Bad Duke

by Emily Bishop

  I scoot over, and he pulls me into a hug, my head on his chest. “We can grow to be happy together, Isabella,” he whispers. “I promise you.”

  I sigh and watch the clouds float by overhead. “I wish that were true, Gray, but it’s not.”

  “What if it is? How will we know if we don’t try?”

  My head feels so fuzzy. “Let’s just get the rest of the time out of the way. It’s more than two weeks, still. We have to persuade Mr. Fink. That’s the main thing.”

  “I’ll invite him over soon,” Gray says. “Before the final meeting. So we can gauge him. See what he makes of it all.”

  That puts me a little more at ease. “Yes.”

  He kisses me on the top of the head. “And I am responsible,” he whispers. “Let me tell you what I’m going to do with all that money.”

  “Not now,” I say. The next thing I say feels like tearing my heart out. But I have to say it. “It’s not my business.” I wonder if he’s going to drop me out of his arms.

  But he squeezes me tight. “Another time.” He sighs, a happy one. “This feels so good, doesn’t it?”

  Too good. “Yes,” I admit. “But I think I’d better go back in and finish my work.”

  He lets me go then smiles at me.

  I smile back.

  Chapter 17

  Grayson

  DAY 11

  Eddie’s coming back today, thank god. He got tired of his Seattle bad-girl babe. It turned out she was trying to fix her life up and wanted to settle down. She had her hopes set on pinning him down. Eddie’s not a settling-down kind of guy, just like me. Sure, I like Isabella. That doesn’t mean I’d want to be stuck in a house with her all the time, with a dog, 1.8 kids, and a Volvo. That’s not how Grayson Fairfax II will be remembered. He’ll be remembered as a man who partied hard, had all the fun in the world, and yes, maybe loved hard, too. Maybe.

  I decide on the perfect prank. Eddie gave me a call when he set off from the airport, so I know just how to time it. By the time he gets here after the torturously long drive, it’ll be dark and he’ll be tired. I know how to get under his skin.

  About ten minutes before I calculate he’s due to arrive, I go down to the front gate. I draw it closed and change the code. Then I climb up a tree and get my phone out. This is going to be gold. I’m dirtying my Armani suit, but it’s worth it.

  Before long I see car headlights make the swerve into the corner before the gate. Haha. He nearly slams into the gate—it’s usually open—then slams the brakes on and screeches to a halt.

  “What the fuck?” he says as he gets out of the car. I’ve already pressed record. The streetlight illuminates his angry face. He goes over to the keypad and punches in the regular number. I can see him do it. 4-3-1-8. Nothing. “What?” he says, then types it again. Punch-punch- punch-punch. He stabs at the buttons. He’s getting madder and madder by the second. This is brilliant. “For fuck’s sake!” He tries again, punching the buttons ever more violently.

  I laugh quietly to myself.

  Then he gets his phone out. I hurry to put mine on silent, my heart racing. He’s going to hear my ringtone from the top of this tree, no doubt. I scramble about with the settings, then flip it back onto video. Ha.

  “That bloody Gray,” he says, then tries the code again. “Fucking hell!”

  Then, just as he’s about to get back in his car, I call out, “Twit twoooo. Twit twoooo.”

  He jumps out of his skin and swerves his head everywhere, looking for me.

  “I’m an owl,” I say, desperately trying not to laugh. “Try 1-2-3-4.”

  “You fucker, Gray!” He peers around. “Where in the hell are you?”

  I turn my phone around to flash at him. “Up here, jackass.”

  “Get the hell down here so I can beat your ass.”

  I grin. “All caught on camera, my bro. Too bad.” I climb down the tree, then go through the walking gate by the side of the car entrance. I slap him on the back. “Welcome back, jackass.”

  He punches me in the side, but not hard. “You’re ridiculous.”

  I take a flourishing bow. “I got you good. Now I’m taking you for a drink, as payback for that wonderful footage you just afforded me.”

  “All right. But I’m going to get you so drunk that I can push you into the river afterward. Then when the police come knocking on the door, I’ll just tell them you were drunk.”

