Right. He would make her believe that today. Because her memory might be fuzzy but he could remember everything. Including the moment that they’d been on the dance floor, him still buzzing from the adrenaline of being on stage, her from the dancing and the music and the day and a half without sleep.
They’d moved together as the music had coursed through him, the bass vibrating his skin. She’d been trying to talk business, shouting in his ear. Contracts and terms, and commitment. But he hadn’t been able to see past her. To feel anything more than the skin of her shoulder under his hand as he’d leaned in to speak in her ear. The soft slide of her hair as he’d brushed it off her face. ‘Let’s do this,’ she’d said. ‘We’d be a great team. I know that we can create something amazing together.’
She’d reached up then, making sure she had his attention—as if it would ever be anywhere but on her again. And then Ricky had said those idiotic words, the ones that no judge could take back this morning.
* * *
She’d laughed, at first, when he had proposed, assuming that he was joking. It had had nothing to do with the way she’d felt when his arm was around her. The way that that had made him feel. As if he wanted to protect her and challenge her and be challenged by her all at once.
He could never let her know how he had felt last night.
It was much better, much safer that they kept this as business. He knew what happened when you went into a relationship without any calculation. When you jumped in with your heart on the line and no defences. He wouldn’t be doing it again.
And then there were the differences between them. Sure, it hadn’t seemed to matter in that moment that he’d asked her to marry him, or when they were dancing and laughing and joking together, but a gig and a nightclub and beer were great levellers. When you were having to scream above the music then your accent didn’t matter. But in the diner this morning there was no hiding her carefully Londonised RP that one could only acquire with decades of very expensive schooling, and learning to speak in the echoey ballrooms of city palaces and country piles.
He’d learnt that when he’d joined one of those expensive schools at the age of eleven, courtesy of his music scholarship free ride. His Bolton accent had been smoothed slightly by years away from home, first at school, and then on the road, but it would always be there. And he knew that, like the difference in their backgrounds, it would eventually come between them.
His experiences at school had made it clear that he didn’t belong there.
And when he’d returned home to his parents, and their comfy semi-detached in the suburbs, he had realised that he didn’t belong there any more either. He was caught between two worlds, not able to settle in either. So the last thing that he needed was to be paraded in front of the royal family, no doubt coming into contact with the Ruperts and Sebastians and Hugos from his school days.
And what about his family? Was Charlie going to come round for a Sunday roast? Make small talk with his mum with Radio 2 playing in the background? He couldn’t picture it.
But he would have to, he realised. Because it didn’t matter what they were doing in private. It didn’t matter that he had told himself that he absolutely had to get these feelings under control, their worlds were about to collide.
It wasn’t permanent. That was what he had to remind himself. It wasn’t for ever. They were going to end this once a decent amount of time had passed, and in the meantime they would just have to fit into each other’s lives as best they could.
Just think of the publicity. A whirlwind romance was a good story. No doubt a better one than a drunken mistake. But since when had he allowed the papers to rule on what was and wasn’t a good idea for him? No, there was more to it than that. Something about waking up beside her in bed that he wasn’t ready to let go of yet.
‘I have an album launch party to go to first, though,’ he said at last. ‘What do you say to making our first appearance as husband and wife?’
CHARLIE ADJUSTED THE strap on her spike heels and straightened the seam of her leather leggings. As soon as the car door opened, she knew there would be a tsunami of flashes from the assembled press hordes. She was considered fair game at the best of times, and if news of the wedding had got out by now, the scrum would be worse than usual.
These shots needed to be perfect. She wasn’t having her big moment hijacked by a red circle of shame.
It was funny, she thought, that neither she nor Joe had called his manager, or her boss yet, and told them about what had happened. Not the best start to a publicity campaign, which was, after all, what they had agreed this marriage was. It was more natural, this way, she thought. If there was a big announcement, it would look too fake. Much better for them to let the story grow organically.
As the limo pulled up outside the club she realised that no announcement was necessary anyway. Word had obviously got around. The hotel had arranged for them to be picked up from a discreet back door, an old habit, so she hadn’t been sure whether there had been photographers waiting for her there. If there had, they’d taken a shortcut to beat them here. There were definitely more press here than a simple album launch warranted. The story was out, then.
Without thinking, she slipped her hand into Joe’s, sliding her fingers between his. The sight of so many photographers still made her nervous. It didn’t matter how many times she had faced them. It reminded her of those times in her childhood when she’d been pulled from the protective privacy of her family home and paraded in front of the world’s press, all looking for that perfect picture of the perfect Princess. As a child she had smiled until her cheeks had ached, dressed in her prettiest pink dress, turning this way and that as her name was shouted. It had been a small price to pay, her parents had explained, to make sure that the rest of their lives were private. But as she’d got older she’d resented those days more and more, and her childish rictus grin had turned into a sullen teen grimace.
And then, when she was nineteen, and had realised that she would never be the Princess that her family and her country wanted her to be, she’d stopped smiling altogether. She remembered sitting in the doctor’s office as he explained what he’d found: inflammation, scar tissue, her ovaries affected. Possible problems conceiving.
She might never have a baby, no chubby little princes or princesses to parade in front of an adoring public, and no hope of making the sort of dynastic match that would make her parents happy.
Her most important duty as a royal female was to continue her family’s line. It had been drummed into her from school history lessons to formal state occasions from as far back as she could remember. Queens who had done their duty and provided little princes and princesses to continue the family line.
And things hadn’t changed as much as we would all like to think, she knew. The country had liked her mother when she was a shining twenty-something. But it was when she’d given the country three beautiful royal children that they’d really fallen in love with her, when she had won their loyalty. And that was something that Charlie might never be able to do. She might never feel the delicious weight of her child in her arms. Never breathe in the smell of a new baby knowing that it was all hers.
What if she never made her parents grandparents, and saw the pride and love in their eyes that she knew they were reserving for that occasion?
And as soon as she’d realised that, she had realised that she could never make them truly proud of her, somehow the weight of responsibility had fallen from her shoulders and she’d decided that she was never going back. If she wanted to roll out of a nightclub drunk—okay. If she wanted to disappear for three days, without letting anyone know where she was going—fine. If she wanted to skip a family event to go and listen to a new band—who cared?
Her mother insisted on a security detail, and Charlie had given up arguing that one. Her only demand was that they were invisible—she never looked for the smartly dressed man