“How is Harlow?” Rick asks as we stand at the bottom of the open-arm staircase in my foyer. He’s wearing a tuxedo, and he keeps adjusting his bow tie as he trains his gaze on the landing above in anticipation of seeing her. “Has she been anxious today? Stressed out? Unsure of herself?”

Jayne is right next to me, brushing the creases from my own tuxedo jacket. I shrug in annoyance and she stops.

“Harlow is rather reserved today,” she says as she walks around to the front of me, inspecting my appearance as she speaks. “I don’t know if it’s because of the impending dinner with Jake Foreman or something else.”

She glares at me, and no words are needed — Jayne obviously knows something happened between Harlow and me. If she knew exactly what it was, she would have already eviscerated me with her sharp wit. But at this point, it’s clear that she only suspects there’s something off between my mail-order bride and me, unlike Rick, who is absolutely clueless.

Jayne sighs in exasperation and turns toward the staircase, focusing on the landing as well. “Perhaps I should go to Harlow’s room and nudge her along, but she said she was going to be down momentarily.”

“Let her be, Jayne,” I say brusquely.

Both Jayne and Rick clamp their lips because I have turned this room into someplace about as welcoming as an ice cave. Hell, I feel just as frozen, because I know that I fucked up with Harlow when I left her in bed this morning to wonder what last night truly meant for us. Goddammit, it’s just that I couldn’t sort through all the emotions that hit me so hard during our first time together. I’ve never been so sexually fulfilled before and I’ve never felt what I think I feel right now. The only real emotions I’ve ever had were for my family, but this shit is in a different league.

Harlow shakes me to my very foundations — she is a natural disaster that has torn my life apart, and, after last night, I have no idea how to keep everything together.

Even so, there’s an even more pressing issue that’s weighing on me now: Is Harlow the type of woman who’ll get revenge on me tonight by embarrassing me at this monumental dinner because of how I treated her?

I don’t have much time to wonder, because when she appears at the top the staircase, the world stops spinning around me.

She is a vision in a long, innocent white dress with ruffles that flare out from her waist to the floor. She is an angel with hair that’s pulled back by sparkling clips that allow most of her sunshine curls to tumble over her shoulders. Diamonds sparkle at her ears, throat, and wrist.

As my chest clenches, it’s as if she is my dream come to life.

And I made her my nightmare.

“Jake Foreman has no idea what’s about to hit him,” Jayne says. “Go Team Royal Romance!”

At the thought of any other man even looking at Harlow the ice freezes my veins. I turn around and start walking toward the front door. “My limo arrived five minutes ago. Rick, yours is waiting for you.”

I stand by the door, opening it so everyone can walk outside before me. Meanwhile, Harlow slowly makes her heavenly way down the stairs, smiling at Rick and Jayne as she passes them, then going cold again as meets my gaze.

As she passes me, she merely says, “Good evening, darling.”

And then she’s out the door. I stare after her, barely realizing when Rick passes me too.

He’s wearing a hopeful smile. “Fingers crossed!”

He pats my arm on his way out.

Before I can get out of here, Jayne comes up to me and grabs my tuxedo jacket. She lowers her thick-framed glasses and glares at me again. “I don’t know what’s going on with you two, but I’ve got frost burn. What the hell happened between yesterday and today?”

“None of your business, Jayne.”

I close the door behind me.

The taillights of Rick’s limo trail off toward the gates of my property. Harlow has already gotten in to our limo, and as I walk toward the vehicle, the driver gives me a blank look as if he can feel the frost burn too. I grit my jaw and get inside, sliding over the seat next to Harlow. She’s looking straight ahead at the dark divider that serves as a barrier between the front seat and back.

The more she doesn’t talk, the tenser I get.

It’s still silent as we take off. The silence is so pervasive that I have to put on the radio to a classical music channel to soothe the atmosphere. Then I pour champagne from the waiting iced bucket into a flute. I offer it to her, and she accepts without even acknowledging my existence.

My jaw is about to shatter because I’m clenching it so fucking hard as I pour a flute for myself. “Is this how it’s going to be all night?”

She merely takes a sip of her champagne and then lets out a long ahhh.

Anger curdles in my gut. “May I remind you about that fifty thousand dollars you seem to need so badly? Remember — if you don’t succeed in this job tonight, that money is—”

“Gone? Yes, yes. You don’t have to remind me about the money, darling.”

I am about to break the flute in my hand as I grip it.

She leans over and turns the radio to a hard-rocking channel. Then she pumps up the volume until the bass thuds through the air. It tangles with my heartbeat, which is already out of control. I debate turning off the music altogether, but there’s nothing else I want to say to Harlow anyway.

Actually, there’s a lot I should say to her.

I wish you didn’t make me feel anything.

I wish another woman had shown up for this job.

As we are driven to the North End, nerves and anger eat away at me. By the time we arrive at the Swann Room, I’m about to rip the leather off the limo’s seats.

The vehicle stops at the curb, and I glance at Harlow. I will not ask her to forget what an ass I was this morning. I will not plead for her cooperation.

I do not scrape and bow to anyone.

The driver opens the door, and I climb out, then wait for Harlow to take my hand. I’m dreading the moment she comes out, because, if she ignores me, this will be over before it even begins. She can humiliate me that easily tonight in front of all these people who’ll decide my future.

But then...

Then a miracle happens.

Harlow emerges from the limo with the loveliest smile, and it’s almost as if everything is going perfectly between us. She lavishes me with such a doting look that I even believe we are in love. She even stands on her tiptoes and wraps her slim arm around my neck, drawing me down to her so she can plant a soft kiss on my lips.

