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