The next morning, Cherry spent an extra fifteen minutes on her makeup. Not for Ruben, she told herself hurriedly; men never appreciated winged liner. She was just in that sort of mood.

Cherry blinked at herself in the bathroom mirror, the spotlights in the ceiling casting rather unflattering shadows across her face. But at least the light was good: white-ish, rather than yellow or orange. And her liner was razor-sharp. She was most definitely ready.

She swept out of her en suite, pointedly ignoring her bed. The bed where, just last night, she’d actually talked to Ruben. Touched him. Comforted him.

Also, where she’d thought about fucking his brains out. But that, she reassured herself, was a natural urge when faced with a painfully attractive, domineering arsehole. Well, for her, anyway.

A weakness isn’t a weakness so long as you accept it.

For the first time since she’d arrived, Cherry left her room without a feeling of overwhelming dread. She wasn’t afraid of bumping into Ruben in the halls, or sharing a meal with him. She wasn’t dreading the moment she’d have to push down all the feelings he caused in her gut and replace them with a show of disdain.

Yes, she’d needed to be miserable for a while, if only for her own peace of mind. And yes, she had resented him. Because despite the fact that she had agreed to all this, it still felt like a trap.

But this was her reality, and would be for the foreseeable future, so she might as well get something out of it. Like… flirting with a man who was gorgeous enough to make her heart stutter. Yeah, that felt like a solid benefit.

And the money, of course. But currently, her parents were being awfully stubborn about taking it.

She entered the kitchen in search of breakfast, her anticipation spiking when she heard someone rooting around in the pantry. But then the pantry door opened, revealing Agathe, not Ruben, inside.

The old woman’s face split into a smile when she saw Cherry. It was almost sweet enough to make Cherry forget her disappointment.

Almost.

“Cherry! Good morning!” The older woman’s voice was rough, her sing-song accent soothing. “How are you? Did you sleep well?”

“I did,” Cherry smiled. She studied Agathe’s face for echoes of Ruben’s and found a few; the hawkish nose, the thick brows—though Agathe’s were blonde.

“Sit down, sit down. I’ll make you breakfast.”

“Oh, no, that’s okay.” Cherry was sure that she’d put on five pounds in the week since she’d come here. Which would be fine, if her clothes weren’t so… tailored. Then again, she was rich now. She could buy more clothes. “Actually, that would be great. But I can make it.”

“No, no, don’t be silly!” Agathe cried.

“Really, I like to cook.”

That gave the woman pause. “You do?”

“Yeah. I mean, mostly baking, but—“

“Oh, you bake?”

“Yeah, I—“

“Demetria!” Agathe bellowed, her raspy voice suddenly strong as a herd of elephants. Jesus Christ. Cherry resisted the urge to cover her ears as the woman shouted again, “Demetria! Come here!”

There was a pause. Then the soft sound of feet padding down the hall. “What?” Demi cried, rushing into the kitchen. “What’s up?”

“Nothing, nothing. Calm down. Cherry just tells me that she likes to bake.”

Demi exhaled. “Agathe, we’ve talked about this. When you shout like that, people think something is wrong.”

“Oh, hush. Your nerves are so delicate. Young people.” Agathe clucked her tongue and rolled her eyes heavenward. “Anyway, I know you want to learn how to bake, yes? But my baking is a steaming pile of horse shit.”

Cherry blinked. Okay; so Ruben’s elderly grandmother, with her floral apron and love of cooking, had a potty mouth. Sure. Why not. Whatever.

“You girls,” Agathe said, “neither of you have any fun. You should have fun together. Bake, ja?”

“Um…” Demi winced down at her watch. “I’m kind of—“

“Oh, stop. All my grandson does is pander to children all day. You cannot have so much work.”

Children? Cherry realised that she’d never actually asked about Ruben’s so-called occupation. When he first mentioned it, she’d been desperate to get away from him—to end their conversation before he did something utterly adorable or unbearably sexy and ruined her decision to hate him.

