Falling For The Rebel Princess. Ellie Darkins

a few songs, but he had an uneasy feeling about it this morning. He needed to go back and look at it again. There were a few decent tracks there, he was sure. But a niggling voice in his head was telling him that he still hadn’t got the big hitters. The singles that would propel the album up the streaming charts and across the radio waves. There was studio space booked for them in London in two weeks’ time and it had to be fixed before then.

      Their manager was going to kill him when he told him he wouldn’t be showing up.

      He could write in London; he had written the last album in London. It had nothing to do with Charlie. Nothing to do with her feelings, anyway. As she kept saying, this was just business. But it would look better for them to arrive home together.

      Nothing to do with their feelings. 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?’