The bed was empty when I woke up.
I propped myself up and wiped sleep from my eyes, looking around the huge hotel room.
Where was Alex?
And what time was it?
I rolled over and grabbed my phone from the nightstand. It wasn’t even eight yet, and that explained why I still felt so tired.
I really hadn’t had enough sleep. All I remembered at the end of the night was falling asleep midway through the second episode of The Queen’s Gambit, and it was a miracle I’d made it that far. I was pretty sure Alex had fallen asleep right after episode one.
He was a terrible TV-watching partner.
I sat up and looked around again. “Alex?”
I waited for a response.
Nothing.
So he wasn’t in the bathroom either.
Where was he?
I had no messages from him or anyone else that would say where he was, and worry snaked its way through my body as the clock ticked over on my phone and there was nothing from him.
ME: Where are you??
I sent the text and put my phone down. Worried or not, my bladder was not going to hold out much longer, and I was going to blame that on the sheer amount of wine I’d consumed last night.
It was a miracle I didn’t have more than the most minor of headaches. I guessed that was what crappy takeaway foods did for you—soaked it all up while you slept.
Thankfully, I did have a strip of paracetamol and ibuprofen in my toiletries bag, so I popped two pills of each out of the blister strips and fetched a bottle of water from the mini fridge so I could take them.
Literally the only bright spot right now was that my boob hadn’t popped out of my pyjama top.
The lock clicked on the door, and I started, almost dropping the water bottle. Alex stepped inside with a bag from a nearby bakery in his hand and looked up at me.
“Oh. You’re awake. I didn’t disturb you when I left, did I?”
“No, I’ve not been awake long.” I looked at the bag in his hand. “Isn’t there room service?”
“Yes, but I went to speak to George before he finished his shift, and he was eating from here. It smelt so good I had to go and get some. A pot of tea is on its way up, though.” He set the bag on the table right as there was a knock at the door. “Ah, that’ll be the tea.”
I grabbed a cardigan and threw it on so my nipples weren’t quite so prominently on view—my thanks to the air conditioning unit—and peered around Alex.
“Gabi. What are you doing here?”
“Have you seen this?” she asked, holding something out.
“Seen what?” I wrapped the cardigan around me. “What’s going on?”
“Come in,” Alex said. “Where’s Eva?”
“Matthew’s room, I assume,” Gabi replied, closing the door behind her. “I texted her, but she hasn’t replied yet.”
“What’s going on?” I walked over to them and reached for the phone, but Alex snatched it away.
He met my eyes. “Remember those photographers last night?”
“I think I’m still seeing stars thanks to all their flashes. What about them?”
Gabi grimaced. “Hope you don’t see Charlotte on your way out. You’re the lead story on all the society pages.”
I stared at them. “We’re a what now?”
“You’re dating,” she said quickly. “According to Richard Andrews, at least.”
“We’re not.”
Alex winced and handed me the phone. “Apparently, we’re hot.”
“We’re not.” I slowly took it from him and tapped in Gabi’s passcode, then stared at the screen.
Yep.
There it was.
In big, bold, black letters.
Was this a news app or a newspaper from the nineteen-fifties?
I blinked.
It was still there.
ALEXANDER, THE DUKE OF WORCESTER, AND ADELAIDE ASTLEY ARE THE ARISTOCRACY’S HOT NEW COUPLE!
“Is it just him? Everyone knows Richard talks shit,” I said, tapping back to the bloody Google search she’d done.
I answered my own question.
It was not just Richard Andrews.
Literally all the society pages were discussing our supposed new relationship.
This… was not good.
I stepped back and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Oh, dear.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Gabi said. “What were you even doing? Wait—you got takeaway? You didn’t get me anything?”
“Is that really your concern right now?” Alex asked her.
“There’s leftovers in there. It’s cold but help yourself.” I stared at the wall. “Oh, goodness. What do we do now?”
“Let me in!” Eva’s voice sounded outside the door right before she hammered against it.
“Bloody hell!” Alex rushed over there and quickly opened it. “Are you trying to wake the entire hotel?”
“Gabi said it was an emergency. What’s going on?” She tugged up the top of her jumpsuit, and wow.
She really had come directly from Matt’s room.
Gabi snorted. “I love that you took the time to get changed.”
I pointed to my suitcase. “Clothes in there.”
“Thank you. Give me two seconds.” Eva rushed over, grabbed a pair of leggings and an oversized t-shirt, and hurried into the bathroom. We didn’t move until she re-emerged, using my make-up wipes to remove hers from last night. “What’s going on?”
