Michelle Conder - Billionaire's Wife On Paper / Their Royal Wedding Bargain

It was the ‘something else’ that most worried Logan. He fought every aroused cell in his body but it was a battle he was worried he might not win, or at least not in the long run. One year of this level of temptation and he would be a certifiable mess. How much temptation could a man endure? Especially for a man who had actively avoided contact as intimate as this.

Kissing a hook-up date was one thing, kissing someone he had known for years and was currently married to was another. Their paper marriage would be incinerated, obliterated if he gave in to the temptation to kiss her again. One taste of her mouth had already unleashed something feral inside him, something he wasn’t sure he could control for too much longer.

Calling on every bit of willpower he possessed, Logan dropped his hand from her face and took a step back. ‘I’m sorry, Layla, but this can’t happen. I made the rules for a reason.’

Her gaze reminded him of the still surface of a lake. Calm. Controlled. But there was a faint ripple of disappointment around the edges. ‘Okey-dokey.’ Her words and tone were flippant given the topic under discussion. So too her overly bright, breezy smile. ‘We’ll leave it at that, then.’ She moved across the room to where the champagne bottle was and topped up her glass. She turned and held her glass up in a toast, her expression faintly mocking. ‘Long live the rules.’

Logan ground his teeth so hard he mentally apologised to his dentist. ‘Listen—I’m not doing this to insult you. It’s not personal.’

‘Isn’t it?’ Her eyes were glittering as brightly as the diamonds on her left hand next to her wedding ring. Not glittering with tears but with anger.

He let out a slowly controlled breath, anchoring his hands on his hips like he was about to deliver an important lecture. Which he was, but he suspected he was the one who needed to hear it most. ‘Think about it. If we were to have a normal relationship, it would be much more complicated to end it when the year was up. This way we can get an annulment and leave it at that. No harm done.’ He dropped his hands from his hips. ‘I’m not saying it will be an easy year. But we’re both mature adults, and I want us to remain friends at the end of it.’

She rolled her lips together, her arms crossed, with her champagne glass tilted at a threatening-to-spill angle. ‘What have you told your brother about us? Does he know it’s just a paper marriage?’

Logan folded back the cuffs of his shirt for something to do with his hands. ‘I haven’t spoken to him yet. He hasn’t answered any of my calls or texts or emails.’ Which, unfortunately, wasn’t unusual when Robbie was on one of his gambling sprees.

‘But what will you tell him?’

It was a question Logan had been asking himself for the last few days. He hadn’t been able to contact his younger brother to talk about anything, much less his sudden marriage to Layla Campbell, the housekeeper’s great-niece. ‘He will have seen the will by now but I’m hoping he’ll accept our marriage as the real deal. It’s not as if you and I are complete strangers and he knows my grandfather always had a soft spot for you.’

‘It might be tricky convincing Robbie we’re a genuine couple when he comes home to Bellbrae sometime. You know what he’s like—he often arrives unannounced. If we’re sleeping on opposite sides of the castle it will look kind of odd.’

Logan could see her point. His brother might be immature and reckless but he wasn’t a total fool. It wouldn’t take Robbie long to pick up on any irregularities in Logan’s relationship with Layla, and their living arrangements in particular. ‘We could move into the west tower. The large suite that has the connecting bedrooms.’ He would be far closer to her than he’d intended—sleeping with just a door between them.

A door he would keep locked—literally and mentally.

‘Fine,’ Layla said, draining her glass. ‘But can I make a request?’

‘Sure.’

She put her glass down and faced him squarely. ‘When we’re pretending to be happily married to Robbie and anyone else, will you use terms of endearment or just call me Layla?’

‘What would you prefer?’

‘You can call me anything but babe.’ She gave a faint shudder as if even saying the word upset her.

‘Why not babe?’

A hard light came into her eyes and her expression set like fast-acting glue. ‘Someone I used to know used it a lot. I’ve loathed it ever since.’

Before Logan could ask her to elaborate, she turned and walked out of the room, leaving him with just the lingering fragrance of her perfume.

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