Maybe I can ask him about it tonight.

But her mind didn’t envision their standing dinner date when it thought about ‘tonight’. It envision darkness, and the heat of his body and the low, smokey hum of his voice.

“Fine,” Demi sighed. “I do want to learn how to bake.”

Cherry shook her head slightly, pushing her highly inappropriate thoughts aside. The man’s grandmother was standing right there, for Christ’s sake. “Bake, as in?”

“Cake,” Demi said. “I love cake. So I thought I should learn how to make it, but… Well, I’m not good at following instructions.”

Cherry found that rather surprising, considering how great Demi was at giving instructions. But the prospect of having something to do other than play with Whiskey or text Maggie or avoid calls from Rose—who was much harder to lie to than Jas and Beth—made Cherry’s day seem brighter. “Okay,” she said. “I’d like that. When do you want to start?”

Demi studied her watch. It was black and sleek and expensive and it had no numbers whatsoever on the smooth, shining face. “An hour?” She said.

“Sure. An hour,” Demi smiled.

As she left, Agathe slapped a plate of bacon and rye bread on the table with a grin. “There. Is all good, ja?”

“Yeah,” Cherry murmured, something happy and hopeful blooming in her chest. “It’s all good.”

* * *

Ruben came home in a foul mood.

It was funny; he’d been so worried about Cherry for the past week, he hadn’t even noticed the fact that Hans was still pissed with him. But now that Cherry didn’t want to kill him anymore—he hoped—his eyes were being opened to all sorts of things. Like the fact that his best friend was still on the edge of fury.

“Will that be all, Your Highness?”

“Stop Highnessing me,” Ruben growled, yanking off his hat and scarf and tossing them by the door.

Hans sent the gloves a speaking look. “If you leave those there, Agathe will tidy them up.”

“I keep telling her to stop fucking cleaning.” Ruben glared down at the pile wool. “I live here because I don’t want people tidying up my mess.”

“Then you shouldn’t have given her a key.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” He snatched the hat and scarf from the floor and hung them up by the door. “Happy?”

Hans simply sniffed before letting himself out.

Something had to be done. Bickering was one thing, but Hans was clearly still furious.

Which was fair enough. If Ruben had listened to him from the start, none of this would be happening.

He wandered down the hall, forcing his mind to focus on simpler topics—like the meeting he’d just had with a local headteacher. He didn’t want to speak too soon, but he rather thought he’d found another partner for his scholarship scheme here in Helgmøre.

His trust had six international branches—so far—and he’d started offering scholarships nationally just last year. It was going well and growing fast. So he’d turned his sights to the U.K., his second home…

And found Cherry. Cherry whose laughter floated down the hall like music. Ruben’s focus danced away, and his mind became a whirlpool of fantasy and memory, the two intertwined like lovers. Cherry in the dark, touching him out of kindness, became Cherry in the daylight, touching him because she simply couldn’t stop.

Her laughter sounded like the ocean used to, when Ruben was a kid and his parents would take him to the coast. He’d roll down the window and listen eagerly for that distant, soft rush to grow louder and more powerful, excitement humming through him.

His feet followed the sound and his mind didn’t bother to argue.

She was in the kitchen, her back to him, an apron tied around her waist. The bow at her back draped over the swell of her arse and her curls bounced as she laughed. Ruben crossed his arms and leant against the doorframe, taking the opportunity to watch her undetected.

At least, he thought he was undetected. He hadn’t even noticed that Demi was in the room too, not until she said, “Hi, Ruben.” Her tone was slightly mocking, slightly smug, and when he finally placed her, standing over by the fridge, her smile was sly. Who needed little sisters when they had uppity personal assistants?

“Hi, Demi,” he sighed, just as Cherry turned around.

God, she was so fucking beautiful. She flashed him her perfect smile, the beauty pageant one, with just enough teeth and the hint of a dimple. If he’d wondered how she’d react after last night, he now had his answer: she was nervous.

