Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
LEXI
The clinking sound of something being put down on the nightstand wakes me from a deep, warm sleep.
Drawing my hand over my bleary eyes, I open them partway to find Oliver standing next to the bed, fully dressed and looking way perkier than, right now, I can ever imagine feeling again.
“Look at you, all sleepy and beautiful.” He makes a kissing sound.
Beautiful? My pulse quickens. He’s telling me I’m beautiful?
He nods at the vase.
Oh, yeah. He doesn’t mean it. He’s saying that only to keep our fake relationship alive for the mystery audience that’s listening at all times.
“You were totally passed out when I came to bed last night,” he says. “Then this morning you just rolled over and grunted when I got up. So I thought I’d bring you some breakfast and coffee.”
He picks up a large china mug with Glenwither Gardens written on the side surrounded by tulips and daffodils and holds it toward me.
“I don’t grunt.” I push myself upright enough to take the drink that I need as much for its warm hydration as its caffeine—my mouth feels like someone spent the whole night tossing sand in it.
“Oh, I promise you, you do.” He winks. “Remember when we played our special version of ten little piggies and—”
I hold up my hand, not wanting to learn what sex game he’s either invented on the spot or has previously played. He’s really getting into the part.
“Marjorie promised me she knew how to make a good American coffee.” He sits on the edge of the bed, making my drink slop dangerously close to the rim of the cup.
Not only do I not want to lose a single drop of the sacred liquid, this bedspread might have been hand-stitched by a group of diligent Victorian ladies. It’s certainly heavy—a weighted blanket from a time before anyone knew there was such a thing.
“But the toast was all me. I know how to do that.”
“Without setting off the fire alarm?” I ask.
“Cheeky.” He hands me a plate with three slices of whole wheat toast. One with strawberry jam on it, one with peanut butter, and one with what looks and smells like Nutella. “Wasn’t sure what you’d prefer, so I made a selection.”
I take it from him. “Seriously? You made this for me? Not the chef, or Marjorie, or whoever?”
“Yup.” He nods with satisfaction at my surprise.
Huh. Imagine that.
I take a slurp of coffee and put it back on the nightstand to give me a free hand to pick up a slice of toast. Who knew jet lag made you both parched and starving.
My teeth have barely sunk into the peanut buttery slice when there’s a knock on the door.
“Bet that’s Sofia,” Oliver says. “She asked me last night if she could take you into the village to show you around.” He turns his head toward the door and calls, “Come in.”
“Good morning, sir.” Fuck, it’s Giles. “And miss,” he adds reluctantly, as if he’s barely able to stop himself from sighing at discovering I haven’t magically disappeared overnight.
“Good job you’re wearing pj’s, darling,” Oliver says with a salacious eyebrow wiggle.
He crawls over me, shaking the old bed so much the jammy slice of toast almost jiggles off the plate and onto the cover I’m trying to protect. Then he sinks down next to me, looking as at home as if that’s where he’d spent the night.
He might have, for all I’d have noticed. I fell asleep before he finished his shower and was so totally out of it, I doubt I would have stirred if he’d crawled under the covers.
Does he sleep naked? Would that have made me notice him no matter how jet-lagged I was?
A sudden image of Oliver sleeping in the nude, curled up on his side, bare butt facing me, flashes across my mind. It is definitely not a bad picture.
“Miss Lane,” Giles says from near the bottom corner of the four-poster. “You are scheduled to be in the village at eleven a.m. for the peat bog treasure hunt.”
“The what?” I splutter through the sticky peanut butter at the same time as Oliver says, “Oh no, she isn’t.”
I can’t be scheduled for anything. Neither can Oliver. We need every spare second to work on the damn book.
“The peat bog treasure hunt, miss,” Giles says, his eyes fixed directly ahead of him as if he should never commit the cardinal sin of looking at a fully dressed woman covered by blankets.
In fact, his manner would suggest that he thinks merely being in the same room as me is a cardinal sin all on its own.
“For fuck’s sake, Giles.” Oliver scrambles off his side of the bed and stands at the bottom next to the chaise that still bears his crumbled blankets and pillows.
Giles’s gaze comes to rest on them. “Trouble in paradise, sir?”
Christ, if this toast wasn’t so damned delicious and I wasn’t starving, his arrogance would make me want to slam the Nutella slice right in his face. Followed by the plate.
“What?” Oliver follows Giles’s gaze. “Oh. No. I, um…” He runs his fingers through his hair. “I couldn’t sleep and Lexi was exhausted, so I thought it was only fair I didn’t toss and turn next to her all night.”
God, he’s a terrible liar.
Which is a good thing—it’s a good trait. Particularly for book reasons. It’s reassuring to know he won’t be able to spin me a bunch of bullshit without me being able to see right through it.
“I see. That’s good news.” Giles sounds about as delighted by it as someone who’s been told their eyeballs are about to be twisted in their sockets.
