Royal Disaster by Parker Swift (17)

By the time we got back to his house that night, his reaction to his father’s bribe had settled more into anger and frustration. Now that the dust had settled, he was squarely back in the vortex of pressures—his work, his father, and the emails.

We sat in the lounge off his bedroom, and we were polishing off glasses of wine. He ran his fingers through his hair as he began preparing me for the week ahead, another long week in which we’d likely see very little of each other. “The Olympic committee is about to have my head, I’m afraid. If I don’t submit the revised designs for the stadium by Friday, I won’t be surprised if they look elsewhere.” He’d been rubbing is forehead while he spoke from the chair where he was seated. He looked so stressed, torn. I stood up from my seat on the couch and walked towards him.

“I know you’ll get it done,” I said, stepping closer, standing between his legs.

“Of course I’ll bloody get it done,” he said sternly. “I’ve never been late on a design in my life, and I’m not going to start now.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m Thomas,” I said, equally sternly, and Dylan removed his hands from his face and wrapped them around the backs of my legs, pulling me closer and looking up at me. I threaded my fingers through his hair.

“I’m sorry, baby. I’m not mad at you. I’m still furious with my father. What he said to you…And then he dares to be relentless, holding my grandfather’s name and company over my head—” Just then his phone chimed with a text. He picked it up and scowled at it in a way that made me very glad not to be his phone. “Tristan fucking Bailey,” he mumbled under his breath, and he tossed the phone back onto the table.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

Dylan nodded. “Like I said, my father’s relentless.” He reached his firm muscular arms around me and pulled me down onto his lap and against his chest. “Until I figure this out, I’ll be busier, I’m afraid. This week in particular.”

I pulled back so I could look him in the eye, and I gave him a raised eyebrow. “Oh yeah, knighty? Well, I’m busy and important too, you know,” I began. “The store opens in less than two months, and there’s mountains to do. So, you know, I’m just not going to be able to cater to your whims and—”

“Cheeky thing.” He chuckled and pulled me against him again. His hands ran up and down my back, stroking, soothing, apologizing for his outburst. He kissed the top of my head and pulled me closer. “I wish I could protect you from all of this.”

“What do you mean?”

“You deserve a simpler relationship, one that doesn’t involve a man being pulled in a thousand different directions by despicable parents, duty, and career.”

“You mean one without the man I actually want? The man who has a complicated rich life but handles it with grace? That relationship? No, thanks. I’ll stick with you.”

“I don’t deserve you.”

“Well, true,” I said, smiling into his chest. “But I’m obviously extremely witty and genius-like, and you can’t seem to stay away, so we’ll just have to cope, won’t we?”

“Indeed,” he said softly into my ear. He was thinking—I could practically hear his mental wheels turning. “You know what?” he asked.

“What?”

“I’m going to take a page from your book.”

“What do you mean?” I asked again, this time for clarification.

“I’m going to tell my father where he can shove it. He and Hale Shipping can wait,” he said with total determination. “I need to get back to my own work. I’ll spend some time with the security team of course—we still have to identify whoever is sending you emails. I won’t let up on that. But otherwise—”

“Otherwise, you’ll be at Hale Architecture and Design, doing your thing. I think this is the best idea you’ve had in a while.”

Dylan kissed my hair in response, and while I couldn’t see his face, I could feel his satisfied smile against my skin.

“I mean, it’s even better than that whole velvet-rope idea you had—”

Dylan slapped my outer thigh, making me jolt in his arms and laugh. I look up into his calmer, happier eyes.

“To bed with you, wench,” he said and carried me towards the low luxurious bed behind me.

The week that followed was flying by, and I couldn’t quite believe when I looked up from my desk in the middle of the day to realize it was already Wednesday. I had moved into the office at the back of the storefront, which in itself had taken all of Monday and most of Tuesday. The upside was that I now could be where I needed to be with deliveries being made, construction happening, designers stopping by. The store was also closer to Dylan’s house, making the whole walking-to-work thing easier. The downsides were that there were no windows, I was mostly alone back there—apart from the deliveries, construction crews, and designers—and I missed Fiona and Josh.

That was why, after two ten-hour days in the shop and a morning of phone calls and emails with suppliers, I had decided to finish out the rest of Wednesday from the main office. Having just said goodbye to Frank outside the building, I was still in the elevator when I started to hear the excited giggles coming from reception. When I walked into the space, I saw Josh practically hyperventilating, the intern squealing, and Fiona rolling her eyes.

“This lot,” she said, pointing to Josh jumping up and down, “is going mental. All because a couple of posh dunces are swooning and in love.” She huffed.

“What?” I asked, confused.

Josh struggled to speak through his excitement but managed to get out two important words: royal and wedding.

“There’s going to be a royal wedding?” I asked. “Who’s getting married?”

“Oh, like you don’t know!” Josh screamed. “Oh good god, you’re going to get to actually go, you tramp!”

“Wait, no, seriously, who’s getting married?” I asked, still confused. I put down my bag, which was heavy with binders of information to go over with Hannah and was hurting my shoulder.

Josh was back to breathing heavily and was now feverishly searching the Internet at his desk for more details about this engagement.

“Prince Richard and Lady Jemma Kirk,” Fiona explained dryly.

“Oh—” I began but was interrupted by my phone buzzing in my pocket. A text from Dylan:

I looked over at Josh, who was now reading aloud a post about guesses at who would design the wedding gown. Hannah was apparently on the list, which was making the intern jump up and down again, and Fiona was headed back to our office, where I could hear phones ringing. I turned back to my phone.

I didn’t even see that last text message until after six when I was headed down in the elevator. It was a cold, rainy night and dark already, so I slumped into the backseat of the Jag and let Frank drive me home. I’m not sure who was happier about that, me or him.

When I checked my personal email for the first time since lunch, I also found that there were already three royal-wedding-related events Dylan and I were set to attend over the next month—the upcoming engagement party, a tea of some sort for friends and family, and some kind of aristocratic traditional thing in which Dylan’s father would be nominally involved.

That last one, it turned out, I wouldn’t be able to go to, being neither an aristocrat myself nor married or engaged to one. I had a twinge of discomfort at the reminder of these social mores that kept me separate from Dylan, but ultimately my relief won out. As it was I would be talking to Hannah about borrowing at least two dresses for these events. Luckily it was a situation that, at least so far, benefitted us both. I got the high-end glamorous clothes I needed for these parties, and she got low-friction publicity.

Dylan did wake me up that night, well after ten, and he did deliver on his promise. A flicker of optimism had dampened the distance between us over the past week, and even seeing so little of each other, I could feel that wedge between us narrowing. Or at least I hoped it was.