28
18 March
Austin Manor
The powerful knock on her door startled her awake. Her eyes blinked rapidly, an attempt to dislodge mascara caked on like a thick layer of frosting. She knew where she was, but still, it took her a moment for the weirdness of waking up in Nico’s house to settle. It had been a week, but it remained almost like an alternate reality. Posing as Rowan’s fiancée, living in Nico’s house, snuggling up with an eighty-pound German shepherd.
Leia snorted, stood on the bed, and gave a mighty shake, making her collar jingle and Juliana’s head pound.
“Juliana?!”
Jules rolled over, peering at her phone on the nightstand. With a quick tap of her finger, she saw the time. With some minor contortions, she placed her feet on the floor.
“Juliana, you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she croaked. Clearing her throat, she tried again. “I’m good. Be out in a second.”
Leia dropped her huge head on Juliana’s lap. Jules gave a quick pat before she gently shoved Leia and stood. She hurried to the closet and pulled on a pair of tights. She grabbed a sweatshirt before hurrying to the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face. Aside from a quick check in the mirror, she didn’t tarry. It was way past the hour she normally got up, and the fog of her disrupted schedule was thick.
Rowan’s impatience with her was a sentient being lingering on the other side of the door. Maybe five minutes had passed since he’d first pounded on her door, but when she pushed it open, the furrow of his brow and the scowl on his face made it seem as if he’d been waiting for hours. He was leaning on new, less cumbersome crutches. These were aluminum sticks, which cuffed around his forearms and provided a handle for his hands. He was in shorts and a long-sleeved compression shirt. A lighter brace was on his knee.
“Good morning,” she said. The high-pitched greeting grated on her nerves, and she thought Rowan might have flinched.
She walked by him, heading for the kitchen. He didn’t speak, but she knew he was following behind her.
“It wasn’t the best idea for you to walk up these steps.”
He maneuvered around her and moved his crutches to one hand before dropping down to his butt. He almost slid down the stairs. Juliana watched, fascinated, while Leia stood at the top of the stairs, whining. A smile tugged at Juliana’s mouth, but she ducked her head, so he couldn’t see it, and then she followed him. By the time she reached the bottom, he’d righted himself, and she ended up trailing him into the kitchen.
She smelled coffee, and feeling grateful, she pulled a mug from the cabinet and filled it. Rowan’s gaze was on her, and it was peculiar. He looked at her like he hadn’t seen her before, curious and thoughtful. She didn’t need to face him to know it. She could feel it singe the back of her neck as she dumped honey into her cup.
When she turned, he placed his phone on the counter and nudged it in her direction.
Inwardly, she scowled, but she merely looked at Rowan. In that moment, she felt like she was poking a hornet’s nest.
He reached forward and pushed the mobile closer to her. With practiced nonchalance, she sipped her coffee. The first hot sip slid down her throat. The aroma wafted into her nostrils, and the caffeine, just the promise of it, kick-started her brain. She took another sip, and then she placed the mug on the counter and picked up the cell. She didn’t need to look. She knew what was going to be there. But she glanced down with nonchalance.
Rowan had a Twitter feed up. It started with a picture of her. On a bar. In a dress that highlighted the length of her legs and her ability to maneuver in heels meant to draw attention. The caption: Stepping out … on Skipper Rowan Beckwith? She scrolled through the comments, most of them vitriolic and chiding, but some were more understanding. One person defended Juliana in a witty and effective use of her 280 characters, including the phrase sowing wild, royal oats. Juliana maintained her mask of indifference, but she wanted to smile.
Curious, she ducked out of Twitter and pulled up the browser on his phone. She Googled royals and noted the headlines were all about her. No mention of money spent or speculation on embezzlement. Mission accomplished. She exited out of the search and replaced the mobile on the counter.
With deliberate movement, she grabbed her mug again and took another fortifying sip. When she glanced at Rowan, he was relaxing back against the cabinets, one crutch lingering in his hand, the other set beside him. His braced leg was crossed over his other. His coloring improved every day as he began losing the post-surgical pallor.
“I didn’t even know you’d left last night,” he remarked casually.
His observation startled a laugh out of her. Not surprising really. The stupid, nervous giggle. She struggled with how to respond. With annoyance, derision, outrage? She opted for mildly curious.