I’ve already finished the peanut butter toast and started on the strawberry one. This is the most delicious jam I’ve ever tasted. Is there such a thing as a royal jam maker?
“So what’s this bog thing?” I ask again, wiping my hands on the napkin Oliver had provided. “And why do we have to go?”
“Oh, it’s not we, miss,” Giles says. “Only you. It’s the village’s most popular event of the year.
So it would be good PR to get you involved.
You know, introduce you to the public in a positive light.
One where you’re seen to be full of community spirit and down with the locals, as I believe they say. ”
I’m not sure anyone has ever said that.
“You’re not wheeling out my girlfriend as a PR stunt,” Oliver says with all the conviction and passion of someone defending an actual girlfriend he has actual feelings about.
“It’s not fair to subject her to that. There’s no need to wheel her out in public at all.
No need for her to have photographers and reporters harassing her. ”
“Is that because you’re afraid it won’t last, sir?”
Oliver’s fair complexion reddens as he sucks on his top row of teeth.
“Like all the others,” Giles adds.
The Nutella slice is now a large step closer to being flung across the room. What a vindictive prick.
Oliver takes a long breath to try to keep a lid on his anger. I might not have known him long, but his mannerisms are easy to pick up on. Or is it only me who’s recognized them so quickly?
“Lexi is not being used as part of some Palace game,” Oliver says.
“Oh, this is nothing to do with Buckingham Palace,” Giles replies. “I doubt your grandparents even know the young lady exists.”
It’s delightful when someone talks about you as if you’re not there.
“It was your parents who called the Royal Communications office and asked what they should do with her. This was the suggestion they chose.”
Of course they did. I imagine they think it’s the one with the most potential to make me look a fool.
Giles turns back in my direction but still doesn’t look at me. “So it’s all arranged. There’ll be a car out front at ten forty-five. That’s in…” He pulls his jacket back from his wristwatch. “One hour and thirteen minutes.”
Well, it looks like I’ll have to sacrifice a morning to whatever this bullshit is, purely to keep up the appearance of the devoted girlfriend who’ll do anything to be accepted into her boyfriend’s family.
“But what is it, exactly?” I’m now cradling the coffee for emotional support. “And what do I have to do?”
Oliver gets back on the bed and crawls toward me.
“There’s a peat bog on the other side of the village.
It has this muddy creek. And every year there’s a treasure hunt.
Locals take silly items like a plastic fish, or an old boot, or anything really, and drop them in the bog the night before.
Then on the day, the competitors have to jump in and find what they can against the clock. ”
“Each item is worth a certain number of points,” Giles adds. I bet he’s a stickler for the rules. “The treasure-hunter with the most points wins.”
“And it’s hard to find anything.” Oliver settles back beside me. “Because the water is so muddy you can’t see and have to do it all by touch.”
“Hold on.” I put the mug down, haul back the world’s heaviest bed covers and jump out of bed.
Giles flinches as if he expected me to be totally bottomless rather than wearing full-length pajama pants.
“Are you saying you want me to go diving in a muddy pond for pieces of old garbage? Because that sounds deliberately designed to set me up for public humiliation.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t be standing up to a member of the British royal household like this. But also, fuck him, and fuck Oliver’s parents if they’re trying to turn me into a laughingstock because they think I’m not good enough to be associated with their family.
“Exactly my point,” Oliver says.
“Oh, no.” I had no clue it was possible for a laugh to sound as patronizing as Giles’s. “You wouldn’t be wading around in the bog. That would be very…unbecoming. You would be officiating. Keeping score.”
“Oh.” Now I feel kind of silly standing here barefoot in my pj’s with no underwear on, arguing with a fancy Scottish man in a suit with a tie that’s been knotted so neatly I wonder if it’s a clip-on.
“Still,” Oliver says, lunging for the slice of Nutella toast. “Let’s keep everything private. No need to parade Lexi in public for anything.”
But I was already planning to go into the village to try to get a handle on how regular Brits feel about Oliver and his move to the US, whether they support him or see it as a betrayal of the royal family.
And maybe this might be an even better opportunity for that type of research. Yes, I could definitely turn this around to work for me.
“You know what?” I turn to face Oliver, who looks ridiculously sexy sitting on the bed eating toast, his legs stretched out in front of him. “It might not be such a bad idea.”
“What? How could you possibly think that?”
I wink at him with the eye that Giles can’t see. “Trust me. It could be good.”
“Excellent.” Giles claps his hands before Oliver can object. “Princess Sofia has some wellies and a Barbour she keeps here that you can borrow. They might make you look a little more like you belong. I assume you brought your own jeans with you?”
He says “jeans” like it’s a dirty word. Presumably something only we revolting Americans would wear.
I nod.
“Then it’s all arranged.” He spins on his shiny shoes and heads back toward the door. “Be downstairs in one hour and”—he looks at his watch again—“ten minutes.”
Oliver is glaring at me with those big, fascinating eyes of his while making a dramatic shrug that says What the hell are you thinking?