The plane began to taxi and we fastened our seatbelts, ready for takeoff.
“I want to make sure you’re comfortable. We need to decide how we met and how long we’ve known each other. That kind of thing.”
She gripped the arms of the chair as we picked up speed, closing her eyes as we took off. “Okay,” she said, her voice tight.
So she was a nervous flyer—that was a new detail.
“You’re going to be okay,” I said. I wanted to comfort her, but I didn’t want things to be awkward between us.
“I’ll be fine once we’re up and I’m drunk.”
I chuckled.
We levelled out and she finally opened her eyes.
“You’re back,” I said.
She released the arms of her chair. “We can say we met because you were interested in buying Cecily Fragrance,” she said, picking up where we left off. “That’s kind of true.”
I grinned. By the time I’d realized she was connected to Cecily Fragrance, I’d made her come three explosive times.
“You know what I mean,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me.
“Okay, but we can’t say we met a few weeks ago. No one is going to buy a relationship that new.”
“I’ve only owned Cecily Fragrance for two years, so we can’t have known each other longer than that.”
As I thought about a solution, I took off my cufflinks and placed them on the table and began to roll up my shirt sleeves.
“Do you always wear formal shirts and suits?” she asked.
I glanced down at myself. “I came straight from the office,” I said.
“I’ve never seen you in anything else.”
“Now that’s not true.” I grinned. “You’ve seen me in nothing.”
A hint of pink colored her cheeks. “You know what I mean.”
“What about if I met you years ago at a party?” I asked.
“What kind of party?” she asked as she tilted her head.
I paused. “A Christmas party. In Manhattan. I saw you and came over to talk to you. I asked you out and you told me you were married.”
“You didn’t see the ring?” She fiddled with the engagement ring on her left hand that we’d picked out yesterday.
“I was too dazzled by your beautiful smile,” I replied, watching as the corners of her mouth turned up.
“There’s no missing that ring,” I said, nodding at her new engagement ring.
“You think it’s too big?” she asked. “It’s a lot bigger than my last one.”
I’d hoped it was. Maybe it was the competitor in me, but even if this marriage was one of convenience, I wanted it to be better than her last one. “The British don’t do big engagement rings. That’s large enough to look authentically American, but small enough people won’t think we’re flash.”
She tilted her head as she held her hand out to admire her ring. “I like it—it’s Harry Winston for crying out loud! But it’s also art deco, a classic and very New York.”
“You better love it. I dropped six figures on it.”
She pulled her hand away and rolled her eyes. I hadn’t meant to sound like an asshole who only cared about money. “So you met me at a party, you crashed and burned. Then what?”
“Then nothing. I met you again a year ago when I wanted to invest in Cecily Fragrance. Brutal negotiator, you turned down my offer—”
“But accepted the date.” She grinned. “I like it. It sounds romantic. Did I remember you? From the party?”
“Of course you remembered me. I was the guy you couldn’t forget.” I liked this game. We could decide who we wanted to be. That’s what I’d been trying to do when I established the Westbury Group. It’s what I’d been trying to do all my adult life.
She shook her head. “No. No one I know would go for that. I loved my husband.”
She sounded sad. Was she still in love with him? Fuck, I hoped he wasn’t going to be a problem. The last thing I needed was for him to want her back, or for her to want out of our arrangement. “Okay, so I remembered you, but you forgot all about me.”
Her smile was back. “Sounds good. And why did you want to marry me?”
“You told me we wouldn’t have sex before marriage.”
She laughed and then stopped herself as the cabin crew came over. “Can I get you drinks? Champagne to celebrate?”
I’d made it pretty clear to people I was flying back to England to get married. I had to act as if I had nothing to hide. As if I’d finally fallen in love.
“Yes, that would be great.” Scarlett beamed up at the flight attendant—a woman I’d never fucked, thank God. I didn’t want any unnecessary complications on this trip.
“The start of the celebrations,” Scarlett whispered. “So, really, why are we getting married?”
“You’re the right girl,” I said, shrugging.
She nodded and then stopped. “Is it really that simple?”
“You tell me. You’re the one who’s been married before. Why did you marry your first husband?”
She picked up her glass, pausing before pressing it to her lips and taking a sip. “I don’t see how that’s relevant. So, I guess, we’re just in love. Never felt like this before blah, blah, blah.”
I chuckled. “Well, if you left out the blah, blah, blah, I think it might be more convincing.”
She shrugged and looked out the window.
“I didn’t want to lose you a second time,” I said.
She turned back to me, her eyebrows drawn together in confusion. “What?”
“That’s why I asked you to marry me. I knew when I met you at that party years ago that you were special, and I always regretted that I’d met you too late. I wasn’t about to let you slip away again.”
“You’re quite the storyteller.”
“You think it’s too much?”
“I think it sounds like a fairytale.” She glanced back at the window, absently twirling the stem of her glass against the table. “A beautiful story,” she whispered. “So yes, let’s say that.”
I wanted to ask what she was thinking. Why she sounded like she didn’t believe in fairytales. But we were strangers. We might have been physically intimate before we’d known anything about each other but, engaged or not, it didn’t seem right to ask such personal questions.
She sat back into her chair. “Where did you go to college?”
“Yale. You?”
“Princeton,” she replied.
“Did you like it?”
“It was close to home and by then I was already dating my ex—we went to high school together.”
“Right.” Again, I had more questions for her that I had to push down.
“But yeah, college was good. All those hormones and lack of boundaries. You know?”
I chuckled.
“But I went home most weekends. He was at a local school.”
Sounded like he might be a bit of a fuckup compared to Scarlett. She’d probably never realized she was too good for him.
“What about you? Your family’s from England, yet you went to college here? Did your parents move?”
“No. I wanted to go to school here. I boarded from twelve.”
“Wow, you were a long way away from home. It didn’t bother you?”