  I laugh and start walking toward the pub. “Don’t you think I should die with a little more glamor? Maybe a plane crash on the way to my private island? Wait til I get my money, bro.”

  “How’s that going, by the way? How’s Isabella taking it?”

  I shrug. I don’t want to think about that right now. Being with Eddie feels like old times. Before everything got confusing. “Fine. It’s all good. You’ll back me up when old Finky comes around, won’t you? Make him believe it’s all legit, of course.” I stride along, feeling so sure about the world. Everyone else are fuddy-duddies. Me and Eddie run this town. Run the whole world. We’re the kings of fun and partying.

  “Yeah. But in that situation, it would be fair to pay me too.”

  “Of course!” I say. “I’m going to buy you a Rolls Royce, remember? In purple, with red-leather interior. People say those colors clash, but what the fuck do they know? They haven’t seen the way we roll yet.”

  He laughs, but it’s short. Mirthless. “No. I want forty percent. Look how much I’ve spent on you already. It’s only fair.”

  “What?” My mind races. “Yeah, you’ve paid for stuff for me, but it didn’t come out in the millions. Maybe tens of thousands. Maybe reaching a hundred, max. You know how much forty percent is? That’s like 400 million pounds.”

  “I know.”

  “I was planning to give you a cut anyway. But not that much. I have plans for the rest of the money.” I can’t wait to tell Isabella about them.

  Eddie gives me a sideways look. “Plans? You can only buy so many yachts and cars and watches. The rest of it will be rotting in the bank. You might as well give it to me, and I can flip it in FX trades.”

  I hate this conversation. “I’ll give you ten percent.” That’s fair. “One hundred mil. Not too shabby, eh?” I dig him in the ribs.

  “All right, rich boy,” he replies. But his eyes don’t match his smile, and his dig back in my ribs is way too sharp.

  I open my shoulders and swagger down the street toward the pub. “Not many people can say their friend put one hundred mil in the bank for them. But not everyone’s friends with Grayson Fairfax II.”

  “Don’t you mean Grayson Fairfax the Second, Duke of Albany?” Eddie says with a grin. I can’t tell if we’re back to being fully good or not. There’s this weird vibe hanging in the air, and I don’t know how to get rid of it.

  “Sounds disgusting, doesn’t it?” I laugh. “Those old titles don’t mean jack shit anyway. The only thing it means is that more fortune and status grabbers will cling onto my coat tails.”

  “There’ll be plenty of those,” Eddie says darkly. “Just make sure you know who your real friends are.”

  We reach the pub, and I slap him on the back before we go inside. “Well, you’ll always be my wingman, Eddie.”

  He slaps me back. “Players forever.”

  Chapter 18

  Isabella

  DAY 12

  Natalie’s so excited for me. I hang up the phone with a sigh. She keeps telling me I should go for it, have another night of sweet, hot sex with Gray. Allow him to sweep me off my feet. I told her she doesn’t know what he’s like. Sure, he’s not as arrogant or mindless as he makes himself out to be. But he’s not exactly my human-rights lawyer family man, is he? It doesn’t matter what I feel. It doesn’t matter that sometimes I imagine his big cock inside me. It doesn’t matter that sometimes I want to take his hand when we’re walking. None of that matters. It won’t work, and that’s the end of it.

  There’s a knock on the door. “Yes?”

&nbs
p; Gray opens it and comes striding on through. “Morning.”

  “Hi.” I get up and straighten my skirt.

  Is he going to push me back on the bed, push my legs apart, pull my panties down, and slide into me? It flashes through my mind in an instant. My mind resists. My pussy says, yes, please.

  But he sits on the elegant antique chair in the corner of the room and leans his forearms on his knees. He takes up so much space wherever he is, even though he’s a fairly slim man. He owns every room he walks into.

  “Finky’s coming tomorrow,” he says. “I’m going to coach you on what to say. How to be.”

  “I think I can handle that myself.”