Good. He was nervous too.

“Hi,” she said, sounded slightly breathless. Which, he told himself, could have nothing to do with his arrival. There was a huge mixing bowl clutched to her chest, and she was stirring its contents with rather alarming vigour. So maybe she’d been standing there, stirring and laughing and talking to Demi and now she was out of breath.

Or maybe she was remembering the way it felt to touch him in the dark.

“What are you doing?” He asked, trying to sound casual. He thought he managed it. So why did she look down at her bowl instead of meeting his eyes? Was that good or bad?

“Baking,” she said.

“Baking…?”

“Nothing exciting. Fairy cakes, you know.”

“Cupcakes,” Demi supplied.

“They’re not cupcakes!” Cherry smiled at Demetria, really smiled. Her cheeks plumped up and her dimples flashed and everything about her relaxed. “Fairy cakes are smaller. And less sweet. And just… better.”

“How can less sweet and better come up in the same sentence?” Demi sounded outraged.

“Subtlety is everything,” Cherry said pertly. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“I will put icing in your hair, you know. I’ll do it.”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

Ruben watched them banter with an unfamiliar feeling in his gut. It took him a good few seconds to identify that feeling as jealousy.

He was losing his fucking grip. He gritted his teeth and told himself firmly not to be ridiculous. But now the little voice in his head was whispering, She’s not really yours, and Demi knows that. You have no claim on her whatsoever…

“Demi,” he said sharply. “The meeting went well.”

She put down a jug and the bottle of milk she’d been pouring into it, her grin fading as she looked up at him. “That’s… good.”

“I want them involved.”

She stared at him for a moment, her face blank. But then her lips curved into a slight smile and she said, “Want me to start on the paperwork?”

The paperwork she’d done twelve times before and could prepare in her sleep? “Yes, please.”

“Aye aye, Captain.” She pulled off her apron, dusting her hands on the back of her jeans. “I’ll see you later, Cherry. Duty calls.”

“Oh, okay. Later, then.”

Cherry sounded far too disappointed for Ruben’s liking. But Demi looked oddly pleased, her dark gaze scanning him with an intensity she usually reserved for official correspondence and football matches. She bumped into him slightly as she passed him in the doorway, and when he looked over his shoulder, she was sticking her tongue out at him as she walked away.

He was a fool. As if Demetria of all people would try it on with Cherry.

Clearly, jealousy was an unpredictable emotion.

Still, there was an upside. Now, he had Cherry alone. She had turned away from him again, and she was stirring the contents of that fucking bowl as if her life depended on it. But he could tell by the set of her shoulders, by her uncharacteristic silence, by the way the air shimmered between them as if the room were heated, that she was waiting.

And he’d never make a lady wait.

He crossed the room before he could second-guess himself. His hands came to rest on the swell of her hips and it felt like everything he’d ever needed, but that didn’t make any sense. Nothing made any sense. Until she put the damned bowl down and turned around in the circle of his arms and looked up at him with eyes that were wide and dark and endless. Then, all at once, everything was perfect.

“I still don’t like you,” she whispered, her lips pursed.

“Yes you do. If you don’t, my heart will break.”

“Boo hoo. Buy a new one.” She pressed her hands to his chest and he thought, for one world-ending moment, that she might push him away. But she just fiddled with the buttons of his shirt, slipping her fingers under his tie. Then she said, “Where did you go?”

“To a school in the city.”

“Why?”

“Same reason I was at the Academy. I put together scholarship programmes for the kids who attend my A.P.s.”

She raised her brows, and he thought that she might be impressed. “You run alternative provisions?”

“Yeah. For kids from disadvantaged backgrounds who are disengaged or have unique learning needs and so on. But some of them are really fucking smart, and I started to think about what they’d get out of attending schools like the Academy. I mean, not schools like the Academy—they’d probably suffocate.”

