Sophie Pembroke - Wedding Promises

One her. Not her plus one oversized, muscular stuntman.

Dan looked out of place in Morwen Hall to start with: his leather jacket was too rough, his boots too scuffed, his jeans...well, his jeans fitted him pretty much perfectly but, much as she liked them, they didn’t exactly fit the refined Gothic elegance of the wedding venue. But if he was too...too much for Morwen Hall, he overwhelmed her little room entirely.

Who was she kidding? He overwhelmed her.

‘So...um...how are we going to do this?’ she asked, watching as he took in the room. Their bedroom. There was no end to the weirdness of that. ‘The sharing a room thing, I mean. As opposed to the faking a relationship thing. Which, now that I come to mention it, is next on my how-to list, actually. But first... You know... We should probably figure out the room thing.’

‘The room thing...’ Dan echoed, still looking around him. ‘Right.’ Then, dropping the bag of wedding favours onto the dressing table, he moved through the bedroom, exploring the bathroom, pressing down on the bed to test the mattress, then yanking open the mini-bar door and pulling out a bottle of beer.

‘So the plan is drink until we don’t care which one of us sleeps on the sofa?’ Laurel asked cautiously.

Maybe she should have found out a few more things about her supposed boyfriend before she’d started this charade. Like whether or not he tended to solve all his problems with alcohol. That would have been useful information about someone she now had to share a room with.

‘We’re sharing the bed,’ Dan said, dropping to sit on the edge of the satin quilt.

Laurel’s heart stuttered in her chest.

‘Sharing. Like...both of us in it at the same time?’

Her horror must have shown on her face, because he rolled his eyes.

‘Nothing to worry about, Princess. I’m not going to besmirch your honour, or whatever it is you’re imagining right now.’

‘I wasn’t...’ She tailed off before she had to explain that it wasn’t his besmirching she was worried about. It was how she was going to keep her hands from exploring those muscles...

‘We’ll share the bed because it’s big enough and it’s stupid not to,’ Dan went on, oblivious to her inner muscle dilemma. ‘This week is going to be deadly enough without a chronic backache from sleeping on that thing.’ He nodded towards the chaise longue, shoehorned in under the second window at the side of the bed. ‘Apart from that...the bathroom has a door that locks, and we’re going to be out doing wedding stuff most of the time we’re here anyway. Especially you—you’re organising the whole thing, remember? How much time did you really expect to spend in this room before I came along?’

‘I figured if I was lucky I might get four or five hours here to sleep at night,’ Laurel admitted.

He was right. They’d probably barely see each other all week, given how much she had to do. And the chances of her passing out from exhaustion the moment her head hit the pillow, regardless of who was snoring away beside her, were high. It would all be fine.

‘There you go, then. Not a problem.’

‘Exactly,’ Laurel agreed, wondering why it still felt like one.

For a long moment they stared at each other, as if still figuring out what they’d let themselves in for. Then Laurel glimpsed the clock on the dressing table and gasped.

‘The welcome drinks! I need to get ready.’

Dan waved a hand towards the bathroom. ‘Be my guest. I’ll just be out here.’

He leant back and stretched out on the bed, his black T-shirt riding up just enough to give her a glimpse of the tanned skin and a smattering of dark hair underneath. She swallowed, and looked away.

‘Don’t give me another thought,’ he said.

‘I won’t.’ She grabbed her dress from where it hung on the outside of the wardrobe, gathered up her make-up bag from the dressing table, and retreated to the relative calm and peace of the bathroom.

Where she promptly realised, upon stepping into the shower, that she still knew next to nothing about her pretend boyfriend and she had to go and meet his parents within the hour.

Clunking her head against the tiles of the shower wall, Laurel wondered exactly how she’d managed to make this week even more unbearable than Melissa had managed.

* * *

Dan heard the click of the bathroom door opening and put down the magazine he’d found on the coffee table, which extolled the wonders of the British countryside. Laurel stepped through the door and he realised that the British countryside had nothing on the woman he was sharing a room and apparently a fake relationship with.

‘Think I’ll do?’ Laurel asked, giving him a lopsided smile as she turned slowly in the doorway.

The movement revealed that the long, slim black dress she’d chosen—a dress that clung to her ample curves in a way that made his brain go a little mushy—draped down from her shoulders to leave her back almost entirely bare.

‘I mean, we need this charade to be believable, right? Do you think your family will believe you’d date someone like me?’

‘I think they’ll wonder why you’re slumming it with a guy like me,’ he replied honestly, still staring at the honey-coloured skin of her back. Did she know what that sort of dress could do to a man? ‘You look better than any of those actresses that’ll be out there tonight.’

Laurel pulled a face. ‘I appreciate the lie, but—’

‘Who’s lying?’ Dan interrupted. ‘Trust me, I’ve met most of them. And none of them could wear that dress like you do.’

She still looked unconvinced, so Dan got up from the bed and crossed over to her. ‘This,’ he said, laying a hand at the base of her back, ‘is a very nice touch.’

‘You don’t think it’s too much? Or...well, too little?’

She looked up at him with wide, dark eyes, all vulnerability and openness, and Dan thought, Damn.

This was where he got into trouble. Every time. A woman looked at him that way—as if he could answer all her questions, give her what she needed, make her world a better place—and he fell for it. He believed he could make a difference.

And then she walked off with the first real movie star to look at her twice. Every time.

Well, not this one. Laurel wasn’t his girlfriend, his crush, or his lover. She was his partner in this little game they were playing. Maybe she’d even become a friend. But that was it. She was looking for a prince, not a stand-in.

Which meant he should probably stop staring into her eyes around now.

‘It’s perfect,’ he said, stepping away. ‘Come on. We’d better get down to the bar, right? I figure you probably have work to do tonight.’

Laurel nodded, and grabbed her clutch bag from the dressing table. Then she turned back to frown at him. ‘Wait—you’re going like that?’

Arms spread wide, Dan looked down at his dark jeans, the black shirt open at the collar, and his usual boots. Admittedly, they were somewhat more casual than the suits and ties he imagined the other guys in attendance would be wearing.

‘You don’t like it?’

‘I love it.’ A smile spread across her face as she opened the door for him. ‘And not just because Melissa will hate it.’

Dan grinned back. ‘All the more reason, then.’

* * *

The bar where they were holding the welcome drinks had been decked out with decorations in cool shades of icy blue and green. Not streamers and bunting and stuff—the sort of decorations Dan remembered from other kids’ parties when he was younger. These decorations were...classy. Expensive. Yet somehow slightly over the top, as if they were trying too hard. But then, he was starting to get the feeling that that was just Melissa all over.