“Am I not allowed to leave?”
Rowan rolled his eyes. “You know you can.”
“So, should I have cleared it with you?” It had been a ploy at first, this sophisticated, I’m an independent woman outrage, but it gave way to genuine interest.
He studied her. “Cleared seems the wrong word. If I were leaving the house, common courtesy demands I tell you.”
“Yes, well, since I’d have to drive you, you’d have to share.”
This time, his look was disappointment, and she felt it somewhere in her belly—this need to please him. It freaked her out.
He grimaced. “I guess since roommate etiquette seems to frustrate you, how about this? We have a deal. We didn’t sign in blood or even pinkie swear, but you agreed to participate in this fake arrangement. I didn’t think I needed stipulations or a list of don’ts. As your fake fiancé, I’d appreciate you not running out and showing your arse to the world at my expense.” There was no harsh tone or raised voice in his matter-of-fact delivery.
Juliana withheld a wince. In Technicolor rewind, the night streamed in her mind’s eye. Her decision to go out, her call to Noah to meet her—safety first!—her deliberate choice of a statement dress and shoes, her loud and conspicuous arrival at the club. The round she bought for everyone present and the calculated move onto the backlit bar. And her leak to the paparazzi about her itinerary for the night. Steps she’d taken dozens of times in her life, a script written specifically to pull the spotlight from something unpleasant about her family. Not once in her carefully constructed plan had she thought about Rowan and the impact her actions would have on him and on their story.
Oops.
She cringed, and he noticed.
“Ah,” he said without any of the gloating she probably deserved. “You hadn’t even thought of it, had you?” He continued to study her, and she shifted uncomfortably. “I guess your night out was to what? Pull attention from the article? Because your social life is so awe-inspiring that the people will forget something unpleasant about your family? A bit naive and narcissistic, aren’t you?”
She slow-blinked—the kind of long respite from reality available only when you couldn’t scurry away and hide your face in a pillow. In the moment, with his critical eye turned on her, she supposed she was. It worked every time. Once, she’d thought maybe she could defuse a situation with a visit to a children’s hospital. And now, as she recalled the day, she inwardly flinched because she’d thought to use sick kids to save the crown from bad publicity. Yikes. The thing was, it hadn’t worked. And everyone had remained focused on Ele’s meltdown at a charity event. Of course, scandal was a perfect misdirection.
She’d grant him his point. Yes, she might have forgotten she was supposed to be engaged, but it wasn’t like she’d flirted, or danced, or left the club with someone. She’d merely gone out. He was acting a bit like a caveman.
“I didn’t do anything to embarrass you,” she said in her defense. “I went out. People go out. They even go out without their fiancés and husbands. I think you are being a bit sensitive.”
He shrugged. “You know those scenes in movies when the main character does something stupid or bad or, hell, a footballer who cheats on his wife and gets nabbed by the paps. And the guy’s sidekick brings in all of the newspapers and reads the headlines as he tosses them on a table in front of our guy. Before clickbait and social media?”
Juliana had no idea where he was going with the image, but it wasn’t difficult to pull it up in her mind because basically, it was just like the mortality and morbidity forum she was going to have to endure with the queen’s press secretary. In fact, she’d bet if she checked her phone, an official summons would be waiting for her.
“Of course.” She almost left it at that, but she decided to be honest about what was coming. Rowan seemed to think she was an impulsive kid who acted without any thought for consequences. But in fact, every action was calculated, and every reaction was considered.
“It’s much like what will happen at some point today when I am ordered to report to the palace.”
“Right. Well, I’ve already had mine. My agent first. Then my mates. And then the duke.”
“I didn’t realize you had any mates left,” she remarked.
He merely raised a brow. She didn’t know if he meant to, but he looked to her like a disapproving father scolding his child with a quelling look. It tipped something over inside of her, something lancing and blistering. Admittedly, Juliana didn’t have a lot of people she was close to, but there was no one in her life who could make her so angry. She’d messed up the night before, and she knew it. She could have come up with another way to divert attention from her family, maybe a faux wedding date or a “leaked” wedding dress design. She’d acted impulsively, and she’d hurt Rowan’s reputation. Again. In a split second, she could see it. But even knowing it in her head, she could only focus on his chiding look. It made her feel small and insignificant and childish.