  He grins. “And I’m the arrogant one? Listen, you don’t know what he’s looking for. You don’t know the guy. You don’t know these English aristocratic circles.” He sneers, like he doesn’t like them much. “He’s been a family friend for years, and I was born a duke’s heir. So, on this one, I’m the expert, all right?” He winks at me. “I know you love your books. But this one you can’t study. You need… lived experience.” He’s mocking me, but it feels like intimate teasing. I even feel a little turned on. What the hell is wrong with me?

  “OK. Although I did go to one of the best boarding schools in the United States, so I’m not exactly Eliza Doolittle.”

  “You Yanks are all the same,” he says, in an overexaggerated version of his own cut-glass English accent. His smile pulls only one side of his mouth. He’s trying to get on my nerves.

  I stare at him and don’t react.

  “Go out the door and come in,” he orders. “I’ll be old Finky. You’ll be you.”

  “What?” This all seems contrived. “Role-play?”

  He laughs. “Not the kind of role-play I enjoy. But we can. Shall I buy you a French maid outfit?”

  “Fuck you, Grayson.” I go to the door. “I’m not knocking. I’ve come in already, OK?”

  He puts on a tense face and tense body language, just like Mr. Fink. He gets up and gives me a firm handshake and says, “Hello there, Miss Price. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  I’m going to laugh if I look at him. He sounds so weird.

  “Eye contact, eye contact,” he hisses.

  I look up at him, and the gleam in his eye, like he’s holding back laughter too, is too much. I burst into giggles.

  His eyes shine, but he keeps it deadpan. “What on earth is funny, Miss Price?” His voice wobbles with laughter. “Is there something… amusing about me?”

  I manage to swallow my mirth. “Oh, no, not at all, sir. I’m so enchanted to meet you, it all spilled out. I do apologize.”

  He furrows his brow in exactly the way I saw Mr. Fink do on the video call, then pulls up another chair for me. “Well, please sit.” His voice is tense.

  I cross my legs at the ankles and rest my hands in my lap. That was the way they taught the “ladies” to sit at boarding school. “Thank you.”

  “No, no, no,” he says, back to his normal voice. “You’re sitting all wrong. Sit naturally. You look like you’re trying too hard.”

  I was actually quite proud I’d remembered the position from boarding school. I feel a little deflated as I cross my right leg over my left, how I normally sit. “Fine. Can you just tell me everything to do in advance, please, so I don’t waste my time making mistakes?” My voice is as tense as Gray’s Mr. Fink.

  He frowns at me, but it’s a Gray frown. He’s dropped the role play. “Mistakes? What are you talking about?”

  I sigh. “Don’t let me make a fool of myself.”

  He crumples up his face in confusion. “Erm, yeah. That’s why we’re doing this now. So you don’t make a fool of yourself and break the whole deal tomorrow?”

  “Do you want me to act Miss Prim-and-Proper, or just be natural? I thought the first, but then you said not to cross my legs like that and—”

  He leans back in the chair and looks over me, his brow still low. “Why are you so agitated?” There’s no judgment in the question. He’s genuinely curious.

  “I’m not agitated.” I fiddle with my shoe. It’s all uncomfortable at the back.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “No, I’m not.” I definitely sound agitated now.

  He laughs. “Oh, yes, you are! —Oh, no, I’m not! —Oh, yes, you are! Sounds like we’re at a panto now.”

  “A what?”

  “Yank.”

  “Shut up!”

  He raises his eyebrows at me and sprawls back in the chair.

  “Look,” I say. “I just don’t see why we have to do all this rehearsing. It’s not a Broadway production of Hamlet.”

  “There’s a lot more riding on it.”

  “OK, yes, there’s a lot of money at stake. But if we rehearse too much, it’s going to be unnatural. I don’t want to lie or pretend to be something or anything. I’ll just be myself and pretend I’m deeply and madly in love with you.”

  A small, playful smile teases his lips. “Pretend?”

  “Yes,” I say decisively. “Pretend. So don’t even try to make me feel like I’m not good enough for your aristocratic English standards, all right?”

  “Not good enough?” His voice goes soft. “Too good, if anything. You think this is what I like?” He gestures around the place. “This is all dead. The house. The titles. Everything. As soon as we get this money, I’m outta here.”