Alex explained quickly and gave her Gabi’s phone.
Eva gave a low whistle. “Bollocks.”
“That’s a better way to put it,” Gabi said, shoving some cold kebab meat in her mouth.
“Oh, is that leftover pizza over there?” My sister quickly turned her attention to it and stole the box, then sat on the sofa.
“Is that really what you’re both concerned about? The entire media now thinks we’re seeing each other,” I pointed out.
Eva shrugged. “What can you do? The media runs bullshit stories all the time, Addy. You should have known not to leave together.”
“They weren’t there when we left. They shouldn’t have been there at all.”
“You looked cosy.”
“It was cold so Alex gave me his dinner jacket, and it’s not like I was sober and wearing flats, okay?”
“You were very poised.”
“Charlotte called them,” Alex said, leaning against the wall and interrupting us. And thank God for that, or we’d argue all day. “I spoke to George this morning.”
“He confirmed it?” My eyebrows shot up. I wasn’t expecting them to actually find out.
He nodded. “I asked him last night, and that was why I was up early. He called the room and told me they’d found out what happened.”
“That bitch!” Eva frowned. “Why the fuck would she call the paps? This was supposed to be a private event. That was why so many people were here. Did everyone even stay at the hotel or were they photographed?”
“Both,” Gabi replied, licking her fingers. “That was how I ended up finding the articles about these two. I got a Google alert on my name and the only photos came from inside the room, so this makes sense if it was Charlotte.”
I frowned, and I knew my expression perfectly mirrored my twin’s. “Inside the room? How was that possible? Someone sold photos?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Either that, or she smuggled someone in and said they were her cousin. She had a lot of her own personal friends and family there.”
“It wouldn’t have been difficult for her to do that,” Alex agreed, nodding sagely. “We know she’s in this greatly for herself, and this exactly why Fred’s father refused to allow the event to be held at the estate. He doesn’t trust her, and this won’t help her cause. This place is notoriously private, and this won’t go down well with the owners. It’s why we stay here.”
That much was true. I almost always stayed here whenever I had to come to Bath, and I knew it was a favourite of so many people in the upper class because of its discretion. Not only was this a huge breach of our expected privacy, but it would potentially dent the hotel’s reputation.
Charlotte was in big trouble.
“Okay, and that’s great,” I said. “But what do we do about this? It’s only a matter of time before Mum and everyone starts asking what’s going on. What do we do?”
“You have two options.” Eva closed the pizza box and went to the mini fridge for a bottle of water.
Was she going to pay for that? I doubted it.
“Which are?”
“You issue a denial.” She looked at Alex. “You have lawyers on retainer, plus a public relations expert. Send a formal denial to all the papers who have published it, state that you’re just friends, and threaten legal action if they continue to publish such untruths.”
Alex shoved his hands in his pockets. “That seems extreme.”
“Or you play along with it.”
I stared at her. “We what?”
“You play along,” Eva paraphrased.
“We’re living together, Eva. They’re going to go from this to marriage in twenty-four hours.”
She shrugged. “It’s up to you, but I’d play along. You’re only there for another four weeks, and it’s not like either of you will be going on dates in bloody Whitborough, is it?”
“Didn’t need to be quite so rude,” Alex muttered.
“Oh, come on,” she shot back. “Where are you going to go? The crochet club?”
“It’s the cross-stitch club!” I threw a pillow at her. “We can’t pretend to be in a relationship. That’s completely ridiculous.”
Nobody said anything.
I looked at Alex. “You can’t seriously agree with her?”
He hesitated.
“Oh, my gosh! You do! You agree with her!” I turned to Gabi. “Do you?”
“Well…” Gabi trailed off. “I do think there’s a third option. You could just ignore it, but that would probably work better if you weren’t living in the same house. It might be easier to simply go along with it.”
“But that means lying to everyone. I don’t think we can do that.”
“Elizabeth would know the truth,” Eva pointed out. “And it’s not like our parents would tell anyone.”
“I couldn’t ask them to lie anyone. This is just too complicated.”
Alex stepped forward. “They have a point, Adelaide.”
“You seriously agree with them?” I jumped up and stared around at everyone. “How can all three of you think this is a good idea? Not to mention that I was literally with another guy for like an hour last night, and that’s a situation I have to deal with, too.”
“You didn’t like him. You can use me to get out of it.”
“You didn’t like him?” Eva exclaimed. “I thought you did!”
“That’s not the point!” I hugged myself. “He’s going to know it’s fake, too. This is messy.”
