Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
ASHER
I wake up to the sound of my watch’s alarm. My arm is crammed under the decorative pillow I’ve confiscated to prop up my head overnight, and the alarm is bloody deafening right next to my ear.
I roll over as best I can. This chaise isn’t meant for sleeping. I hit the button to silence the alarm, then I see the time.
“Shit,” I murmur.
Clearly, it wasn’t loud enough. The damn thing had been beeping for several minutes before I woke up, and now I’m running late.
I get up. The darkness makes it hard to see, but I press on. I rearrange the pillows, fold the blanket I had wrapped around my body, and sprint to the bed just in time to toss it at the foot of the bed and pull the covers back.
The door creaks open just as Mercury turns, her sleepy eyes meeting mine. I’ve barely got the sheet pulled over me, my arm still suspiciously raised in the air, so I do the first thing I can think of—I throw my leg over her hip and drop my arm around her waist.
“Oh!” the maid gasps, catching us in what appears to be a compromising position. “I’m so sorry, my lord!”
I look over my shoulder and pull the covers up as if I’m trying to hide any indecencies. “No apology necessary. We just lost track of time. Come back later?”
Her blush could give Mercury a run for its money. “Of course, my lord,” she says, backing out of the room.
By the time she exits, I’m already out of bed. “Sorry,” I say, running a hand through my disheveled hair. “My alarm didn’t wake me in time, and I had to think of something on the fly.”
She’s sitting up now, arms folded around her knees.
Despite all the changes my mother has tried to impose on her out there, in here she’s still the Mercury I remember from the cottage.
The one who wears shorts and a hoodie to bed.
The one who falls asleep on one side of the bed and wakes up curled against me in the morning.
Or at least she used to. Before I started acting like an ass and sleeping on the chaise.
Before the kiss…
“It’s okay,” she responds. “It was smart thinking. Gotta keep up appearances.”
Keep up appearances…
That’s all we’ve been doing for weeks now. Ever since that moment in the water, when she said she wanted me to be her first, I’ve been doing everything in my power to keep her at arm’s length.
To remind myself that this isn’t real and that it’s just temporary.
Because it’s safer this way.
Although things may feel awkward and strained now, it could be a hundred times worse if we added the complications of a physical relationship.
Despite my promise to her brother, I just don’t see it ending well.
The chances of either of us coming out unscathed are slim to none. One of us is likely to get hurt, and while I believe I’m stepping back to protect her, I worry that the one I’m protecting might be myself.
Because the one word that keeps ringing in my ear since that day in the loch is “first.”
I want you to be my first…
Does that mean she plans for there to be others?
And god, doesn’t that make me a fucking hypocrite? How many women have I slept with, not caring whether I was the first, second, or fifth? As long as we both enjoyed ourselves, who cared?
But with Mercury, I very much care.
For the first time, I don’t want to be just a number. I don’t want to be just her first.
I want to be her bloody last.
“We should probably talk about this interview today,” she says, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“Why?”
Her mouth gapes open, then closes, as she stares at me. “When I asked Evie about it, she said, ‘Remember those crazy interviews the royal couples did after they each got engaged? Expect something like that.’”
The blankets slip off her legs, and I’m momentarily distracted by all that bare skin. I still remember what it felt like to have those legs wrapped around my waist, her rubbing up against my—
“Okay,” I manage to say, turning my gaze toward the dresser.
Clothes. I need clothes.
And a shower.
“Okay?” I hear her scoff. “That’s all you have to say? Asher, this reporter will probably ask us questions we don’t have answers to. Questions like, where did we meet? How long have we been dating? Or even more revealing—what we love most about each other.”
“We’ll be fine.” I shrug.
I turn back to her, watching her stare at me, eyes wide and unblinking. Her arms cross her chest, and she lets out a frustrated sigh. “Okay. If you say so.”
Our interview is scheduled for the early afternoon. I tried to convince my mother to hold it somewhere off-site, like a quaint café or a pub to showcase a local business, but all my requests were firmly denied. “You in a bar is exactly the image we are trying to erase, Asher.”
So it will be held here at Blackstone House, in all its splendor. Mercury and I will be dressed for the occasion, she in a beautiful blue silk dress and me in a steel-gray suit. It’s the perfect place to introduce the world to the happy couple, or so my mother tells me.
As the hours dwindle down to the reporter’s arrival, my apprehension grows.
Mercury and I haven’t spoken since this morning.
Things between us have been strained for over two weeks since that heated moment in the loch, but we’ve managed to keep it cordial and communicative. At no point have we stopped conversing altogether.
Until today. And what a day to start.
Well, you did sort of brush her off this morning…
God, I’m such an idiot.
While I meant my words regarding the interview to sound reassuring—as in, don’t worry, we’ve got this—I realize now, in hindsight, that they may have come across as uncaring and rude, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
I know this interview is important.
Despite my mother’s relentless efforts to rehabilitate my scathing reputation, I couldn’t care less what the rest of the aristocracy thinks of me. I’m inheriting this title whether they see a rock star or an earl, and there’s nothing I can do to change their opinion of me.
But it can make a difference in how the world perceives Mercury.
Right now, she is more or less a blank slate—a mystery. The world knows she’s my manager’s daughter, but beyond that, there is little else known about the woman at my side. And that has sparked quite a flurry of interest online.
The tabloids have done deep dives, trying to find anything they can about her. There are articles about her younger days in which an unnamed source describes her as “shy and forgettable.”
Then there’s the interview with one of her sorority sisters—someone named LuAnn—who claims she is “best friends” with Mercury and that she never heard her mention my name once.
Of course, Mercury has no idea any of this is going on. At the insistence of her family and me, she’s been staying off the internet and social media to protect her mental health.
And thank Christ for that, because if she knew the reason my mother scheduled this interview was that people were beginning to doubt our relationship because of her attention-seeking sorority sister, LuAnn, she would be even more nervous than she is now.
But I wasn’t kidding this morning.
It’s going to be okay. I will make sure of that.
When we meet in the foyer a few minutes before the reporter is due to arrive, I have to force myself to breathe at the mere sight of her.
It’s been a month since she appeared on the side of the road like an apparition from my mind, and yet she’s still the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen.
She is the picture of elegance in blue silk, and I can’t tear my eyes away from hers.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi.”
Before I get a chance to add to the riveting conversation I’ve started, my mother storms in, her private secretary in tow. “Ah, good. I see we’re all here.” She gives Mercury and me a passing glance but ignores Evie and Mac, who stand toward the back of the room, against the wall.
If I know my mother well—and I do—she’s so focused on this interview right now that Evie and Mac might as well be furniture.
All she cares about is making those headlines from LuAnn WhatsHerFace disappear.
Permanently.
“The reporter from the Morning Star just arrived at the gate, so we only have a minute or two,” she says, now giving Mercury and me her full attention. “Her name is Lana Chancler and—” I let out a groan I didn’t mean to be so loud. My mother gives me a pointed glare. “Is something wrong?”
Shit. “No?”
“You seem unsure.”
“It’s fine.”
She and Mercury both eye me suspiciously, but before I have a chance to explain, the double doors open, and Lana is being ushered in by the butler.
Her dark-brown eyes sweep the room until they land on mine, and a smug, cruel smile spreads across her lips. “Hello, Asher. Long time, no see.”
This is going to suck.