  “Really? Where will you go?”

  “America, of course,” he says. “I feel freer there. Here they’re all obsessed with class. In America, it’s like, I’m British. That’s it.”

  I nod. “Which part of America?”

  “I don’t know yet. Maybe Seattle part of the time. I might move around. The States and some other countries. But I want to be in the States most of the time. Buy a few properties. Just small ones. High quality. But I guess it’ll depend where my new venture takes me.”

  “New venture?” I ask. I imagine some wild business that’ll drain his father’s money before the year is out.

  “Yes,” he says proudly. “I’m going to be an angel investor. Like you told me before, your father’s business is independent, right? Challenging the big guys. We… I could look for other businesses like that. Ones that need a cash injection. And give them the money.”

  It’s a sweet sentiment, but there’s no room for sentiment in business. “But you know nothing about business. How are you going to know which companies are good to invest in, and which will flop?”

  He grins. “Well, I’ve thought of that already. I’ll get someone who knows all about business.” He watches me with intense eyes. “Someone who’s already pulled a struggling business back from the brink.”

  I know he’s talking about me. But I don’t want him to say it. Then I’ll have to give him an outright rejection.

  “Well, I wish you all the best with it. For now, let’s just focus on getting the money in the first place.”

  He leans back, frustratingly nonchalant. “We’ll get it.”

  I don’t know what it is, but he’s irritating me. “And I suppose your angel-investing business will go swimmingly, too? With no problems?”

  “Whoever said that?”

  “You act like everything’s so easy.” I feel something rise in my chest. “Like you’re just going to get all this money, and you can be an angel investor, and we can be together, and everything will always work out fine. Life isn’t like that.”

  “It can be.”

  “Maybe for someone like you, born with a silver spoon in their mouth.”

  He leans forward, angry. “Well, you’re hardly from the Bronx, are you?”

  “Exactly my point! I’ve had one of the most privileged upbringings a person can have. And life is still hard. Things still fail. Things still don’t work out the way you want them to. Sure, you have no problems believing you can achieve anything you want and do it easily. But you know why that is? Because the only achievements you’ve made so far are drinking and sleeping with wome
n. Not exactly brain surgery, is it? Or rocket science.”

  “I’m sorry I’m not good enough for you,” he spits bitterly.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “You know, Mr. Fink’s going to love you. Because you’re cynical and joyless, just like him. Just like my father, in fact. The three of you would have loved to hole up in Father’s office, bitching about how irresponsible I am.”

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  He gets to his feet. “I thought you’d be excited by my angel investing idea.”

  “It’s a good idea, but—”

  “But not for an irresponsible fool like me,” he snaps. “I know. Well, don’t worry. Just charm the solicitor with your cynical and joyless ways and soon you’ll be on your way with your money. You’ll never have to see me again.”

  “But—”

  “In fact, he might just give you all the money and bypass me altogether. Since you’re their type of person and I’m so clearly not.”

  How did this conversation go downhill so fast? I don’t know what to say.

  “You know, I actually thought you respected me for who I was. Not the whole Grayson Fairfax persona from school. The actual me. But that was probably a hint from that book you read, right? Just a tactic to get me to do what you want and try to make you happy.”

  “No!”

  “Now I know what it feels like when people told me I messed with their minds. Maybe I just got a taste of my own medicine.” He looks like he’s about to throw up. “I thought we had something. But you’re obviously just a lesson. A lesson that I can’t do what I used to do. And I can’t open up to anyone else, because they’ll do the same thing. So, basically, I can’t do anything with my life. I’ll just sit in this mansion and rot until I die. Wonderful. Bloody wonderful.”

  Then he storms out and slams the door. A cloud of dust flies out of the carpet in front of it and sets me off coughing. Jeepers. The inner workings of Grayson Fairfax’s mind. He’s got as many issues as I do. Him being upset might make me want to jump up and run after him and comfort him, but not this time. He’s got to work that stuff out on his own. I have enough problems to deal with.