As my mouth tingles, she whispers, “You’ll get your money’s worth, Grayson. Don’t worry about that.”

Oh fuck. I don’t know if this is a good or bad promise.

I escort her inside the Swan Room where we are surrounded by water tumbling down blue-tiled walls and old-school, classic-restaurant décor — Roman columns, swan statues, and crown-molded ceilings. The companies bought the restaurant out for this event, and the crème de la crème from Avilus, Inc. and Colossus Pharma are mingling over cocktails. Tuxedos and extravagant gowns are everywhere, the room buzzing with conversation, but when Harlow and I walk in, every gaze turns to us.

It’s almost as if the string quartet even stops playing,

Harlow smiles around the room, turning on the charm for everyone, and I’m pulled down by a stunning sense of regret. Soon, she will be gone from this room — and from my life. But then I hear the practical voice I’ve been living with ever since I was a kid trying to pull my family out of poverty and withstanding all the taunts I used to get at school.

You’ll be relieved when she is gone. You are doing the right thing by keeping yourself together, Grayson.

The president of the Colossus board and his wife are the first to greet us.

“A royal romance,” Terrence Larson says with a smile as he takes Harlow’s free hand. Her other one is still linked through my bent arm. “I wouldn’t have believed it with my own eyes, but you really do exist outside of society column photographs, Miss Turner.”

His wife Loretta, a tall, cocoa-skinned brunette with a gray streak in front of her hair, gently takes Harlow’s hand. “Every woman knows that beasts can be tamed.” Then she shoots me a look that tells me she is caught between believing her own words and remembering all the scandalous crap I put Colossus Pharma through over the years. I wonder if she even saw the sex tape that was scrubbed from the Internet before it got any traction.

Harlow laughs softly. “I never saw the beast in Grayson. He’s always been a prince to me.”

It is almost as if her anger and resentment toward me is giving her more fuel to put on the best act imaginable. Thank God.

She goes on to entertain the Larsons with the bullshit story of how we met at a charity function. She teases me about how I seemed so uptight and standoffish in my Hugo Boss suit until I started my campaign to win her over with a surprisingly tender streak.

“There was something about Grayson that made me see the good-hearted man in him,” she says, slipping her hand into mine. “Everything about us was meant to be.”

I wonder if she means how we are inevitably going to break up, as well.

All along, I haven’t been able to say a word. Is she going to throw me under a speeding bus with a license plate that reads REVENGE soon?

Not too far away, Rick nods his approval to me, and that is when I notice whom Rick has been talking to.

Jake Foreman is standing next to my partner. The CEO of Avilus, Inc. is not as tall as I am, but tall enough, and he’s got hair as blond as Brad Pitt and brown eyes that always look as if he knows more than anybody else in the room. He’s a holier-than-thou PR dream...

But, right now, he is looking at Harlow as if he knows what she looks like without her pretty dress on.

What the hell?

He excuses himself from Rick, and then he is on his way over to us, never taking his eyes off Harlow.

When he arrives, it seems that he finally realizes that I’m standing here too. “Grayson. Would you introduce me to this adorable woman?”

Adorable. And he’s still caressing her with his gaze.

Motherfucker. He’s been on my ass about living a more wholesome life, and here he is coming off like a hound. I’ll hand this to him — he’s good at keeping this side of himself undercover.

Hypocrite.

But I am not here to pick a fight with the man who’s got my career in his hands. “Jake Foreman, this is my girlfriend Harlow Turner. Harlow, this is Jake Foreman, the CEO of Avilus, Inc.”

His gaze goes right back to Harlow as if magnetized. Even with me standing right here, he isn’t bothering to hide the desire in his eyes.

Terrence Larson pulls me away to speak with another board member from Avilus across the room, and, shit, I can’t refuse. Once I’m there, I get caught up in business talk, but I keep an eye on Harlow and Foreman. He’s still devouring her with his gaze and I want to rip out every Brad Pitt hair in his head, but I refrain. He laughs with her, and she is eating it up.

Jesus, is she flirting?

When she touches Foreman’s arm, the urge to snap his neck takes me over. Anger rampages through my veins, and the mere thought that Harlow would turn her back on me and seek the attention of someone else is maddening.

I picture ripping Foreman’s spine out of his body, and it should make me feel better.

It doesn’t.

As Rick wanders over to pull Foreman over to another conversation, I see an opportunity. I excuse myself from my crowd, and without a word, walk over to Harlow. I grab her hand and whisk her away, through the hallway, then into the ladies lounge that’s connected to the bathroom. Velvet upholstered furnishings, mirrors, and marble surround us, and I reach into my pocket and give the attendant a wad of one-hundred dollar bills while asking her to watch the door.

As soon as she is gone, I turn on Harlow. “What the fuck are you doing out there?”

Harlow looks in the mirror and starts primping, ignoring me.

I move behind her, hovering over her shoulder in the reflection, my gaze blazing with fury. “Answer me.”

When her eyes meet mine, a bang of lustful anger makes me even hotter.

Because, hellfire, I am hot. I am jealous, resentful, guilt-ridden, and burning for her.

“Grayson,” she says levelly. “I’m only doing what I’m supposed to do — playing nice with Jake Foreman and showing him what a sweet girl I am. I’m selling our so-called relationship like I’m a Girl Scout during cookie season.”

She’s mocking me, and when she sees that I’m about to lose my shit, she swallows, her throat working.

Goddammit, she’s hot too. I know her too fucking well by now.

I seethe until she turns around to face me. When I see the mixture of fear and excitement in her eyes, a thunder ball of lust roars through me.

She wants me as much as I want her.

Good, because it’s fucking on.