“Well…” Alex looked around and threw his hands up. “Why don’t we just ignore it? Everyone is aware that you’re living with me and tutoring Olympia. We can allow everyone to draw their own conclusions from there. We won’t confirm or deny anything. Leave it ambiguous.”
“And my parents? What then? What about when my mother calls me and demands to know if it’s true? What about Olympia, Alex? She’s old enough to listen to the news. Do you really want to have to explain this to her?”
Nobody answered.
Alex looked away.
“Exactly. It’s so simple until it’s laid out. Give me your room key,” I said to Gabi, holding out my hand. “I need ten minutes to myself.”
She handed it over without argument, and I wrapped my cardigan even tighter around myself and left, shutting the door behind me with a louder bang than I’d intended.
This was insane.
It wasn’t just me, was it? The whole idea was crazy. Avoidance, denying, admitting, lying… what kind of whacko pretended to be in a relationship?
Not me, that was who.
I let myself into their room and sat on the bed that was made up. It was clearly Eva’s, and had I known she was really spending the entire night with Matt, I’d have crashed Gabi’s room and taken this bed rather than sleep next to Alexander all night.
I didn’t have to explain those particular dreams, did I?
The only saving grace was that I hadn’t woken up in a hot sweat.
I buried my head in my hands. This was all a disaster. This was all supposed to be simple.
Fuck Charlotte and her need for attention.
She’d literally messed up my life.
I crawled under the covers and pulled the duvet up to my chin. The windows gave me a gorgeous view of the old architecture of Bath, and I could just about see the old Roman baths from here.
I didn’t know what to do.
Stupid Adelaide.
Stupid past Adelaide for offering to come here.
Nothing good ever came of messing with things you shouldn’t mess with.
For me, being someone’s plus one had never been a good thing. There’d been the time that his ex-girlfriend had shown up and they’d fought, there was another time a different guy had gotten back together with his ex, and then the time I found that someone else’s ex was pregnant.
Now, I was facing being someone’s fake girlfriend.
This was not how my life was supposed to go.
I just wanted to tutor Olympia, write my book, and go home at the end of the month without anything untoward happening.
The dirty dreams about Alexander screwing me against a bookshelf were really quite enough drama, thank you very much.
The room door opened, and I glanced in its direction.
Eva.
Of course.
She blew out a long breath and sat down next to where my legs were. “This was unexpected.”
“No shit,” I muttered.
“Addy—”
“How can you think this is a good idea? I’m the worst actress in the world, Eva. I was fired from being Mary in the school Christmas play, for goodness’s sake!”
She turned and rested her hand on my leg. “I know.”
“Then why? Why do you think this could possibly be a good thing?”
She sighed. “Mum’s going to kill me for telling you this.”
I propped myself up on my elbow. “Telling me what?”
Eva swallowed. “The hotel is struggling, Addy. Dad says we have six months of trading without a cash injection, if we’re lucky.”
“That doesn’t make sense. The hotel is always full.”
“Running costs have skyrocketed. Mum and Dad don’t want to raise the prices anymore than they have to. Country hotels aren’t the niche things they once were. They’re all over the place. There’s a huge wedding on the cards that could buy more time, but it’s not secured yet. They’re looking between us and two other places.”
My heart clenched. We’d run that hotel my entire life—they couldn’t lose it. Not now. Not after everything we’d all put into it, especially my parents. “And the media attention for me and Alex in a relationship would equal more interest in me. And by default…”
“More interest in the hotel,” Eva confirmed. “You and I are on the fringes of this society. We’re relatively unknown, but we’re still quite interesting to the society pages. The reporters will go digging for information on you and pull up the hotel.”
I stared at the pristine, white sheets. “That’s a huge assumption, Eva.”
She shook her head. “It’s not. I knew about those articles, Addy. Mum already texted me a link to one.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you pretend like you didn’t know?”
“I don’t want anyone to know about the hotel. Neither do Mum or Dad, so you have to keep this secret.” She squeezed my leg through the sheets. “You can tell Alex if you must, but nobody else. It won’t save the hotel, but it could buy us some time.”
“If it fails?”
“It’s four weeks, Addy. Four weeks, and you come home anyway. Most of the time you’ll be in Bentley Manor, and the paps can’t get anywhere near that place. All you need is the new relationship excitement, then the drama of you moving out and you breaking up.”
Three knocks sounded at the door, and Gabi’s voice filtered through. “Addy? Your mum has called you five times.”
Eva stared at me, and I held her gaze for what felt like forever before I flopped onto my back with a sigh. “Let her in,” I said. “I’ll tell Mum what she wants to hear.”
I was so, so going to regret this.