back of my mind kept whispering that everything between Spencer and I was a lie. How could I have gone to bed with a man who didn’t know who I really was? I had slipped into Kerrigan’s life too easily. I needed to clear my head, and there was no way I could do that around Spencer. He had a way of muddying up my brain.
“Well, it’s not as if it will take a year to get to know each other. I simply wanted more time before the press descended upon us and my mother started in on invitations and all that nonsense,” he explained, opening a drawer. He found a pair of jeans and held them out to me. “They’ll be loose on you.”
“Thanks,” I said as I took them. I pulled the pants on over my bare legs, not bothering to figure out where yesterday’s knickers had landed. “At least we have time before they make us get married.”
“The longer we give them, the bigger the spectacle will be. I think when we are ready, we just elope,” he said as though he’d given it some thought.
I swallowed back a cry of surprise at this revelation. Part of my arrangement with Tod Belmond was that the wedding would take a long time to plan — long enough for him to convince Kerrigan to come back and take her rightful place at the altar. That timeline was going to have to be significantly shortened if Spencer decided he wanted to run off to get married. I felt torn. I knew I was going to have to tell Tod about this development, so he would have time to work on tracking Kerrigan down before it was too late. For some reason, I couldn’t imagine taking wedding vows for her. Not only because it wasn’t my place to do so, but because I feared what would happen to my own heart in the process. I liked Spencer. Maybe I liked him too much. I was certainly attracted to him. I had never considered what would happen if we became emotionally attached to one another. I thought of this relationship as more of a business transaction, like the one I’d made with Kerrigan’s father. But things were getting much more complicated than that—much more quickly than I could process.
“I’d always imagined a large wedding.” In truth, I’d never thought about getting married. It’d never really crossed my mind. I didn’t know why. Weren’t girls supposed to think about their wedding days? I hadn’t, but the lie was easily delivered and even more easily swallowed.
“We’ll do whatever you want, of course.” He grabbed the shirt I wore and pulled me to him. “Are you certain you need to go home?”
“Don’t you have work or something?” I didn’t actually know what Spencer did on a daily basis, which was yet another reason things were moving too fast. It wasn’t as if preparing to be Prime Minister in ten or fifteen years was a full-time, paid occupation. Still, no one had mentioned him doing anything else but that.
Spencer checked his watch and grimaced. “I really should be getting into the office. My grandfather tends to be a bastard on Mondays. Secretly, I think he hates taking weekends off. If the man could spend every moment working, he would.”
“If you don’t have time to drop me off, I’m sure I can call a car,” I offered. Each second I spent with him, my brain felt more muddled, as if I had taken a very strong drug. The sooner I could get some space to clear my head, the better.
“Nonsense. I’m not sending you away in a car after last night.” He wrapped his arms around my waist and studied me for a moment with a worried expression, mistaking my confusion for pain. “Holden distracted me from checking on you. Are you okay? Is everything all right down there?”
Despite the anxiety clouding my brain, I giggled. “I think I’ll live.”
“That’s exactly what a man wants to hear after the first time he sleeps with a woman.”
“Sorry. I’m new at this, remember?” I teased him.
“Actually, that reminds me.” He angled his face so that his mouth covered mine, and I forgot about anything but him at that moment. “I hope you enjoyed yourself as much as I did. I promise it only gets better.”
“Promise, huh?” I whispered. “You’re talking a big game.”
“I’m more than willing to back it up right now,” he said, huskily, and his mouth crushed