he knew which fork to use, and how to spot the nasty ones in a room of over-privileged Henrys. He’d learned that much at his exclusive public school, where his music scholarship had taken him fee-free. But the most important part of his education had been the invaluable lesson he’d got in his last year—everyone was out to get something, so you’d better work out what you wanted in return.
The only place he felt relaxed these days was on the road, with his band. They moved from city to city, sometimes settling for a few weeks if they could hire some studio space, otherwise going from gig to gig, and woman to woman, without looking back. Everyone knowing exactly what they wanted, and taking what was on offer with no strings attached.
‘Come on,’ he said, reaching for her hand. As his fingertips touched hers he had another flash of that feeling from last night. The electric current that had joined them together as they had danced; that had woven such a spell around them that even a visit to a courthouse hadn’t broken it.
‘I can’t believe we got married. This was your fault. Your idea.’
Was she for real? He shrugged and reminded her of the details. ‘No one forced you. You seemed to think it was a great idea last night.’
So why was she looking at her ring as if it were burning her?
‘Wh...?’
He waited to see which question was burning uppermost in her mind.
‘Why? Why in God’s name did I think it was a great idea?’
‘How am I supposed to know if you don’t? Maybe you were thinking it would be good publicity for the album.’
He looked at her carefully. Yes, that was why they had done it. But also...no. There was more to it. He couldn’t believe that she was such a stranger this morning. When they’d laughed about this last night, it hadn’t just been a publicity stunt—that sounded too cold. It had been a joke, a deal, between friends. A publicity stunt was business, but last night, as they’d laughed together on the way to the courthouse, it had been more than that.
And maybe that was where he had gone wrong, because he knew how this worked. He knew that all relationships were deals, with each partner out to get what they wanted. He had no reason to be offended that she was acting like that this morning.
‘I’m not sure why you’re mad at me. You thought it was a great idea last night.’
‘I hadn’t slept for thirty-six hours, Joe. I think we can say that I wasn’t doing my best reasoning. We have to undo this. What are my parents going to say?’
Her parents, the Queen of Afland and her husband. He groaned inwardly.
‘Last night you said, and I quote, “They’re going to go mental.” As far as I could work out, that was a point in the plan’s favour.’
In the cold light of morning—not such a good idea. Bad, in fact. Very bad.
He had married a princess—an actual blue-blooded, heir-to-the-throne, her-mother’s-a-queen princess.
He was royally screwed.
‘Look,’ Joe said. ‘I’m hungry, too hungry to talk about this now. How about we go out for breakfast and discuss this with coffee and as much protein as they can cram on a plate?’