“True,” she murmured. Her eyes were pinned to his chest, and now she was fiddling with his tie. He looked down at the sweep of her lashes. She had some kind of dark makeup around her eyes that made her look like a cat. Well—even more like a cat than usual. “So why were you looking at a school in England?” She asked.

“The Trust operates across a few European countries.”

She looked up, finally, her eyes warm. “The Trust?”

“The Abmjørn Trust.”

“Ambjørn is your family name, right?”

“My mother’s.”

“Ah.” She was looking at him with an expression he didn’t recognise. Her eyes were bright, her lips slightly parted and tipped into a half-smile, as if she was seeing him for the first time.

But then a tinny ding popped the bubble around them, and she threw up her hands, pushing him away.

“Where’s that bloody tea towel,” she muttered, marching around the kitchen. “Ah!” She snatched it off of the island and bustled over to the oven. Ruben leant against the counter and watched her bend over. Yes, he was a pig, but it was definitely worth it.

She produced a tray of little cakes, and then another, popping them onto the counter with a flourish. “There! Three and four!”

“Three and four?”

She turned around and nodded towards a cupboard. “One and two are in there.”

He pulled it open to find two plastic containers full of little cakes, decorated in lavender and pink and cream, with glitter—is glitter edible?—and pearls and tiny stars scattered across the icing.

“You’ve made a lot of cakes,” he said finally.

“There’s a ton of stuff in here. Do you bake?”

“Ah, no. I can cook, but I don’t really bake. Agathe tries, but she’s kind of terrible at it.”

“Hm.” She had returned to her bowl, but now she was spooning its mixture out into trays full of little paper cases. “You know, you never got around to explaining how the two of you… grew apart?”

“We were separated,” he said. Then he realised that his voice had been too sharp, too hard. “I mean… I just mean, she wouldn’t have left me.”

“No,” Cherry said mildly. “I’m sure she wouldn’t. Separated by whom?”

He sighed, wandering over to stand beside her. She scooped out the mixture with sure, practiced movements, not spilling a drop as she transferred it to the cake cases. Clearly, she did this a lot. “My brother,” he finally said. “My brother cut off all contact with my maternal family, after my parents died.”

It wasn’t something he liked to tell people. It revealed a little too much about the direction his life had taken, once he’d become his brother’s property. Or responsibility, as Harald would say.

But Cherry made no expression, didn’t say a word, didn’t even look up. She just nodded and kept spooning out the cake batter.

“So… so when I was older I asked Hans to find her. Of course, she was the same place she’s always been. This town.” He wet his lips. His throat felt dry, all of a sudden. “The main house was my father’s. A country getaway sort of thing. It’s where he and my mother met.”

“I see. And this house?”

“Oh, I built this myself. I didn’t want to live in there.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t like—” he broke off, suddenly realising that he’d said way too much. But the movement of her hands and the softness of her voice were almost hypnotic, and she still wasn’t looking at him, and the words were suddenly desperate to escape. “I don’t like big houses. Feels like a palace.”

Finally, her dark gaze turned on him, and she might as well have pinned him to the wall. “Did you grow up in a palace?”

He swallowed. “Yes.”

She nodded thoughtfully. Then she said, her tone suddenly bright, “Do you want to help me decorate these cakes when they cool down?”

He hesitated. Not because the answer was no, but because he was suddenly afraid. Afraid of the words she pulled from him without even trying, afraid of the way she looked at him as if she read the meaning behind his every breath. The last thing he needed was someone understanding him.

Anyone who understood him would leave.

But she raised her brows and said, “I told Demi we’d decided to spend time together. So now we have to do it, or she’ll be very disappointed.”

“Fair enough,” he said, and in spite of his worries, he felt himself smile. “Tell me what to do.”

* * *

After a couple of hours in the kitchen with Cherry, Ruben could see why she loved to bake.

It was almost therapeutic, following her murmured instructions, stirring ingredients and setting timers. After he proved less than effective at the cosmetic side of things—his icing arrangements looked more like accidents—Cherry put him to work on a sponge.

Her directions were clear and she smiled when he mucked things up. She made him wash his hands before and after cracking eggs, and swatted his arse with a wooden spoon when he didn’t get out of her way fast enough. And she laughed when he streaked icing sugar down her nose—though, to his disappointment, she didn’t retaliate and start a food fight. He’d been hoping to rub icing into her cleavage in the name of war.

Somehow, she coached him through the recipe for chocolate puddings while she sat at the breakfast bar and messed about with marbled icing. He had no idea what that meant, but it looked damned good.

“You should be a teacher, Cherry.”

“Oh, no,” she scoffed. “Bugger that. I don’t do well with kids, hence why I stay in the tower as much as possible.”

Ruben laughed. “Okay. Fair enough. A lecturer, then.”

She arched a brow. “Really, Ruben? Doesn’t that require three or four or however many degrees?”

“You could do that.”

“In a thousand years, maybe. I’m hardly the brains of the administrative outfit.”

He sighed, the exhalation punctuated by the trill of the timer. His puddings were ready.

“You’re smarter than most people I know,” he said lightly. “You can do whatever you like.”

She didn’t answer. He looked over to see her faffing about with a handful of blueberries, holding back a smile. Satisfied that she was at least listening, Ruben whipped his puddings out of the oven with a flourish and presented them like an offering.

“Oh, well done,” she said, sounding rather surprised. The little sponges had all risen, unburnt, and even looked somewhat light and airy. He was pretty surprised himself.

“Thanks,” he grinned, setting them onto the counter. “It’s all thanks to your expert guidance, of course.”

She snorted. Then she leant over the chocolate puddings and closed her eyes, inhaling the scent of almonds and cocoa with a look of pure pleasure on her face. For the past hour, Ruben had been too busy following instructions to remember how badly he wanted the woman in front of him. Now it was back to the forefront of his mind.

The warmth of the kitchen left Cherry’s rich skin glowing, and tiny little coils of hair sprang out around her face with particular enthusiasm. When she opened her eyes again, Ruben was staring at her with what he knew was plain lust.

She bit her lip.

He moved closer, his voice low. “What do you want to do? Professionally, I mean.” He asked because he’d been curious for a while. She hadn’t seemed upset about quitting her job, and she wasn’t enthusiastic about education, clearly.

Cherry blinked. That probably wasn’t what she’d expected him to say. But even when he wanted her, when desire rode him relentlessly, Ruben still wanted to know her. He wanted that more than anything else.

She shrugged, turning away slightly. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, come on. You must.”

She flicked a dark look his way. “Must I? I suppose I should. I’m a grown woman after all.”

“…You really don’t know?”

“Well,” she sighed. “I have a few ideas. When I was a kid I wanted to make wedding cakes, actually. But then I turned eighteen, and I needed a job, and… Well, I’m good at telling people what to do and charming them into doing it. So, to Rosewood I went.”

He nodded slowly. “HR, right? You didn’t like it?”

“I liked it fine, and I really am good at it. But I’ve been thinking… I’m rich now. You know, thanks to you.” She flashed a wry smile. “I can do whatever I want. Like… start a small business? I don’t know. I’m just playing with ideas. I have a year to think about it.”

Ruben ignored the reminder of the time-limit on their… association, because thinking about it made him somehow uncomfortable. But everything else she’d said intrigued him. “I can see you as a businesswoman. Thinking about your wedding cake dream, are you?”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s not a dream. It’s just an idea.”

“Right.” He grinned. “But even if it was a fully-fledged business plan with start-up capital, would you tell me?”

She gave him a pert look. “I wouldn’t tell anyone. Not until I made my first million at least.”

Ruben laughed, sliding a hand into her hair. He couldn’t help himself. “You really are something, Cherry.”

“Yes. So I’m told.”